Morgan, which ended its recent poor run at the federal level with a 53.5-46.5 result on the eve of the election, has produced the first post-election poll on voting intention. It shows Labor enjoying a honeymoon boost to 58.5-41.5, with a primary vote lead of 49 per cent to 36.5 per cent. Newspoll will presumably return to the fold in the new year.
For most of the year I predicted Labor to win the election with 81 seats. This can be confirmed on the oz politics blog tips.
During APEC, when Howard asked his colleagues if he should step down and they said yes, I revised my prediction to 91 seats. How in the hell could Australian’s vote for someone who was not preferred by his own party?
On the last couple of days when the electorate was serious about their voting preference, it was obvious that the election was going to be closer than most of us had thought, Adam. Given that our tips were lodged some 4 to 6 weeks before the election, most PBs did very well.
As far as the margin of the win was concerned, at the time I couldn’t have cared less if it was 1 seat or 50. The bookies pay out was the same!
I’ve gone quiet because im hungry and dinner needs making.
Maybe you’ll pop some more champers because those are the last bits of footage of Howard in public on the news that you’ll see for quite some time, he wont be like Keating.
Well off for some grub see ya’ll bit later maybe.
993
Harry ‘Snapper’ Organs – Dont worry i expect you are as happy now as i was to see the back of Paul J Keating, full circle id say. Except from elements of the far left, History will judge John Winston Howard better than Paul J Keating.
1002
Glen Says:
December 12th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
“…he wont be like Keating.”
He never was.
To which you would say, I guess, “praise be”.
Keating was PM over 11 years ago – history is already judging him. And it’s giving him a pretty big tick.
Glen
bull butter and humble pie for dinner again eh?
Keating was invisible for 10 years, he popped his head up when Labor looked like winning and his economic credentials were finally acknowledged.
Howard will just disappear. Any economic miracle (which is a fallacy) will be claimed by Costello.
Howard will be blamed for losing the “booming economy” election. What was he thinking – 68 was just too old.
What surprised me were the msm comments that said Howard wasn’t disliked,no animosity towards him. He was loathed by quite a few people I know. Much more than Keating.
1004
gusface – bull butter and humble pie for dinner that sounds like what Keating has had for tea since 1996 but don’t forget some sour lemon pie for dessert LOL!
No wonder he’s become so bitter!
Ah, nothing like a bit of neoconservative revisionism:
943
Glen Says:
December 12th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
al-Qaeda were active not completely but they were active in Iraq before hand.
But since they are there fully now why should we run away?
___________________________________________________________
Says who? al-Qaeda were in Iraq prior to Bush’s catastrophic misadventure? Oh yeah, Douglas Feith and maybe Paul Wolfowitz and their necon crony mates.
Pure, unadulterated twaddle. It’s like saying Soeharto was happy to let Muslim fundamentalists prosper under his regime! (Hint: he had thousands of them massacred and exiled the likes of Abu Bakir Bashir)
If you do not not know the geopolitical facts, all it proves is that you are a lazy cut and paster of ignorant rightwing blogs.
As for al-Qaeda taking over a country of 20 million (well, minus a few million that have escaped the borders) if we leave…purleeeese, do try and pay attention. Even the al Anbar Sunni are sick of these nutters, not to mention what the Shia majority thinks of them.
Like so much disinformation that ooozes out of the Beltway, al-Qaeda is a very small presence in Iraq (and if you don’t believe me, check the number of foriegn nationals held by the US in Iraq, it is miniscule!), and the fact has always been that disgruntled ex-Baathists are the main driving force behind the insurgency against the coalition. In a very tribal country, foreigners are easily identified and only get to stay if the locals want you to. Just look at the Brits for example!
Given Iraq’s long secular government, rabid Wahhabists are not, were not, and cannot be, a good fit.
Now, stick to something you think you may know something about, and stop regurgitating neocon talking points. That used to the job of Malvolio of Mayo, and he made about as much sense as you do.
The Libs are no longer part of the problem!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/12/12/2117295.htm?section=justin
“[Dr Nelson’s] first decision as the leader of the Opposition was to support ratification of Kyoto so what we have done is very simple. We’ve set out a positive agenda and the reason why we’ve done that is because we want to be part of the solution.”
lol. Talk about being a day late and a dollar short.
Yes, Howard has been treated very kindly by some sections of the press about such matters, Megan.
Can’t say I know many people who think he was anything other than shifty, self serving, easily led by major players and far from honest.
I doubt, in the end, that he will ever been seen as anything other than this. It is singularly hard to thing of any real contribution he made to Oz society, other than his stance on guns, perhaps.
pssst! megan. i agree about that meany howard. what do you reckon, was it funny last night how mister bowe tore up the homework of half the class? i nearly copped it for something else, got off with a warning, but. (bit scared to say much today, but mister bowe’s over at the other thread..)
Adrian @ 992
I think your analysis is very wonky. The Liberal and Labor BTL is not 5%, it’s more like 1%. It is the Greens that will suffer leakage, as they draw their ticket votes from a lot of parties where the calculator assume 100% flow. Labor will get a regular drip of BTL votes, and are likely to be closer to the third quota later in the count than shown by the calculator, and the Greens are likely to be further from a quota.
Ron at another comment asked me to explain 6 Queensland seats. Leichhardt and Forde, retirement of sitting MPs. Dawson, the roughy of the election. Longman, Dickson and Petrie, all had swing to the Liberal Party of more than 5% in 2004. Regression to the mean, exceptional swings one way, exceptional swings back the following election. Forde and those last three are also outer suburban electorates, and there were lots of big swings in those sorts of seats in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. I wasn’t actually proposing any sort of Queensland exceptionalism.
