D-day minus 2

• The Australian has published the latest cumulative Newspoll with state-by-state breakdowns. Most interesting of the state-level results is a correction following a mid-campaign Labor plunge in New South Wales.

• Marcus Priest of the Financial Review on the dispute over George Newhouse’s eligibility in Wentworth (UPDATE: A learned refutation of what follows from Grace Pettigrew in comments):

One option for Turnbull to avoid a new election would be to argue that rather than go back to the ballot box there should be – according to an ancient common law rule – a recount that excludes the disqualified candidate. The High Court has not been willing to do this in other successful challenges but left the door slightly open in the (Jackie) Kelly case, and it has occurred in England before. For this to occur it would require Turnbull to put Wentworth voters “on notice” before the poll that Newhouse was ineligible.

• Having raised genuine concerns about Newhouse, the Coalition broadened the attack to 12 other candidates who websites indicated were still on the public payroll (“based on investigative public records searches”, as Andrew Robb would have it): Sharon Thiel (Kalgoorlie), Mark Reynolds (Tangney), Tony Zappia (Makin), Belinda Neal (Robertson), Yvette D’Ath (Petrie), Ross Daniels (Ryan), Garry Parr (Hinkler) and Shayne Neumann (Blair), Rob Mitchell (McEwen), Alan Neilan (Kennedy), Mark Buttigieg (Cook) and Peter Conway (ACT Senate). Most seem to have had little trouble refuting the claims, Reynolds saying his piece in comments on this site.

• More and worse late-campaign desperation from Lindsay, where Labor operatives have photographed outgoing member Jackie Kelly’s husband Gary Clark and party state executive member Jeff Egan distributing a bogus pamphlet, purportedly from Muslim extremists praising Labor’s support for the “unjustly” treated Bali bombers.

• Meanwhile, Michael Bachelard of The Age reports being contacted by a “Liberal campaign source” spreading smears about Rodney Cocks, Labor’s candidate for the finely placed outer Melbourne seat of La Trobe.

• Michael McKenna of The Australian reports that the Liberals are so alarmed about their outer Brisbane seat of Forde, which outgoing member Kay Elson won by 13.0 per cent in 2004, they have “abandoned their candidate” and told the local to get behind Nationals candidate Hajnal Ban, who has “won traction with voters”. At the end of October, Tony Wright of The Age wrote that Liberal polling from the seat was “whispered to have sent a bolt of fear through the party”.

• A study of Australian voting patterns by the Australian National University’s Andrew Leigh and Oxford University’s Amy King finds that “female candidates in major parties tend to get 1.5% fewer votes than their male colleagues, all other things being equal”.

• Nick Xenophon’s seemingly effortless journey to the Senate has been rudely interrupted by Ann Bressington, the unanticipated victor of a second No Pokies seat at last year’s state election. According to John Wiseman of The Australian, Bressington claims Xenophon “guaranteed that her entry into politics would cost her nothing, only to tell her after she was elected he wanted $50,000”. She has also criticised him for abandoning state parliament just after he became eligible for the pension granted upon 10 years’ service.

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.

1,111 comments on “D-day minus 2”

Comments Page 19 of 23
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  8. Things we’ve learned out of the NPC lunch:
    1. Howard is past it. Exhausted and cranky.
    2. The gallery has finally seen which way the is blowing, and is circling for the kill.
    3. The Libs have no idea how to go about minimising the damage, or they wouldn’t have thought that sending the troops to cheer for Howard at the NPC could possibly help.

  9. And so ends the Rodent’s last set piece.

    Ray Martin closes the show by bringing all back to Bogangate. I think Ray is really going to enjoy saturday night.

  19. Picture the scene on Saturday night: Howard’s concession speech, with Hyacinth, the Howard son who works for Bush/Cheney, Alan Jones, David Flint, and other Liberal lackeys from Sydney’s North Shore. I predict it’ll be the most watched youtube video for some time.

  20. I have been smelling a rat in this Lindsay racist thing. Some in the Liberal party would have been quite happy to blow their dog whistles about muslims at this particular time and this has given them a chance to do so.

    Howard has given it a good going over today. Then we hear from Paul Bongiorno that the Labor party only found out about the pamphlets after a tip off, probably from the Liberals. Without wanting to sound too paranoid, I wouldn’t put something like that past the bastards. They are very desperate people.

