After last night’s sort-of-triumph in the Victoria Park by-election, the morning has brought two opinion polls to warm the Labor supporter’s heart. After a quiet week on the polling front from the previously prodigious Advertiser, its News Limited stablemate the Sunday Mail has published a survey of 607 voters showing Labor with 45 per cent of the decided vote against 37 per cent for the Liberals, for a two-party lead of 55-45 – which fits in nicely with this site’s election guide predictions.
In Tasmania, the Launceston Examiner has published the second EMRS poll of the campaign showing Labor’s statewide vote up on the previous survey from 40 per cent to 44 per cent, with the Liberals down from 33 per cent to 28 per cent and the Greens down from 22 per cent to 18 per cent, with 10 per cent undecided. I will ferret around to see if I can locate a table, so stay tuned.
Hate to disagree with you here, but any figures published by the Sunday Mail are known not to be the most accurate.
Any party polling poorly in this survey, such as The Greens or Liberals, will consider purchasing more newspaper advertising to support their vote.
Parties who have already heavily invested in newspaper advertising, such as Labor and the Democrats, are rewarded with a healthy poll result.
If the polling is conducted by phone, how is newpaper advertising going to influence the results ?
Zane is obviously wet behind the ears. The only question mark over that poll is that it surveyed only 607 voters. Is that a large enough sample to cover the entire State?
The polls conducted by the Advertiser/Sunday Mail have generally shown a downward trend for the Greens and Liberals over the course of the campaign. This is something that cannot be denied.
Zane being a Green is obviously not happy with the polling.
Kris Hanna who quit the Green party as their only MP (to run as an independent) is affecting the Greens performance as well as the fact that they have not been able to get media.
I must say though that the only poll that is accurate is the one taken on polling day.
Opinion polls are good at showing trends, but given the high amount of undecided voters, who knows where those votes will go.
Are the Democrats ‘investing heavily’ in advertising? Forgive my ignorance, I know they are standing nearly a full slate again, but I’d assumed after their worst result since ’85 at the last poll, they were still on the slide. Or are things holding up in their ‘home’ state?
Dems have invested heavily in direct mail and advertising in independent newspapers.
In SA the Dems are not on the slide. They have been increasing their polling over the campaign, but a strong ALP is making it hard for all minor parties. The Dems have also had a good run of earned media coverage.
The only upper house poll conducted by the Advertiser has the Democrats on 5% along with the Greens 5% and Family First 3%.
In the Advertiser’s lower house polls (statewide) over the past few months the Greens have fallen from about 4.5% to 2%, whilst the Dems have risen from 2% to 3%, but the undecided votes are quite high for this stage of the campaign.
Things are definitely holding up for the Dems in SA, but we won’t see the final result until the count in the upper house is complete.
The dems are holding up??? Are you kidding or just biased?
In 1997 the Dems got 16.67% in the LC, in 2002 they got 7.34%. This election they will probably get somewhere between 2-4%. In the 2004 federal election the SA Democrats got less than 2.5% of the vote.
Their leading (and so far unelected) candidate will need a lot of luck to push beyond the greens and get elected to the 11th spot on greens preferences. Unlikely.
Their campaign has been dismal, except for some interesting antics from their Norwood candidate.
And Zane seems to be no genius either.
After looking at his website, I wonder why he didn’t take part in the “great waite debate” instead of giving the honour to his party leader????
Totally agree Chris. Also got to add to the mix that they are still a quite well resources party, and thus have alot of corflutes around (albiet many in the wrong electorates…), and are still able to afford alot more advertising than the greens.
Oh and there candidate is also an incumbent
with all that in mind i wouldn’t say 2-4% is worth making to much noise about.
I agree with Chris and Cameron. The electorate at large sees the Democrats as useless bastards.
Rather than “keeping the bastard’s honest” they were quite keen to hop into bed with the bastards.
The Federal Liberals gave us the GST but its the Democrats that are paying the political price (and rightly so – thanks to Meg Lees).
After all the Liberals told every one up front what their intentions were (whether you agrred with them or not) and managed to win the election with less than 50% of the 2PP vote.
The Democrats on the other hand said “Vote for us..we wont allow a GST, AND we will keep the bastards honest”.
The rest is history and the electorate has obviuously come to the conclusion. Better vote for the bastards that we think can deliver something in Government than for a whinging bunch of hypocrites – called the Democrats.
A pundit
Actually in that election, Meg Lees said that if the Howard government is elected and Australian public voted for a GST, the democrates will allow the GST to become law, after some changes, which was what they did.
It was all the bickering that happened afterward between Democrats senators that led to the demise of the Democrats.
The 2004 federal senate election shows that the Democrats lost the liberal leaning voters. In every state in that election, it was Democrat down 2-3% liberal up 5%, like it or not, the collapse of the Democrat led to the Howard Government controlling the senate.
There will be yet another poll out, just got my third call from the advertiser this campaign, guess its expected in a marginal.the questions were who will get your first preference, will Rob Kerin stay on if defeated, who will replace him and who will be the logical successor to Mike Rann.
Expect the gap to tighten in that poll Cheyne
I wonder if your name-calling correspondents have better knowledge of politics than they have of grammar (“there candidate”, “to much”, etc).
Many people deeply regret the departure of Aiden Ridgway and the loss of the other Democrats, and the weakening of the constructive and moderating role they played for years in the Senate.
If complaining about Government lies/ waste, avoiding public scrutiny, invading another country, locking children up like animals, destroying wages/ conditions for low paid workers, deporting Australians, polluting the planet, spreading paranoia at the expense of an identifable minority, bribing voters, funding Saddam, ALP inaction, etc is “wingeing”, then the Australian Democrats should wear that insult as a badge of honour.
Melbourne, 16 March
People may criticise the Dems for dropping from 16% in 1997 to 7% in 2002, but people need to realise that these elections were massively different. During the 1997 election the ALP were not seen as an alternative Government because of the bad economic management and their part in the State Bank disaster and the Liberals were brawling at the time. People voted Democrat because they saw them as an alternative.
In 2002, the ALP had stabilised and recovered ground and the Libs had stopped fighting. People overwhelmingly moved back to the ALP and Liberals therefore limiting the Democrats chance of maintaining the 1997 result. That is fact and reality.
If we put how the Democrats are doing in the context of after the 2004 Federal election, the SA Democrats are doing much better than their federal counterparts did.