D-day minus 20

• In the midst of the Friday morning poll flurry, I somehow failed to take note of the Advertiser poll of 778 voters from Wakefield. Labor’s Nick Champion led Liberal MP David Fawcett 58-42 on two-party preferred, from 47 per cent to 33 per cent on the primary vote. Yesterday the Advertiser ran a front-page item complaining that South Australia was being overlooked because its three Liberal marginals all looked like foregone conclusions for Labor. One might protest that Sturt and Boothby are in play, but the article informs us that “neither is expected to change hands unless the political stocks of the Government deteriorate even further in SA”.

• Speaking on Lateline on Friday night, Michael Kroger claimed “people in the Liberal Party and around the traps generally” were “more and more confident that the two high profile seats in NSW of Bennelong and Malcolm Turnbull’s seat in Wentworth will be won by the Government” – although Rod Cameron wasn’t so sure. Kroger also rejected talk Labor might have its eyes on Casey and Aston in Melbourne, as their campaign focus was entirely on more marginal seats.

• The Age economics reporter Josh Gordon on the targeting of recent election promises:

In the past week alone, the Coalition has announced a $15 million south coast sustainable regions program (for the NSW electorate of Eden-Monaro), $300,000 for a Beaconsfield Heritage Museum (for the Tasmanian seat of Lyons), $400,000 for palliative care in Geelong and Colac (for the Victorian seats Corio and Corangamite) and $16 million to extend the Tasmanian freight equalisation scheme to include King Island (for the Tasmanian seat of Braddon). Those states with more marginal electorates have generally faired best. Queensland has been the overwhelming winner. It has been promised $878.7 million by the Coalition, including hundreds of millions of dollars worth of road funding announcements. Western Australia has also been the next major beneficiary, with a $405 million plan announced to extensively upgrade Perth’s roads. Victoria, where there are no Coalition seats held by a margin of less than 4.9 per cent, has been promised $238 million by the Coalition, despite its 25 per cent share of Australia’s population and economy. Labor has been just as expedient with its spending plans. Its policy promises tally to about $47.6 billion. As with the Coalition, the vast bulk would be soaked delivering tax cuts. A significant chunk of the remaining cash – about $4.3 billion – would be used to fund spending decisions targeting specific states. Again, Queensland has been the major winner, with more than $2.6 billion on offer. Victoria, where there are eight Labor seats held by margins of less than 5 per cent, would fare relatively better under a Labor government, with about $724 million promised.

• I don’t get too excited about ballot paper placement, but it’s nonetheless interesting to note that Maxine McKew is last out of 13 in Bennelong. Notable candidates elsewhere: long-standing Liberal preselection aspirant Michael Darby running for the CDP in Dobell; former Greens MPs Michael Organ in Cunningham and Robin Chapple in Kalgoorlie; former state Noosa MP Cate Molloy, running as an independent in Wide Bay; and perennial trouble-maker Stephen Mayne in Higgins. No sign of Kelly Hoare in Shortland. In the Senate, former Labor member for Kalgoorlie Graeme Campbell is on a ticket in Western Australia along with former state One Nation MP John Fischer. The fourth Labor New South Wales candidate I was wondering about the other day turns out to be Pierre Esber, a Right faction Parramatta councillor who had long coveted the Bennelong preselection. The all-important Senate preference tickets will be revealed this afternoon.

• Sue Neales of The Mercury reports that “internally, Labor remains confident about winning Bass back from the Liberals … but gloating about a Labor clean-sweep of all five Tasmanian electorates is gone”. This is roundabout way of saying that Braddon is still in play, although the Liberals suffered a blow there this week when the government was forced to delay its much-touted Mersey Hospital takeover.

• There has been a spike in chatter lately about the possibility of the Liberals losing their ACT Senate seat, following recent Morgan results showing the party’s vote at a parlous 24 per cent. With 33 per cent needed to secure a seat, that would turn the second seat into a contest between Labor and the Greens. As territory Senators’ terms are tied to the House, this would mean the Coalition would lose its Senate majority immediately, and not with the changeover of state Senators in the middle of next year.

• Shame on me for not yet having linked to Peter Tucker’s self-explanatory Tasmanian Politics website. Go look.

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.

