Galaxy: Gillard versus Rudd in Queensland

A question of dubious value on how respondents would vote if Kevin Rudd were leader will hog all the headlines, but a Galaxy poll of federal voting intention in Queensland gives Labor one of their better results of recent times.

The Courier-Mail reveals a Galaxy poll of 800 Queensland respondents conducted on Wednesday and Thursday evenings shows a result for federal Labor which is better than their recent form, with Labor holding its ground from 2010 (not that that’s saying much) with 33% of the primary vote and a two-party preferred deficit of 55-45. This is the first time in a while that Labor has been able to enjoy a poll pointing to a status quo result. However, the headline-grabber is a supplementary question on how people would vote if Kevin Rudd was leader, which suggests Labor would be at 47% on the primary vote and lead 53-47. I have all sorts of problems with this kind of exercise, but you can nonetheless expect to hear a great deal of these results in the coming days. The full figures will be published in the Courier-Mail tomorrow.

UPDATE: Full results courtesy of GhostWhoVotes here. The primary vote figures are remarkably similar to the last such Galaxy poll in late November, back when Labor were thought to be on the upswing: 33% for Labor (steady), 46% for the Coalition (steady), 9% for the Greens (up one).

UPDATE 2 (25/2/13): A dire result for Labor in the latest Essential Research poll, which has the Coalition up two points to a epic 49%, Labor down one to 34% and the Greens steady on 9%, with the Coalition two-party lead blowing out from 54-46 to 56-44. Despite that, extensive questions on expectations of a Coalition government are not all that rosy, despite a net positive 10% rating for the economy: workers rights, job security, public services, and even interest rates, the cost of living and personal financial situation are all solidly in the negative. The kicker is that 57% say the government does not deserve to be re-elected, against only 26% who say it does. Thirty-six per cent said the Liberal Party was ready to govern against 45% who thought otherwise. Further questions gauge responses to policies on flexible work hours, industry and supplying mining projects, which party best represents blue-collar workers, and trust in various types of information sources.

Seat of the week: Port Adelaide

Since we already have a new thread going courtesy of Galaxy, Seat of the Week will attend to an electorate of marginal importance for which I was never planning on going to the effort of making a map.

The electorate of Port Adelaide includes Port Adelaide itself and the adjacent Le Fevre Peninsula, including the suburbs around Sempahore and Largs Bay, along with Woodville and its surrounds to the north of the city and, some distance to the north-east, a stretch of suburbs from Parfield Gardens north to Salisbury North, which are separated from the rest of the electorate by the Dry Creek industrial area. Over-quota enrolment required that the seat be pared back with the redistribution to take effect at the coming election, which has added 8000 voters around Salisbury North while removing 700 in the badlands west of Princes Highway. A little further south again, a projected 7,200 voters in a rapidly growing area from the University of South Australia campus at Mawson Lakes north to Salisbury Park have been transferred to Makin. At the southern end of the electorate, 3,300 voters around Seaton have been transferred to Hindmarsh. The changes have boosted the already handsome Labor margin from 20.0% to 21.4%.

Port Adelaide was created with the expansion of parliament in 1949 from an area that had previously made Hindmarsh a safe seat for Labor. Labor’s strength was such that the Liberals did not field candidates in 1954 and 1955, when it was opposed only by the Communist Party. Rod Sawford assumed the seat at a by-election in 1988 upon the resignation of the rather more high-profile Mick Young, member since 1974, and held it until his retirement in 2007. His successor has been Mark Butler, previously state secretary of the Left faction Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union and a descendant of two conservative state premiers: his great- and great-great-grandfathers, both of whom were called Sir Richard Butler.

Butler has quietly established himself as a rising star over his two terms in parliament, winning promotion to parliamentary secretary in June 2009 and then in the junior ministry portfolios of mental health and ageing after the 2010 election, despite his hesitancy in jumping aboard the Julia Gillard bandwagon for the June 2010 leadership coup. He was elevated to cabinet in December 2011 when social inclusion was added to his existing responsibilities, and was solidly behind Gillard when Kevin Rudd challenged her leadership two months later. Housing and homelessness were further added to his workload in the reshuffle which followed Nicola Roxon and Chris Evans’s departure in February 2013.

