Newspoll has targeted 17 marginal seats in NSW, Queensland and Victoria, with results that are heartening for Labor: a manageable 1.3 per cent swing in NSW, a surviveable 3.4 per cent in Queensland and, remarkably, a 6.2 per cent swing in their favour in Victoria. We are told of a 4.6 per cent drop in the Labor primary vote in the six NSW seats, an 8.1 per cent drop in the eight Queensland seats and a 1 per cent increase in three Victorian seats. The Coalition are respectively up two to 47 per cent and 1.7 per cent in Queensland, but down 5.3 per cent in Victoria.
UPDATE: PDF here. The seats covered were Bennelong, Eden-Monaro, Gilmore, Macarthur, Macquarie and Robertson in New South Wales, Brisbane, Dawson, Dickson, Flynn, Forde, Herbert, Leichhardt and Longman in Queensland, and Dunkley, La Trobe and McEwen in Victoria.
Note also this evening’s Galaxy marginals poll and Nielsen national poll covered in the previous post.
Other matters of note:
• Stephen Lunn of The Australian reports that Antony Green, Newspoll’s Martin O’Shannessy and Bob Brown’s chief-of-staff Ben Oquist all agree that Greens preferences will run 80-20 to Labor as usual. This is contrary to much talk around the place from such as Dennis Shanahan, who spoke of Labor two-party results bloated by “heroic assumptions“ about Greens preferences. The Nielsen poll released earlier this evening gave Labor 86 per cent of respondent-allocated Greens preferences.
• An article on the Liberal campaign by Simon Canning and Patricia Karvelas of The Australian is interesting both for its content, and in providing the first hint of pre-emptive recriminations in the Liberal camp. “Senior Coalition frontbenchers” have complained the Liberal camapign director, Brian Loughnane, had “left Tony Abbott vulnerable with an overly safe advertising campaign”. John Singleton is quoted in the article saying it had been “the worst campaign the Liberal Party has ever run”. Many of the specific criticisms proffered ring false to these ears, but it has indeed been notable that Liberal advertising has failed to target “Kevin Rudd’s execution and re-emergence, and the constant distraction provided by former leader Mark Latham”.
• Michael Kroger in The Australian optimistically rates the week a “draw”, and appears to believe the decisive seats so far as a Labor majority is concerned will be Bass, Corangamite, Forde and Solomon. He also offers that “a Labor loss in the seat of Melbourne now seems likely”.
• Emma Chalmers of the Courier-Mail notes the Australian Electoral Commission’s statistics on postal vote applications show Labor has lodged three times as many as the Liberal National Party in a “a clutch of key Queensland marginal seats”. Labor is said to have learned its lesson after being slow off the mark with its postal vote campaign at last year’s state election.
• The Age reports the Northern Territory Country Liberal Party is likely to disendorse its candidate for Lingiari, Leo Abbott, for failing to inform the party he had breached a domestic violence order.
• GetUp! have had another win, this time in their challenge against the Australian Electoral Commission’s refusal to admit enrolment applications signed with a digital pen and submitted through their website. One observer who declined to join in the congratulations was Possum, who argued it would strengthen the “potential fraud” argument the Howard government used to justify its franchise-curtailment measures in 2006.
Last election Galaxy had Labor winning 2 seats in Qld.
6.8% swing isn’t bad (in QLD), I was thinking more.
Considering Anna Blight Government.
@Boerwar 874
Good report – please thank Bluey for me. I especially agree that we need to avoid overconfidence – as Bluey says, “it ain’t over till it’s over”.
I’d shake Bluey by the hand – if I could figure which was an octopods right hand!
rua
Arrest would be inevitable, despite a thing of beauty being a joy forever.
nice one TSOP, if not 60mins then sky news
Thumping it home yesterday, being thrashed today. 🙁
What the hell is going on?
Are we seeing a move in the betting markets already?
Boerwar
Budgie smugglers? In Cooma? Well on your own head be it, mate. Well maybe not your head as it is a pretty conservative sort of town.
