Sunday Mail: 64-36 to SA Labor in Adelaide

Adelaide’s News Limited Sunday tabloid, the Sunday Mail, today carries a poll with a small sample of 483 showing state Labor with a two-party lead of 64-36 among Adelaide voters. Remarkable as that might sound, Antony Green calculates it’s in the same ballpark as the 2006 election, when the Adelaide two-party result was 62.6-37.4. Antony further observes that the Sunday Mail article absurdly compares this purely metropolitan result with the statewide two-party figure from 2006 to conjure a 7 per cent Labor swing that would cost the Liberals eight of their 14 seats. In reality, the poll points to a roughly status quo result, although that’s quite bad enough for the Liberals given the scale of Labor’s win in 2006.

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.

271 comments on “Sunday Mail: 64-36 to SA Labor in Adelaide”

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  1. [Even an 8-7-6 split would crush the party. A three-way leadership contest, with such a small caucus, is never a good idea.]
    What happens if there is a 8 – 7 – 7 split?

    How do they decide which candidate is eliminated? Do they have a special ballot just to work out which candidate is excluded from the last ballot? 😀

  2. Mitch Williams is an utter joke candidate. He may well end up delivering the leadership to Vickie Chapman if he’s not careful. Isobel Redman would have to be their best bet. She seems a fairly no nonsense sort of character in the limited media coverage I’ve seen of her. She would certainly be a more measured opoosition leader than MHS ever was. Decimated oppositions need safe steady leadership when they have a mountain to climb.

  3. [Liberal leadership contender Mitch Williams has backed away from the party’s policy to build a sports stadium on the site earmarked for the new Royal Adelaide Hospital.

    Opposition leader Martin Hamilton-Smith released plans to build a city stadium earlier this year.

    But Mr Williams says he is unsure if the stadium was ever Liberal Party policy.

    “The reality is that I think Martin did get sucked in a little bit on the stadium, in so much as I don’t know that the Liberal Party ever had a policy that we were going to build a stadium,” he said.]

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/07/07/2618858.htm

  5. Crikey’s take:

    [Life inside the SA Liberals is again beginning to resemble the 1970s split with the wets focussed on internal control while the right is in a panic over how to win an election. The conundrum of the right is whether to let the wets’ Vickie Chapman take the leadership while they wait for more members of the right to get elected in 2010 and toss her out. The problem with that is that it repeats the Brown/Olsen challenge that got the party into so much trouble in the mid 90s where a record landslide win in 93 was totally eroded in 97.

    Their chance to axe Chapman is to do her over now. What the party heavyweights are considering is whether to back an Isobel Redmond/Steven Griffiths ticket with two relatively inexperienced MPs at the top that would knock Chapman out of contention and onto the backbench. The residual problem is that her background attack dogs (ex-MP Pratt and current fed MP Chris Pyne) will not take the umpires decision and will cause ongoing disruption. It’s time the party formalised its factions, put in place a method of dealing with outbursts of ambition and presented a united face.

    If not, the Chapman mob should be forced out of the party where they will wither and die just as their 1970s predecessors did (The Liberal Movement).]

  6. [If not, the Chapman mob should be forced out of the party where they will wither and die just as their 1970s predecessors did (The Liberal Movement).]
    The Chapman faction IS what remains of The Liberal Movement! Except now it is inside the tent.

  7. LOL! Isobel Redmond, the favourite to win the leadership of the S.A. Liberals tomorrow, was previously a member of the Labor party!

  8. [LOL! Isobel Redmond, the favourite to win the leadership of the S.A. Liberals tomorrow, was previously a member of the Labor party!]

    Source?

  10. Seems spell-check isn’t working at the ‘Tiser today…

    [TWO men have been arrested over a robbery at a northern suburbs bus stop.

    A Hillcrest man, 28, and a Holden Hill man, 31, were charged with aggravated robbery and theft after robbing a person near a bus stop on North East Rd, Mobury, on Sunday June 5.

    The men were bailed to appear in the Hodlen Hill Magistrates Court at a later date.]

    http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,25746118-2682,00.html

  11. Will Isobel Redmond get rid of all the fundamentalist Christians who have infiltrated the South Australian Liberal Party????? Time will tell!!!!!

