Voters in the critical seat of Namadgi have shown strong pro-Labor opinions in a series of questions put in a Canberra Times-Datacol opinion poll which was finalised yesterday.
They tended to favour Labor positions on Telstra, the Public Service, their preferred prime minister and the republic … though arguably the last is non-partisan.
They were also asked about their voting intention in the March 2 election and results of that question will be published tomorrow.
Details of the questions and the sample are in the panel.
Paul Keating is preferred as Prime Minister over John Howard by 50 per cent to 39, according to the poll. The undecided and minor-party voters also prefer Mr Keating. However, the older age groups much prefer Mr Howard. The over 55-year-olds favour Mr Howard 55 to 30. The younger voters prefer Mr Keating with 18 to 34 year olds favouring him 62 to 28.
The Namadgi opinion follows the national trend in the age weighting, but overall Namadgi voters appear more favourable to Mr Keating than voters nationwide.
On the separate question of approval for the leaders, Mr Keating is slightly ahead. He is approved by 48 with a disapproval of 46. Mr Howard’s figures are 46 and 42. More voters (12 per cent) have no opinion with respect to Mr Howard than Mr Keating (6 per cent).
The poll showed that Namadgi voters are heavily in favour of a republic: 57 to 20, with 20 per cent neutral and only 3 per cent undecided.
Approval is higher than the national figure and disapproval at 20 per cent is significantly lower than the nationwide figure.
Interestingly, the over 55 age group in Namadgi is 50 per cent in favour of a republic, a much higher figure than nationwide in that age group. Males (62) are more in favour than females (53).
The poll showed that nearly half of voters, 48 per cent, do not want any of Telstra sold; 37 per cent said sell some and 11 per cent said sell all. Those percentages were fairly constant across the age and sex groups. Though generally in favour of the Labor position, Namadgi voters are not as opposed to the sale as the nationwide opposition.
Fairly predictably, more people thought the ALP would manage the federal public service better than the Coalition (37 to 25), but there was a fair degree of indecision (32).
Namadgi is seen as a litmus-test seat in the federal election. Technically it is a new seat, but it was carved out of the old seat of Canberra. That seat was won by Liberal Brendan Smyth in a by-election in March caused by the retirement of Labor’s Ros Kelly. Mr Smyth obtained a swing of more than 16 per cent and the question for this election is the extent to which that anti-government sentiment is maintained.
He is being opposed by Labor’s Annette Ellis, a former Member of the ACT Legislative Assembly; the Greens Shane Rattenbury and Independent Derek Rosborough.
Canberra-Times Datacol will conduct a further poll of federal voting intention and opinion on federal issues in all ACT seats in the next week.