The biggest head-turner to emerge from the latest batch of polls was Labor’s sub-30% primary vote in Nielsen, but the BludgerTrack poll aggregate in fact records a slight improvement this week for Labor, who appear to be trending back to equilibrium after last month’s leadership crisis. As well as Nielsen, the aggregate has been updated with results from Galaxy, Morgan and Essential (there was also last night’s ReachTEL poll for Channel Seven, but I haven’t included this as I don’t yet have enough data for ReachTEL to determine bias and accuracy weightings). Nielsen’s breakdowns have also allowed for the state relativities to be revised.
Speaking of which, I thought it might be illuminating to plot how the mainland states have been tracking relative to the national polling since the 2010 election. The following charts do so with reference to Labor’s two-party vote. Keep in mind that this measures the states’ deviance from the national result, and not simply the level of Labor support – so a flat line tells us not that support for Labor in that state has been steady, but that the ups and downs have closely matched the national results (as they usually do).
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The most obvious point to emerge is that Queensland is the odd man out on account of its volatile trendline. This relates to the “smooth” function displayed at the top left of each chart, reflecting the smoothness of the line which most meaningfully represents the scattered data points (in the estimation of my stats program, going off something called the AICc criterion). Where the trend is either consistent or non-existent, as it is for the other four states, the smoothing parameter is high and the line fairly straight. But where there is a distinct pattern to the variation, as in the case of Queensland, the number lowers to produce a line variable enough to follow the trend (different smoothing parameters also explain why the Coalition’s primary vote trendline on BludgerTrack is smoother than Labor’s).
The Queensland exception is down to a fairly clear 3% sag for Labor from March to July 2012, which happens to be coincide with the immediate aftermath of their devastating state election defeat. This seems to suggest that temporary static from Queensland state politics added over half a point to the Coalition blowout in the national result at this time, which can be clearly observed on BludgerTrack. It should be noted that this week’s Nielsen result is the only data point for Queensland since last month’s Labor leadership crisis, and it’s solidly lower than anything recorded since November. BludgerTrack will need more than one 350-sample result before it draws any conclusions, but the Nielsen result may point to a downturn the Queensland trendline is yet to catch up with.
Something similar may also be happening in South Australia, where Labor’s downward turn since late last year would be much sharper with a lower smoothing parameter. If forthcoming results for this state remain poor for Labor, their already weak projection will deteriorate fairly rapidly.
Other news:
• Barnaby Joyce had a clear 150-10 win over local IT businessman David Gregory in the Nationals preselection for Tony Windsor’s seat of New England, conducted after the withdrawal of Richard Torbay. The LNP will now have to choose a (presumably Nationals-aligned) candidate to fill Joyce’s casual Senate vacancy when he resigns to the contest the election, with the winner to serve out the remainder of a Senate term that will end in mid-2017.
• WA Labor has determined the order of its Senate election ticket, the top two positions going to Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Assocation state president Joe Bullock and incumbent Louise Pratt, in that order. Bullock takes the seat designated for the SDA from the man he succeeded as the union’s state secretary, Mark Bishop, who bowed out of the race on Monday in recognition that he faced certain defeat. Bullock’s success in securing the top position was the contentious fruit of an arrangement between the Right faction SDA and the largest Left union, United Voice, which secured the state lower house seat of Fremantle for United Voice faction member Simone McGurk at the expense of Adrian Evans of the insurgent Maritime Union of Australia. Pratt’s demotion from top of the ticket in 2007 is more than symbolic, as there are fears Labor’s vote in WA is so weak it can’t be guaranteed a second seat. Former state upper house MP Jon Ford, who is associated with the United Voice’s main Left rival, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, complained that the SDA-United Voice deal very nearly led to Pratt being excluded altogether.
• Also determined by the Labor state executive was the Senate vacancy created by the retirement of Chris Evans, which will stay in the United Voice fold by going to Sue Lines, a WA-raised but Sydney-based official with the union.
• Labor’s state executive also chose candidates for four lower house seats, three of which would be winnable under normal circumstances. Hasluck will be contested the aforementioned Adrian Evans of the MUA, whose partisans reportedly account for a quarter of the state party’s membership after a recruitment drive swelled their numbers from 150 to 850. There will be more on Hasluck in Friday’s Seat of the Week. The other candidates are lawyer Tristan Cockman in Cowan, Victoria Park deputy mayor John Bissett in Swan and, in the safely conservative regional seat of Durack, Fitzroy Crossing musician and party activist Daron Keogh.