Oscar
I have passed along to Bluey who thanks you for your kind thoughts. He advises against trying to select a winner when shaking tentacles with Blue-ringed Octopuses. They are quite unpredictable.
Remember – Galaxy almost ALWAYS under-represents Labors vote in Qld.
[“7 ALP seats at risk in NSW, 10 seats at risk in Qld.”]
No shit. They’re called marginals.
Still this is good, if it makes sure that Labor’s supporters don’t get too far ahead of themselves and declare victory prematurely. Still have got one more week. One more week of dirty tricks, last minute attempts at throwing in spanners, one more week of journalists attempting “gotcha!” moments…
Allan, not to worry.
We will be having our best rural, dairyfarming, potato growing and cattle raising backgrounds to the fore.
Gosh John i may be biased but a few policies have been great.
for my oh and I the policies to make reverse mortgages better and safer has never been mentioned by the the msm and the journalists after the press conf on the elderly that day did not ask one question about anything.
I rang the abc and ask to be put through news and current affairs.
So i ask the young lady if she new what a reverse morgage was , ‘No “was the reply.
well dont you think it up to abc journalists to ask the question and become aware of this type of thing’ she half agreed . It seems to me that if they are not interested in a policy they dont give a stuff about it.
Now if it was boat or something dramatic they may.
I am starting to wonder what the university degree is all about.
Labor have had some good policies but the media that follow Julia just do not seem interested, really its a disgrace. You would think they would want to make a name for themselves if that was i would be so enthusiasitc in case one day i wanted a job in the pm department. Doesnt seem to enter their head these days, life is handed to this generation on a platter,
Sorry, after that people’s get together this week I’m not convinced by anything TDT produces.
[One more week of dirty tricks, last minute attempts at throwing in spanners…]
TSOP, and what will the Libs be doing? 😉
“Remember – Galaxy almost ALWAYS under-represents Labors vote in Qld”
And Nielsen Overstated Labor’s vote in 2007.
I still think Labor will only lose about 5 seats in Qld. Bligh is a factor though. She is universally hated. If she resigned, Labors vote would increase….for a while….. 🙂
Seems to me that the election campaign so far can be divided into three phases.
1) For the first week it was Labor versus the coalition, with Labor way on top.
2) For the second two weeks it Labor versus the Media – with the Media on top for the first week and it starting to even up a bit buy the end of the second.
3) For the third week it was Labor versus – well, no one really! (the few shots fired by the coalition generally resulted in them getting hoist on their own petard, and the Media, while hardly friendly to Labor, were finally starting to notice that the Libs were not exactly covering themselves in glory.
From the beginning of the campaign to the end of week 4 the coalition’s own impact has been about as damaging as getting hit around the head with a wet tissue. THey even seem to be getting their analysis of “what went wrong so far” completely “a over t”. Their problem isn’t that they haven’t been negative enough. It is simply that they haven’t had anything positive to present to the voters to prove their credentials after a couple of weeks of heavy artillery barrage on Labor by the media in weeks 2 and 3 of the campaign had softened up the target for them.
Maybe the Libs have been saving it all for the last week? They certainly haven’t been putting any weight into it so far!
[TSOP, and what will the Libs be doing?]
Heroically trying to save the country from the clutches of the ALP and their corrupt administration of effective economic management and treating refugees like humans.
are these all our marginals that is what i have been saying today.
we seem to be ahead of ourselves today are we.
what was the pr v 40 i beleive is that correct.
so do they like to keep the thing going by saying we are at risk in marginals
thats always the case isnt it but today it seems insiders seem to not be as worried as the msm paint it why have we been so happy with oursleves to day.
some one reassure me please.
Scarpat
OT but are you spending all summer in France?
