Advertiser poll: 52-48 to Liberal in Boothby

The Advertiser has published a survey of 617 respondents from Boothby which shows Liberal incumbent Andrew Southcott leading Labor’s Nicole Cornes 52-48 on two-party preferred. Southcott’s lead on the primary vote is 41 per cent to 32 per cent, which suggests the “don’t know” component has not been excluded. The poll was conducted on Monday night. A similar poll published on September 26 had the primary vote gap at 44 per cent to 29 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.

161 comments on “Advertiser poll: 52-48 to Liberal in Boothby”

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  4. Being Tabitha

    Nicole is beaut
    Nicole is cute

    And speaking of the Southcott, Nicole could have mentioned, at any time, but I presume has not, that Graham Cornes served in Vietnam.

  6. or Tabitha again:

    Liberal is old and grumpy

    Labor is rumpy-pumpy.

    (C’mon, it’s getting late over there, and it’s gone half-three in the afternoon here. I’m tired, for god’s sake)

  10. The Advertiser polls usually are pretty good, and I suspect this is very close to what the true margin will be. Then again I remember a Tiser poll last election that had the Libs winning Adelaide by about 1-2%.

  11. I’ve always thought Boothby would be harder to win than Sturt. If you look back through election results, Sturt has at least had times of being marginal over the last 25 years, whereas Boothby hasn’t even been close. The current margin is the closest it has been since the ALP last won the seat. To pick up another 5.4% all in one hit was always going to be a tough ask regardless of who the candidate is.

    I think both parties will be fairly happy with this result. Oviously Southcott will be because based on this he wins the seat, and at least from Labor’s perspective they have gone forwards from the last poll, and are still definately within striking distance.

  13. Kev, I must reiterate. Previous comments, other threads.

    I cannot say that Nicole will get in, however she has done remarkably well.

    Against the odds.

    I maintain, as I have, that Labor is at fault if it does not gain this seat, for a failure of resource, over many years. Labor did present one only, previous good candidate, Chloe Fox, but it was hard yards for her, against a resourced incumbent.

    It is simply not good enough for Labor to do nothing, for what seems like forever, and to hope that jump starting a candidate, a few only months out, from an election, will do it.

    Hardly Nicole’s fault.

  15. Supporters of the Liberal government shouldn’t despair if Labor win on Saturday. Over the last 11 years they have been conditioned to put economic prosperity above moral or ethical considerations, so on Monday they’ll simply have to go out and find another pimp and become the rent boys and prostitutes that Howard has made them.

  19. How much reliability to put on this Tiser poll is the question. From the same website they ran another story of Nicike’s latest ‘stumble’.

    According to this, at Brighton Station she cleared a pathway to help a blind man onto a train, but it was the wrong train. Wow! They’re really onto something about her fitness to be an MP!

    Toby’s inside Lib polling story sounds just as credible. We’ll just have to wait and see.

  21. Good poll for Nicole. She’s been making up ground during the campaign. She’ll get the donkey vote. Then there’s the MoE, the possible understatement of the youth vote and doubts about how preferences will fall. She was thrown to the wolves but is still very much alive.

  22. Didn’t the Advertiser understate the ALP vote in their final individual seat polling for the last SA state election?

    At least according to this poll, Cornes is within striking distance of winning the seat. With all the silly attention she’s gotten during the campaign, I hope she triumphs on Saturday.

  23. I’m pleased with the improvement shown by Nicole 46-54 to 48-52, and is at least heading in the right direction. Is it enough to get her over the line ? Probably not, although she is clearly still in the game. As I’ve mentioned before, green preferences will be the key to Nicole winning, and I feel sure some parts of Boothby will vote heavily green and preference Nicole.

  24. Oh yes, do I win something for predicting the Advertsier would have a poll on Boothby this week ? Probably not … was a dorothy dixer really !

  27. Why is it that Nicole’s primary vote has increased 3% – at the direct expense of Southcott – but the final TPP has only increased 2%?

    It this News Ltd fiddling with preference allocations again to make the situation look better for the Coalition than it actually is?

