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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  6. [Never having been a member of the Victorian Left I can only say that I have been told by someone who is that she is loathed in sections of the left and seen as a highly divisive figure. This is not something recent, it goes back a long time, prior to her election to Parliament.]

    The Victorian Left is composed of several parts. The “Carr left” (headed by the Dear Leader Cde Kim Il-Carr) is descended from the old Hartley-Crawford Left of the 1960s, and its main purpose in life was to hate the USA and Israel and support the PLO. In 1982 a large chunk of the Victorian branch of the Communist Party resigned and formed the Socialist Forum, which eventually disappeared into the ALP Left, but well to the right of the Old Left now led by Carr. Notably, they don’t think hating the USA and Israel is the essential hallmark of leftist politics. Gillard was never a CPA member or supporter, but as a young lawyer she was a friend of Mark Taft, son of the CPA State Secretary Bernie Taft, who headed the Socialist Forum, so she was counted as part of the “soft left” of ex-SF members. Tanner in his student politics days was a young acolyte of the Old Left, and developed a lasting dislike of Gillard, due to various long-ago conflicts at Melbourne Uni, although he is five years older than her so I don’t think they were students together.

  15. [Frankie V.
    Posted Monday, February 25, 2013 at 10:30 pm | PERMALINK
    rummel @ 3161

    Britain’s most senior Roman Catholic

    By which metric? He’s the Archbishop of Edinburgh.]

    i dont know………… ask the media.

  17. tom paine is a sweetie. thank goodness for old fashioned values. and he is probably right, probably so, new parliament by may, rudd again. 55 (Lab) 45. on with change and future. simple eh.

  19. Turnbull just showing why the majority of Aussies were sick of him when he got the chop.
    Just arrogance and hubris personified.
    With that little performance, well it was so bad you just wanted him to continue.

  21. [Mod Lib
    Posted Monday, February 25, 2013 at 10:32 pm | PERMALINK
    confessions
    Posted Monday, February 25, 2013 at 10:31 pm | PERMALINK
    PLEASE BRING ON A TURNBULL LEADERSHIP!!!!

    YEAH BABY!]

    Dont worry, Abbott will do.

  22. Frankie V.
    [Britain’s most senior Roman Catholic
    By which metric? He’s the Archbishop of Edinburgh]
    I would imagine as being the only Cardinal elector

    The Archbishop of Westminster is not a Cardinal. Having said that, I think the Roman church has separate hierarchies for Scotland and England…

  25. turnbull is a silvertail. he lives on the harbour. he has many enemies in business. who was that republican contender – probably better than that

  26. Henry
    [
    Turnbull just showing why the majority of Aussies were sick of him when he got the chop.
    Just arrogance and hubris personified.]
    JTI over at the OO dubbed hin “Truffles” .An excellent choice.

  28. The Archbishop of Westminister, Vincent Nicholls, is head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, but he is not yet a cardinal. The church treats Scotland as a separate country, and since O’Brien is a cardinal he is senior to Nicholls. He also has longer service as an archbishop.

  32. [Now QandA audience running Turnbull for leader campaign]

    That’s why I mostly stopped watching Q&A. It has really become a masterclass in how to avoid issues of substance and not keep the political class to account.

  34. Bugler:

    The QandA audience is reflecting discussions going on out there in the real world.

    Get out there and chat to folk and you will hear the same thing. If Turnbull becomes Lib leader the next ALP PM might be in nappies.

  35. [ Never having been a member of the Victorian Left I can only say that I have been told by someone who is that she is loathed in sections of the left and seen as a highly divisive figure. This is not something recent, it goes back a long time, prior to her election to Parliament. ]

    Unlike Rudd? Ha!

    Oh – and by the way bemused, your factional allegiance is showing!

  37. I am legitimately confused. I used an ampersand and it came out as “and” in the comment. I’m no tech-head, but that doesn’t seem right.

  38. I met Turnbull once.

    He was doing a Republic forum at Corowa.

    Hubby and I went up to him during ‘intermission’ and had a very awkward conversation with him. He didn’t speak to anyone else.

    It was only later I realised that the reason we’d had his undivided attention for so long, despite the awkwardness of the conversation, was that he had no idea how to talk to people.

  47. [Never having been a member of the Victorian Left I can only say that I have been told by someone who is that she is loathed in sections of the left and seen as a highly divisive figure.]

    Of course, everyone in the ALP Left is loathed by other sections of the left: that’s the nature of the Left. Also “highly divisive figure” is frequently code for “woman who won’t be pushed around by male faction heavies.”

  48. zoomster

    that’s right – losing the unlosable referendum on the republic. boring. now if he’d pulled that off, one might listen.

  49. [Also “highly divisive figure” is frequently code for “woman who won’t be pushed around by male faction heavies.”]

    Gold. We noted here the other night that among the Labor-voting, Labor-leaning commentators, most of them who are critical of JG are themselves men.

  50. Today’s Q&A was the worst so far this year. While it may be amusing watching Carr and Turnbull trying to outsmart each other, it doesn’t leave anyone better informed. And no NBN question??

    4/10

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