Morgan Senate poll

I normally don’t have much time for Morgan’s Senate polling, having posited that wavering survey respondents incline to minor parties for their second choice purely to shake things up a bit. However, it may be that Morgan’s technique is improving, as their September effort finally has the Democrats down to an almost believable 2.5 per cent. The headline finding is that Pauline Hanson’s vote in Queensland has increased to 7.5 per cent from 4.5 per cent when they started tracking her in March/April. She’s still no chance of winning a seat, but it’s nonetheless interesting to speculate why her relative support might be increasing. Despite what the Morgan press release says, my back-of-envelope calculations tell me the results would be 3-2-1 in Labor’s favour in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, 3-2-1 in the Coalition’s favour in Western Australia and 4-2 to Labor in South Australia. Tasmania would see a tight contest for the final seat between Labor’s third candidate and the Greens’ second, Andrew Wilkie, with the others going two each to Labor and Liberal and one to Bob Brown. It needs to be remembered that these are the same respondents who have been providing Morgan with consistently implausible lower house leads for Labor.

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.

128 comments on “Morgan Senate poll”

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  1. I guess it was one of his better moves (leaving my crank hat off for a second) but he just reminds me of a snickering private schoolkid too much.

  2. Yikes, Jen, just watched it on the Chaser’s website.

    I can see why people might have been just a tad offended but yep, very clever indeed (loved the Belinda Emmet moment!).

    Kind of like Noel Coward on Nasty Pills. 😉

  3. First timer as well.. .I think that is a great poll for labor… the primary vote is only down 1%… it also tightens the gap so they can start to sell the underdog status.. let’s face it… looking through the seats that have to fall, and the fact labor need to probably win over 52%2pp that poll puts them in a mentally tight position… this will go down well in qld in time … look at the last state election… Beattie kept saying he was an underdog.. when all the internal polling had him murdering it.. like he ended up doing… a false sense of momentum for the coalition.. and think… if labor are as smart as they should be, they should get a jump at some point on the back of the tax reply…

  4. OK – back on track.
    I guess Galaxy is going to reflect the initial bounce people were expecting from Howard’s 34 billlion dollar bribe – but with a little time and the realisation that it doesn’t happen for years, that it is obvious they were overtaxed in the first placer etc etc, wouldn’t you expect that Mr and Mrs Plasma TV are going to have time to see that it won’t really make any difference?
    and what the hell are they going to offered next?

  5. ESJ – that’s still a winning position for Labor and the Libs have fired off thier biggest gun. Labor hasn’t fired a shot yet. Gee, that preferred PM (the most “important” figure) looks great for Rudd.

  6. GB,

    I can recall many posters on this site scoffing when Shanahan said preferred PM was important.

    It seems our good friend “Glen” was right to warn about the h word. In time you will see that I was right about the L word.

  7. For the ALP, it shows -1% in primary vote, and stable PPM. Not as panicky as it looks on the surface. Howard agenda has dominated this week, and $34 billion is the sort of bribes he needs to become competitive. However, if Howard goes big, and goes big early, it gives Rudd plenty of room to throw ALOT of money around, just a little less than Howard to appear responsible. That said, Labor seriously needs to lift their game on the campaign trail.

  8. You know in your heart of hearts this election is over ESJ. If that’s the best they can do after dominating the week they are in heaps.

  9. Labor have their own timetable and will not deviate. No need too with figures like this. Isn’t it strange how Galaxy produce such a poll just when it is needed?

  10. Gary,

    I suspect Swannie is sitting in a hotel room with his shoes and socks off trying to count out a tax package, remember this is a man who said the FTB was not real.

    Why does the Labor party tolerate failure? Surely swan should have been retired after claiming the Family tax benefit was not real. Same with Gillard after medicare gold.

    As the English when asked why they occasionally executed an admiral – “to encourage the others”

  11. ESJ, you’ve been smoking too much of your own hubris. The English executed Admirals for political intrigues, the only ones they killed for “encouragement” were cannon-fodder such as yourself.

  12. ESJ – where in the heck did you drag that rot up from. I thought I was having an intelligent conversation with an intelligent person. My mistake.
    Galaxy suggests a 23 seat gain by Labor by the way. That will do.

