Advertiser Makin poll

The Adelaide Advertiser keeps cranking out those opinion polls, as it did in the lead-up to the state election last March. This time it’s a survey of 662 voters in the north-eastern Adelaide seat of Makin, retained by the Liberals in 2004 by just 0.9 per cent after a backlash against the sitting member, the now-retiring Trish Draper. Despite Liberal candidate Bob Day’s massive self-funded campaign, the poll shows a 54-46 lead for Labor’s Tony Zappia, who holds a primary vote lead of 45 per cent to 38 per cent. Further questions asked in the survey suggest that the loss of Draper’s personal vote has very little to do with the swing, despite recent reports the Liberals were begging her to reverse her decision to retire. The mystery of who actually conducts these Advertiser polls remains, to the best of my knowledge, unsolved.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

284 comments on “Advertiser Makin poll”

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  1. CTEP,

    Dont you think the Liberals in those 2 seats will be doing everything possible to “communicate” who their prospective new members might be?

    The irony is that in a campaign dominated by IR and ALP/Union links that the 2 seats they need to win could be those in which union candidates are the difference between winning and losing. Would be very poetic.

  2. Costello along with Minchin was a founder of the ultra right H.R.Nichols society and would have been up to his elbows in worst choices, remember Minchin apologising to them for worst choices not going far enough, the main aim of the society is changing the IR laws and demonising unions, a big difference from Costello’s brother, how can two people bought up the same be direct opposites in their ideology?

  3. Peter is a class traitor. Big chip on his shoulder. Very conflicted individual – who ultimately has very little belief in himself (hence the parliamentary braggadocio). He looked a lot happier as a social democrat. I believe there was some truth in the girl swinging him to the dark side. He’s a tragic figure. He should have a light opera written about him.

  4. Mr Rocket,

    I haven’t forgotten your little heresies of yesterday, sounds like a few dark nights of the soul have been had by you too!!

  5. Adam,

    Actually the 14 seats I have on my A-list are based on the average betting odds of Labor winning those electorates according to the individual electorate markets in Portlandbet, Sportingbet and Centrebet (which Simon Jackman analyses daily on his blog).

    Admittedly those individual electorate betting markets are very thin, but may be a better guide once the election is called and more money starts pouring into those markets. However the momentum in those betting markets, after a slow start, has been to Labor and I note that there are a swag of Coalition seats where Labor (according to punters at the moment) has a 40 – 49% chance of winning. The Coalition by contrast has only 1 Labor seat in that category – Hasluck.

    It’s a pity Australia has a non-proportional system of electing Lower House MPs which makes nationwide opinion polls not very useful in determining the number of seats a party will win. Of course in New Zealand under our MPP system, the percentage of votes a party wins directly determines the number of seats they get in the NZ Parliament (provided that the party gets at least 5% support or wins an electorate seat – note under MMP NZ has 121 MPs: 69 represent electorates and 52 are from each party’s list).

    However under MMP it does sometimes take ages to form a coalition government! 🙁

  6. Those comments weren’t heretical – Labor is getting too imbred – and I could be wrong but there doesn’t seem quite as much of it on the conservative side. What the Murdoch and Packers do is up to them – the fourth generation rule will get them all in the end… but Labor while not precluding candidates who have relatives in high positions – should be very careful about promoting them beyond their ability.

  7. No-one gives a stuff whether Labor candidates are union officials or not. Labor could run a slate of 150 Norm Gallagher clones and it wouldn’t make an iota of difference. If the voters want to kick out the Howard government, they will do so, regardless of whose name is on the ballot paper.

  8. ESJ, in all probability the number will be closer to 10 than 2. I am happy for you to cut and store that, and I’ll re-emerge on 25 November for a thrashing if I’m wrong.

  9. ESJ, there’s more seats than Blair.

    Some of Herbert, Petrie, Ryan, Leichhardt, Longman, Bowman, Flynn (not to mention the bolting seat of McPherson) will fall.All of them may not, maybe even nearly all of them may not, but some of them will.When Qld changes its mind, it’s game over for politicians.

    The ALP is already well ahead in 3 of those seats, very close in another 3.The Coalition simply will not hold them all.

  10. Re Penny Wong, i’ve heard it said that she could never be suitable for a Lower House seat because she’s gay. You can get away with it in the Senate because there’s less emphasis on the individual. Do people think this might be right? Sad if it is.

    Re Albanese: could he please just get his teeth fixed?

  11. Ignore this sentence @ 208: “The Coalition by contrast has only 1 Labor seat in that category – Hasluck”. It’s a typo – I should’ve deleted it!

  12. Edward StJohn

    How can you be so certain about how well the Coalition is doing on a seat to seat basis when John Howard is refusing to release the results of internal polling even within his own party.

  13. Hey, I’m not calling anything, nor am I associated with the ALP. But simply on the basis of the polls, and the absolute majority that the coalition currently has in Qld, I restate the ‘in all probability the number will be closer to 10 than 2’. And I’m rounding up from 6 🙂

  14. Adam #207,
    can you point me to the bit i missed? I admit, I haven’t followed this thread very closely, so just point me to the relevant comment number and I’m more than happy to look at the full context.

  15. KT @ 151

    I gather from your reply that abolishing the age pension IS on the agenda of the present Liberal Party. Do not give me nonsense about Centrelink. It exists solely to shoo people away.

  16. I gather from your reply that abolishing the age pension IS on the agenda of the present Liberal Party.

    Why would they abolish something which would result in electoral suicide?

