Morgan: 58.5-41.5

Hard to say what to make of a poll conducted last weekend in the present fluid circumstances, but the latest Morgan face-to-face poll suggests the Oceanic Viking issue was washing out of the system even before the Liberal Party went into its present meltdown. Labor is up three points on the primary vote to 48 per cent while the Coalition is down one to 35.5 per cent. The Greens are steady on 9 per cent; most of the balance comes from Family First, which has corrected from 3 per cent to 1.5 per cent after an aberrant result last week. Labor’s lead on two-party preferred is up from 56.5-43.5 to 58.5-41.5. Elsewhere:

• Antony Green’s blog has been a hive of activity recently. Of particular interest is his latest post, in which he departs his comfort zone to assert we can expect a by-election in Wentworth if the Liberal leadership saga plays out as presently expected. Also featured is an epic account of the bureaucratic nightmare involved in the enrolment of young voters, apropos the NSW government’s plans to introduce automatic enrolment.

• Peter Kennedy of the ABC reports the resurgent WA Nationals have chosen John McCourt to head their Senate ticket. The party made a big fanfare of its Senate hopes at its state conference earlier this year, promising a campaign heavily funded by unpleasant Queensland mining billionaire Clive Palmer.

• The Advertiser tells us it has seen internal party polling (we are not told which party’s) which shows the Liberals were building a head of steam even before the past week’s unpleasantness. The Liberal primary vote across selected marginal seats (again we are not told which ones, which makes the figures hard to read) is said to have been 39 per cent to Labor’s 31 per cent (the undecided were presumably not distributed), with the Liberals leading 52-48 on two-party preferred.

• Jeff Whalley of the Geelong Advertiser reports Kurt Reiter, managing director of IT consultancy Digital Quay, has been preselected to run against Labor’s Lisa Neville in the state seat of Bellarine.

• Nino Bucci of the Bendigo Advertiser reports Anita Donlon, founder of the “Independent Musos Network” (can’t say I’ve met too many Liberal-voting “independent musos” in my time), and Michael Langdon, former Australian Technical college principal, are jockeying for Liberal preselection in Bendigo West and Bendigo East respectively. An announcement will be made next week.

• Western Australia’s Willagee state by-election, held to replace former Premier Alan Carpenter, will be held tomorrow. Notwithstanding that these are not the happiest of times for state Labor, their candidate Peter Tinley should have no trouble seeing off a Green, an ex-Green independent and the Christian Democratic Party. I don’t think it would be too much of a stretch to say the most interesting thing about the by-election has been the Poll Bludger comments thread. Those wishing to discuss the by-election are invited to do so there; live coverage will as always be available here from the close of polling booths tomorrow.

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.

2,749 comments on “Morgan: 58.5-41.5”

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  1. So! Michael Johnson was about to be sacked as Whip by Chief Whip Alex Somlyay for misuse of entitlements.

    http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,26417985-3102,00.html

    [His (Mr Johnson’s) wife was driving the car. He told me that,” Mr Somlyay said.

    “Leaving the vehicle behind for a wife to drive is outside the spirit of the entitlements and I instructed him to bring it back.

    “(I was) furious. I didn’t want the Whip’s office to be tainted by misuse of entitlements.

    “He resigned from Whip last week. He beat me to it.”

    Mr Somlyay said he would have sought Mr Johnson’s resignation for not abiding by direction from the leader’s office.]

  3. Here it comes again:

    [Since the last poll three weeks ago, the biggest mover was the Greens, whose primary vote rose 4 percentage points to 13 per cent, their highest rating in 37 years.]

    :kiss:

  4. [Out of the blue a Nielsen poll reported in the Herald, taken on Friday and Saturday:]

    Ah ha! Gazumped Newspoll! They won’t like that!

  5. “Joe believes if this bill is not passed, nobody in our party, including him, would have the capacity to present a credible alternative on climate change policy”

    Hmm..

  7. [Since the last poll three weeks ago, the biggest mover was the Greens, whose primary vote rose 4 percentage points to 13 per cent, their highest rating in 37 years.]

    Erm, The Greens haven’t been around for 37 years 🙂

  14. [ Fielding is scary ]

    Fielding is a dumb pussycat. He is Dumber than Dumb. He make average look like Einstein.

    Eric the hun is scary, weird etc. The only *reason* I can fathom as to why he is in the senate is that the taswegians demeem him the *smartest of the litter.

  15. That incoherent gush of a speech of Hockey’s on Grech Day proved that he is an incompetent muddle-head, totally unfit to lead a political party, let alone a government. It was the speech of a man who completely loses his head under pressure. And after his unscrupulous double-crossing of Turnbull, we also know that Hockey is man of weak and shallow personal character, a two-faced treacherous liar and political opportunist. We don’t set the bar very high in Australian politics, goodness knows, but I can’t see the voters accepting this backstabbing weasel as an alternative national leader. Come the new year, Rudd and Gillard will utterly demolish him.

    *gone*

  18. [Yet you crowed when Queen adele won in Fremantle.]

