The Greens have surged in support in the latest Newspoll, stripping votes from both the Labor and Liberal parties and capturing 16 percent of the primary vote to the delight of Greens leader Bob Brown.
The Newspoll results, published in The Australian today, shows support for the Greens increasing by one third or four points to 16 percent, stripping support from both the Labor and Liberal parties.
Greens leader Senator Bob Brown cautioned against looking too much into the result, believing it possible to be a polling aberration, but is confident to be gaining ground on the major parties.
“I think you can easily get carried away by one poll – mind you, I’d rather have a poll going up than the other way,” he told the ABC’s NewsRadio program.
The Greens share of primary vote intentions is now double what it was at the last election in 2007 picking up 7.8 percent of the vote then and 16 percent now. Labor’s support has continued to slide, down to 35 percent from 37 last poll and a high of 43.3 at the last election.
The Liberal party has also seen a 2 percentage points fall, down to 38 percent, with the coalition including the National Party still down slightly from their 2007 election vote share of 42.1 percent at 41 percent.
The swing away from Labor can mostly be attributed to a flight of voters from the party to the Greens, picking up 6 percentage points after Labor abolished support for the Emissions Trading Scheme until 2013 earlier this year.
The Australian reports that both Tony Abbott and Kevin Rudd have slipped in their approval ratings since the last poll, with support for Prime Minister Rudd slipping due to the Resource Super Profits Tax announcement and Tony Abbott’s support sliding after his “you can’t trust what I say” performance on the ABC’s The 7:30 Report.