    (Ok Workchoices, but that’s a bit different)

    The Libs have actually given Age Pension to those who don’t really need it, especially with their recent boosting of the assets test threshold.

  17. Fair enough Edward, it’s certainly possible. For what it’s worth, people usually predict a close result. I remember reading on the morning of the ’04 election that the Coalition would be returned with a reduced majority or possibly a hung parliament. Look how that turned out.

  18. Skynews is trying to put pressure on Rudd to name his entire front bench if he were to win the election. What a joke! We want to know:
    – When Howard intends to handover to Cossie?
    – Who will be deputy leader of the liberal party?
    – Who will be the treasurer?
    – Will Kevin Andrews be given a senior portfolio?

    These are the sorts of questions which the media should be asking,these are the sorts of questions that the people want to know answers to, instead of pushing their own one sided political agenda!

  19. Shows On @177
    Two things – While the Party Room will make a decision on a parliamentary issue or vote, and Senators are expected to follow that, the only sanction they have is to exclude the Senator who does not abide by a Party Room decision. This would then be transmitted back to the Australian Greens and state party for any further action. In reality how this normally works is that Senators, (or state MPs) will normally try and thrash out their differences and come to a consensus position. It may also be that the Party Room accepts that a Senator may vote differently, but this would normally be in a situation where that Senator’s vote is non-critical. I saw this happen in the WA Parliament for 4 years (with 5 Green MPs), and only on 1 occasion was there a deliberate split vote. This had been debated thoroughly by the MPs, the vote was secured anyway, so the dissenting MP voted in opposition to the other 4 MPs.

    Regarding the ALP IR legislation, Bob Brown has already given an undertaking that the ALP IR legislation will be passed, although the Greens will put forward amendments (undoubtedly doomed to failure irrespective of their merit). This is on the basis that the ALP legislation will be an improvement on the existing legislation.

    Adam @ 170
    It may be your belief that the Greens are the far-left on non-environmental issues (although the policies in many cases return us to pre-Howard days – the socialist utopia???), but this is not at all the case. Take defence for example – the retention of Australia’s military capability but a re-orientation and training for defence & peace-keeping, in line with the increasing demands upon the defence forces. A health system that caters for all Australians. etc etc. The bulk of the policies the Democrats and the left of the ALP could be comfortable with (even some in the Liberal Party – note Ben Quin).

  20. “any system which results in Winston Peters being foreign minister is a bad system as far as I’m concerned.”

    Adam, I know you don’t like PR, but you’ve got a bad habit of mistaking the outcome of an electoral process with the political decisions made as a result of those outcomes.

    The NZ election did not result in in Peters being the Foreign Minster (obviously. There was no election held for that position). Clark and Labour *decided* it was politically better/easier to deal with NZF and United Future rather than the Greens and the Maoris.

    d

  21. Re: Sky. Do people really care about these things? Do they pay attention to an announcement about an entire front bench or otherwise? Could the majority even name (or remember) all in the mix?

    Maybe this treating of Rudd as someone who is already a winner and should be accountable will work in his favour. He gets more coverage to the detriment of a scrambling Howard. Perhaps…

  22. ruawake,

    Andrews to lead ministers like Ruddock, Pyne, Downer, Bronwyn B, Sophie M, Abbott and Minchin.

    What a side, your heart would be busting with pride being a liberal supporter. 🙂

  23. Thanks Daryl @ 234,

    I wish I’d posted that reply to Adam!

    There’s nothing wrong with MMP, Adam – New Zealanders voted for that system in 1993 because the previous First-Past-the-Post system meant governments with less than 40% of the vote having unnaturally large majorities over the other parties which they used to push sometimes extreme legislation and policies (particularly from the 1975 – 1993).

    Since 1996 MMP has acted as a handbrake and forced governments to listen to smaller parties and to voters in between elections. Compare the pragmatism of the Clark government with the ideological see-sawing of the Muldoon, Lange-Palmer-Moore and Bolger governments.

    I have lived through First-Past-The -Post and MMP electoral systems and I prefer the less hasty, more considered pace of the latter – where no single party is completely dominant.

  24. Sky News is Australia’s Fox News. It is biased. Its political commentator, David Speers,is a disgrace. It is also irrelevant to public opinion – just like the Government Gazette.

  25. #35

    “BTW where does Andrews get those ears?”

    Got ’em from the late Jack Dyer, Albert. wanted to differentiate himself from his namesake, “Rotten Ronnie” Andrews.

  26. I suspect that the legislation next week will be about Health.

    Howard always said that the Mersey was a trial run.

    It explains this week’s visit to Tasmania and the discussion of Health policy.

    Abbott is in the papers again discussing Health – taking the focus away from McClelland.

    My pick is a big new piece of legislation effectively co-opting Health to the Feds. Howard has already legislated his idealogy into IR, but Health still looks decidedly social-democrat (despite his slow draining of funding).

    Absurd? Maybe, but it also does tie together a whole bunch of weird random things that Howard has been doing recently, and make them all seem coherent and planned.

  27. Nicola Roxon did say Abbott had another “thought bubble” on health today.

    If Howard wants to run on health he will get creamed, Abbott has already admitted they have reduced health funding to public hospitals.

  28. Almost certainly NZ Labour wouldn’t have had to deal with any of them under the old system. They would have been either in or out.

    One solution to some of the problems with PR is the Greek system. Greek elections use PR so minor parties get elected, but the law says that the largest party must get a majority of seats. This distorts proportionality considerably, but it means that Greece always has a majority government. The Greeks blame the 1967 coup, in part, on chronic weak government caused by PR.

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