    Because I wasn’t expecting the Greens to win. It was their best performance in any lower house seat anywhere. It was unexpected.

    Willagee is status quo. Yet in a seat where the 30% Liberal vote was up for grabs and all candidates got various swings, Labor could only muster 2% of it. Not much of a vote of confidence in terms of voters that only swing between Labor and Liberal.

  20. [Because I wasn’t expecting the Greens to win. It was their best performance in any lower house seat anywhere. It was unexpected.

    Willagee is status quo. Yet in a seat where the 30% Liberal vote was up for grabs and all candidates got various swings, Labor could only muster 2% of it. Not much of a vote of confidence in terms of voters that only swing between Labor and Liberal.]

    May I refer you to this:

    http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2009/11/28/willagee-by-election-live/comment-page-3/#comment-365167

  21. [If Hockey is seen to fall into the denialist camp then the cooler heads in the LP won’t vote for him as leader.]

    Well that is right.

    The option is to offer Turnbull’s head in exchange for passing the ETS. The worst option would be to dump Turnbull and block the ETS (which appears what they might try and do).

    I gather the right are also concerned with Turnbull’s leanings and probably now given the words exchanged, hatred…they may be happy with this prize. However if the right want it all then there is no reason for the moderates to take that deal…it is a lose lose.

    Hockey is the sacrificial lamb to stop the guerrilla warfare.

  23. Shanahan’s got Newspoll!

    [… Primary support for the Liberals dropped from 33 to 30 per cent, almost seven percentage points below its losing 36.6 per cent at the last election, but rose one point for the Nationals, to 5 per cent.

    On a two-party-preferred basis, support for the government was up one percentage point to 57 per cent and for the Coalition down one point to 43 per cent.

    …

    {Turnbull’s} standing in the latest Newspoll as preferred prime minister has dropped to a record low of 14 per cent against Kevin Rudd]

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/malcolm-turnbull-pays-the-price-for-mayhem/story-e6frg6n6-1225805158001

  26. Somewhere, sometime, someone I think the Age, used the header, Dolt from the Blue.

    That was about Kevin Andrews.

    Bemused, BB, that Turnbull has not made more of his oddly supportive cohort, the Labour voters.

    Many of us have emailed Malcolm, offering advice and support. I am not alone in so doing.

    I can only assume that the dolts he employs don’t get it.

    My mind goes back to the ridiculously ill advised Grech thing, whereby he was so idiotic, hubristic and had no one to correct him, given his foolish and brainless staffers.

    Not to mention Lucy.

    Who no doubt means well, after all, Malcolm has provided.

    But sometimes, a little advice on how to deal, would be worthy of an hearing.

    Malcolm does not need artful spinners, he is straightforward, honest.

    Speaks for himself.

    I bet he rues the moment that he caved in to the anti boat people paddlers.

  27. So.. what’s to stop Minchin and friends from now filibustering every single bit of legislation? How long does it take before the newspapers start writing them off as juvenile delinquents?

    And if there is a limit to how much they can filibuster then the government should announce publicly tomorrow (Monday) that if the Bill is further delayed they will bring back the original.

  28. Turnbull’s position is right:
    [Mr Turnbull’s dramatic decision last week to announce the Coalition would support and pass the ETS in the Senate was given clear support in the Newspoll survey, with 53 per cent of those polled saying they believed he was “right to support” the ETS. and 26 per cent saying he should have blocked the vote.]
    But it is a minority view among Coalition voters:
    [35 per cent of Coalition voters said Mr Turnbull was right, but 48 per cent said he should have blocked the bill. Satisfaction with the way Mr Turnbull is doing his job rose to 36 per cent, but dissatisfaction remained on 50 per cent.]

  29. Crikey, if I were MT and I won the vote, one of the things I would do to declare ****-you to the conservatives is to publicly denounce the use of boat people as a political plaything.

  30. [So.. what’s to stop Minchin and friends from now filibustering every single bit of legislation? ]
    Yeah, it’s not like they care less about what the leader of their party tells them to do.
    [And if there is a limit to how much they can filibuster then the government should announce publicly tomorrow (Monday) that if the Bill is further delayed they will bring back the original.]
    I suspect in February the government will put the original back through the House just so they can point out that the CPRS was blocked 3 times.

  31. [The party’s history can be traced back to the formation of the United Tasmania Group (UTG), the first Green party in the world, which first ran candidates in the 1972 Tasmanian State election.]

    and like that other great Tassie icon- the thylacine, soon to be extinct

    enjoy the light while it briefly flickers, flickerbriefly’s

    LOL etc etc etc

  33. I wouldn’t be getting too excited over Turnbull’s current form because he happens to be on the side many of us prefer and because he is stubborn beyond belief against the very people we hate. His enemy is our enemy doesn’t make him our friend in any sense once they are out of the way.

    He would be the same way in a fight over a lettuce leaf. I can guarantee he will disgust and horrify us again as he did with Ute-gate when personal interest trumps decency, because his it is his nature driving him, not a overarching desire to do what is right.