  13. Here it is:

    http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,25731562-5006301,00.html

    [VOTING for the Liberal Party leadership has narrowed rapidly with number-crunchers tipping former deputy Vickie Chapman will win today’s ballot by 12 votes to 10.

    The three contenders – Ms Chapman, current deputy Isobel Redmond and former frontbencher Mitch Williams – were all working feverishly yesterday to shore up votes for the make-or-break vote in Parliament House at 10am.

    One of the former leader Martin Hamilton-Smith’s strongest supporters told The Advertiser yesterday his gut feeling was Ms Chapman had her nose in front.

    “She is putting in a big effort,” he said.

    Ms Redmond’s supporters said they believed they had at least 10 votes locked in, but both sides admitted there was likely to be a sudden shift in votes just before the party room ballot.]

  14. Woah, I can’t believe Chapman is favourite.

    Now that Hamilton-Smith has gone, I wonder if Robert Gerard will stick to his threat of ending donations?
    [Federal party figures also said there had been threats made to state Liberal MPs that unless Mr Hamilton-Smith remained leader, the state branch’s biggest donor, wealthy Adelaide businessman Robert Gerard, would cut off the flow of funds to the cash-strapped party.]
    http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25716165-2702,00.html

    Apparently Gerard’s contributions to the Liberals at the during the last state election was 50% of their total donations.

  15. [Ms Redmond’s supporters said they believed they had at least 10 votes locked in, but both sides admitted there was likely to be a sudden shift in votes just before the party room ballot.]
    I wonder if Chapman supporters have just fed this story to the media to try to encourage others to support Chapman to make the result conclusive?

    The worst result of all would be if after Wiliams is excluded, Chapman and Redmond both get 11 votes. but the second worse result would be 12 to 10 either way.

  17. [I wonder if Chapman supporters have just fed this story to the media to try to encourage others to support Chapman to make the result conclusive?]

    Well considering the following:

    [One of the former leader Martin Hamilton-Smith’s strongest supporters told The Advertiser yesterday his gut feeling was Ms Chapman had her nose in front.

    “She is putting in a big effort,” he said.

    Ms Redmond’s supporters said they believed they had at least 10 votes locked in, but both sides admitted there was likely to be a sudden shift in votes just before the party room ballot.]

    Comes from “one of MHS’s strongest supporters”, and the last bit comes from Redmond supporters, I don’t reckon it’s a ploy by Chapman supporters… but who knows.

  18. [Comes from “one of MHS’s strongest supporters”]
    This person could just be pretending to be a MHS supporter. I mean how exactly would the journalist know how the person voted in a secret ballot?

  19. I’ve gotta say, I’ve got no clue why they’re so keen to go for Chapman as leader. She’s got less charisma than any other leader I’ve ever seen except Eric Ripper. If they’re stupid enough to go with her, it’ll be a very entertaining election night – and hopefully we’ll be saying buh-bye to folks like Pisoni.

    I suspect Williams-Redmond ticket would be far more successful, and would in all probability take a few seats off Liberals, but the state Liberals seem to be rather short of strategic sense. So I shall be looking forward to election night 2010 then…

  20. In the Australian
    [“The partyroom is largely polarised. There are just a handful, maybe six of us, who sit in the middle on it.”

    A senior party figure aligned to Mr Hamilton-Smith’s camp later said there was a lot of bitterness toward Ms Chapman and her supporters, including federal frontbencher and moderate faction powerbroker Christopher Pyne.]
    and here in comments ShowsOn says:
    [The Chapman faction IS what remains of The Liberal Movement! Except now it is inside the tent.]
    I didn’t realize Pyne was a moderate but okay – if that is the case and Chapmen represents the small ‘l’ within the party then why does Pyne have bitterness towards her?
    Is Chapmen really the moderate I have to barrack for? She is painful! Actually I suppose its a good thing if she’s elected – her being ‘moderate’ (sic) might move the middleground that the parties argue over slightly to the Left which may mean slightly less Rightwing ALP government policies plus the fact that personality wise she is not so charming and so not a vote winner makes her the perfect candidate. On the otherhand I think I couldn’t really stand seeing her face in the media all the time so perhaps my local MP Redmond will have to do. Otherwise I don’t really care – they are all conservative dinosaurs of an obsolete age anyway.