@915 – possibly. I would say Morgan though.
my say
my late da used to always say
[when I was a boy]
I find myself sayingit to my lads now
🙁
Just saw the Climate Sceptics Ad. Yes, I know they are so poor they can’t afford professional actors, announcers, scripts, production or even policies, but it is just so sad that I think it is counter productive to have a teenage girl spout forth some puerile rantings. Where’s the Children’s Services Department when you need them?
my say
It is more likely than not that it will all be alright on the night. Unless something unexpected happens between now and this time next Saturday.
Enjoy the dream. Sleep well.
tks Bluey.
The polls this evening are good will keep labor focussed.
Doesn’t Galaxy have a inbuilt bias against the ALP, if course after Rooty Hill it is pretty academic.
[Posted Saturday, August 14, 2010 at 6:18 pm | Permalink
Sorry, after that people’s get together this week I’m not convinced by anything TDT produces]
as i said why put the western sydney galaxy poll in the hobart mercury dont know if you read my post it the head line was dreadful then i realised it was just about
western sydney.
[Scarpat
OT but are you spending all summer in France?]
Laocoon,
Yes I am. I hope that the ABC will be streaming election night with Kerry et al so I can follow the sport live.
[Just saw the Climate Sceptics Ad]
I don’t think this will help the Libs in any way.
John Reidy
No worries. Bluey can’t advise on polls because he can only count to 8, but he does reckon that Rooty Hill, with less than 100,000 viewers was vastly overrated v Q&A which had over 800,000 viewers. Bluey reckons that the tories clutched RootyHill like a drowning man a straw. But what would an Octopus know?
Up here in Central Queensland we’re being swamped with seperate Lib, Nat, LNP Candidates and other “concerned” (eg Fishing Party???) groups advertising on Win News (Ch 9). The adverts are mostly blatent lies or total misrepresentations. If a student put such unsubstantiated garbage in an essay they wouldn’t even get a look in. However, it’s certainly capable of producing a big swing to the LNP across Queensland. Palmer and his mates are spending up big time.
Brissy @909 is there a plausible explanation of why galaxy would under-represent Lab in Qld? I’ve got the impression it under-represents Lab generally (though only by half a point).
scarpat
We had a wonderful, wonderful post retirement year in Paris. Swapped our house with a Paris family. Worked wonderfully well. I imagine that the dominant sound in the canyons of the 13ieme Arrondissement, as we write, are the cries of the swifts as they hurtle to and fro…
Rocket
[Lets see that is $43,000,000,000,000 ($43b) for a NBN for 23,000,000 (23m) people which equals $1,900,000 ($1.9M) for every man woman and child in Australia just to build a internet network???]
As you say, obviously Oakes was a cadet journalist, not an economist. At $1900 per person, spread over 8 years, the NBN will cost no more ($250/cap/year) than what most Councils spend on maintenance ($500/year). It is a lot less than annual spending per capita on gambling (was $900/cap/year in 2007).
This leads me to a general point, that as an engineer I find frustrating. Most people say they want certain services, but few if any governments are willing to allocate the dollars to pay for them, even though the economic return on such spending is usualy very high. There is a quite bizarre lack of understanding on what $ are needed to maintain and develop what is now lumped together and called infrastructure . Australia’s spending on infrastructure dropped to quite low levels under Howard, just as our population growth was becoming spectacular. We really face quite a lot of work to do to restore it to the levels of the 1970s, let alone what we might call a “modern” standard.
When I worked in Canberra I was stunned to realise that before AusLink, Federal spending on transport (road, rail and ports combined) was less each year than the cost overruns on defence projects. Defence was in turn dwarfed by education spending, and that in turn was nearly doubled by health spending. On average, our spending on all forms of engineering infrastructure (transport, water, energy, communications) is less than 5% of GDP. In % terms, it was almost 50% higher in the 1960s.