The Liberal candidate for the second successive election will be Nigel McKenna, a self-employed painter and decorator.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

3,311 comments on “Galaxy: Gillard versus Rudd in Queensland”

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  1. Sorry I made a mistake. That would include ….. is my addition not what Wilkie said. I just thought implied and was worth emphasising.

  3. The Finnigans

    [

    Mahatma was a very good spinner – he bowled out the Raj single handedly ]
    Unfortunately the bowling attack of England in the first innings were particularly nasty.

    [Mr Cameron is the first serving British prime minister to have visited Amritsar, where hundreds of unarmed Indian protesters were killed by British soldiers in 1919.]
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21516201

    http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/war.crimes/US/Davis.htm

  4. [probably Gillard numbers overstated and Rudd numbers understated since coalition voters wont want labor to change, since Gillard is seen as doing badly and the assumption Rudd would do very well.]

    Obviously this is the case! And we can dismiss the last Newspoll and Neilsen too because obviously all the Labor voters wanted to prevent a Turnbull challenge! Anything is possible when people lie to the pollsters!

  5. [Okay, so I’m biased in favour of The Finnigans then. I mean, why wouldn’t I be.]

    Thanks Bilbo, I love you too :kiss:

  6. Rex Douglas

    [

    Such a superb troll by the conservatives in getting Geert Wilders to speak in Western Sydney tonight. ]
    And on a Friday the muslim holy day.

  7. TP@95

    [ probably Gillard numbers overstated and Rudd numbers understated since coalition voters wont want labor to change ]

    probably Rudd numbers overstated and Gillard numbers understated since coalition voters desperately want labor to change.

  8. The Unusual Moustache@94


    dave @90

    given his aim is to wreck the place, how about getting him far away from the place fullstop, ala expelling him

    I think that would just be petrol on red hot coals.

    But others in caucus can hardly be unaware of the situation and have an approach scoped out.

    I hope what Danny Lewis said recently that rudd is on board is true but frankly don’t see it.

    Hope to be proven to wrong on this.

  9. It seems the media have slunk off to lick their wounds, the week did not work out the way they planned.

    So lets get back to sport. Its so much easier to report on than politics.

    One day a hero next day a stilnox gobbler.

    Oh sorry its the same story, different actors.

  10. I am very sceptical of the value of asking a bunch of sun-dessicated Tories whether they’d vote Labor if (insert something destabilizing to the government here) happens.

    If Galaxy called me and asked if Humpty Dumpty would make a more effective LOTO than Tony Abbott I’d say yes. Doesn’t mean I’d vote for Humpty Dumpty OR Tony Abbott though.

  13. I’ve referred to problems with Wangaratta council before, after rumours Mirabella was involved behind the scenes to try and ensure a council more in tune with her views was elected (she usually doesn’t pay much attention to local council matters; I remember being genuinely surprised to discover, when I was a councillor, that she was the head of the Liberals’ local council policy committee — although that explained a lot).

    The council was elected in late October – and not only have three of the seven members already complained to the relevant Minister, and an enquiry into council called for, but past councillors are predicting that the council will be turfed and administrators put in.

    I expect any government involving Mirabella to show the same stamina!

  14. If your party is doing so badly for a long time and still looks like heading over a cliff then leadership issue is aways legitimately on the table.

    The issue has always been about leadership performance , so blame Gillard.

    people who wont vote labor if Rudd is leader can ignore this comment since you are neither interested in labor or Australia.

    Please also note NBN was Rudd Labor initiative. But you credit her with her wonderful mining tax payoff.

  16. Ooo guess when this was said.

    [“The government is committed to driving down the cost of living [and] intends to pursue further the issue of electricity prices by undertaking a full review of the industry in the next 12 months.”

    Mr Newman said for one year only Mr McArdle, rather than the QCA, would be given the power to set electricity prices pending a further review of pricing structures.

    He emphatically rejected the QCA’s proposed price reforms, saying they would cause winners and losers.

    “One family’s gain was another family’s pain and we weren’t prepared to have that happen, particularly for the disadvantaged in our community,” he said.

