Senate and Page polls

Morgan has published a survey of Senate voting intention aggregated from its polling over October. As usual the minor party figures look a little inflated, while major party support reflects the slight improvement the Coalition seems to have managed during the campaign. We also have a poll of 300 voters in Page conducted by Grafton’s Daily Examiner and Lismore’s Northern Star, which they stress is “not intended to be scientifically accurate”. It shows Labor’s Janelle Saffin with a decisive primary vote lead over Nationals candidate Chris Gulaptis, 44 per cent to 41 per cent. A poor level of recorded support for the Greens is not of interest in itself, but it elicits an admission from candidate Theo Jongen that the party’s vote is “running at six per cent”, compared with 10.8 per cent in 2004.

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.

986 comments on “Senate and Page polls”

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  2. Most people in Canberra have obviously forgotten that there is a lake entirely suitable for a nuclear plant cooling water, slap bang in the middle of town. The nuclear plant would make a good feature and be a tourist attraction.

  3. Will. I reckon you are right about the religious right v small l libs. NSW is having trouble containing the religious right. From all reports the Young Libs is full of hard right and christian right types. All the product of growing up in Howards Oz.

  4. Yes I feel priveledged to know about the in joke Anthony green and I will shout the bar a drink when you say it (okay the Higgins group with me).

  5. Will, the Libs have a long way to go before being a centre/right party – Labor are the mini right wingers…they are the second party of the right (the dominant forces of the party and from where their policies are based)….it will take alot of move Labor back to the Centre Will – forget about the Libs. The greens are the only true social democratic left party in Australia – when you say centre, well, the centre has moved so much further to the right – mainstream opinion is so much more to the right than 20 years ago…

  7. Chris B, (198) he asked two embarrassing/personal Q’s,(183) If he had asked, Now can all the people who are going to vote liberal keep you hands down, he would have got a huge swing to the libs, but you are right it is shooting the messenger, can someone make sure he is on the list post the revolution.

  9. Chris, no I don’t, thats because they are real polls. Sorry about the typo, I will make an effort to check, its my state school education you will understand.

  11. I think all journalists should declare who they vote for it ensures that we know what bias they may have.

    Newhouse has blown his chances, good news for Malcolm chowing on some eggs benedict on the foreshore this morning.

  12. Maybe it’s time to nominate a few campaign awards.

    BEST CAMPAIGN SLOGAN: “Put the Boot into Slipper!”

    I’m not sure if a blogger here invented it, or someone noticed it on the campaign trail. But it resonates in the manner of Roy and HG piss-taking. If the ALP organisers had any initiative they’d rush out a truckload of bumper stickers and T-shirts with it on.

    BEST BLOG PHRASE SO FAR:

    To Gaynor of PB, after the debacle of the Mersey pork falling apart over a Workchoices requirement:

    “… from the wreckage of their health policy emerges the steaming turd of Workchoices.”

    I should also give honorable mentions to our own Greensborough Growler who at LP, on the subject of the Howard-Costello duumvirate, observed:

    “It should lead to a few Dad and Dave moment.” (It has.)

    And to Murph, also at LP, who in response to Howard guessing the interest rate was only 6.25 instead of th correct 6.5, as Rudd called, noted:

    “… just showing that interest rates will always be lower under a Howard Liberal Government than Labor.”

    Perhaps posters can cite some more.

  13. Glen: why?
    There is such a thing as independent critique, and separating the personal from the professional. You can still critique, discuss ideology, values outcomes of a policy etc …and write an informing article..looking at values critique, independent information and research….then let the reader decide based on their values..you could easily do that with IR stuff..

  14. Glen, nobody in any profession has to declare who they vote for including you, get over it. Now that we’ve had the Liberal Policy launch where are the nuclear power stations going to be situated? So far we only have rumors of Bribie Island and downtown Canberra.

  15. Will

    Workchoices and the fact that its about to go down as probably one of the biggest policy blunders in Aust political history will ensure that the Liberal party post election are pushed to a more moderate centre. Costello and all the other ideologues associated with it will go.

    The problem for the Libs is that there’s not much left of the moderate or ‘wet’ faction: Petro Georgio, Judy Moylan – thats about it. Its gonna take years for the libs to rebuild – during which time Labor will be hammering them for workchoices and I dare say tearing to pieces their economic record. To me Howard’s period will present in the future as another lazy, lost opportunity, resources fueled nothing period – in the same way that the last two lib govts have been seen – Menzies and Fraser. As always the modernising reforms will come from Labor.

    Unfortunately for Howard history (with a few exceptions) is written by the lefty intellectuals that he so despises and they are going to hammer him something shocking. The human rights record alone will be keeping historians and commentators occupied for years.

    The hard right intellectual footsoldiers and their political wing (who used to meet in a phone booth called the HR Nichols society 20 years ago) will again retreat to Quadrant magazine and the handful of loopy think tanks where they’ll be seen as about as relevant as Davids Flint and Barnett are now…

    Howard will be an ugly and mediocre footnote in Australian history..

  16. will, turnbull is never going to run as an independent. being in parliament is not the name of the game – he wants to be PM one day (doesn’t look like that’s going to happen). i think he won’t give up that dream easily but there’ll come a time (early on in the couple of terms in the wilderness) when he realises that he ain’t gonna ever be PM. he’ll leave politics. i never thought it suited him, anyway. or maybe he’s just in the wrong party.

