BEC’S THE FAVE
SUPPORT for the State Government has held steady but new polling has thrown up a surprise for Labor, according to the latest EMRS poll.
The telephone poll of 1000 voters — done between July 29 and 31 — found support for the Liberals was at 38 per cent for the third survey in a row.
Support for Labor fell from 34 per cent to 30 per cent, which was the party’s worst result since May last year.
Labor has not seriously challenged the Government in opinion polling for the past five years, except for a single poll where the party drew level at 34 per cent support in November 2017.
The latest poll shows support for the Greens rose by one percentage point to 16 per cent.
“Of the remaining decided voters, 16 per cent said they would vote for an alternative to the three major parties, up only slightly from 15 per cent in the last May 2019 poll,” commentary accompanying the result said.
Labor’s Rebecca White continues to be the preferred premier, with support of 45 per cent of those surveyed, compared with 40 per cent for Premier Will Hodgman. Her result was a two percentage point increase on the last recorded result in May this year.
EMRS chief operations director Samuel Paske said both major parties had seen their support fall since the election.
“Whilst the Tasmanian Government’s primary vote has held at 38 per cent across all polls in 2019, this is still well below the 50 per cent of votes won in the 2018 state election,” he said. “With the support for Labor at 30 per cent currently, this means almost one in three decided voters have placed their vote with the Greens, another minor party, or an independent.
“We typically do see this in Tasmanian polling during an election cycle, but would strongly suspect the 16 per cent for ‘other’ in this latest
poll is some residual support for high-profile federal candidates Andrew Wilkie and Jacqui Lambie.”
Premier Will Hodgman downplayed the result.
“I would rather Tasmanians judge our government on our performance, our record of delivering on keeping Tasmania’s economy strong, on doing more to invest into essential services, improved services for Tasmanians,” he said.
“There are other things I’m more concerned about than an opinion poll.”
Labor’s David O’Byrne was similarly unperturbed.
“A poll 18 months into a four-year term, off the back of the federal election when there’s a whole range of issues that are flowing around the community, I don’t think you can take much store in it,” Mr O’Byrne said.