    At his post-cabinet media conference, the LNP premier also flagged a review of how power prices were set, including “a long hard look” at spending by the poles and wires businesses.]

    Did Newman do this, of course not. This was his bullshit in April last year.

  18. Another election to watch tomorrow is Senate pre-selection by the ACT Liberals. It has been pretty well open warfare between supporters of Gary Humphries (supported by Abbott et al) and Zed Seselja (supported apparently by most ACT Liberals).

    There have been very public complaints by supporters of Humphries that strictly applying the party’s rules on eligibility to vote will disenfranchise supporters of his candidacy. One high profile businessman has quit the party and another has complained publicly and loudly.

    At the end there will be tears in the camp of the losing candidate and much ill will remaining up to the federal election.

    Oddly enough, the media outside Canberra seems to have ignored this contest, unlike the Labor pre-selection in the NT.

  19. Quite so, Zoomster. It’s a bit too glib to say if I cop it on both sides I must be doing something right, but I can definitely take comfort from the calibre of the critics my moderation attracts.

  20. TP, somehow I doubt that. Most likely there were LNP voters who said they’d turn for Rudd because they want to further the instability.
    This is a disgraceful piece of trolling by Galaxy, a clear case of determining the desired result first and working out how best to get it. Qld, home of Kevin07, is the most likely State to favour a change.
    The current numbers, though, are an improvement on the rest of the country-holding the 2010 line. Regrettably NSW remains the big problem.

  23. I don’t understand at all the notion that “the mainstream media” has this obsession with leadership, and that they’re somehow driving all this talk in a grand conspiracy to get at Julia Gillard. As though no one else in our fair land pays the slightest bit of attention to who the leader is, and how they’re travelling.

    The plain fact is that like many democracies, we’ve increasingly taken the US path of focussing more and more attention on the personality at the top of the ticket, albeit that our system is quite different from the US one. I mean this is elementary, isn’t it?

    I doubt anyone could argue with that.

    So when you have a situation as now where the PM and Labor leader has a very significant drop-off in her party vote and her personal standing in two consecutive major polls, immediately after that same PM has taken the highly unusual step of naming an election date 8 or 9 months out, then how, in the name of creation, is it some construct of the MSM to call into question the leader’s security of tenure?

  28. guytaur

    [
    Peter Martin must be leaving Fairfax. He just slagged off blocking comments on stories tactics.]
    Off to the Grauniad ?

  31. [ “Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood has lashed out at claims that The Guardian’s Australian launch could derail his company’s plans to implement paywalls this year, claiming the British media brand will be a bit player in the local media sector.” ]

    With Fairfax well on the way to being a bit player themselves, that’s actually quite amusing!

  32. [I don’t understand at all the notion that “the mainstream media” has this obsession with leadership, and that they’re somehow driving all this talk in a grand conspiracy to get at Julia Gillard. As though no one else in our fair land pays the slightest bit of attention to who the leader is, and how they’re travelling.

    The plain fact is that like many democracies, we’ve increasingly taken the US path of focussing more and more attention on the personality at the top of the ticket, albeit that our system is quite different from the US one. I mean this is elementary, isn’t it?

    I doubt anyone could argue with that.]

    Sorry, who’s “we” in this situation? Where do they get their information from? How do they make decisions on who to vote for in the polls?

  33. Bemused

    Green did use the term “narrative” viz:

    “What works politically is in fact a compelling, ahem, narrative – whether it be manufactured from fact or fiction is not really to the point.”

    But he is not referring to the same “narrative” that Wahleed and other critics of JG refer to.

    In essence, Green says that in the present climate of contemporary politics, unless you’ve got a con-job fabrication to sucker the suckers with, then you won’t engage the electorate.

    The context of his paper is that it matters zero if truth, facts and honesty is on your side.

    This is altogether a different matter, a totally unrelated phenomenom to the Labor lacking-light-on-the-hill-type vision or “narrative” (as the critics who hide behind the term like to call it) and about which I take issue.

  34. [ I don’t understand at all the notion that “the mainstream media” has this obsession with leadership, and that they’re somehow driving all this talk in a grand conspiracy to get at Julia Gillard. ]

    I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you simply haven’t been paying attention.