328 comments on “D-day minus 20”

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  1. Does anyone know of any analysis regarding informal votes in marginals? I’ve seen figures where informals are as high as 4% in some electorates. Any research been done on what the intended vote was (LNP, Labor etc) which ended up as informal? Is this always inadvertent, or is there a certain percentage of voters who are determined to vote informal, and are these people ever detected in opinion polling? I guess I could ask the same questions regarding donkey voting. Obviously, when 2pp difference gets down to 1-2% then intell on informals and donkeys becomes of interest.

  3. Timing is everything. This has not hit the media in SA yet. Many thousands of patients in the next weeks will get letters saying they cannot have the surgery their GP has referred them to public hospitals for anymore. I wonder if federal Labor is happy that SA Labor has done this with 3 weeks to go. I can just imagine the Mad Monk.

    “The Department of health has announced a list of elective surgery procedures that will be excluded from public hospital elective surgery activity from 5 November 2007 on the basis that the funding could be better allocated to procedures where there is clear medical need.”
    http://www.health.sa.gov.au/ELECTIVESURGERY/Default.aspx?tabid=205

  4. The most worrying statistic from psephological sites has strated to fall into line with conventional polling. Simon Jackman finally has the ALP ahead in 75 seats in his three bookies average. I think the latest one to move into the ALP camp is Herbert.

  6. What a disgrace it will be if Howard pulls this one out of the fire. He was hopeless this morning on Insiders – desparate and all over the place. His “only we can be trusted with an economy where inflation is inevitable and interest rate rises a matter of course” was Keating 96ish.

    My only fear remains a sudden and late shift as a result of electoral risk-aversion. While it’s hard to see this shift occurring in all states and all seats, it only needs to be enough to avoid a net 15 seats changing (15 being enough with the majority of the 2PP vote).

  7. Well I finally got off my backside yesterday and spent the day campaigning for ALP at a park stall in the very safe lib seat (13.9%) of McPherson. An amazing day and we were absolutely flooded with best wishes and cheers for Eddy Sarroff (local ALP candidate).

    No one mentioned the Garrett incident, not once. In fact seems no one is bothering to listen to any Lib stuff at all, all the talk was about Howard being past it and tricky, Rudd being positive about the country, need to fix the hospitals and of course workchoices.

    Considering McPherson is such a safe lib seat we were overwhelmed with the amount of support and encouragement we got and with how many people indicated they were ditching the libs this election. Rudd is very popular here and I have heard Maragaret May (won the seat for Libs in 98) has basically resigned herself to being over run by the ALP swing.

  8. I think all this rummaging through entrails is missing the point. Most people have switched off long ago. Thats why the polls are so steady at 55-45. I can’t get any interest from anyone when I mention Abbott turning up late or Garretts gaffes. And I think Sols 25% making their mind up in the last week is BS. The 25% who claim that just want to be perceived by the person polling them as someone who likes to get “all the facts before I make a decision”.

  9. Hey, I was just phone polled (Sunday morning) by UMR research, and it was seat specific (I’m in McEwen). The questions weren’t really loaded either way, they just asked me who I was going to vote for, 2PP, and my opinion of Rudd, Howard, Costello and the two local ALP and Lib candidates. The woman ‘didn’t know’ (perhaps couldn’t say?) who the poll was for, but thought it was private party polling. Anyone know who UMR work for?

  10. Does anyone know which ad agency is responsible for the Libs’ singularly unimpressive (negative, dated, black and white) campaign?

  11. Watched Insiders for the first time in weeks – as an act of masochism. Howard’s body and facial language was quite revealing. Recalled the commentary on Clinton’s facial language during his endless questioning. The specialists on this aspect of non-verbal language pointed out the characteristic raising and drawing together of the brows when a person is lying. Howard’s brows were almost permanently in that position even when he was supposedly telling the truth. They only got more emphatically so when he was asked about whether he would retire if the party lost and he won.

    Overall he looked like a rabbit in the spotlight. The last rabbit out of the hat, rabbiting on on auto pilot.

    Glen Milne had the look of someone who has given up the fight and has decided to enjoy the ride from then on. Don’t think it’ll stop him from doing His Master’s bidding from on high in his rags.

  14. Following on from the earlier discussion on UK papers. Here is the Telegraph’s take on things.

    {Australia ready to embrace Kevin Rudd
    By Barbie Dutter in Brisbane
    Last Updated: 2:14am GMT 04/11/2007

    According to its most famous housewife, Australia is not yet ready to be led by a man named Kevin. But for once, Dame Edna Everage seems to have got it wrong.