  34. And if the government reintroduces the original bill, Minchin will probably try to send it too to a committee. The constitutional test for “failed to pass” seems stronger on the amended Bill, but since it isn’t the same bill as the original there would argument that the same Bill had been rejected 3 times.. no?

  35. [I thought the days of 60/40 were over. It’s a pity Rudd Labor only managed to pick up 1% on 2PP after the past 2 weeks.]

    Current events will take a little while to sink in. I expect it will get worse.

  36. [And if the government reintroduces the original bill, Minchin will probably try to send it too to a committee.]
    The original bill has already been through 2 committees. If they send it off to a committee again then it would be pretty easy for the government to argue that the committees were just being used as a delaying tactic.

    It is possible that their wouldn’t be majority support in the Senate to send them off to committees again. I would like to think that by that stage the minor parties would just demand that the Liberals vote the legislation down, thus creating a D.D. trigger.

  37. Referral to committee would be a failure to pass because of what Andrews said below. There whole motivation has been revealed to be only to delay the bill, not consider it. ‘…do whatever is necessary to delay a vote…’

    [Former Howard minister Kevin Andrews says senators will do whatever is necessary to delay a vote on the government’s emissions trading scheme (ETS) until after Copenhagen.

    “We should delay it and if that means talking it out, that means talking it out,” he told Network Ten on Sunday.]

  38. [Current events will take a little while to sink in. I expect it will get worse.
    Yes, especially when Hockey is forced by the wackaloons to start his leadership by showing that the Liberals can’t be trusted even when they come to an agreement with the government.

  39. Minchin is risking the eternal emnity of one of South Australia’s biggest businesses, Santos. At the most senior levels, Santos has been demanding the CPRS be finalised and passed into law as quickly as possible.

  40. Reading critically and carefully, Shamehans column seems to be construing the worst possible result for Turnbull.

    Only citing (am I surprised) results which denigrate Turnbull.

    No release of the actual figures, upon which we could take a reading of the true situation.

    But this remains surreal and crazy. Why would Shamehan be interested in downing a Lib?

  41. One interesting point to note in the Neilsen poll in the SMH – 66% of voters want an ETS passed! Note that the previous results that implied a drop in support asked whether it should be delayed. So some who want an ETS might still prefer a slight delay. But asked straight up, do you want an ETS, the answer is 66/34 yes!
    http://www.smh.com.au/national/go-joe-voters-back-hockey-20091129-jyv9.html

    So much for the groundswell of voters phoning coalition MPs depanding no ETS. If they exist, they are not so much as a Silent Majority, as a Moronic Minority.

  44. Shows On @ 2677

    I agree. They don’t want an eary election – but they can’t appear to back of because they were pushing it so urgently.

    Putting the bill through the house again – probably with the negotiated amendments and therefore possibly with bipartisan support in the House – and then sending it back to the senate again in Feb/March ‘as a gesture of good faith and in a spirit of compromise and negotiation in the national interest’ would keep the issue front and centre, look like they were continuing to work constructively to get the bill passed, and send the Libs into another round of palpitations.

  45. [Current events will take a little while to sink in. I expect it will get worse.]

    The early portion of the Newspoll two-week survey period was overshadowed by the final stages of the five-week + media and Opposition beat-up on “asylum seekers”. Once that washes out (next Newspoll) I’d expect the government’s stocks to rise, in league with the effects of the Liberal meltdown.

  46. Thomas, I’m not madly in love with MT. Especially after the ruthless way he conducted his campaign. My dream outcome would be for Hockey to win, promising the denialists something which he then reneges on. Hockey then immediately instructs the few moderate Senators to vote for the Bill. In a fit of picque, Abbott then calls for a spill and runs himself, and gets voted for. This leaves the LP without any leaders who haven’t been stabbed in the back going into an election where its moderates lose their seats. What remains of the LP get’s increasingly loopy and ends up writing political columns that noone reads because the printed papers go out of business.

  47. If people were asked to vote tomorrow I think they would find it very hard indeed to vote for the Coalition. 57/43 would be generous. Some people would be assuming that things will settle down to a more normal course and thus not change their vote.

  48. Shanners was on Lateline on Thursday (?) claiming that Turnbull was going to step aside within hours, before the whole fracas really blew up. I remember thinking at the time – you know what the bloke is like! There is no way he’ll resign.

    Shanners powers of analysis are up there with Uhlmann’s. He describes vague things and rambles through his allotted space till the word count satisfied. I wouldn’t be looking too hard for a motive in his piece – those still waters run shallow.

  49. [At the most senior levels, Santos has been demanding the CPRS be finalised and passed into law as quickly as possible.]
    I’m related to one of Santos’ chief CPRS negotiators with the government and opposition. They were all shocked and horrified about what happened last week, because they thought it was going to be the week that it would finally pass.

  50. I hope you’re right Cuppa, but I think we’ve reached the point where the voters have pretty much worked out where they stand. I think earlier higher results for the ALP in the polls simply reflected a lot of soft Liberal voters protesting at things like Malcom wavering and then opposing the stimulus. I think all the boat people issue does is harden the attitude of the “core”.

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