UPDATE (9/7): The latest weekly Essential Research poll has the two-party vote steady at 56-44, from primary votes of 31% for Labor (down a point for the second week in a row), 49% for the Coalition (steady) and 11% for the Greens (up one). There are further questions in asylum seekers, of which the most illuminating is the findings that 60% believe the government is too soft, the carbon tax (31% say they have noticed an increase in costs, 54% say they haven’t) and the European economic crisis.
UPDATE 2: Roy Morgan has published poll results from its last two weekends of regular face-to-face surveying. This has both parties down on the previous fortnight, Labor by 3% to 29.5% and the Coalition 2.5% to 45.5%, with the Greens up 4.5% to 14.5%, their best result since February and equal best result ever. The Coalition’s two-party lead is down from 54.5-45.5 to 54-46 on previous election preferences, but up from 56.5-43.5 to 57.5-42.5 on respondent-allocated preferences.
Before we proceed, two automated polls from ReachTEL which were published earlier in the week:
• A poll of 646 voters in Dobell points to a crushing victory for the Liberals, regardless of whether Craig Thomson remains as Labor candidate (which would not appear likely, as the party is proceeding with the preselection process while Thomson’s membership is suspended). Without Thomson, the primary votes after exclusion of the undecided are Liberal 61%, Labor 30% and Greens 6%. With Thomson, the results are 64%, 21% and 13%. The former set of figures suggests a two-party split of about 64-36 and a swing against Labor of around 20%, which seems a bit much. Imre Salusinszky of The Australian reports Labor sources have “confirmed the party hoped to finalise its candidate by the end of the year, which would make it impossible for Mr Thomson to clear the legal issues surrounding him in time to resume his party membership and nominate”.
• A 1051-sample poll of state voting intention in Queensland had the primary vote at 56.5% for the LNP, 21.8% for Labor, 9.4% for the Greens and 7.4% for Katter’s Australian Party. This compares with election results of 49.6%, 26.7%, 7.5% and 11.5%.
Now then.
Created when South Australia was first divided into electorates in 1903, Hindmarsh was traditionally a safe Labor seat covering Adelaide’s working class north-western suburbs. The creation of Port Adelaide as a separate electorate in 1949 made it somewhat less secure, pushing it southwards into more conservative Henley Beach, but only in 1966 was long-term Labor member Clyde Cameron seriously threatened. The watershed moment in its progress from safe Labor to marginal came in 1993, when the abolition of Hawker drew the election further south into Liberal-voting Glenelg. It currently extends along the coast from Glenelg South north to Semaphore Park, from which it extends inland to mostly Labor-voting suburbs south of Grange Road, from Kidman Park to Torrensville south to Morphettville and Ascot Park. The redistribution to take effect at the next election has effected two minor gains, both to Labor’s slight advantage: 3300 voters at Seaton in the north from Port Adelaide, and 1500 voters at Edwardstown in the south from Boothby. Labor’s notional margin is now 6.1%, compared with 5.7% at the election.
The Liberals’ first win in the seat followed the aforementioned redistribution at the 1993 election, at which a cut in the notional margin to 1.2% coincided with the retirement of sitting Labor’s John Scott, who had been the member since 1980. The Liberal candidate was Christine Gallus, who had become the first Liberal ever to win Hawker in 1990. She duly followed by becoming the first Liberal to win Hindmarsh, defeating future state government minister John Rau with a 2.8% swing. Party hard-heads rated Gallus’s vote-pulling power very highly, and they were duly dismayed when she decided to retire at the 2004 election. The Liberals were also damaged by a redistribution that added a northern coastal spur through Grange to Labor-voting Semaphore, which cut the margin from 1.9% to 1.1%.
It was thus widely expected that the seat would fall to Labor candidate Steve Georganas, a former taxi driver backed by the “soft Left” faction in a deal that saw the Right’s Kate Ellis take Adelaide. So it proved, but Georganas was given a run for his money by Liberal candidate Simon Birmingham, who limited the swing to 1.2% and came within 108 votes of victory (and went on to become a Senator in 2007). Georganas’s margins were increased by 5.0% and 0.7% at the elections of 2007 and 2010, which represented modest growth by the standards of other South Australians, such that the margin is now substantially lower than in three seats (Makin, Kingston and Wakefield) which Labor had been unable to win in 2004. This partly represented the party’s lack of mortgage-paying areas, and their attendant electoral volatility.