  23. It’s hilarious that 1000+ post threads are now just par for the course.

    Howard is now talking about Blair and Brown, is he considering running as leader of the opposition in the U.K.?

  27. “Mr Combet and Mrs Banton held hands as they left the courtroom.
    James Hardie’s lawyers refused to comment.

    Mr Combet and the family will make an official statement following the finalisation of the settlement terms at 2.30pm.” [from the Age]

  29. [Howard is now talking about Blair and Brown, is he considering running as leader of the opposition in the U.K.?]

    The UK Tories already had Michael Howard as leader – didn’t last long.

  31. To be sung ad nauseam on Saturday night..

    Ten blue Liberals, clinging to their seats..
    Ten blue Liberals, clinging to their seats
    And if one safe seat should accidentally fall
    There’ll still be 10 blue Liberals clinging to their seats

  34. Yeah, the sad part is I suspect the Libs will be quite happy with racehategate getting a lot of airtime.

    Wont help though. Too late in the piece.

  36. Received 3 election pieces in the letterbox this morning – 2 to 1 in ALP’s favour. The spend was more like 3 to 1.

    I think the libs have given up on Herbert

  38. Julie @ 927

    Wonderful juxtaposition: Howard in damage-control mode against scurrilous acts of anti-unionists / Mrs Banton and Combet hand in hand

  40. what a sh*thouse job the libs in lindsay did with their material. after they are charged with electoral fraud they should also be charged with incompetence.

  41. Lefty E: I think you are right, but I think the Libs want people to focus on the flyer not on the dirty tactics (as pointed out by some Lib hacks on here who have said that the info on flyer is true). I think the media is looking at the dirty tactics, so the plan has failed.

  43. Hi Great Site
    Just a query/observation about polling methodology. Pre-election there was some suggestion that marginals were swinging less than safer seats but this seemed to be somewhat debunked by more recent polling of marginal during the election campaign. I’m wondering if this is really true or that polling companies which are actually profit making organisations at times to cut cost deviate from there normal polling methodology during election. Basically i’m wondering if during election campaign is the strict methodology used compromised by the companies in that a they incorporate there marginal seat polling into there overall poll to a large extent thus the national figures and the marginal figures appear to come together as the national figures are overly biased by marginal data incorporated. If marginal bias is being incorporated into figures then might expect larger sample size as companies attempt to somewhat offset bias, so even though larger sample might have smaller MOE it my actually be less accurate because it was done to offset a bias and not to be more accurate. Would companies risk being less accurate i suspect so for two reasons (1) they have limited staff so hard to do separate national and marginal polls within cost parameters (2) they know they will be judged only on there last poll before the election which i’m sure they will do using non-bias methodology as it is on this one there accuracy is judged. I’m just wondering if any stats experts out there might be interested in this idea and test whether there is a correlation between the marginal seat polling results and national polling results released around sametime for each company, basically is there evidence of pollution of the national polling figure by over reprensentation of certain marginal that the company is also concurrently polling.

  45. The leaking almost certainly came from the soft-Lib side. They knew they were stuffed and here was an opportunity to shaft the right…brilliant for all.

  46. “Karen Chijoff knows the electorate of Lindsay well, having spent the past five years working in the electorate office of Jackie Kelly.”

    And they say that they had no idea what their husband’s were doing – crud. 🙁

  48. “I have been smelling a rat in this Lindsay racist thing.”

    Darn, you might be onto something. Howard couldn’t help himself in reminding the press club and the viewers that the pamphlet was suggesting that Labor sympathised with the Bali bombers. It was most likely a dog whistle.

    Whether it was planned this way all along or whether Howard is just now using it as a dog whistle, who knows? It is hard to imagine that it would be have been planned exactly this way though because the Lindsay Liberal candidate’s husband is now being implicated, which might then rebound onto her with suggestions that she should resign.

    Most likely a stuff has occurred somewhere in all of this even if some of it may have been planned as a way of dog whistling to the rednecks.

  49. Frank Calabrese: If he is from the Hard Right, I bet it was a wet that leaked it to the media. They’re already planning to take their party back out of the hands of the Uglies.

  50. [Newsradio – Lindsay Candidate’s Husband set to be expelled from the Libs.

    He’s a powerbroker of the Hard Right.]

    If Howard expelled her, could that save the Liberal vote in other seats?

    Lindsay has been inked in as a likely Labor gain for MONTHS. By letting her remain I think Howard will just do damage in neighbouring seats.

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