  18. With one hand he giveth the 3 rs reading writing and rhythmatic and with one hand he taketh away – workchoices, rights, remuniration and respect!

  19. bird: I understand what you were going on about, but my post was about Turnbull and his future within the Libs, not where the parties stand in the political spectrum. I do admit that Labor is now right-of-centre and that it because the Libs moved to the right and Labor had to fill the void or become irrelevant.

    Turnbull has never seemed to be comfortable as a member of the Libs, but I also don’t think he would be comfortable within the ALP. As I pointed out unless he can become the lower-l liberal saviour of the Libs, we will see him in the future being the leader of a true centre party.

  20. [I think all journalists should declare who they vote for it ensures that we know what bias they may have.]

    Glen, for the 10th time running you win my award for most ridiculous post!

  22. Glen at 211: But that would shatter all your illusions of supposed media bias this campaign for the ALP.

    Because I can name a lot more right wing hacks then you can left wing journalists.

  23. I don’t think journalist’s ought to disclose who they vote for. However they should disclose if they are a member of a political party or if their spouse works for a member of a party etc.

    Normally when I start reading a piece and note it’s completely ridiculous I scroll to the end and see that they writer works for one party or the other. They should be made to put the disclaimer at the top of the article.

  25. Sean, why not?

    They have a lot of power to influence elections and yet they don’t have to disclose their political preferences.

    Oh and here is another one for the award count, i support nuclear power because it is a safe and environmentally friendly energy source, (if you don’t count the waste).

  27. glen, you’d have to be a halfwit to not work out what party various journalists lean (some tip right over) towards. sometimes i worry about you.

  30. Hey right or left wouldn’t it be good to assess jurnos based on their political preferences.

    LTEP simply bury it, we’ve got a lot of desert out there, may as well be useful for something.

  34. Glen, we can’t assess anybody based on their political preferences it is a matter for that individual. That is one of two problems of the current government, their trampling on individual rights and failure to tell us where the nuclear power plants will be sited.

  35. Jazz (65), prepolling began on the Monday of last week and will continue right up to the Friday before election day.

    In Senate voting, If you are not confident you have filled in all the boxes below the line, you can put a 1 in one of the boxes above the line as insurance. If below the line is ok, that will take precedence. Otherwise above the line will count. This is AEC policy but it is not anxious to have it widely known.

  36. Glen @230: Brilliant idea! Once we start burying our own waste we will then have the potential to open up the most lucrative import business in the world…

  37. middle man, don’t forget about occams razor, “All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best”.

    Hence the simplest solution to waste is to bury it.

    Steve the market and the people will decide where they go.

  38. Because Glen who you vote for is your business. A declaration of voting intention just degenerates the whole poltiical process into one infested by accusation of partisanship, prejudice, bias etc. Check out Joe Hockey’s modus operandi if you want to see what it leads to – sound, rigorous academic studies which are critical of the govt automatically get renounced because of the implied political allegiance of the author rather than the merits of the arguments/research/

    Everyone has to vote – even the most balanced fair minded person..voting for a party does not necessarily reflect a blind allegiance to them (well maybe in your case Glen it does). I’ll vote Labor but I’ll remain critical of them. I’m sure however that this wouldn’t bother a political hack on the make who would prefer to attack me personally as being partisan, rather than have to go to the trouble of rationally engaging with my arguments.

  39. On the postals:

    It seems that sitting MPs have the big advantage with postals, as they’re able to send out postal application forms. Since the Coalition currently has 87 sitting MPs and Labor only 60, it’s not a big surprise that the Coalition is doing well with party postal forms.

  41. Second question Glen, how expensive do you think nuclear would be for the consumer? More or less expensive than renewable energy? How much so?

    And to anyone scaremongering about nuclear reactors… nuclear won’t go ahead without bipartisan support (it just takes too long to set up for it to be set up and would be too risky to invest in if it could collapse with a change of government).

    We should look at the positives and negatives of nuclear… I just haven’t seen enough, if any, positives for nuclear yet.

  42. Occasionally I have asked Journos who they vote for, they have two stock answers, UMMMM non of your business, Or, Ummm I tend to vote for who ever I think is the best candidate/party. But, I would be all for a polygrapth or maybe some other questioning techniques that we have developed that don’t breach the Geneva Convention but do involve a fair amount of pain.

  44. Apropos of nothing but where actually is the tallyroom in Canberra and in this digital age is it really just used essentially for nostalgia reasons?

  45. William, Adam, Possum or Peter, do you know of any research which looks at intelligence as a factor in voting choice? An interest in political issues demands an ability to read thoughtfully, to analyse argument, to have a knowledge of history – and to have the leisure to pursue this interest. Given that 25 percent of people have an IQ of 90 or less and that half the electorate will have difficulty with political argument, perhaps we should not be surprised by the repetitive banality of what is offered. Perhaps, too, some passion would be more persuasive than reasoned argument.

  46. Overington really is an embaressment. Surely uncle rupey (as she now doubt refers to him) will need to send her back to the eastern suburbs tea party set from which she comes.

  48. maccatas… firstly IQ is not a good measurement of ‘intelligence’ any self-respecting pscyhologist could tell you that.

    Any study referring to ‘intelligence’ and voting intention would be on pretty shaky grounds. On the other hand a study based on qualifications could be quite easily done and has been done. I would again question the importance of such research.

  50. #248 Hasn`t North Sydney long held the mantle of `most-educated electorate`,based on post-graduate qualifications? Most have Joe Hockey shaking in his boots.

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