Morgan has published its first face-to-face poll conducted on Julia Gillard’s watch, other recent efforts having been phone polls. This one combines polling conducted over the last two weekends, and it shows Labor’s two-party lead up from 53-47 in the last poll under Rudd to 56.5-43.5. Those of you who have already looked at the Morgan press release might be surprised to learn this, as the headline figure is 55-45. This is because Morgan has apparently decided to switch from the “preferences distributed by how electors voted at the 2007 election” measure to “preferences distributed by how electors say they will vote”, and as has been widely noted this is less favourable for Labor. The Morgan headline’s statement that Labor has picked up a 6 per cent swing is based on comparison with last week’s anomalous phone poll result. Interestingly, the poll reports the opening of a huge gender gap, with Labor leading 60.5-39.5 among women and trailing 50.5-49.5 among men. The primary vote has Labor up 4.5 per cent on the last poll under Rudd, with the Coalition down three points to 38 per cent and the Greens down two to 10.5 per cent. Curiously, the sample was only 299 for the first of the two weekends, immediately after the leadership change, which explains the lack of a face-to-face result last week. The more recent weekend’s sample was a more normal 879.
A bit of federal news:
• South Australian Labor Senator Annette Hurley, who had the top position on the Senate ticket for the coming election, has instead announced she will retire. Her Right faction must now decide who will replace her as candidate for one of the two unloseable positions, the other of which is held by Left faction incumbent Anne McEwen. Another incumbent, Dana Wortley of the Left, is expected to remain in third place (UPDATE: I am informed Wortley is now in the Right, which has mostly absorbed the “Duncan Left” sub-faction of which she formed part).
• Denis Atkins of the Courier-Mail last week quoted a “senior Queensland LNP campaign official”. Herbert and Petrie in particular are nominated as seats Labor is now likely to win.
• Andrew Wilkie will be making yet another bid for parliament, this time as an independent in Denison. He narrowly failed to win one of the five Denison seats at the March state election, polling 8.4 per cent of the vote.
New South Wales news:
• State Greens upper house MP Sylvia Hale has failed to win her preselection bid for the inner-city seat of Marrickville, which the party is expected to win at the election in March. They have instead nominated the candidate from the 2007 election, Marrickville deputy mayor Fiona Byrne. The NSW Greens have also been struggling with the revelation of Lee Rhiannon, currently in the state upper house and endorsed to run in the Senate at the coming federal election, has used state parliamentary resources on her federal campaign. Bob Brown has called on her to resign her upper house seat sooner rather than later, but she is insisting she will resign when the election is called.
• The Wentworth Courier has published a list of Vaucluse Liberal preselection hopefuls which includes former Malcolm Turnbull staffer Anthony Orkin, together with previously noted “PR professional Mary-Lou Jarvis, Woollahra mayor Andrew Petrie, Woollahra councillor Peter Cavanagh, restaurateur Peter Doyle”.
• The Daily Telegraph reports on nightmarish opinion polling for the NSW Labor government.
Barrie Cassidy today on Insiders surprisingly did not give JG a serve regarding the East Timor matter. He appeared to take a much softer approach, which is a turn around from his bashing of the ALP during the past few months. Wonder why?
Chris, I agree that Evans’s trilogy is much the best recent history of the Third Reich, and I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to read a detailed account, but not one that is too heavily academic.
Shirer’s books have the advantage of being eye-witness accounts, especially Berlin Diary, but he wasn’t a historian and his general histories suffer from this. There are better recent histories of both the Third Reich (Evans) and the fall of France (Jackson).
Is the word “Ackerman” enough to have a comment put in moderation? I don’t know what else it could be. Let’s try again.
[He appeared to take a much softer approach, which is a turn around from his bashing of the ALP during the past few months. Wonder why?]
A lot of the media “bashing of the ALP” was motivated by personal dislike of Rudd and resentment at the media management by his office, which is now no longer a factor. Many in the Gallery are now willing to give Gillard at least the basics of a fair go. That doesn’t apply to hard-core Labor-haters like Ackerman and Miranda Devine, but it does to many.