Nonetheless, Mark Kenny of The Advertiser reported in May that Liberal internal polling showed Hindmarsh to be the party’s most likely gain in South Australia. Their candidate is Matthew Williams, national business development manager with law firm Piper Alderman.
[ You are assuming, clearly, that I have some affiliation with the Greens. This is the type of thinking which is killing the Labor Party (anyone who criticises us must be a Liberal/Green). ]
Patrick, I knew you weren’t a Green when you started calling people morons..
This Q&A is far from impressive.
What are the KPIs in deciding pollies pay?
Golden question!
PS: I am all for increasing pollie pay btw!
Jake
I am a paid-up long serving branch member in Rudd’s electorate.
My criticism of the Greens bashing is that I feel it has the potential to backfire badly on Labor.
And we do need them back. Where else are we going to get them?
okay.
So politics 101.
Why didn’t Bowen immediately draw the shot after Turnbauull’s idiot opening rant with ‘a dysfunctional government which has seen it’s entire legislative agenda passed to date!’
Audience applauds.
Why.
Why didn’t he.
What the fuck is wrong with the ALP?
Don’t they do politics anymore?
Don’t they want to stay in government?
I don’t support the art’s… Surprise 🙂
[rosemour
Posted Monday, July 9, 2012 at 10:05 pm | Permalink
okay.
So politics 101.
Why didn’t Bowen immediately draw the shot after Turnbauull’s idiot opening rant with ‘a dysfunctional government which has seen it’s entire legislative agenda passed to date!’
Audience applauds.
Why.
Why didn’t he.
What the fuck is wrong with the ALP?
Don’t they do politics anymore?
Don’t they want to stay in government?]
This is the weak bit of the argument. The electorate is not applauding.
Is Gillard still PM?
[I truly hope that somehow the next psychotic FF senator we get forces through some appalling law which directly affects you and yours.]
Still wouldn’t be as bad as what you are helping Abbott do. Unbelievable.
feeney
[My criticism of the Greens bashing is that I feel it has the potential to backfire badly on Labor.
Awww, do we have to stop now? Just a bit longer pleeeeeeeeeeeeease?
[ShowsOn
Posted Monday, July 9, 2012 at 10:08 pm | Permalink
Is Gillard still PM?]
Yep.
Lets see if the ALP vote is still falling!
James J???????
[Patrick, I knew you weren’t a Green when you started calling people morons..]
Funny I knew he was. …. …
Shows On
For about two weeks more I reckon.
rosemour
Like you have said, the game is up. Labor are fighting the greens now not for this election but for the next three to four.
When Turnbull is isolated it’s so blatantly obvious that he doesn’t believe most of the shit his party makes him spout.
Shows
Yes she is still the illegitimate PM. 🙂
[Brenton Eccles @BrentonEccles
Hear & weep. “@joshgnosis: As @GMegalogenis points out… it was Turnbull who first came up with the “stop the boats” slogan #qanda”]
rummel
[I don’t support the art’s]
Yeah you do. Your taxes go there, spent by both sides of politics.
Jake
[Agree. But many who have drifted to the Libs have done so, not because the ALP is not conservative enough, but because among other things, it is perceived as being too close to the Greens.]
I don’t know why they have left but it’s a bit of a Rorschach blot test. Your reason will fit with your ideology; the left will say it’s because Labor has been taken over by Right unions etc etc and the right will say it’s because Labor is too close to the Greens agenda.
One thing I have noticed is that every time Labor tries a “tough on xxxx (Afghanistan, drugs, AS, dole bludgers etc etc”, it backfires. Basically, if we want a bastard running our country the Libs are better at it than Labor.
[My criticism of the Greens bashing is that I feel it has the potential to backfire badly on Labor.
And we do need them back. Where else are we going to get them?]
The LNP is sitting on close to 50% of the PV. I’d start there.
This fettucini is delicious!
Do not go gentle into that good night
Old age should rave and burn at close of day;
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light
Dylan Thomas
[The LNP is sitting on close to 50% of the PV. I’d start there.]
Leave us alone please!
Just keep fighting among yourselves, its very, very good for us…
QandA a waste of time tonight.
graffiti…
doG spare me.
[ Like you have said, the game is up. Labor are fighting the greens now not for this election but for the next three to four. ]
Nah, at some point the Greens will compare the amount of progressive policy implemented in the last 5 years to the amount of progressive policy in the 12 years before that..
confessions…..obviously I agree with you. It is not going to be possible for Labor to prosper by sharing its traditional ground with the Greens. The corollary of this is the two parties will be drawn into in an increasingly intense competition.
