Whom to believe? The first two polls conducted during the election campaign proper have turned in wildly different results. Newspoll has Labor with a lead so overwhelming that The Australian describes it as “solid”. On the primary vote Labor holds the lead for the first time since mid-April, with their own vote steady on 42 per cent and the Coalition down two points to 38 per cent. That translates into a landslide-winning two-party preferred split of 55-45, compared with 53-47 at the previous poll three weeks ago. We are told that Julia Gillard now holds a 30 point lead as preferred prime minister, up from 24 per cent last time. Galaxy on the other hand has turned in its second poll in as many days, this one conducted on Saturday night from a sample of 800 (yesterday’s poll, which had Labor ahead 52-48, was conducted in the last days before the election was called), and it has the two parties tied on two-party preferred, with Labor’s primary vote down a point to 38 per cent and the Coalition up two to 44 per cent. However, Julia Gillard maintains huge leads on attitudinal questions, in particular “more in touch with voters” (56-28). Both polls have the Greens on 12 per cent. The margins of error are about 3 per cent for Newspoll and 3.5 per cent for Galaxy.
UPDATE: Full results from Newspoll here and Galaxy here. Newspoll has sought personal ratings on Julia Gillard for the first time, which have her at 48 per cent approval and 29 per cent disapproval. Tony Abbott’s ratings have sagged heavily: approval is down six to 36 per cent, disapproval up 10 to 51 per cent. Gillard’s lead as preferred prime minister has widened from 53-29 to 57-27. Both polls also ask voters to identify the best party to handle the economy, climate change and asylum seekers/border security. Oddly, Labor gets better results on items two and three (and the same on item one) from Galaxy.
Other news:
• According to Sid Maher in The Weekend Australian, Coalition polling in the Brisbane area has it “12 points clear of Labor in one marginal seat, and Labor sources concede that the party’s primary vote remains below 40 per cent in some key areas”. Discussing internal polling in Queensland on Insiders yesterday, Dennis Atkins of the Courier-Mail spoke of “seats that are next to each other, one which has got a 5, 6 per cent swing against Labor, the other one hasn’t budged, no swing whatsoever”. He also related that “even the Liberals are saying they can’t make it in Herbert”.
• Phillip Hudson of the Herald-Sun reports leaked party research indicates Labor has been focus group testing television advertisements featuring Julia Gillard attacking Tony Abbott on health, education, broadband and WorkChoices, unified by the theme: “Don’t let Tony Abbott take us backwards”.
• The Daily Telegraph reports police are investigating what appear to have been gun shots fired into the home and campaign office of Brent Thomas, Labor’s candidate for the marginal Liberal seat of Hughes.
• Two men have been reported for allegedly assaulting a Liberal volunteer who was on the campaign trail with Jassmine Wood, candidate for the marginal Labor Adelaide seat of Hindmarsh. The incident reportedly followed a dispute over the Liberals’ policies on asylum seekers.
• Drew Warne-Smith of The Australian reports GetUp! will take the Australian Electoral Commission to court over its determination that it would not accept enrolments placed through its OzEnrol.com.au website, which sought to facilitiate online enrolment by having the required signature filled out through a mouse of trackpad.
• Malcolm Mackerras has tipped a slightly increased majority for Labor, of 85 seats to the Coalition’s 65.
UPDATE 2: Essential Research, conducted from Tuesday to Sunday, concurs with Newspoll at 55-45. This is the same result as the previous week, with the Coalition up a point on the primary vote to 39 per cent, Labor steady on 41 per cent and the Greens steady on 13 per cent. Julia Gillard is up on both approval (four points to 52 per cent) and disapproval (three points to 30 per cent), while Abbott’s three point gain on approval (40 per cent) comes out of a lower disapproval. Gillard’s lead as preferred prime minister has widened from her debut from 49-29 to 53-26. Also featured are most important election issues, best party to handle them and some hard-to-read stuff on “Australian values”.
Tim’s in real estate? I never knew that. I thought he was a hairdresser.
Then again, once a hairdresser always a hairdresser.
[LOL! Homophone!]
If there was an author named Kneck, and Truthy had read him… you get where I am going…
Does that mean he puts it in his ear?