    In less than three weeks, her fellow Australians are set to oust John Howard, their conservative-minded prime minister of 11½ years, and replace him with Kevin Rudd, the Labour leader.

    Kevin Rudd is favourite to become Australia’s next prime minister
    A man of ferocious intellect, but with such boyish features and a fringe so feathery that satirists have nicknamed him Tintin, Mr Rudd seems to be almost home and dry, even though the general election campaign is barely at the halfway point.

    Mr Howard’s defeat would mean the departure from office of the last of US President George W Bush’s original, staunch allies on Iraq, and the withdrawal of Australia’s 550 combat troops stationed around Baghdad – both factors that are encouraging voters to desert him for Labour.

    Even so, the 50-year-old Mr Rudd, a studious former diplomat, is surprising seasoned political observers with the warmth of the response that he is generating on the campaign trail. “Hi, I’m Kevin,” is his customary opening gambit; “Good luck, mate!” the usual response.}

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/04/woz104.xml

  16. Political spin merchants have long used the Australian media cultural cringe to ensure getting stories into the Australian media that would not get a look-in if they were promoted from within Australia. Just get a friendly Right-wing paper in the US or Britain to run a story about how the Libs are going to win, how the Libs are economically responsible and/or how the Australian people know the economy will be ruined if Labor gets in and the Australian media will run it because it has the “authority” of the overseas media name.
    It’s known as not being able to think for yourself – a mandatory qualification to be a media executive in Australia.

  18. William, I made a comment a couple of hours ago about Shaun Carney’s column in yesterday’s Age. Has it been moderated? Or lost in the digital ether?

    No biggie if it has …

  20. RX
    No the Sportingbet odds have not come in for the Coalition
    At start of campaign odds were ALP $1.65 NLP $2.25 and have been steadly moving towards the ALP.
    Latest odds ALP $1.32 LNP $ 3.30 is the widest the margain has been

  21. Inner Westie: there was an issue up to about 10 mins. ago with posts appearing earlier than posted (e.g. a post of I made appear back about 300 mins before I posted it). This has been fixed now so maybe just reposting would bring it up on the end of the thread.

  22. Inner Westie, you left that comment on Friday’s Morgan thread which, for some reason, reappeared with today’s date on it. I then proceeded to change the date. So if you track back to Friday’s post and look through the Morgan thread, that’s where it is.

  23. Thanks William … and for what it’s worth, here’s the repost:

    Interesting piece by Shaun Carney in yesterday’s Age. He reports that (Nielson pollster) John Stirton has ‘done the averages’ for each federal election since 1996 and discovered that, with the exception of 2001, the difference between the average TPP through the campaign and the actual TPP was merely a fraction of 1%:

    “For example, at the last election, between Howard and Mark Latham, the Government’s average two-party preferred vote through the campaign was 52.2 per cent. On election day, it secured 52.7 per cent of the vote.”

    So much for The Narrowing …

    Carney comment

  26. Response to Letitend at 2.11pm

    Letitend, you need to be careful with that kind of subjective impression of popular opinion. If you took a bunch of Liberal cards and went out to Inala, you’d find lots of friendly people, too. That doesn’t mean the Libs are going to win Oxley. The major parties have supporters everywhere, and they will rally around their candidates during campaigns. Sometimes the fervour of the faithful is in inverse proportion to the fortunes of their party. The biggest and most enthusiastic crowds Labor has ever drawn were during the 1975 campaign, where Whitlam was virtually deified by the crowds, but was still thrashed come election day.

  28. Just noticed that the AEC has the GVT info up. A quick look reveals that Dems are actually well placed in NSW Dembo – lots of the minors have gone through them before the Greens. Of course the issue will be primary, and will there be much to throw around – noting that groups such as UAP and FFP have placed everybody ahead of the Greens & Dems! Although the CEC has placed the Dems 3rd! Climate Coalition playing footsie with the Fishing Party, and with a 2-2 swap with the Dems, although the CCE seems to prefer the Greens to the Dems and ALP. Noted that most right minors have the Greens after the majors, with the Dems before.

  30. In S.A.

    Family First are preferencing the S.A. Nationals, THEN One Nation!

    They have Liberal just above Labor. But they put Penny Wong below the two Labor right candidates!

    The D.L.P. and Citizens Electoral Council are preferencing the Liberals

    Xenephon has put Labor above Liberal.

  32. Humphries is must be feeling unliked in the ACT – only the LDP have him ahead of Tucker, with no CDP or FFP candidate to provide those christian right votes.