  21. [I didn’t realize Pyne was a moderate but okay – if that is the case and Chapmen represents the small ‘l’ within the party then why does Pyne have bitterness towards her?]

    Pyne and Chapman are moderates and Pyne supports Chapman. You’re reading it wrong.

    [A senior party figure aligned to Mr Hamilton-Smith’s camp later said there was a lot of bitterness toward Ms Chapman and her supporters, including federal frontbencher and moderate faction powerbroker Christopher Pyne.]

    This is saying that the MHS camp has a lot of bitterness to Chapman and her supporters which include Pyne.

  29. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25749782-5013945,00.html
    [But new deputy leader Isobel Redmond, whose claim of being a political cleanskin and circuit-breaker for weeks of leadership tension has seen her emerge as favourite in today’s ballot, was a central figure in a strategy meeting in Mr Hamilton-Smith’s office the day the documents were used against the government.

    This was the first strategy meeting Ms Redmond, a former lawyer and the then opposition legal affairs spokeswoman, had attended. She was present for the entire meeting, during which she was shown the documents and the accompanying questions, and asked if she approved.

    “She specifically asked in the meeting, ‘Where have these (documents) come from?’ She was specifically told they came from a highly placed Labor source,” an insider told The Australian. ]
    Expect Labor to talk about this a lot.

  30. [But new deputy leader Isobel Redmond, whose claim of being a political cleanskin and circuit-breaker for weeks of leadership tension has seen her emerge as favourite in today’s ballot, was a central figure in a strategy meeting in Mr Hamilton-Smith’s office the day the documents were used against the government.

    This was the first strategy meeting Ms Redmond, a former lawyer and the then opposition legal affairs spokeswoman, had attended. She was present for the entire meeting, during which she was shown the documents and the accompanying questions, and asked if she approved. ]

    http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25749782-5013945,00.html

  31. [For the first time since the fake documents scandal erupted on April 28, the exact role and level of involvement of these key senior MPs can be revealed. At the strategy meeting were Mr Hamilton-Smith, his communications director Kevin Naughton, Ms Chapman, Ms Redmond and Mr Williams. Also present was frontbencher David Pisoni, who a day earlier had received the documents in a large yellow envelope, posted anonymously to him at Parliament House.

    Ms Chapman, who arrived after Ms Redmond, sat away from a central table, at Mr Hamilton-Smith’s desk, and so did not see the documents. Mr Williams also was late, and after scanning prepared questions, left the meeting without viewing the documents, which later proved to be fakes.]

    Seems Redmond was the worst choice of the lot!

  41. Sigh, looks like we’ll have to put up with her in my neck of the woods for at least 4 and a bit more years.

  42. [Sigh, looks like we’ll have to put up with her in my neck of the woods for at least 4 and a bit more years.]

    As I said, she’s smarter than Chapman but only just. I think there’s a reasonable chance she’ll stuff up big time prior to election day, potentially driving voters to the Greens in Heysen, the electorate that polled highest for the Greens at the last election. The Green vote has doubled in Newspoll since the last election, so I think the Greens will easily poll in the 20s/30s, maybe higher if she stuffs up.

  43. http://www.borderwatch.com.au/archives/3308

    [The Labor government has opened a raging $1.10 favourite with leading election bookmaker Centrebet to retain power next year, with the Liberal Party under new leader Isobel Redmond now a long $6.25 outsider.

    Centrebet media chief and political analyst Neil Evans said the struggling Liberals had clawed back some ground under Martin Hamilton-Smith, but this had evaporated after the “dodgy documents” scandal and leadership struggle.

    “It has been a savage blow twofold, not just because Hamilton-Smith had been a strong leader at a time when the SA Liberals had lost key electoral ground, but also his demise opened up a reportedly fragmented party,” Mr Evans said.

    “In key regional voting areas, the Liberals have suffered a disastrous swing, and right now there seems to be a general public acceptance of the government’s performance from both sides of voting politics.]

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