Galaxy: 50-50 in Wentworth

The ABC reports that Galaxy’s poll of Wentworth, which we first heard about on Thursday, shows Malcolm Turnbull and George Newhouse locked at 50-50 on two-party preferred. The only further detail provided is that Turnbull leads by 8 per cent on the primary vote, and that the sample size was 800. All will be revealed in tomorrow’s Sunday Telegraph.

UPDATE: Sunday Telegraph article here. Primary vote figures are Liberal 44 per cent, Labor 36 per cent and Greens 14 per cent.

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.

423 comments on “Galaxy: 50-50 in Wentworth”

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  1. What a pathetic little parrot Howard is:

    “One thing we know is that he doesn’t know anything about economics,” said Mrs Howard.

    “No, he knows nothing about economics,” agreed Mr Howard.

    “I don’t think he stands for as much,” said Mrs Howard.

    “I don’t think he stands for much,” her husband emphasised.

    “People are nice,” says Mrs Howard.

    “Yes, people are nice,” he says.

    http://www.theage.com.au/news/federal-election-2007-news/janette-plays-second-fiddle-with-gusto/2007/11/10/1194329568955.html

  2. [I feel a lovely movie in the making. Julia, our beautiful own Hepburn. Blanchett, perhaps.]

    Actually Nicole should play Julia in the Biopic – the “Bewitched” manneriusms would be a distinct advantage to the role 🙂

  3. please don’t mention The Dwarf.

    i still have nightmares of watching a rather younger, more ambitious Dwarf cuddling up to G Richo one night in a cosy dimly lit area of the Albury SS&A club.

    eewwwwww

  7. “Playing dirty is another tactic the Liberals now seem to be flirting with. On Friday morning a fake letter from one Samuel L. Bronkowitz was distributed in the Canberra press gallery.”

    Surely people should go to prison for this type of thing at election times, MP, Minister or not. It is just corruption of democracy.

    The people should be informed on the front pages if this is the type of thing the Liberal Party are doing.

    AND talking of front pages did The Australian print a retraction or appology for their false piece yesterday?

  8. 340 odd comments in approx. 7.5 hours? On a Saturday night??? Doesn’t anybody go out any more?

    Well I was out and about at noon today. Bob Hawke “opened” Jule Owen’s campaign office for Parramatta which is located in the western end of the Division in Seven Hills.

    Prior to the ceremony Bob and Jules did a walkabout in Centro Seven Hills where the effect on the Saturday morning shoppers was extraordinary. He’s still a pop star and there was a high recognition factor for Ms Owens too.

    Abot 250 faithful plus a lone Green (me) crowded into the campaign office for the official launch. Ms owens gave a very competent warm up speech but Hawkies’ turn ably supported with prompts and encouragements from Ms d’Alpuget was a spectacle that has to seen to be properly appreciated. Serious and very funny by turns the Silver Bodgie (78 mind) had the audience totally captivated from about 3 milliseconds from the get go. I would have to say that although this was obviously a set piece his delivery and charisma has lost nothing over the years. If anything he has only got better.

    As a speech to wind up party workers for the final push it was a tour de force and I have to say it had me thinking that I might give my first preference to the ALP in the lower house.

    There is no doubt that if the ALP do snatch defeat from the jaws of victory this time around, Bob Hawke won’t be lying awake wondering if he could have made more of an effort.

  9. Hypocrisy is pretending to be independent when the blood of partisanship drips from every stroke of your pen.

    Hypocrisy is taking a step backwards and distancing yourself from your fellow combatants when the smell of defeat is in the air.

    Hypocrisy is feigning conviviality with those whose opinions you dispise.

    Thank God I’m not a politician or a journalist.

    And yes, I do know the meaning of the words hypebole and turgidity, in case you should ask.

  10. George Newouse is an idiot, but Wentworth is not what is was.
    For all the psephs on line, I am curious how polsters would go about sampling in an area like Wentworth which has various pockets with vastly different types of voters whose voting pattern would not accord with what you would expect in the usual demographic categories In wentworth, it’s not just income, age or occupation which might influence how someone might vote – for example there is the jewish vote around vaucluse and the gay vote around potts point and darlinghurst.

  11. 356 Albert Ross

    Thought that myself. Just glued.

    Pollbludging is great!

    And escaped a night with a person I preferred to avoid, today.

    He would have would have been watching cricket or something.

  12. Damien J 316

    As a financial adviser, I can’t give financial advice without going through the proper processes first, but I would like to predict one stock that is about to surge…

    Its called The Labor Party… and I also heard on the grapevine that the Liberal Party stocks are about to plummet… so you better selldown immediately if you were so unfortunate to have bought Liberal stocks in the past because the word from the Australian Stock Exchange is that they are trading insolvent and many of the directors are going to be subject to corruption charges.

  13. Mrs Howard reckons Kev knows nothing about economics? She obviously was seperated from John Howard when he was Treasurer or was it really her running the Treasury.