[As the election draws nigh – and as a matter of pure academic interest – are you able to quantify the impact of this site on political decisions and discourse.]
Sure can – 0. Or if you’d like another decimal place’s worth of precision on that – 0.0.
[Does it have wide readership ( other than the worthy regulars who dominate commentary). Do the “hits”: run into tens of thousands – or more.]
In the last 30 days there have been 122,827 visits and 571,246 page views (remembering always that this includes spiders, robots and the undead). That makes for 4.65 “pages per visit”, which surprises me. On a normal looking day I’ve picked out at random – last Tuesday – there were 3809 visits and 17,677 page views.
I can’t offer you anything on demographics: all Google Analytics knows is how many are coming and where they’re from. Couple of months back I had occasion to inform readers of the following geographic breakdown:
[By city, 30.8% Sydney; 22.9% Melbourne; 10.2% Brisbane; 9.1% Adelaide; 8.9% Canberra; 8.7% Perth; 1.5% Hobart; 0.6% London; 0.3% Cranbourne.]
Adelaide was punching above its weight at that time due to the state election. Perth has now overtaken Adelaide and Canberra, and Adelaide has fallen behind Canberra. “Richmond”, whatever that means, has overtaken Cranbourne.
William why are my last two comments in moderation?
and what about Queanbeyan?
No idea, Adam. I think it’s like the missile defence system on Magrathea – it take the occasional potshot to relieve the monotony.
Queanbeyan doesn’t count apparently. They must roll it together into Canberra.
So “Ackerman” is not officially a rude word?
Nobody ever spells it correctly, so moderation filters wouldn’t be much use if it was.
Psephos. “Ackerman can’t be officially a rude word. It was bandied about quite a bit on yesterday’s posts. Must be some other reason.
William, Regarding hits:
If I visit then view a page and over the few minutes hit refresh 4 times is that still one visit and one view? Just curious.
Just watching O’Connor being interviewed by Farr, PVO, Patricia somebody, and the chair, on A/S.
He just keeps talking though when being interrupted, which has been around 7 times by three of the journos in the last five minutes. He has also stated at least once that he doesn’t accept the premise of a question. He has just also said that ‘you are putting words in my mouth’ and disallowing that as well.
Good to see Ministers not allowing journos to push them around.
Excellent stuff.
“Ackermann” by the way is a German word meaning “peasant” – a farmer who farms only an acker (acre) of land.
Tom, I do believe that would be one visit and five page views. Which probably explains the high “page views per visit” ratio.
Predicting a 52-48 Newspoll to be released tonight.
Another two interruptions ignored by O’Connor. BravoX2.
How do you like Bob Brown’s analysis?:
[The Greens lost ground at the polls after Ms Gillard was installed as leader.
Senator Brown said he put it down to her popularity as Australia’s first female prime minister.
“I raised a glass to that myself, it’s an historic breakthrough,” he said.
“However I think a lot of Green votes went across and parked with Julia and Labor voters came and parked with us.”]
Greens parking votes with Labor? Sounds like he’s having two Bob each way.
The next gambit should be, when O’Connor has finished answering the question, for him to say, ‘While I was answering your last question, you interrupted me. Would you like to ask your follow up question again?’
Well, Piers certainly hoes over a very limited area- again and again and again.
Well named.
gloryconsequence. obviously in favour of the ALP?
Piers has a condition known as “verbal d……….”. Once he gets started, hard to stop.
[Which probably explains the high “page views per visit” ratio.]
Thought so – thanks. I generally load PB each morning and hit refresh 20 times or more through out the day so there must be a fair number of visitors who read what’s been posted and leave for the day/week. Do you get a significant increase in the two days following Newspoll?
Don’t worry – I won’t try to turn this into an interview!
Demons winning! Where is my new politically independent friend Glen?
Kersebleptes
It came to mean a measured ‘acre’ but it used to mean more simply a cultivated field.
IMHO, if you are looking for a link, then I suggest that a certain cloddishness is possibly closer to the mark.