  34. If the Coalition loses their senate seat in the ACT, they lose their senate majority INSTANTLY.

    In other words, Labor won’t have to wait till July 2008 to scrap Workchoices

  35. [Howard said Work Choices was in the last terms policy documents which he just re-read. I challenge him or anyone else to produce this document.]

    But Greeny, I’m sure Andrews has a copy of the manifesto somewhere. It’s just too sensitive to release.

  36. Sky does it again …… Agenda show on air right now (they are live on the weekend now) – panelists Glen Milne and Steve Price. I guess Price has now got his forum and a few minutes worth of fame. Sheeesshh …. leave it alone already ….

    I told my 6yo she could watch cartoons for real instead of the cartoons Sky News is showing right now 😉 …..

  37. # LaborVoteron 04 Nov 2007 at 4:02 pm
    If the Coalition loses their senate seat in the ACT, they lose their senate majority INSTANTLY.

    In other words, Labor won’t have to wait till July 2008 to scrap Workchoices

    Yes Yes Yes :):):) …… GO those in the ACT, get out your pencils and do it for the ALP or the Greens or the Democrats for that matter. Both the other two are preferencing the Greens in the Senate …….

  39. Can’t the Garrett “gaffe” be turned to Labor’s advantage?

    Surely the idea that things would change if Labor “get in”, is the point for voting for them on environmental issues, so most would be hoping for a marked difference on approach on that issue.

    Wouldn’t you be using this to highlight the differences between the two on environmental policies in order to show the positive effects on the environment with a Labor government?

    I’d be saying “Yes, sure things will be different for the environment if we get in – we’ll actually do something. Based on the Liberal Party’s history on this issue, they’ll continue to sit on their hands.”

  41. I know not much detail about the home owners savings plan is out but as i understand it the tax treatment on the savings is the ‘money shot’ so to speak. 15% concessional treatment as per the salary packaging concesions some employees get by packaging wages into super. But what if this money is saved in a managed fund instead for example? Are these taxed higher on earnings? What is the difference if anyone knows?

  42. The fun on interest rates and inflation begins.

    Labor leader Kevin Rudd says he is stunned that Prime Minister John Howard can say he believes inflation is unavoidable.
    “What I’m stunned by with Mr Howard today is him hauling up the white flag in the fight against inflation by saying it’s unavoidable,” he said.

    “And what I’m stunned by today is Mr Howard owning no responsibility for his Government’s policy when it comes to the five interest rate rises that we’ve seen.”

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/11/04/2081213.htm?section=justin

  43. Kina

    That is a terrific response by labor, Howard tried to dodge responsiblity for inflation and interest rate increases in his usual way and got caught out badly.

    ” PRIME Minister John Howard has said rising inflation is unavoidable in a strong economy affected by drought and high global oil prices.”

    http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22700300-29277,00.html

    Howard also said “But I do know this: interest rates now are lower than they were at any time under a former Labor government”

    Another big lie, there are at least six or seven occassions that interest rates have been lower under labor than they are now under Howard, hope labor picks him up on this as well.

  44. On the 24th of Oct Howard was saying look at the headline interest rate, the CPI is great. Interest rates? Pah no worries.

    Two weeks later?

  45. On the topic of work choices: the dog whistle for WC mark 2 is the promise by the Rodent to further reduce unemployment to 3%, then he (cos he won’t resign) can tell us next time that he announced it prior to the election. And when are we going to see the Labor ads with Minchin at the H R Nichols Society and their benevolent plans for the welfare of the Oz worker?

  46. What Howard did this morning shows that the Coalition is just all over the place and does not have a coherent message and that will destroy them in the end.

    Winners of elections stay on message and therefore the public are safe with that as their message is clear whilst a party all over the place creates doubt – the
    messages are mixed and people don’t know what they stand for.

  49. Trevor – Agreed. Howard’s campaign this time around feels remarkably similar to Latham’s in ’04. A small band of advisors around the leader, making up strategy on the run and unwilling or unable to share what’s going on with the troops on the ground.

    To be honest, I’m surprised. Much as I’ve always detested everything Howard has ever stood for, I thought he had much more strategic nous than this situation suggests.

    Just goes to show. That was artifice, too.

  50. Howards lies so much it is getting hard to pin him down, the media seems to have given up discerning what he is saying and exposing him.

    Lets hope the voters are aware of his lies.

    Anyone know when the Galaxy poll is out?

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