    She was obvioulsy absent when JH couldn’t remember the tax scales himself; didn’t see Downer get stuck and, obviously didn’t see our wonderful Treasurer truly emabarass himself in not knowing how tax scales were actually applied by the real people.

    Didn’t Howard fail maths at high school or only just pass rudimentary maths?

    It is actually quite distasteful to see a polly’s wife make an unprovoked personal attack on an Opposition member – this is not the USA. It will make people roll their eyes.

  14. isabella you are not taking your tablets again by the sound of things. you know that when you forget your medicine, you do strange things like use ‘liberals’ and ‘deceny’ in the same sentence. You’re a very very bad girl!

  15. For what it’s worth, Bob Hawke will be campaigning in Eden Monaro at Queanbeyan on Monday, with a debate (against who??) on Industrial Relations at Qbn Leagues Club at 12:00 and a dinner at Walshes Hotel in the evening.

    Mike Kellys team are allocating locations for how to vote volunteers and scrutineers at the moment. I’m sure they would appreciate additional volunteers from good people!

  16. It is actually in Malcolm Turnbull’s best interests for the Libs to lose this one. He just need to keep his seat. I would also like to play the role of conspiracy theorist and say that he leaked the cabinet discontent of Kyoto, and his chat to Cundle backed it up nicely.

    If (heaven forbid) the liberals get voted out in 07, the next front runner for the liberal leadership will be Peter Costello?

    Unfortunately for the treasurer, he may have the credential but has no personality and I wager would be seen as being more out of touch than Howard.

    After being in the job and having an ordinary approval and being seen as not the man to lead the libs a la (Hewson/Downer), enter ..Malcolm Turnbull.

    He’s safe as houses.

  17. CBet has been remarkably steady for the last three days; $1.36/$3.15.
    El Rodente’s downfall proceeds on course. Team Rodent failed to gain any electoral traction for yet another day. If anything, they are self destructing under bodgie leadership and dud spin. In the morning there will be only 13 sleeps to go. The zzzzzs’ll come easy tonight. See yez.

  19. No way will Turnbull lose Wentworth. To win Newhouse is relying on the full support of the Jewish community there, and a mate of mine has said he’s put that community offside. Put that together with King’s influence in the last election and the likely split in the green preferences (a lot of those will be coming from right wingers looking to give the LNP a kick) and there is no chance for a LAB win in the seat.

    I wish it were otherwise (I’ll be at a party in the electorate that night), but another seat will be have to be picked up elsewhere for a LAB win.

  21. Tory Crimes, at least Isabella covered her mouth when she yawned.

    Great stayer for her AWA. Must have terrific conditions. Or something.

  22. Re: 267,

    the HoR calculator is wrong. Isaacs is not a .1% liberal seat that can be taken with a slight swing. It is a ALP seat. A 5% swing is needed in vic for ALP to gain a single seat.

    Perhaps Antony could fix the calculator…..
    also needs to fix cowan and makin which are on the wrong side of the fence. Until that happens the HoR calculator does more harm than good.

  25. “Latest dirt on Gillard by the Poison Dwarf”

    Why is it there are only a few journalists willing to go into the grubby little world of attempted personal smear by association?

    We have one journalist writing a piece to help the Howard govt based on a faked letter; another trying to smear with an ancient Heiner affair barely related to anything; another printing personal ‘scandals’ that everyone has known about for ages but adds a lie fed to him from Downer’s office; one about Julia being a member of a group that had some members who had previously been members of the communist party or some such thing [a legal party as far as I am aware anyway]; some about Julia’s personal relationships for goodness sake.

    It is always the same low lifes that stoop to this level. I know there are a number of low lifes in the real world for whom these articles appeal – but surely any self-respecting newspaper would release some of these journalist as past their sanity dates or use by dates.

    The local community rag writes better stuff than some of this.

  26. Well, Teh Crodent’s gone, Tip’s unelectable, and Malcolm represents the future of the Libs after Teh No Iceberg’s failed future sinecure. Wentworth would be mugs to toss him out.

  27. Sunday Times online version also has the disclaimer as well.

    Another own goal for Team Howard and it’s chief slime digger.

  28. Darn,

    I think some of the middle-class welfare will disappear with Howard, some of the excesses at least.

    For example if you wanted to deal with the private-insurance rebate, you means-test to cut out the rebate at anything above medium income, and you do what Coalition did whenever they did something unpopular (privatising Telstra – provides funds for environmental projects), you say the savings provided for meantesting will be invested in reduced waiting lists/super clinics/specialists for the bush, or some other urgent expenditure the public has a burning desire for, making it an either-or option in which to gain acceptance.