1011 CW…(will we need to resort to passing notes? Would love to know what was confiscated!) Explains why I spent too much time outside Principal’s office in my time. Curiosity is a wondrous thing. Enjoy your posts. Wonder how Bushfire Bill is doing? Loved getting his updates.
CW and Megan.
I got a smack today too, and all I did was a little gloating.
After what happened to Melbcity (blessed relief I might add) i think Bilbo is becoming V. hardline.
Although i suspect he hasn’t slept for 11 months.
Glen,
“those are the last bits of footage of Howard in public on the news that you’ll see for quite some time, he wont be like Keating”
Keating will always be sought out for comment because he smart, sharp and very witty.
Few will be interested in Howards views.
I wish him a well in whatever he chooses to do – just as long as he does not appear in public again – please.
Ferny Grover (in an obviously inebriated state 😉 claimed:
Now you tell me, just as the fates have removed the major source of my moral aggrievement. With little chance of bringing them back until I’ve become positively ancient, doddery, probably perpetually perplexed and long past caring about s, e and especially x. Sigh & Bugger! ;(
Oh, well, at least I won’t have to buy those little blue pills? hehe
Jen @ 928
Two gold elephant stamps? I am honoured. 🙂
Re Victorian Senate,
It surprises me that there has been very little coverage of this in the MSM. Here we have the sixth seat going down to the wire. It looks as if the ALP are minutely ahead of the Greens.
The BTL are imposible to know well until the button is pressed. Really a chook raffle, it would not make much change in the Macro Senate sense.
It would have an impact in Vic as a Green Senator would increase their ‘machine’ and just take the edge off the ALP’s win.
What chance pundits, a double dissolution?, not much I say, but it would be fun.
yeah, jen, i reckon he is a bit cranky, nearly christmas holidays though. still he has been good all year, might get a nice pressie yet. and megan, don’t get me wrong and i wasn’t cheating, but the stuff that was confiscated was a lot of rubbish! i know cos i copied it. not worth the trouble, though. no wonder mister bowe was cheesed, i sure was while they were carrying on.
and a pink one from me mayo…et al…
glen
your presence here intrigues me – you’re not the progeny of the foul rodent’s loins are you? you sit here and cop all sorts of logic and respond with half-arsed cliches from lib central – it’s like you WANT to do the right thing but hyacinth said you’d rot in hell if you showed emotion and reason – odd – VERY ODD
Source: The Australian
12-DEC-2007
The full text of Rudd’s address to the UN climate change conference in Bali.
concluding with …
Adrian at 940, you said” “A question for Antony or anyone else. There seem to be a lot of provisional/absent/postal/prepoll votes being excluded. I counted roughly 27,000 or 2.7% of the total vote, and probably about 13.5% of the provisional/absent/postal/prepoll votes, attempted for SA seats. (This is on top of the roughly 4% informals). Apart from not being on roll, what else causes this. Is there any breakdown of the causes for exclusion. How does it compare to previous elections. Nationally then we have 500,000 plus informals, probably 400,000 plus excluded and plenty more who never got on the roll. Surely we could do better than this?”
You may not be aware, as many are not, that in its unpredendented assault on the integrity of the electoral system, and with a compliant Senate, the Howard Government changed the Electoral Act in a number of major and minor ways, in order to suppress the votes of anyone who might vote for the then oppostion.
These included abolishing the seven day grace period after the announcement of an election for new and amending enrolments (expected to impact most on young voters, but countered by a strong enrolment drive by the AEC and GetUp amongst others), disenfranchising prisoners (overturned by the High Court), and changing the rules on provisional votes (not noticed by many because its so arcane).
The changes to the provisional voting rules are complex and I am not completely across them, so please correct me anyone who understands them better, but I understand they include requiring provisional voters to show idendification at the polling booth (and many provisional voters, the homeless and aboriginals, do not carry ID around with them), and disallowing provisional votes cast in the same division (where previously a simple change of address within a division would have been allowed).
Under the rold rules, anyone removed from the roll, during the AEC’s roll cleansing drive prior to the election, for not living at their enrolled address, would have been able to cast a provisional vote and had it counted, if they had only moved to another address within the same division (on the principle that the direction of their vote would not have been different given the same field of candidates).
I understand that the number of provisional votes allowed through to the count has decreased markedly at this election, so perhaps the reason lies somewhere in the changes to the rules made by the Howard Government in order to “tighten up” the provisional voting system, and thereby rig the system further in their favour (on the assumption that these voters are more likely to vote left).
We can only hope that these legislative amendments will be removed by the new Rudd Government and the fairness of our electoral system restored.
Er, don’t know what “rold rules” are, I mean “old rules”.
70% rise in natural disasters since 2004. The seas are warming.
The US, Canada, and Japan: the future sits in judgement.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/12/13/2117667.htm
Re Antony @1012
Always good to get figures right! My 5% estimate was based on SA averages and the Vic figures for below line votes are only about 1% as you correctly note. Also ALP fraction of Senate has now started increasing after dropping for most of count so its now about 7000 over quota. And the Greens below line votes for their first candidate and Feeney below line votes dont move. And the ALP will get its share of leakages from groups favouring Greens above line. Greens are long odds against a Vic Senate seat on current trends.
Hey folks – a few people on here mentioned that they were going to have copies of all stations’ election coverage – ABC, 7, 9 and 10 – on DVD. Anyone out there have copies they’re willing to make available?
Cheers!
William,
Time to update the sapm filter.
Spam.
Thanks, William, but now that the spam has been deleted, I’d like to make it clear I was not referring to J’s post.