  28. Stick to the fundamental!!

    The Government CANNOT win on 41% primary vote. Let me repeat the Government CANNOT win on 41% primary vote. Be it the national vote or in each marginal. On the national, the Government is stuck at 41% for all of 2007. See Possum at:

    http://possumcomitatus.wordpress.com/

    The best that the Government can do on 41%P is 48% TPP. So if the Govt is at 41% for Boothby, the Labor will win the seat. Period.

  29. I hate to say it Finnigans but the Advertiser does not exclude undecided or no answer respondents from its analysis, which almost all other polls do. Therefore the true liberal vote is probably at least 2 or 3% higher than this poll shows. On these figures you would expect a liberal retain. Nicole would probably have to increase her primary vote by another 2 or 3% to be in with a good chance. Not impossible, but unlikely.

  31. This is Labor’s most promising bid for Boothby since Tom Sheehy won the seat in 1946. Sheehy, so the legendary Harry Krantz once told me, lived in the street where I live now. An unfavorable redistribution in Boothby prompted him to switch his attentions to the new seat of Kingston in 1949, but he was defeated there by the Liberal ‘Jim’ Handby, a former Glenelg footballer and Military Medal winner. Boothby, a Labor seat in the early days, still includes the blue-ribbon Liberal territory which caused Sheehy to jump ship, but the last redistribution slightly improved Labor’s position. No Labor candidate since Sheehy has had a better two-party preferred vote better than Nicole Cornes.

  32. Can someone who knows more than me about surveying talk about the possibility that survey respondents don’t want to admit to (planning to) vote for Nicole ?

    I remember way back in my undergraduate university days about a survey that had more people in the South East of England buying The Times than were sold in the whole of the country; ie, when asked people said, ‘I buy The Times’ – for its positive association. Perhaps people just don’t want to admit they intend to vote for Nicole for the negative association (as promoted by the ‘Tiser and Matt and Dave).

    I’ll say it again – she’s a terrific candidate who was poorly schooled by the party.

  36. Phil Robins, I think the Liberal Party has sent them out to all houses regardless of which electorate they are in. I’ve seen people in safe Labor elecorates say they have received them.

    GP, do you think you will personally be worse off under a Labor government? In what way?

  37. Why would one assume the undecided would go liberal? Wishful thinking perhaps. This seat is not a guaranteed easy retain for the Libs. & the quantity and nature of the mail from the previously totally inactive Lib. candidate proves that even the Lib. Party knows this.

  38. I’m not assuming that the undecideds will necessarily go to the liberals, but if the undecideds are about 8%, which they usually are in the Advertiser polls, its not unreasonable to say that this may easily lead to a 2 or 3% increase in the primary vote for the liberals, and probably for labor as well. This would make the true primary vote something like 44-35%. This is still a bit short of the magic 40% which makes labor very competitive. I need to buy today’s Advertiser to see what the Green’s vote is, as I think it is crucial.

  40. The Finnigans and Phil Robins

    I hope you guys are right about Boothby. Labor needs to win that seat to be sure, just in case there are losses in WA.

  44. Hmmm …. greens at 9%, quite a few people are giving their first preference to greens … Nicole may not be done for yet. If the greens can tick above 10%, she might yet be in business.

  46. Matthew, first preferences as presented in the Tiser:

    ALP 32
    Libs 41
    Dems 1
    Grns 9
    FF 3
    OneNat 0
    LDP 1
    Ind 1
    Inf/None 1
    Und 10

    They have a gender split – of note – Nicole – men 34%, women 30%; Undecided, Men 7%, women 13%

  48. Haha. The Advertiser. World-renowned as the least accurate polling group in the history of man. There is a considerable swing in Boothby of atleast 5 or 6%. It will go down to a few hundred votes on the night.

  50. Thanks for that Ian. I think if the green vote can be around the 11-12% mark on polling day, Nicole is in with a great chance. Boothby is partly the old democrat heartland, so that’s why the green vote is higher than average here.

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