The latest Morgan face-to-face poll, conducted last week from a sample of 893, shows a slight improvement for Labor, up 1.5% to 32% on the primary vote with the Coalition down half a point to 45.5% and the Greens down 1.5% to 10.5%. This translates into a one point improvement on the respondent-allocated two-party preferred measure, from 59-48 to 58-42, and a half-point improvement on the previous election method, down from 55.5-44.5 to 55-45.
UPDATE (28/5/12): Essential Research has Labor losing one of the points on two-party preferred it clawed back over previous weeks, the result now at 57-43. Primary votes are 50% for the Coalition (up one), 33% for Labor (steady) and 10% for the Greens (steady). Other questions gauged views on the parties’ respective “attributes”, with all negative responses for Labor (chiefly “divided” and “will promise anything to win votes”) rating higher than all positives, and the Liberal Party doing rather better, rating well for “moderate” and “understands the problems facing Australia”. Bewilderingly, only slightly more respondents (35%) were willing to rate the state of the economy as “good” than “bad” (29%), with 33% opting for neither, although 43% rated the position of their household satisfactory against 28% unsatisfactory.
In today’s installment of Seat of the Week, it’s everybody’s favourite:
Seat of the week: Eden-Monaro
Taking in the south-eastern corner of New South Wales, including Queanbeyan, Cooma, Tumut and the coast from Batemans Bay south to Eden and the Victorian border, Eden-Monaro is renowned throughout the land as the seat that goes with the party who wins the election. Until 2007 its record as a bellwether was in fact surpassed by Macarthur, which had gone with the winning party at every election since its creation in 1949, but while Eden-Monaro stayed true to form by being among the seven New South Wales seats to switch to Labor with the election of the Rudd government, Liberal member Pat Farmer held on in Macarthur. The seat bucked the statewide trend in 2010 by recording a 2.0% swing to Labor, in what was very likely a vote of confidence in the popular local member, Mike Kelly.
Perhaps explaining its bellwether status, Eden-Monaro offers something of a microcosm of the state at large, if not the entire country. It incorporates suburban Queanbeyan, rural centres Cooma and Bega, coastal towns Eden and Narooma, and agricultural areas sprinkled with small towns. Labor’s strongest area is the electorate is the Canberra satellite town of Queanbeyan, excluding its Liberal-leaning outer suburb of Jerrabomberra. The coastal areas, which swung particularly heavily to Labor in 2007, can be divided between a finely balanced centre and areas of Liberal strength at the northern and southern extremities, respectively around Batemans Bay and Merimbula. The smaller inland towns are solidly conservative, but Cooma is highly marginal. The area covered by the electorate has been remarkably little changed over the years: it has been locked into the state’s south-eastern corner since federation, and its geographic size has remained fairly consistent as increases in the size of parliament cancelled out the effects of relative population decline. Outside of the interruption from 2007 and 2010, when it expanded westwards to Tumut and Tumbarumba, its boundaries since 1998 have been almost identical to those it had before 1913.
Eden-Monaro was held by conservatives of various stripes for all but one term until 1943, the exception being Labor’s 40-vote win when Jim Scullin’s government came to power in 1929. Allan Fraser won the seat for Labor with the 1943 landslide and held it against the tide in 1949 and 1951. He was defeated in 1966 but was back in 1969, finally retiring in 1972. The loss of his personal vote almost saw the seat go against the trend of the 1972 election, with the Country Party overtaking their conservative rivals for the first time to come within 503 votes of victory. The Country Party again finished second in 1974, this time coming within 146 votes of defeating Labor member Bob Whan (whose son Steve unsuccessfully contested the seat in 1998 and 2001, and was later the state member for Monaro). However, 1975 saw the Liberals gain strongly at the expense of the Country Party as well as Labor, and their candidate Murray Sainsbury won the seat with a two-party margin of 5.6%. Sainsbury held the seat until the defeat of the Fraser government in 1983; the same fate befell his Labor successor, Jim Snow, who was swept out by a 9.2% swing when Labor lost office in 1996, and then Gary Nairn, who served as Special Minister of State from January 2006 until the November 2007 election defeat.