[And a council run buy a bunch of Liberals that can’t even run a budget and are generaly on the nose with everyone in Townsville. They even get slamed by the local Murdoch newspaper which incedentaly is giving Mooney a real good run.]
The council is run by independents, are you sure you are a Townsvillian? It’s pretty basic knowledge mate.
1304
A significant proportion of “independents” in local government elections are aligned with the conservative side of politics.
Fulvio Sammut@1303
And goes Ting a Ling A Loo. 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysFrt3V7nvI
[By the end of the war, more than a half of all industrial production in the world would occur in the United States.]
Ken Burns, The War
Just watched Q&A here in the frigid West.
Thought that Hawker presented pretty well, and Tanya too. Tanya did seem to be a bit grumpy by the end but i think she had cause as Tony Jones seemed quite happy to let Mesma babble on at length with the support of the rather gross Ackerman. Yet he was quite happy to cut her off.
Mesma i thought didnt really ahve much to say except to spout the current crop of Liberal talking points as fast as she possibly could whenever she got the chance. Someone must have written them out for her and made her learn her lines. 🙂
Adam
you listed Herbert as one of labors weakest seats , Longman as par of Brisbane area (not to most people there up to Cabooture way) Lindsay is part of greater western sydney where AFL headed , agree Macquarie into blue mountains
Bud Sigotoga
Posted Monday, July 19, 2010 at 11:50 pm | Permalink
“I Have just caught up with tonights posts and come to the startling realisation I come from the same town as Truthy. The sad fact for Truthy is that Mooney is going to win Herbert with a very, very large swing.”
can you supply some hard info as its 50/50 on last result?
I thought it was one of the worst ones. Everybody was just trying to talk over eachother. Aly barely got a word in despite, IMO, being an interesting person.
Akerman was an insufferable partisan prick who spent the whole evening picking on Tanya and making shit up or repeating right wing rhetoric.
Mesma was her normal “pretend to be human” self. Love her choice in dressing completely in black – really highlights the party she represents.
Bud Sigotoga
although accept although notionally now labor but only slim
Tanya was a sad sack as always on QANDA why does she bother turning up if it makes her upset.
*turns into pumpkin*
Tomorrow’s OO:
Love this quote on Abbott and Serfchoices: “Abbott said he changed his mind after ”carefully pondering the verdict of the voters in 2007”, even though in his book Battlelines there is a chapter called ”Work Choices wasn’t all bad” which outlines the ”destructive” provisions of Labor’s laws.”
For those who are concerned about rogue polls, or are jubilant after one poll company releases a great poll, then suicidal after another releases a terrible one, the ABC have a poll of polls running, which factors in all the major polling companies’ releases and runs an average (as well as give a graph of individual trends)
http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2010/campaignpulse/
Right now, the average is 53-47 in favour of Labor.
I thought Bob Brown made perfect sense: abolish ticket voting for the Senate – its undemocratic rubbish, encouraging people to have their vote directed by unelected hacks under the ruse of “convenience”.
Its one of the last great rotten boroughs of Australian democracy, and totally unnecessary. If its all to hard to count to 50: introduce optional preferential BTL, or NSW style ATL prefs.
I name, seriously: try explaining to someone from another democratic country that upper house votes can be directed according to the tickets of unelected party officials. And more: that the easier option is to do so.
Its a national embarrassment.
[Tanya was a sad sack as always on QANDA why does she bother turning up if it makes her upset.]
Tanya is very pregnant and looks exhausted!
Peter van Onselen:
[The Australian understands that Labor’s track polling shows its support is lifting in all states except Queensland, where the combinations of the toppling of Kevin Rudd (a local boy) and the deep unpopularity of the state government and Premier Anna Bligh are stifling support.
The numbers suggest Labor could lose a host of seats in the Sunshine State.
Attempts to arrest the decline include efforts by candidates to localise campaigns, along with sending Julia Gillard to Queensland for the early part of the campaign to break down the growing angst against her for tearing down an elected prime minister.
Labor sources point out the irony is that during Rudd’s leadership, Queensland had been a problematic state where dissatisfaction with the job he was doing was high.
Perhaps surprisingly, the dip in support for Labor in Western Australia has been contained and a small upsurge has occurred.
The same results have been seen in NSW on the strength of Labor’s changed border protection policy under Ms Gillard.