I think it is finally clear. Labor cannot build its own mandate and at the same time accommodate the Greens. Labor either rules alone or does not rule. This always was the code. It has to be revived. It means that though Labor will lose elections, when it does govern it will do so from strength, not from vulnerability. This is just essential. Were Labor now acting from strength, so much more would be possible. As it is, Labor is seen to be weak and unstable, and to be driven by its own quest for survival rather than in pursuit of the national interest.
I also think that the Greens have mastered the politics of division, emulating the tactics used by Howard. Labor must find a way to disarm these tactics – not merely because this will benefit Labor, but because the theatre of spite and malice has the potential to do untold harm to the country.
If there’s one thing that should be ignored in talking politics, it is a statement that Party A or Party B will be in the wilderness for a decade or more.
It’s hard enough to predict what will happen next week.
A matter of huge public import: graffiti. Am I getting old or something?
The New Statement (UK) has just described Angie Merkel as the most dangerous German leader since Hitler. Compare to Abbott she is a pussycat
People here are analysing Labor’s current demise far too much.
It boils down to Gillard knifing Rudd, and “lying” about a carbon tax.
Labor’s entire overarching narrative is diminished by the fact that the 10% of voters that decide elections are not listening to the Labor Government.
It doesn’t matter who the Opposition Leader is. It doesn’t matter what the Opposition Leader says.
Along with that, the mainstream media have picked their winner, as they always do, and they’re sticking with it.
PAAPTSEF
[Nah, at some point the Greens will compare the amount of progressive policy implemented in the last 5 years to the amount of progressive policy in the 12 years before that..]
Wrong. The Reds pepperpotted in the Greens Party basically believe that there is no real difference between Labor and Liberal. They are all reactionaries.
Gee thanks Fulvio.
Like if you hadn’t hadn’t put Dylan Thomas we might have thought it was an original thought. Little chicken wanker.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Q&A is 10/10 for how borement.
[Still wouldn’t be as bad as what you are helping Abbott do. Unbelievable.]
Labor is helping Abbott.
If they were smarter they’d allow the Greens to quietly cater to their left wing while sensibly competing for moderate middle ground.
Instead they are trying to torch the Greens while competing for the far right, which they’ll never win from a psycho right winger like TA.
OMG! YOKO ONO IS ON QANDA!
Did Scotty just beam Ms Trioli down from Mission Control?
[I don’t know why they have left but it’s a bit of a Rorschach blot test. Your reason will fit with your ideology; the left will say it’s because Labor has been taken over by Right unions etc etc and the right will say it’s because Labor is too close to the Greens agenda.]
*googles “Rorschach blot test”*
I would simply say that attacking the Greens is likely to be only one of a number of things that the ALP will need to do to build its PV.
[One thing I have noticed is that every time Labor tries a “tough on xxxx (Afghanistan, drugs, AS, dole bludgers etc etc”, it backfires. Basically, if we want a bastard running our country the Libs are better at it than Labor.]
Labor has screwed the implementation of most of its major policies, sure. But you don’t have to be a bastard to be reject the Greens. You just have to be normal.
[Do not go gentle into that good night
Old age should rave and burn at close of day;
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light]
I’m not convinced I should be taking advice about burning at old age from someone who drank himself to death aged 39.
[ Wrong. The Reds pepperpotted in the Greens Party basically believe that there is no real difference between Labor and Liberal. They are all reactionaries. ]
Yeah. Oh well, at least we will be united in opposition. We can all howl about those progressive policies of the last 5 years being dismantled.
Jake @ 3270
The Liberal voters will not “return” to Labor while Julia Gillard is still leader.
Not only totally disrespecful of the Westminster System, and electorate, but also totally ignorant.
[*googles “Rorschach blot test”*]
*realises that Jake is of high school age at most*
Like if I hadn’t you would have rounded on me for that.
Go sit under your little umbrella, chicken shit.
Has anyone been listening to the Sydney Piano Competition? It has been quite stunning….many charming sonatas getting a run tonight…..
[I would simply say that attacking the Greens is likely to be only one of a number of things that the ALP will need to do to build its PV.]
Exactly. When they are through screwing their sister they can start on their brother.
Turnbull stirs up the leadership issue by saying he would vote for gay marriage!
Is Bowen awake?
[If they were smarter they’d allow the Greens to quietly cater to their left wing while sensibly competing for moderate middle ground.]
“Quietly cater” – typical underhanded Greens strategy.
Audience laughing at Turnbull’s jokes!
Just golden.