    The only alternative I can think of is that you are being deliberately obtuse.

  35. Mimhoff.. Yes I can see where you’re coming from. The “we” is the wider community. It’s the old chicken and egg argument. However, I would suggest that the rise of television in the late 1950s and 1960s was the single biggest factor in this shift. Suddenly “we” could see our leaders on a regular basis, scrutinise them up close and personal. It was natural, therefore, that attention would focus increasingly on their performance as leader.

  37. The Unusual Moustache

    [given his aim is to wreck the place, how about getting him far away from the place fullstop, ala expelling him]

    Being an ALP member like I was for 27 years you should look up your Rules book and find out just how that can be done.

  40. the courier mall reveals

    i ve noticed this in all new papers these days

    its like its a big secret.

    i am rather surprised {mr bowe do you usually put

    up polls that are just state based

    or do you enjoy rudderesturizationS .

    frankly most people are sick of it,

    very fed up with in fact i think its turned a lot of people off .
    and for goodness sake if i was ask about turnbull / abbott

    well i may very well say tunrbull just becauce i wanted to

    but on reflexection mr abbott is so sure of him self

    i may have actully said abbott

    if you get my meaning,

    when you looked through the set of questions
    ask of these 800 people
    was the question on top of the list, of who do you normaly vote for, now that would give us an idea.
    of the thoughts of labor voters

  41. [ Denise ‏@SpudBenBean
    Are #Galaxy poll the people who arranged the #RootyHill audience that was stuffed full of LIB staffers?

    Is that true, or just a rumour?]

    lizzie – can’t see where you got a reply but, yes, it was Galaxy. If not staffers they were certainly Lib supporters.
    \
    BTW I don’t think JG should agree to separate forums for Sky this time. She and Abbott should be on same platform answering questions. He wouldn’t be able to lie so much

  44. Heard the PM address to the AEU today.

    In one part of it she said that the government will prune the budget as necessary to ensure that Gonski and NDIS are funded.

    She said WTTE “it won’t just be a little nip and tuck to the budget …. the changes will clearly show Labor’s signature values” .

    So she states unequivocally that Labor values education and disability support, two very high order and landmark policies, very highly. But dear dear! Isn’t it such a pity that she doesn’t have an effing “narrative”.

  45. Here’s another proposition that might cause some to splutter into their cups of tea.

    This idea that the LNP is promoting Rudd as leader because they’d rather face him that JG is wrong, I think.

    Actually they’ve been a bit all over the place on this but to the extent to which some have been talking up a Rudd re-installation, I would say it’s a kind of double bluff.

    That is, they would really much rather the status quo: face JG, with her plummetting personal standing and overall vote.
    They fear a Rudd return, so they think “OK, if we advocate the Rudd return, the other side will say: ‘They’re saying this because they’d rather face Rudd, so guess what, we’re sticking with JG’ and voila, we have our preferred result: the status quo.”

    Convoluted yes. But true.

  46. [In essence, Green says that in the present climate of contemporary politics, unless you’ve got a con-job fabrication to sucker the suckers with, then you won’t engage the electorate.

    The context of his paper is that it matters zero if truth, facts and honesty is on your side]

    psyclaw Good points made by Jonathan Green because we are living that at the moment. His article was well worth reading and in stark contrast to Waleed’s.

    guytaur – who was on the Drum panel with Peter Martin and what kind of response did he get to his compliments about Swannie and Labor. please?

  47. MySay How is your family. Hope they are all OK.

    Laura Giddons was good on NPC this week and should stand federally if Labor loses the Tassie election.

  49. alias

    You have spent the past two years trying to find a way to get your preferred leader back in the big chair.

    Why do you want to waste 2013 doing a similar thing?

  50. William Bowe
    Posted Friday, February 22, 2013 at 6:32 pm | Permalink

    Quite so, Zoomster. It’s a bit too glib to say if I cop it on both sides I must be doing something right, but I can definitely take comfort from the calibre of the critics my moderation attracts.

    I’ve noticed the small calibre and shocking aim too. I don’t think you have to worry about dodging any bullets…perhaps slipping on a poorly aimed spitball?

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