GhostWhoVotes reports that Galaxy have conducted their first poll of federal voting intention for some time, and it’s bang on the mark of other recent polling: the Coalition leads 56-44 on two-party preferred, from primary votes of 31 per cent for Labor, 48 per cent for the Coalition and 13 per cent for the Greens. Thirty-seven per cent support the carbon tax (which is apparently “up two”, although I couldn’t tell you off the top of my head what they’re comparing it with), with 55 per cent opposed (steady). UPDATE: GhostWhoVotes in comments does my homework for me by pointing out that the point of comparison is this poll from May.

The sample, remarkably, is 2000, producing a low margin of error of 2.2 per cent. Pollsters rarely go this high, as the statistical return on the investment diminishes quite rapidly: a 1000 sample poll gets you a margin of error of about 3.1 per cent; another 500 cuts it by 0.6 per cent; but another 500 only cuts it a further 0.3 per cent. Newspoll approaches 2000 for its immediate pre-election polls, but it does this in order to boost its sample sizes in the smaller states so it can produce credible state-by-state breakdowns. Maybe Galaxy has done something similar here and we can expect more detail to be forthcoming – or alternatively, perhaps the method used is some sort of low-cost alternative to phone polling, such as the automated dialling employed by JWS Research.

UPDATE: Told you so: GhostWhoVotes reports that the figures for Queensland are 59-41 two-party, with primary votes of 32 per cent for Labor, 54 per cent for the Coalition and 8 per cent for the Greens.

UPDATE 2: Further from Ghost central:

In the Sydney Metro area the primaries are ALP 29 L/NP 54 GRN 9. The two party preferred comes to ALP 40 L/NP 60, which is apparently a swing of 13% since the last election …

People that believe that man-made carbon emissions are the cause of global warming has remained steady at 36, while belief in the cycle of nature being responsible rose 6 points to 32 percent.