ReachTEL also published its latest monthly automated phone poll for Channel Seven last week, which slipped through my net at the time. This had the LNP up 0.7% to 47.8%, Labor up 1.3% to 30.2%, KAP down 1.4% to 10.1% and the Greens up 0.1% to 8.0%. On my reading of two-party preferred, Labor made a rounding-assisted one point gain on the previous month’s poll, putting it 59-41 behind rather than 60-40. Newman’s combined good rating was up from 38.4% to 42.3% with combined poor down from 46.9% to 43.8%, while Annastacia Palasczcuk was down on both good (from 24.1% to 21.0%) and poor (34.2% to 32.2%).

The following chart shows the two-party results recorded so far this term in both the Newspoll quarterly polls and the monthly ReachTEL polls, which find the latter’s results in encouragingly close proximity to the former’s.

UPDATE: Didn’t take long: results here. Katter’s Australian Party is up from 10.5% to 11.5% the Greens are down from 8.4% to 7.9%. I calculate that as a clean 60-40 lead for the LNP, compared with 54-46 a month ago.

UPDATE 2: Now we have a result from Newspoll, which I wouldn’t have picked because it normally reports quarterly from Queensland and it’s still on February – I guess Queensland has been promoted to bi-monthly now (UPDATE: Need to read more carefully. It’s Galaxy, not Newspoll). Anyway, GhostWhoVotes relates it’s quite a different set of numbers from ReachTEL, with the LNP two-party preferred lead at only 55-45 (down from 56-44) from primary votes of 43% (down one) and 34% (up one). Campbell Newman’s lead as preferred premier has also narrowed from 53-28 to 52-31.

Essential Research has rolled together its polling for November and December to produce results on state voting intention from New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, with respective sample sizes of 1386, 1170 and 719, and respective margins of error of 2.7%, 2.9% and 3.7%. The results are readily in line with the general impression of polling elsewhere, to wit:

• The Coalition continues to look strong in New South Wales, with a primary vote essential unchanged on the election result at 51%, Labor up from 25.6% to 31% and the Greens down from 10.3% to 8%. The Coalition’s two-party lead is 60-40, compared with an election result of 64.2-35.8.

• The going is considerably rougher for the Baillieu government, who are at 50-50 after snatching the narrowest of victories at the November 2010 election from a result of 51.6-48.4. The primary votes are 43% for the Coalition, 39% for Labor and 11% for the Greens, compared with election results of 44.8%, 36.2% and 11.2%.

• The result in Queensland is at the strong end of the polling trend for Labor, who trail by just 53-47 on two-party preferred after the 62.8-37.2 demolition inflicted at the election. The LNP primary vote is at 41% compared with 49.7% at the election, with Labor up from 26.7% to 35% and the Greens up from 7.5% to 8%. Pollsters seem to be struggling at getting a believably high figure for Katter’s Australian Party, although Essential has done better than Newspoll in having it at 7%, compared with 11.5% at the election.

All three governments score net negative ratings on “heading in right/wrong direction”, health, education, economic management, “managing the economy in the interests of ordinary working people”, industrial relations, unemployment, planning, public transport, the environment and water. The strongest results across the board are for police/public safety, with the only net positive rating in the entire survey being the score on this measure in Victoria. The Newman government does particularly badly on health, ordinary working people, industrial relations and unemployment, while the Baillieu government does poorly on education and gets savaged on public transport.

GhostWhoVotes reports the October-December Newspoll of state voting intention in Queensland has the Liberal National Party two-party lead down from 60-40 to 56-44 (only the tail end of the July-September polling period captured the decline in the LNP’s fortunes, a point which was noted by Possum, but escaped The Australian). The LNP’s primary vote is down six points to 42%, of which Labor has reaped only a one-point dividend to reach 31%. Katter’s Australian Party is up three on the primary vote to a still unrealistically low 4%, while the Greens are down a point to 8%. The most bruising figures of all are for Campbell Newman, who has slumped nine points on approval to 38% and vaulted 10 points on disapproval to 48%. Annastacia Palaszczuk by contrast has recorded an encouraging gain, up five on approval to 34% and steady on disapproval at 30%. Newman’s lead as preferred premier has shrunk from 55-21 to 45-29.

The period since the last such poll has seen no fewer than three defections by LNP parliamentarians, which have changed the numbers in the chamber from LNP 78, Labor 7, KAP 2 and independents 2 to LNP 75, Labor 7, KAP 3 and independents 4. Condamine MP Ray Hooper, who was first elected as an independent at the 2001 election and joined the Nationals later that year, has joined Katter’s Australian Party and assumed its parliamentary leadership. A further two MPs, Alex Douglas from the Gold Coast seat of Gaven and Carl Judge from Yeerongpilly, have quit over disputes with the LNP leadership and now sit as independents.

