Morgan: 51.5-48.5 to Labor

The latest weekly Morgan face-to-face poll has Labor shedding another two points on the primary vote – down over the last three surveys from 42 per cent to 40 per cent to 38 per cent – and the dividend again being picked up by the Greens, who have gone from 8.5 per cent to 11 per cent to 13 per cent. The Coalition is down half a point to 41 per cent. As a result there is only a slight change on the two-party vote, with Labor’s lead down from 52-48 to 51.5-48.5. There seems to be an anomaly with the “others” rating, which has supposedly jerked up from an anomalous 2 per cent to 6.5 per cent. The fact that last week’s figures only add up to 97 per cent probably has something to do with this.

Elsewhere:

• New South Wales Labor is bracing itself for tomorrow’s Penrith by-election, which you can discuss here. Tune into this site from 6pm tomorrow for live coverage.

• The Senate passed legislation yesterday that will allow pre-poll votes cast within the relevant electorate to be treated as ordinary rather than declaration votes, and thus to be admitted to the count on election night. This will account for about 4500 votes per electorate – roughly 5 per cent of the total. Nearly 20 per cent of the votes cast in 2007 were declaration votes of various kinds, slightly under half of which were pre-polls. The bill also allows changes to enrolment to be made online, and will prevent a repeat of the Christian Democratic Party’s effort from last year’s Bradfield by-election where it fielded nine candidates without having to go to the bother of obtaining the 50 supporting signatures required of independent candidates.

• Wyong councillor John McNamara has been chosen as the new Liberal candidate for Dobell. The nomination had been vacated by the withdrawal of original nominee Garry Lee, who seems to have been pushed because his establishment of a company to take advantage of the government’s insulation scheme threatened to muddy the election campaign waters. VexNews published a colourful account from a local Liberal who tipped the outcome earlier in the week, which suggested the party does not fancy its chances in the seat.

• The Queensland Times has published a list of eight starters for the June 27 Liberal National Party preselection in the new seat of Wright, to be held following the disendorsement of Hajnal Ban. Not included are the previously discussed Bill O’Chee and Ted Shepherd. Former Blair MP Cameron Thompson appears to be the front-runner, the others being Scott Buchholz, chief-of-staff to Senator Barnaby Joyce; Richard Hackett-Jones, “a long-term tax-review campaigner who helms the Revenue Review Foundation which advocates for a uniform rate of income tax”; Bob La Castra, Gold Coast councillor and perennial preselection bridesmaid; David Neuendorf, a Lockyer councillor; Scott White, an aircraft engineer; and the unheralded Erin Kerr and Jonathan Krause.

• Yet more trouble for the Liberal National Party, with the Courier-Mail reporting local members are calling for Forde candidate Bert van Manen to be disendorsed because “he had not kept his promise to fund his own election”. While van Manen was reckoned safe for the time being, “sources admitted there had been problems and his position might come under scrutiny if there were any further issues”.

• The Liberal National Party has preselected Logan councillor Luke Smith to run against Craig Emerson in the safe Labor southern Brisbane seat of Rankin.

• The Illawarra Mercury reports former rugby league player David Boyle will withdraw as Labor candidate for the winnable south coast New South Wales seat of Gilmore, after his installation by the national executive caused an uproar in local party branches.

• Following the withdrawal of original nominee Tania Murdock, the Nationals will preselect a new candidate tomorrow for the Labor-held north coast New South Wales seat of Richmond. The preselection has attracted four candidates, an interesting turnaround on the first round when Murdock was the only person interested. According to Alex Easton of The Northern Star, the nominees are “Richmond Nationals president Alan Hunter and lawyer Jim Fuggle from the south of the electorate; and businessman Phil Taylor and pharmacist Brian Curran from the seat’s north”. Oddly, Hunter was quoted on Wednesday saying “party members would not automatically appoint a candidate if there were no stand-out nominations”, with suggestions the one-time Anthony family stronghold should be left to the Liberals.

• The Tasmanian Liberals are hawking internal polling which it says shows Labor in trouble in as many three seats, although the only figure provided – a 37 per cent primary vote tie in Bass, which would translate to a comfortable win for Labor – doesn’t bear this out. The other two seats are Braddon and, it seems, Lyons. Barnaby Joyce has today been talking of a Queensland hit-list consisting of Leichhardt, Dawson, Flynn, Longman and Wright (a slightly creative inclusion given it’s a notionally LNP new seat), with Forde as a roughie.

• Left faction powerbroker and state party assistant secretary Luke Foley has taken the place of Ian Macdonald in the New South Wales Legislative Council, following the latter’s resignation after an adverse review finding into travel expenses.

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.

1,944 comments on “Morgan: 51.5-48.5 to Labor”

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  1. mexicanbeemer @ 1882

    The same goes for state government . . . A lot of good stuff never gets reported.

    Oh please, enlighten us on all the achievements of the Carr-Iemma-Ress-Keneally-Obeid government.