We have run down not only our infrastructure, but our capability to provide it. There is still a shortage of civil, electrical and power engineers in almost every state, despite the building industry being in quite shaky circumstances. A lot of the 1960s/70s cohort of engineers are retiring now, and there are not enough people to replace them. Organisations respodn by drafting peopel without Bachelor of Engineering degrees into “project manager” roles, but that is usually when entirely avoidable disasters like this happen:
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/new-500m-railway-line-unsafe-20100721-10l6e.html
I don’t complain for my own sake – my salary will keep going up, and I can get a job in almost any capital city I choose, when I choose. But surely for the nation, this is a bad thing. We need substantially more investment, more predictable cash flow, and more training of people. The boost of the stimulus package was a great step forward, but it was a one off, when it really just took us back to the level of spending needed to fix the problems for the first time since the Hawke era.
Meanwhile government policy ensures that a huge amount of workes wages in the form of super, is shovelled into a poorly regulated industry that returns little better than inflation, as Stephen Long has shown:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/08/05/2974671.htm?site=thedrum
The only real beneficiaries are the salesmen, sorry, I mean financial advisors.
So what is the solution? Pretty obviously, some reallocation of resources needs to be done, on a permanent, rule-formula basis. If not, get used to spending an increasing proportion of the rest of your life waiting in traffic jams. Or move to the country, where medical services are probably worse than capital city transport. The time has come for governments to tax, and spend, more.
Gus, this is my first full day off in eight weeks, and here I am. I haz lotz a sad.
george
What were the main messages?
I’d love to see the climate skeptic’s ad and see what kinds of lies, distortions and humbug they’d have to use.
Scarpat
Well enjoy…sounds like a very civilised way to while away a few months (Laocoon adds wistfully)
And given the election coverage should start at around 10am local time(?), a good time to work through a few bottles of France’s best 🙂
I know some of you will say get over it BUT.
As a Brisbane ite and out and about with some older voters , may I say if Kevin Rudd was not running in this election, the QLd vote would even be worse. Hopefully people will stick with Labor and its better policies despite this.
I can’t boot up one of the pages. can someone please provide me with the galaxy results?
[Win just announced a poll of plus 4000 in 19 marginal seats indicating that Labour could lose 17 seats in Qld and NSW. 2PP was around 48.5% lab 51.5% Liberal]
Nothing from the GhostWhoVotes. Is that 48.5 Lab 51.5 Lib a national TPP or is it for the marginals (and if so which ones).
thanks all, o dear we have all had a horrible few weeks haven’t we we deserve this win i dont think liberals voters care about the country like we do
i think this is the most important election in the country ever
others that are older may disagree it would be good to know perhaps during the war or some other time in history, but the way the talk and think is scary. I dont think i would feel safe having an opinion
[Still this is good, if it makes sure that Labor’s supporters don’t get too far ahead of themselves and declare victory prematurely. ]
Agree. I think the ALP needs to keep the idea that Tony might win alive right up to polling day – both to keep themselves focused and ensure there isn’t any “well they are going to win anyway – so I’ll protest” voting
[Nine News had Daily Telegraph poll info
4000 sample in 20 marginals. 51.4-48.6 to the Coalition.
1 in 2 list Rudd as PPM in Qld. 60% don’t trust Abbott’s campaign message.
“7 ALP seats at risk in NSW, 10 seats at risk in Qld.”]
4000 is a large sample
I wonder over what time period this was taken…more than a day??
Was Maranoa one of the Galaxy marginals?
NSW just isn’t budging away from the Coalition 🙁
[Nothing from the GhostWhoVotes. Is that 48.5 Lab 51.5 Lib a national TPP or is it for the marginals (and if so which ones).]
if that was the case why would the 40 ppv be that good, may be the msm think they where to nice to us thismorning need to keep the sales up etc
because this is not what they where saying this morning. Is this all from galaxy is it
Annie 937
I concur with you
Yes work to rule i was a bit worried this morning to much happiness here.
JJ flasson said similar to you. O dear the rollercoaster ride it is
Some talking head on the Channel 7 news is spruiking a poll of 4000 across the marginals which they claim shows a massive swing to the Libs. It will appear in tomorrow’s Herald/Sun and could mean up to 19 seats going to the coalition.
Anyone else heard this crap?
MT
so sorry to hear
🙂
I will endeavour to cheer you up
🙂