NSW Labor under the leadership of Premier Kristina Keneally is polling worse than when former Premier Nathan Rees was pushed from the job in December last year.
The Newspoll results found that if an election were held today, NSW Labor would receive only 25 percent of the total vote and be almost entirely wiped out in NSW. The latest survey is based on 1,280 interviews among voters conducted over the last month, with a maximum margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Kristina Keneally still fares well with her satisfaction rating as Premier unchanged at 47 percent, however her dissatisfaction rating has increased from 31 to 37 percent since the last survey. When it comes to preferred Premier voters still favor Kristina Keneally by a significant margin over Liberal leader Barry O’Farrell 44 percent to 36 percent, however Barry O’Farrell gained 6 points since the last poll and Ms Keneally lost 1, most likely as a result of the non-stop campaigning Mr O’Farrell engaged in in the month leading up to the Penrith by-election to see Stuart Ayres win in a landslide victory.
The Liberal Party in NSW continues to poll consistently at or around the percentages seen over the last year, with most of the vote flight away from Labor ending up with the Greens who poll at 16 percent vs 9 percent for the 2007 election.
In two party preferred poll numbers, the Liberal/National parties pull in 61 percent, the highest result since the 59 percent seen just prior to Nathan Rees demise, with Labor correspondingly down to 39 percent,.
Six months after the installment of Kristina Keneally as Premier, it would appear that the voter intentions for Labor have normalised to their recent historic trend levels, with the ‘dead cat bounce’ effect of a fresh NSW Premier in Ms Keneally all but evaporating. While Kristina Keneally still polls well herself, voters have well and truly switched off from the NSW Labor party.