The Coalition is facing financial constraints and is not doing anywhere near the amount of expensive track polling it did at the last election, or as much as Labor is doing now, according to one senior Liberal source.
But the quantitative research the Coalition has done is said to have buoyed Tony Abbott and Brian Loughnane about their chances of a competitive result or even an upset victory.
The Coalition is apparently tracking better in key marginal seats than published polls with wider samples such as Newspoll might suggest.
The more concerning research from a Coalition perspective is the qualitative work being done with small focus groups of marginal-seat voters. It suggests the need for the conservatives to find one or two key wedge issues if it is to force voters into switching allegiances at the election.]
Tone’s “Caught in a Trap, can’t look(go) back”
Pressure on Liberals for dismissals move
SMALL business groups said they expect a Liberal government to ease unfair dismissal restrictions, despite a pledge by Tony Abbott not to change workplace law, because a dismissal code could be changed instead.
but if he does he reneges on the “Signed Agreement”
[undemocratic rubbish, encouraging people to have their vote directed by unelected hacks under the ruse of “convenience”.]
Then why did his party negotiate a preference agreement with the ALP, under which his voters will be directed by their HTVs to preference Labor? Because they’re a political party and they want to win seats, duh. Brown can’t be a party leader and then pretend to be somehow not connected to the realities of party politics.
As for “unelected hacks”, I don’t know who the Greens negotiator was, but the Labor negotiator was an elected member of Parliament.
The Big Ship
The key failure of your argument is that you chastise the
ABC about alleged right-wing bias yet you are implicitly happy for a left-wing bias to exist.
You can’t have it both ways.
Oh, and by the way, what a terribly inane Q&A. Tony Jones may as well abolish the panel given his predisposition to interruptions and even answering his own questions.
[The Coalition is apparently tracking better in key marginal seats than published polls with wider samples such as Newspoll might suggest.]
Just like last time, quelle surprise. It’s amazing how the Liberals’ private polling (which we never see) always has them winning lots of marginals despite getting thrashed on the 2PV. We saw this exact same story in 2007 (before PVO was around, so he doesn’t remember), and we know how that turned out.
And while I’m here, there seems to b a lot of idiocy about Abbott somehow “stumbling” today, which is complete nonsense. One can tinker with the Fair Work Act without bringing back WorkChoices. Seriously, get a grip journalists.
William Bowe
Posted Tuesday, July 20, 2010 at 1:00 am | Permalink
Peter van Onselen:
“The Australian understands that Labor’s track polling shows its support is lifting in all states except Queensland, where the combinations of the toppling of Kevin Rudd (a local boy) and the deep unpopularity of the state government and Premier Anna Bligh are stifling support.
The numbers suggest Labor could lose a host of seats in the Sunshine State.”
which mirrors my past comments Whats more Q’ld aint been good to Labor ovr past 20 years and swings like 2007 were huge , and prob we’ll get some huge ones again
Q will be that damage be contained to Q’ld Maybe eg NSW especialy better than 8 weeks ago
That does seem suspicious, especially in light of the fact that these same shadowy sources are apparently conceding Herbert.
[Tony Jones may as well abolish the panel given his predisposition to interruptions and even answering his own questions.]
It’s funny how the right and left both see Jones as this evil villain because he doesn’t lob softballs and eat up the answers with a smile.
Tony Jones is an excellent journalist. Sometimes he is the bane of my side, other times he is the bane of yours. I think that is testimony of his journalism skills.
[That does seem suspicious, especially in light of the fact that these same shadowy sources are apparently conceding Herbert.]
Party insiders don’t “concede” competitive seats this early in the campaign. The campaign can still go in either direction…
ps. sorry about the LNP confusion the other night, tokenyank. I genuinely made a mistake there.
No 1327
Jones is not an excellent journalist; rather, he is a supercilious git. Trioli was much better in the hot seat.
[he is a supercilious git.]
Welcome to the ABC.
Either way, for better or worse, what happens on the ABC stays on the ABC. So it doesn’t really matter what is said, except to us political tragics.
psephos, you know better than anyone that there are 40 odd different ways to determine upper house seats.
Only one slyly encourages voters to hand their vote over to political parties.