There is, BTW, nothing wrong with being a peasant, as such. Our AGW problems largely arise because as soon as people can stop being peasants, they do. Almost invariably this means moving away from human and animal-based labour to something driven by internal combustion engines.
In my childhood I had cause to work on the ‘ackers’ amongst the boers – picking potatoes into, wait for it, wicker baskets.
The ‘Patricia’ is Kervalas or something like that.
The other good thing that Labour appears to be doing now that Rudd is gone is letting all sorts of people go up to bat. There is a bit of risk that they will not get their stories together, but it is quite refreshing.
Farr and PVO getting stuck into Abbott, Kavalas defending him.
They are getting stuck into the ‘turning back the boats’ meme of Abbott and supporting Gillard on it.
Boerwar. PVO has been very vocal over the past few days regarding “turning back the boats” meme. He feels very strongly about it and has said quite clearly he is ashamed of Abbott and Morrison pushing this line.
vic 1070 – yep in favour of the ALP.
Is Piers Ackermann of German or Dutch ancestry?
Piers could be related to Andrew Bolt who apparently is of Dutch background.
My dictionary tells me that in German an “acker” was a traditional unit of measurement, varying between 2,500 and 5,500 square metres according to region. In everyday speech it meant “a small plot of land.”
Piers Ackerman really is a vile creature. Don’t ever mention the issue of Palestine & Israel unless you want to come under extremist attack. He not only replies with childish name calling but invites other bloggers to do the same. Really appalling crap.
In his eyes all Arabs are terrorists & the Israelis are the victims 100% of the time. Much the same as his political view. Labor all bad, Liberals all good.
Boerwar,
I remember when the Iron Curtain drew back, and Eastern Europeans began forming new political parties: in some countries (Romania?) there were “Peasants’ Parties”. I don’t know if any still operate under that title, though.
PS- Who wove the wicker baskets?
Brown is a fool saying that Green votes are parked with Gillard. The polls clearly show that it was the Rudd votes parked with the Greens that have come back. Surely he knows this??
His name is actually spelled Akerman, if that’s any guide. I put “peasant” into an online English-Dutch translater and it turned up “boer; plattelander; lomperik”.
How long would the DLP have lasted as a political force if Calwell had won in `61?
“lomperik”
Oh, now that’s a good one.
Thanks muchly, William!
Dee. Piers and his bloggers only know name calling and vulgarity. There is never an occasion that someone has posted a thoughtful and respectful blog. It is full of anger hatred, vitriol and pure racism. You are right, it is “really appalling crap”.
[(Origin Saxon) From Acker, oaken, made of oak, and man. The brave, firm, unyielding man. (Origin German) Farmer in service to the lord of the manor.
Source: An Etymological Dictionary of Family and Christian Names With an Essay on their Derivation and Import; Arthur, William, M.A.; New York, NY: Sheldon, Blake, Bleeker & CO., 1857].
Akerman or Ackerman. No difference regarding history I would imagine.
[His name is actually spelled Akerman, if that’s any guide. ]
Goodness me, so it is. I always thought it was Ackerman. Of course I never read his stuff so I wouldn’t know.
My giant German etymological dictionary says that the Old Saxon word for “oak” was “ek”, from which the modern German “eiche”, the Dutch “eik” and the English “oak” have all evolved. So I don’t think “aker man” means “man of oak.”
On the other hand the Old High German “acker” (from the Latin “ager”), a unit of land, gives the Dutch “akker”, the English “acre” and the Swedish “aker”. I think that is the origin of the surname Akerman.
My book cites ‘Ackerman’ Akerman’ as ‘ploughman’ ‘arable land’.
“Man of oak” in German is of course Eichmann, which is probably not a name anyone wants to claim these days.
Dee,
Tree or land unit, Piers definitely spent years as a devoted servant to his lord of the manor!
Akermann and Akermanis. Interesting.
Way to much time dedicated to a man of such little brain methinks, Piers is a gluttonous nutter with the analytical skills of a goat.
Fair enough. Last word to Jon!
Akermanis is a Latvian name, and Latvian is not related to the Germanic languages, so there’s unlikely to be any etymological connection.