    I think a similar sort of thing can be done with private schools, remember private enrolments haven’t spike despite the funding distortions put in by Howard. You wouldn’t want to go too far with these, but if people see that you are re-allocating to needy schools, and its only an elite minority that are losing, there will be no public stampede. Its the sort of thing that is done after an election, maybe like that Freudian slip from that Garrett muttered in a Melbourne airport longue. And “white elephants” like the Australian Technical Colleges, they’ll just be merged into TAFEs, not many people will miss the new layer of bureaucracy that was built for electoral vanity posturing.

    Family Tax Benefits, Baby Bonus, probably won’t be fiddled with much, except for the excesses focused on stay-at home mums with rather well-off husbands. These payments though would be much harder to change, as many of the libertarians in the Liberal party regret it is the bloated cost of just this sort of churning that makes it very difficult to find the funds for big-bang tax cuts that they dream about.

  30. These tory fellow travellers in the MSM seem determined to show us what low types of unethical gutter trawlers they are.

    Extraordinary. Dont they realise they’ll be on the losing side in about a fortnight. No thought of appropriate ass-cover?

    Ay, Milne, ya creep: how does a council milk run for quest local sound, pissant?

    Can be arranged.

  31. the HoR calculator is wrong. Isaacs is not a .1% liberal seat that can be taken with a slight swing. It is a ALP seat. A 5% swing is needed in vic for ALP to gain a single seat.

    Perhaps Antony could fix the calculator…..
    also needs to fix cowan and makin which are on the wrong side of the fence. Until that happens the HoR calculator does more harm than good.

    The calculator is not wrong. See below (from the calculator website)

    Retiring MPs

    Parties often suffer a loss of support when a long serving sitting MP retires. We have built a factor into the Election Calculator to take account of this. That is why when you first load the Calculator, three seats change hands even though no swing has occurred. This is because Labor has retiring MPs in Isaacs and Cowan, while the Liberal Party has a retiring MP in Makin.

  32. Kelly, it factors in retiring members personal following. For what you want uncheck the “Factor in retiring MPs” box above the swing.

  33. I hear Milne drunk, attacked someone standing up on a stage. Maybe I should try standing up on a stage, but I wouldnt step away like the other guy did.

    So the newspaper printed a deliberate? lie about Gillard then does the appology later but on-line? Or is this just an unlucky mistake – they forgot to proof read; Milne forgot he didn’t have anything to back up the claim? What is going on?

    Labor voters I know do not buy any papers published by News Ltd.

  35. Stephen Hill (378) What you say makes a lot of sense. There are ways and means as long as the commitment to change is there.

    There’s no doubt Labor has had to tread a very narrow line in their quest to get rid of Howard. If it works – and it should – it will have been a brilliant strategy.

  36. These journalists must have some guts though.

    They must be forever looking over their shoulders, checking their letter boxes and peaking out of their windows. They are effectively through their attemts to elect Howard by abusing their positions, trying to corrupt democracy through misinforamtion, disinformation etc.. pissing off a great number of Labor supporters many of whom must live in the same city.

    Imagine if they were successful? They would all need to immigrate.

  37. Milne just can’t help himself the sleazy little rat, see bottom of story.

    Early editions of the Sunday Telegraph contained an allegation that Ms Gillard had incorporated funds used by Mr Wilson.

    The Sunday Telegraph acknowledges that this allegation is entirely untrue. This error was made by The Sunday Telegraph.

    I dare say that Ms G. will enjoy her new pool.

  38. What is SCAREY, Barry at 370.

    Quoting Alan Ramsey: 2004, as you refer:

    “A reader sent me a copy of the Suich article, published just before Howard’s most recent visit to Britain in June. Apart from the lunch menu, which reflected the gentle, Saturday afternoon pace of the piece, and the headline (“Bush’s Other Buddy”), what intrigued most was the revelation of the embryonic Howard political dynasty.

    Wrote Suich: “One comment made me sit up over the smoked salmon. ‘My kids don’t hate what I have done,’ [Howard] said. ‘They don’t hate politics. None of them has grown up hating what I did’ … Youngest son Richard recently joined the Bush/Cheney campaign office in Washington DC, where the President gave him half an hour in the Oval Office.”

    CW says. It has long concerned me that we will see a new and entitled Howard, the younger, aspiring to PM ship. A distant future, yes, a frightening possibility, certainly.

  40. Ok, did that adjustment on the calculator, and can now confirm that a 0.2% swing in vic will achieve nothing, contrary what you are assuming at post 267.

  46. What does “incorporated funds” mean? Did The Telegraph accuse Gillard of something dishonest? If so, and it’s out there, in the ether or on hard copy, no amount of apologies, of the “regret” or genuine kind, will save the smarmy, vile, intoxicated little toad or the newspaper from a defamation suit which will end up costing both dearly.

    This is going too far.

  49. and can now confirm that a 0.2% swing in vic will achieve nothing, contrary what you are assuming at post 267.

    Well of course it won’t, you just cancelled out the need for it. Don’t need the 0.02% to recover Issacs if it isn’t notionally lost due to retiring member!

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