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.
[DOESN’T IT KNOW I HAVE BEEN QUOTED IN HANSARD!?]
You big dill – it’s trying to tell you that you’re in the wrong place 🙂 kisses too
Fess & Vic, we promised you MOAR …. and there will be MOAR …………….
I’m a james joyce fan. 🙂
I missed that PPM. Would someone mind posting it…
54:46
If it is 54/46 then this is exactly in line with my predictions, which I know you’ve all followed carefully with open mouths (“how does he know …?”) In particular I predicted a 2/3% budget bounce which we got last Newspoll which then established Peak Gillard at 45/55 with a predicted +-1% around this, within margin of error, and staying that way until Gillard moves aside when there’ll be a further improvement of at least 2/3%. Again you heard it here first!
budget bounce???
54-46 is right 🙂
well done James
Finns:
We deserve MOAR.
No no , the ABC, Murdochia etc will say PM ONLY gets 4% improvement, rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb….
[Henry
Posted Monday, May 28, 2012 at 11:00 pm | Permalink
I missed that PPM. Would someone mind posting it…]
🙂
I’ll give you that one!
Sky confirms nos declares a post budget bounce!
James is Dennis Shanahan?
Welcome Dennis!
M77 @ 6656
That is all very well, but you were not quoted in Hansard.
Emma Alberici just pronounced Ban Kee Moon’s name like spanky or hanky. Banky Moon.
BTW Carr sounding very good on Syria. Talking like a human being.
[Newspoll Primary Votes: ALP 32 (+2) L/NP 46 (+1)]
Headline – LNP vote surges
Maybe greens are drifting
Wow Xmas comes early, The Newspoll + the Lawler/Jackson MOAR + MOAR to come on Ashby/Pyne. Watch this space
BW
But I was quoted in PB, by me
Sky saying the oppositions aggressive approach on CT isn’t working. Alp primary vote up 5% in last 2 newspolls. Pleasing result in the circumstances with all the real positives still a month off.
James J should explain his early tip or face a birching.
54-46 is welcome but only a start. Ari said on Insiders on Sunday that it is doable either way so that encourages me to get going with Emmo and fight the tories to make it Labor’s way.
Well done JamesJ – any chance he is GWV?
@AshleyLeahy @GhostWhoVotes have faith in the BISONs. They will crush Abbott in the end
Shellbell
[Newspoll Primary Votes: ALP 32 (+2) L/NP 46 (+1)
Headline – LNP vote surges
Maybe greens are drifting]
For Labor to have got to 46% 2PP from 32% primary, the Greens would have had to be on at least around 12%. Maybe some of the ‘Others’ have started jumping off the fence?
From the tone of what he’s said on here previously, I think James J is an ALP insider
[3m GhostWhoVotes GhostWhoVotes @GhostWhoVotes
#Newspoll Primary Votes: ALP 32 (+2) L/NP 46 (+1) #auspol]
I’m sorry, but weren’t the Liberals here rubbing their hands at a Labor PV around the 25 mark?
What happened?
54/46
And they are calling for Gillard’s blood?
What a disgrace!
So Howard should have got the sack in um let’s see; 98, 01, and 04 for being behind 54/46 at a similar stage.
You see how much of a pair of dopes you both look Mod Lib and Bluegreen 😉
New thread.
So Shows On,
For what fine work were you quoted in Hansard for:
-being a pillar of your local community
-rescuing a kitten from a tree
-winning the local football grand final
-stacking all the right branches
M77
[BW
But I was quoted in PB, by me]
Sorry, that does not meet the ShowsOff benchmark for instant celeb status.
BTW, being right doesn’t help around here either. It just means that everyone thinks you got lucky.
The obvious point was made wrt Abbott’s low satisfaction/high dissatisfaction ratings being due to his outrageous attacks on Craig Thomson. Hence his recalibration of the attack, small show of sympathy and pivot towards JGPM. However, I’d hazard a guess that a lot of the female population aren’t too enamoured of his virulent and vituperative attacks on our female PM either.
[Sky saying the oppositions aggressive approach on CT isn’t working.]
Rossmore – and just maybe the ppl are getting fed up with the media as well.
[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”.]
WTF? 54/46 would be a massive landslide loss that would be worse than 1996.
@TurnbullMalcolm Malcolm, Tony Abbott is not electable. what are you waiting for, else you will be another Peter Costello. No balls #auspol
Not mentioned in Hansard, but I get to have drinkies with the minister responsible for renewable energies next month, can I get to gloat constantly and at infinitum.
Tony Jones looked well and truely like a shag on a rock tonight on Q&A, tears steaming down my face, “that little man” LOL I felt for Hewsen though.
[Kirsty Yarr @KirstyYarr
I want a Blair-themed cuckoo clock with a man popping out and shouting ‘war criminal’ on the hour. ]
Tony Blair @ Leveson,
[ … if the press decide to go after you, that’s not journalism, it’s an abuse of power. ]
From the ABC ticker.
Nah, doesn’t happen here. That nasty stuff only happens in foreign countries, we are pure and squeaky clean.
You want proof? Watch ABC 24. Wall-to-wall bimbos, of both varieties. If the question of “libel” crops up they would, I suspect, adjust their make-up and stare at the nearest wall.
Blair also said wtte that he decided to “manage”, not “confront” Murdoch. A mistake.
Our Prime Minister should, IMHO, confront Murdoch and his operatives. Head on.
At press conferences, Ms Gillard could say to News Limited reporters: Interesting question. Who wrote it for you? I’ll place it on the notice paper. Next.
[ He pointed the finger – “You are not only not fit to be PM, but not fit to be an MP”. ]
In this present climate, that’s THE quote. Along with “In your guts, you know he’s nuts.”
Abbott in QT today looked, well, yellow. I checked the colour balance on the TV. All OK.
+++
Bluddy freezing here. Minus whatever. Doggies. Doonas. No snoring, or nocturnal yelping.
Pact?
Good night, all Bludgers.
Miriam Margoyles a real treasure
Brilliant!!
______
She is one funny lady. She liked Cadell Evans ..”.but not that other the bike rider”(Abbott)
She was brilliant in the “Miss Fisher”mysteries and I saw her Dicken’s performance and it was marrvellous…as you saw tonight briefly!
She is also very brave…as she said tonight.. though she’s jewish she is highly critical of Israeli treatment of the Palestinians ..and she acted 2 years ago in a play in Melb.. about the Palestinian issue…and was roundly abused by some for her action..and gave as good as she got in the debate which followed
Brave lady !
[ShowsOn
Posted Monday, May 28, 2012 at 11:14 pm | Permalink
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”.
WTF? 54/46 would be a massive landslide loss that would be worse than 1996.]
When it’s 50/50 will you still carry on with your shit.
The important questions:
When does it stop?
Does pain or Showy stop first?