UPDATE: Also helpful for ReachTEL’s credibility is a result from Galaxy overnight which had escaped my notice due to weekend inattentiveness. The 56-44 two-party result is more favourable to the LNP than ReachTEL’s, but the primary votes of 44% for the LNP and 33% for Labor are well in their recent ballpark. The poll also shows Campbell Newman with an approval rating of 43% and a disapproval rating of 48%. Galaxy’s poll has a sample of 800 and a theoretical margin of error of about 3.5%, while ReachTEL’s has 1123 and about 3%.

In a further Queensland development, Condamine MP Ray Hopper has defected from the LNP to Katter’s Australian Party. Hopper came to parliament in February 2001 when he won the predecessor seat of Darling Downs as an independent after failing to win Nationals endorsement, and he joined the party later in the year. He also assumed a position on the front bench, but was progressively demoted to parliamentary secretary and dropped altogether after opposing the Campbell Newman takeover in March 2011.

Newman has spoken today of “a deep sense of betrayal for the people of the Condamine electorate”, and has apparently said he will treat the LNP’s preselected candidate as the electorate’s legitimate representative. I’m usually not too keen on mid-term defections myself, but Hopper’s is an unusual case, and Newman’s approach seems to me to bespeak the tin-eared over-aggressiveness that is so often attributed to him. Having come to parliament by appealing to the court of the people after defeat in party preselection, Hopper’s electoral strength is clearly his own rather than his party’s. This point was further emphasised in 2009 when he comfortably retained the seat against an independent challenge from the highly regarded Stuart Copeland, who had been contentiously been squeezed out of Nationals preselection after his seat was abolished.

The conservative side of politics was certainly not troubled when Hopper abandoned the label he was elected under by joining the Nationals, and neither were his constituents. My guess is that the latter will be neither dismayed nor surprised by this latest development.

The commonality between Newspoll and Galaxy ends at Campbell Newman’s personal ratings: Newspoll has his approval at 47% and his disapproval at 38%, which compares with 44% and 49% from Galaxy. The numbers are in fact slightly better for Newman than the 47% and 40% he recorded in the final pre-election Newspoll. Annastacia Palaszczuk has done correspondingly worse out of Newspoll, with 29% approval and 30% disapproval compared with 36% and 28% from Galaxy. Newman leads Palaszczuk 55-21 as preferred premier.

A note of qualification should be added that this poll is presumably derived from surveying conducted over a three-month period from July to September, during which much occurred in Queensland politics. Were a short-range phone poll such as Galaxy’s to be conducted, it might well produce a different and more current result.

A seat results projection of the results Poliquant now has Labor at 28 seats, compared with 24 last month and seven at the election. Possum Comitatus, who is privy to polling conducted by ReachTel for the union movement in Queensland, published aggregated results for last month from both published and unpublished figures which indicated a 6.9% swing to Labor in Brisbane off a sample of about 2000, and a 5.0% swing in regional areas off a sample of about 800.

The poll also finds over a third of respondents now rating Campbell Newman’s performance as “very poor”, which has progressed since July from 14.8% to 27.4% to 35.8%. Interestingly, his “very good” rating is down only slightly, with most of the movement coming off “indifferent”, down from 20.0% to 8.6%. Annastacia Palaszczuk’s ratings have improved slightly, with a combined good and very good result up from 19.4% to 23.2% since July, with poor and very poor down from 32.3% to 29.1%. The budget has not done much to change views on the appropriateness of the government’s cost-cutting measures, with results of 51.2% for gone too far, 16.6% for not gone far enough and 30.5% for too early to tell, which is little changed on a month ago.

Stay tuned for what promises to be a glut of federal polling over the coming days: Nielsen tonight, Newspoll most likely tomorrow evening, Essential Research early tomorrow afternoon, and Morgan on Tuesday afternoon.

UPDATE: Looks the Courier-Mail aren’t interested in Palaszczuk. A graphic accompanying their story shows only results for Newman. It also tells us 49% have found the Newman government’s performance worse then expected,, 7% have found it better, and 39% believe it has lived up to expectations (whether those expectations were high or low is not specified).

UPDATE 2: GhostWhoVotes reports Galaxy does in fact have personal ratings for Annastacia Palasczcuk: 36% approval (down two) and 28% disapproval (up 10).