• The Liberals have a new candidate for the Melbourne hinterland seat of McEwen after their initial nominee, Ben Collier, withdrew due to “unforeseen family circumstances”. The party’s administrative committee unanimously chose as his successor Donna Petrovich, a member of the state upper house for Northern Victoria region and former mayor of Macedon Ranges. Sue Hewitt of the Northern Weekly was able to confirm that ReachTEL had earlier conducted a poll of the electorate on behalf of an undisclosed client gauging name recognition for Collier and Petrovich. Petrovich will relinquish her seat in the upper house on June 30.
• John Ferguson of The Australian reports Liberal internal polling has them leading 56-44 in the Labor-held Melbourne seats of Chisholm and Bruce, with the primary votes at 29% for Labor’s Anna Burke and 48% for the Liberal candidate in Chisholm, and 32% for Alan Griffin against 48% for the Liberals in Bruce.
• Former Victorian Farmers Federation president Andrew Broad has won preselection to replace retiring Nationals member John Forrest in Mallee. The other candidates were Swan Hill councillor Michael Adamson, Buloke mayor Reid Mather, Horsham farmer Russell McKenzie and Mildura resident Anne Webster. Swan Hill deputy mayor Greg Cruickshank was a late withdrawal. The Liberals are yet to determine whether they will field a candidate.
briefly
Yes its up there with gun law reform in the LNP working to destroy One Nation as a political force.
This is where the editor of News Limited gets more credit than Abbott.
That editor has said he will destroy the Greens at the ballot box.
Abbott has been using the courts to destroy his political enemies.
In a segment on Channel Seven’s Sunrise on Wednesday morning, the controversial 2GB host said Boston was a student city home to prestigious institutions such as Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and suggested that students could be the culprits.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/alan-jones-suggests-leftwing-radical-students-link-to-boston-bombing-20130417-2hz8y.html#ixzz2QgGwx9k2
Fran
If you don’t like $100 for the Salvos then Chris Riley “Youth off the streets”. I think he may also believe in God but don’t you Greens believe in freedom of belief and worship, or is that only for non-Western religions?
Anyway let’s see Rhiannon’s statement first – maybe she’ll do it for you.
briefly@94
Excellently put.
95
The good gun reforms were in fact one of the causes of One Nations success, particularly in Queensland.
Mick
You just can’t help your little asides, can’t you?
A civil action can normally be brought up to six years after loss is first suffered. There are extensions available if the injured person is not aware of the fact a loss has been suffered or who is responsible.
The CMC report would tend to indicate an awareness by Ettridge that he has suffered loss and his view that Abbott was responsible in 2004 which makes the extension hard to get.
Be aware that this is a false account. Emmerson laughing at the RW-ers who followed Reith enthusiastically.
[Peter Reith @ReithPeterK 28m
Have changed my tune about twitter. Technology is a great thing for children to embrace, as long as they dont go overboard.]
It was twenty years ago today……
https://twitter.com/kleinyheraldsun/status/324324899906785280/photo/1
By the way nice charts in BludgerTrack this week William. Us QLD’ers are always a strange bunch.
davidwh@104
Yes, I almost forgot to say:
Numbers, yay!
:angel:
Even though most online readers knew it was coming the vast majority of the population probably didn’t know about David Ettridge’s allegations against Abbott. Labor should take the fact that Abbott has now been served & turn it into a completely over the top rant about “trust” whether it’s true or not or will amount to anything. Why hold a higher moral ground when your faced with the likes of the coalition.
Display Name
[You just can’t help your little asides, can you?]
Guilty as charged! However I do sense a lot of hypocrisy in those who claim their motives to be pure. We’re all hypocrites to a point, but most of us don’t claim to be paragons of virtue unlike the Greens and their hard-core supporters.
Abbott could hardly complain about getting some of his own back. The difficulty for Labor is being seen to side with One Nation which may work against them. Labor may be better to let things just play out.
Honestly I think people generally are sick and tired of the smear stuff so not sure any campaign built around smearing an opponent will go over well in the current environment. I think the Coalition suffered in the second half of last year by going way over the top with Thomson, Slipper and AWU.
If you want proof of how sick we all are of the smearing you only need to look at the QLD election result. That must have cost Labor a swag of seats in the washup.
[University students are less politically active than they were in previous decades. The Howard Government being particularly responsible for this]
It was before that. There was little or no protest at HECS being introduced for example by the Hawke government in 1989. There was also no unrest at all about the decline in teaching hours that took place throughout the 1980s under the free system. When I started uni in the early 80s – final year students had 28-30 contact hours per week, when I was in final year later in the decade – same subjects – contact hours had reduced to 20 hours a week. Very common across the sector at the time.
Who is funding David Etteridge?
Uni politics was dead at Sydney in late 1980s .
My wife initiated a uni protest in early 1990s in Phillip Street which I observed from the safety of the pool table area where JJJ was occasionally played.
BBS maybe Albanese has started up a “Save Australia from the Monkey” