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Greens Vote Surges to 16 percent in latest Newspoll

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 latest Newspoll results published in yesterday's The Australian show that the greens vote has surged by 30 percent from  12 percent to 16 percent. At the same time support for the major parties has dropped by 2 % each.

Greens leader Senator Bob Brown cautioned that the result could be a polling aberration, but is confident The Greens are 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.

If carried through to the next federal election, this  level of support could easily  see the Greens gaining a full quota in the Senate in NSW electing at least one greens senator from that State. It is also quite likely that this level of support would translate to members in the lower house.

The Greens primary vote  is now double what it was at the 2007 ( 7.8 percent ). Now 16 percent . 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 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.