In today’s Australian, the regular bimonthly state poll for New South Wales shows a swing back to Labor from a catastrophic low of 26% in December 2008.
Labor is up from 26% to 30%, while the Coalition drops from 43% to 42%. The Greens have risen from 14% to 15%, which appears to be a record for the party. There was a big jump from the 5-9% range where the Greens sat during the 2003-2007 Parliament following the 2007 election, with all but one poll being in the 13-14% range, with the exception of the first poll after Nathan Rees took over from Morris Iemma, which put the Greens on 11%. This 15% is the first time the party has reached those levels.
I’ve included a chart showing the Newspoll performances of the Greens since mid-2003.
Elsewhere: Poll Bludger and Pollytics.
My eyes, my eyes!
What’s that green line doing on a grey background!
There. Does that satisfy your delicate sensibilities, Mr Comitatus?
The real thing not to like about that chart is the way that the time axis isn’t a constant scale. That big jump corresponds to almost a year’s gap in the polling!
I agree, the time axis there is a little out of whack, but it still shows a big jump in support for a party to gain in one year. The Greens have effectively jumped 10% points in one year, which is a huge gain and shows what can happen when an ineffective Labor Party is in power. If Labor continues the way it is one could only expect these numbers to go up in the lead up to 2011.
It is also interesting to see when looking at Newspoll that the Victorian Greens are also currently sitting at 15% support. This is up from the 10% support they got at the election in 2006.
What is interesting about this however, is that it comes at a time when I would argue that Victoria has a relatively stable and popular Labor government.
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