Labor’s successful candidate was Lieutenant-Colonel Mike Kelly, a military lawyer who had been credited with efforts to warn the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade about the AWB kickbacks scandal, and the Australian military about possible abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. Kelly was installed as candidate a week after the party’s national conference empowered the state executive to appoint candidates in 25 key seats over the heads of the local party branches. A member of the Right faction, he won immediate promotion to parliamentary secretary for defence support, shifting to the water portfolio in February 2009. After the 2010 election he was shifted to the agriculture, fisheries and forestry portfolio, which was criticised owing to Kelly’s status as the federal parliament’s only war veteran. He was restored to his earlier role in the December 2011 reshuffle.
The Liberal candidate at the next election will be Peter Hendy, a former Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive and previously a staffer to Brendan Nelson and Peter Reith. Hendy reportedly had a comfortable victory over three other candidates, including Sustainable Agricultural Communities director Robert Belcher. The Nationals have reportedly approached Cooma mayor Dean Lynch to run, having determined that the Liberals’ endorsement of Hendy offers them a “point of difference” owing to his stance on foreign investment and the currency of foreign farm ownership as an issue locally.
Graham Young’s pollees are pretty much self selected
54/46 would mean that Labor only has to pick up around 30,000 2PP votes per month for each of the next 16 months.
Do-able.
why did Lawler feel he had to disclose his role with FWA and the stress his was acting as a private citizen???
All very strange
Hafta watch the tape, larfed until we almost vomited after the Gina black hole line…
I just want to repeat my prediction (for the third time)
43:57 Abbott down and Gillard steady
Where is GWV?
Q&A is stupid programme generally…………. only masochists want to watch politicians give their meaningless crap and IPA zealots ……. and smarmy Jones…
If it is 46:54 it is a true outlier.
Or in Australian political lingo a “rogue poll”
Maybe all the government advertising that is going on is having the desired effect.
Watching that QandA shows how conservative we have become. I’m still bemused by the reaction to the panelists by lefties who seem uncomfortable with open barracking for the ALP.
bluegreen and Mod Lib
Go and take a valium, sheezus!
[If it is 46:54 it is a true outlier.
Or in Australian political lingo a “rogue poll”]
I disagree bluegreen. Hearing a lot of grumbling here in Indi and it’s all about how Thomson is being treated. Hence Abbott’s ‘sympathy’ comment earlier in the week which I think was a reaction to focus group info.
Maybe all the negative attacks is getting blowback. Just like Labor against Can Do.
[Centre
Posted Monday, May 28, 2012 at 10:44 pm | Permalink
bluegreen and Mod Lib
Go and take a valium, sheezus!]
Why?
LOL womble
After QandA. May I suggest Dame Edna for GG
Shellbell. Lepore! God, how quickly one forgets tort law, though I did once write about that case. Criminal assault might be a different bag of fish than a statutory ‘tort’ linked inherently to employment? Gleeson left open the idea of power and intimacy in a job generating vicarious liability.
[Centre
Posted Monday, May 28, 2012 at 10:44 pm | Permalink
bluegreen and Mod Lib
Go and take a valium, sheezus!]
Huh? Whatsup?
I wanna go to bed….stuff to do tomorrow!
Fiz
I actually said several times earlier that this has been a bad week for Abbott and he has looked more craven this week than at any time.
That is why I predict his personal rating to go down.
However, the poll would still be a rogue in the sense that it is outside the broader level of the other polls. Or it would be first in a trend.
A swing towards the govt would make the dubious leadership article on Sunday interesting…
(puts on tinfoil hat)
Imagine if numbers were looking quite strange, in favour of the govt, and certain people wanted to try and influence the Sunday pollees…
“Hey Sam, have your ALP contacts been grumbling about leadership?”
“Yeah, they always grumble about leadership”
“Get a couple of quotes and we’ll run it tomorrow”
(takes off tinfoil hat)
[Why?]
Because before you declare a rogue poll or it being a true outlier, how about you wait ’til you know what it actually is?
If it is 54-46 i wont be surprised.
Abbott has overreached massively on Thomson and the public is recoiling.
He has heard the focus groups and is pulling back big time now.
I am still in shock for being called a Tory today. I might need a valium to cope with that.
An allegation that Ms Jackson may have had access to the FWA file server via Mr Lawler’s computer is also potentially deeply serious. It is amazing that the MSM are not asking questions about this allegation. For example, can FWA assure that Ms Jackson, (a litigant in numerous proceedings before FWA) did not have unauthorised access to court material/investigative material relevant to the HSU matter. Easily resolved if FWA have reasonable computer security via digital footprints of people accessing the server.