Only one leads to totally BS, totally undemocratic outcomes like the random generation of Senator Fielding – who no one voted for, and bugger all ALP voters in VIC “preferred”.
Our system.
Its got to go. Really, it does.
Bob Brown is up to his grubby hands in a pref deel of which he IS Greens Party Leader , and then hypocritically says oh I do not believe in pref deels
Trying to explain personal opinions to make his suporters still think Greens above politcal deels , and contrary to his own Partys pref agree is gutless and decitful to Public
How could Labor expect him NOT to welch out of a Climate Change agreement , maybe Tony Abbott is more trustworthy
Lefty, as it happens, I don’t like the Senate lodged-ticket system either. (Although it’s better than the 10% informal vote we used to get in Senate election when people had to number 50 or 60 squares.) Maybe we could have a system where people who vote above the line could number the party tickets in order of their preference. Most would still follow their party’s HTV, but at least then they’d know what they were voting for.
But that wasn’t my point. My point was Brown’s hypocrisy in pretending that his own party’s preference deals are somehow nothing to do with him.
*eliminates self from count*
lefty e
re Senate voting
“Only one slyly encourages voters to hand their vote over to political parties. ”
then we hav Senate voting on first past post only , with th 6 Senate seats proportonately allocated on th number of HoR seats a Party gets
Greens & Mr X then get no Senate seats
Rule by majority , democracy , and save alot of tax payers money as well
[The more concerning research from a Coalition perspective is the qualitative work being done with small focus groups of marginal-seat voters. It suggests the need for the conservatives to find one or two key wedge issues if it is to force voters into switching allegiances at the election.]
Ohh ohhh! I got one!!!
Gillard flooding our marginals with immigrants because Labor have run the capital cities into the ground with mass immigration and lack of infrastructure.
I do hope to God the Libs realise what a gift Labor have given them by declaring seats like Townsville as the immigration dumping ground will have here. Rather than DEAL with the problem at the source or try and fix the problems with Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane the new Gillard thought-bubble is to screw our nice little lifestyles up here as well.
This will be an election in Townsville about whether you want the lifestyle you now have, or the Labor outlook of a flood of people into our city. I hope the local member screams it from the roof tops.
“And while I’m here, there seems to b a lot of idiocy about Abbott somehow “stumbling” today, which is complete nonsense. One can tinker with the Fair Work Act without bringing back WorkChoices. Seriously, get a grip journalists.”
He didn’t just stumble GP. I watched his presser today and it was actually painfull. someone here described it as, Serengetti, Lame Wilderbeast, Hungry Lions. That i think was probably too complementary asn assesment to Abboot.
Still, i appreciate your stated position. You obviously believe that what Tony says is true even in the face of his form as a lying reptile. That probably puts you in a minority, but we’ll get confirmation of that on the 21st i guess.
1334
As Brown mentioned in the Lateline interview that he had introduced a bill to do but that it was voted down.
“Maybe we could have a system where people who vote above the line could number the party tickets in order of their preference.”
I agree. That’s already a superior balance of democratic integrity and voter convenience.
Despite being a Greens member, I’m not here to argue with you on Brown – I really do have a major and longstanding problem with lodged-ticket voting. Thats what I took from his interview.
#1339
Then Bob Brown is now whinging about Greens Party factional heavies calling th tune
He is either part of Greens Party (which made a deel) of which he is leadr but was too weak to stop , or he is being deceitful wanting his cake and eat it
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/in-far-north-things-never-black-and-white/story-fn59niix-1225894302140
These sort of articles make me queesy.
“Deep North”? Really.
Would that make Hobart the “Deep South”?
TheTruthHurts
Tony you tink is going to “turn back th boats”
Can you tell me on an ocean map just where those boats will be actually towed to ?
[Can you tell me on an ocean map just where those boats will be actually towed to ?]
Back out to international waters in Indonesia’s direction, obviously.
or with our huge Navy ( of 5 ships and one dingy) , do we then hav a Naval blockade of oz to stop them boats coming back into oz waters at nite
TheTruthHurts , its ok , Tony Abbot does not know answer to my Q eithr
maybe some day bfore 21/8 , a journo using logics will ask it , if Libs become unlucky
I cannot believe this took place 40 years ago today:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twKTfXwhL60
New thread.