  2. [Brown said that Milne had worked well with a Tassie Lib Govt. ]

    Yeah, right. Milne worked so well with that government that it committed electoral suicide eighteen months ahead of term because even that was judged a better fate than continuing to govern with her holding a gun marked “unstated no confidence motion threat” to its head. Over a decade later the former Premier of that government Milne worked so well with chummed up with some former Labor Premiers to send out a joint statement warning against a repeat of that sort of arrangement.

    Bob also reckons the Accord years of “1989-92” (bzzt, Accord was dissolved in 1990) were very successful. Wonder what Michael Field reckons about that?

  3. [Thought Rudd survived the tara brown inquisition quite adroitly.
    She was very sarcastic and her tone was dripping with contempt.
    Rudd did well all up I thought. Therese is his best asset.]

    Henry – how right you are. Therese is magnificent. ABC showed a piccie of Abbott and is wife walking into the Ball last week. He looked like a mincing little fella beside her and I didn’t realise he was shorter and smaller than his wife. But they didn’t look like ‘foreman material’ and I pictured them at international meetings and the image didn’t jell.

    In comparison Kev & Therese look at home wherever they are and the photos of her at the Sorry Days showed a lady full of compassion and feeling for others.

    I’m of the school that if Kev is tossed aside then the voters will not look at Julia and Tim as kindly. For Julia to make the grade as PM she has to resist challenging in the first term and let Kev stand aside at a later date.

  4. It helped Kev that he had Therese with him!
    However, I doubt too many people would have watched it, because MASTERCHEF thrashes all other channels in that timeslot. 😀

  5. because the press perception that rudd has given way on the ETS they think he is going to give way on everything including leadership. no way hose’

  6. Call me old fashioned, but where did the respect that should go with the office of PM go?

    These upstart journalists talk to the PM like he a local shopkeeper who has just ripped them off for 20c.

    While I don;t advocate the reverence the Americans gove their president — the PM has to make momentous decision that affect all our lives, and they think it is okay to treat him like trailer-trash!

  7. [Yeah, right. Milne worked so well with that government that it committed electoral suicide eighteen months ahead of term because even that was judged a better fate than continuing to govern with her holding a gun marked “unstated no confidence motion threat” to its head. Over a decade later the former Premier of that government Milne worked so well with chummed up with some former Labor Premiers to send out a joint statement warning against a repeat of that sort of arrangement. ]

    Kevin – I thought Brown was wrong when he was saying that but I couldn’t really remember.

    The other thing he said in the interview was that if Labor had negotiated a carbon tax with the Greens after Copenhagen then we would have one in place now.

    Van Onselen made no mention of the fact that the Greens & Labor still wouldn’t get the votes in the Senate and he allowed Brown’s comment to stand. I call this misleading the public but Brown seems to think it’s OK for him to tell big porkies in the Abbott style. He’s gone down in my estimation.

  8. Frankie V are you new around here for if you are I am a Victorian so for the achievements of the Carr-Iemma-Ress-Keneally-Obeid government I am sure someone from NSW could answer you.

    I am happy to list the positives of the John Brumby Government. But since we are nearing the Victorian election that can wait for the Victorian Election thread

  9. [It helped Kev that he had Therese with him!]
    = gutless wonder lol 😀

    Jen to get to be PM you’ve got to do a lot of nasty unpleasant things. It’s part of the territory IMHO.

  10. [to be PM you’ve got to do a lot of nasty unpleasant things]

    Destroying the miserable little right wing extremist, abbott, won’t be nasty or unpleasant.

  11. Regardless Glen. It is our highest office (GG notwithstanding) and I think if we can’t have some measure of respect for our leaders, then our democracy is really in a bad way.

  12. Look of course and I agree with you in principal Jen, but if you really knew I mean really knew the kinds of things these politicians have to do I’m talking dirty politics then it would probably make few people think that those that got to the top job deserve not to be called gutless and worse ect.

  13. [It is our highest office (GG notwithstanding) and I think if we can’t have some measure of respect for our leaders, then our democracy is really in a bad way.]

    This is a bit sanctimonious. No-one objected when Howard was held up to ridicule – I certainly didn’t. To be a politician you need a healthy ego and a very thick skin. I’m sure Rudd has both.

  14. I agree with Political Sword. I said on this thread yesterday that it peeves me that journos are more interested in tripping up a pollie that getting a real story.

    Is it the voyeur in us all that makes them think we want something sinister or underhanded to make us feel better about ourselves?

    Political journalism has long since deteriorated from a vocation to a mere ‘job’, and we are all the poorer for it. And that is even before the concept of any orchestrated conspiracy comes into it!

  15. [To be a politician you need a healthy ego and a very thick skin. I’m sure Rudd has both.]

    Well for a gutless wonder maybe.

    But wasnt Rudd the one calling up the editors to complain about the newspapers in 2007??

  16. And it’s In:

    GhostWhoVotes GhostWhoVotes – sucked in Dennis 🙂

    #Newspoll Pri: ALP 35 LIB 40 GRN 15 2PP: ALP 52 LIB 48 half a minute ago via web

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