Any legal eagles know which regulator could look into this – CW ombudsman? or this something that the AG would have authority???
Thanks for the thoughts, Graeme
The last time PVO said expect something big it was when the lead went down to 52/48 early this year and everyone was expecting the opposite. I think PVO is a secret Labor admirer 🙂
bluegreen:
I take your point on the ‘rogue’ nature. It’s never a real move unless it is sustained.
davidwh:
I think PVO is an open Abbott loather!
Hmmm if it is 54/46 you can thank Thomson.
He pointed the finger – you are not only not fit to be PM but not fit to be an MP 🙂
bluegreen
[I am still in shock for being called a Tory today. I might need a valium to cope with that.]
You are clearly not a Tory.
To cope with a political insult, a Tory would need a jolly good whipping with the birch followed by a bracing plunge in an icy river. Or maybe just the whipping by a trollope whilst wearing fishnet stockings.
van Onselen hates Abbott by the way. Told Paul Howes in his book that he even though he worked for him, he still wouldn’t vote for him
That being said, he’s not fond of Gillard either
[davidwh
Posted Monday, May 28, 2012 at 10:51 pm | Permalink
The last time PVO said expect something big it was when the lead went down to 52/48 early this year and everyone was expecting the opposite. I think PVO is a secret Labor admirer]
Huh?
The last 52-48 was 12 months ago…
WHY THE HELL DOES THIS WEBSITE KEEP LOGGING ME OUT!?
DOESN’T IT KNOW I HAVE BEEN QUOTED IN HANSARD!?
Boerwar
Aside from the birch
What is confusing is that the UK Tories are liberal on climate change and the Australian Liberal Party are conservative, but if they were true conservatrives they would seek to manage risk…
I just give up, curl up in a ball and imagine Alfred Deakin (without the white australia part).
@6625 yep. Don’t trust PVO after what he did to Julie Bishop.
If it’s 46/54, I wonder how Dennis will spin it
[On December 21 last year, Mr Lawler wrote to the NSW police strike force set up to investigate the HSU.
He noted he was “vice president of Fair Work Australia”… but was making the complaint in “my private capacity” on behalf of “Kathy Jackson and myself”.]
Why do you identify yourself in a such a position and then say but then say in a private capacity?
Why did he need to make the complaint?
The improvement, if there is one, coincides with the improvement in people’s bank balances.
Ghost corroborates James J’s 40-37 preferred PM result.
I have always wanted to know how the contemporary “Liberal” Party is Tory in any real sense.
I mean they seem to have little respect for any traditional institutions, including the monarchy (John Howard made the monarchy an absent institution to aggrandise the PM’s power and office), rule of law, parliamentary conventions, and just common decency.
I am surprised at people like ML who sound reasonably rational and decent supporting this horrible development in our polity.
@6629 depends who is wearing the fish nets
#Newspoll Preferred PM: Gillard 40 (+4) Abbott 37 (-3) #auspol from Ghost – James L was right. Yay
[GhostWhoVotes @GhostWhoVotes
#Newspoll Preferred PM: Gillard 40 (+4) Abbott 37 (-3) #auspol\
GhostWhoVotes (@GhostWhoVotes)
5/28/12 10:55 PM
#Newspoll Preferred PM: Gillard 40 (+4) Abbott 37 (-3) #auspol
A few weeks ago on an ABC program Jacki Weaver said wtte that she loved JG’s way of speaking Tonight she didn’t make mention of that but only spoke of Plibersek and Wong.
I wonder how much hate mail she got after that earlier mention of JG. Weaver did say she had received a lot of hate mail in earlier years after appearing in a commercial for a political party. It must have been the It’s Time ad for Gough.
Ghost: PPM Gillard 40, Abbott 37, a + 4 and – 3
Ghost Who Votes has spoken on Twitter!
Preferred PM: Gillard 40(+4) Abbott 37(-3)
I can read Kevin Rudd’s mind: “Bugger!” 😀
Ghost just confirmed James J’s PPM figure on Twitter.
Good news on the polling.
Poor Michelle tomorrow – how will she spin it? “Well on the hand it’s an improvement but on the other hand it’s still really really bad”.