  13. To all you clever people.
    What do you think the reason for the decline in the vote for the Greens in SA could be caused by, while thay continue to gain votes in every other state?

  14. According to this Morgan poll The Greens’ Senate vote has not increased in Victoria, Queensland or South Australia, but has surged in WA and Tassie and increased in NSW.

    In Victoria the Greens have enjoyed a dream run from the media but their stagnant vote may be related to the relentless, vicious ALP campaign against them. Also, they didn’t poll particulalrly well in Albert Park after talking up a win, as is their habit. Their election to the State Upper House is anti-climatic, they often vote with the Liberals and they voted against requiring a plebicite on nuclear – all exploited mercilessly by the ALP.

    The Greens Senate vote is holding up well in Victoria despite these factors (which may also apply in SA), because of the profile and ability of their excellent Senate candidate. It’s regrettable that only Richard or Lyn Alllison (and not both) will be elected on these figures.

    I would be interested to hear about The Greens in SA. The Democrats vote has stabilised there and Natasha S-D and current Dems candidates – Ruth Russell and Jenni Williams – have been getting good coverage, in Melbourne at least.

  15. The quality of candidates for the sixth senate spots in this election is excellent. The Democrats, Greens and people like Xenophon and Hanson all deserve to be in parliament, as they are much more representative and talented than the hacks put forward by both the Labor and Liberal parties. It makes me so mad that 5 seats are wasted on seat warmers. I would seriously consider having a national vote for senators instead of state based. (ie our vote elects 40 senators instead of 6).

    I can’t believe Labor has put Jacinta Collins as their number one senate candidate in Victoria – she’s anti-abortion! Don’t women in Labor have any self respect?

  16. 117
    Watcher Says:
    October 18th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
    ESJ, you’ve been smoking too much of your own hubris. The English executed Admirals for political intrigues, the only ones they killed for “encouragement” were cannon-fodder such as yourself.

    Vice-Admiral John Byng was court-martialled and executed for failing to ‘do his utmost’ at the Battle of Minorca. You can read the whole story at Wikipedia. Voltaire incorporated the execution into his novel _Candide_ and had another character tell Candide that ‘in this country, it is wise to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others’. This is what Edward St John was quoting, although it’s not strictly accurate to say that it was an explanation given by the English themselves.

  17. Well, this is interesting. Like many others, I have little faith at all in the accuracy of Senate Polling, however, running these fresh figures through Cassandra’s nifty little senate calculator:

    http://um.com.au/cgi-bin/cassandra/

    We get an interesting result.

    ALP: 3 seats
    LIB: 2 seats
    FFP: 1 seat

    Two caveats: a) I redistributed the residual fairly evenly, to make it 100% and b) I know information about some preferences here that are not yet public, which influences this result, though I have had to get the lower end of two parties.

    It still stacks up as an interesting contest. I can’t find any reasonable scenario on Cassandra that gets Larissa Waters in (GRN) nor returns Andrew Bartlett (DEMS) his seat, unless Andrew can manage over 9% of the vote, or Larissa over 11% of the vote…

    Some might be disturbed to realise that in several slightly tweaked scenarios on this simple calculator, I found Pauline with a seat…

  18. WYSIWYG

    If Pauline Hanson wins a seat, I think I’ll leave the country too, might go somewhere a little less oppressive.. Myanmar maybe 🙂

  19. The fate of those minors will depend on being able to climb the preference ladder.
    Bartlett appears likely to be stick in the middle of a 3-3, although much of it will come down to the tickets of shooters party, fishing party, marijuana party and any number of other micros, which collectively scored a third of a quota in Qld last time.

    I’m guessing the Cassandra result giving 1 seat to FF relies on them collecting Dem prefs, and I don’t know which way they’ll go this time.

  20. Eric

    No, I tried to make the preferences as balanced as I thought they would be. Dems & FF preference talks broke down in around July, I think. The Greens have also been courting ALP all year, a preference deal is far more advantageous to the Greens than ALP but they might be getting there, so I’ve assumed it here.

    FFP have reasonable bleed from both sides and minors and are more “palatable” to have on your ticket in the (often difficult) middle area than extreme right or left parties.

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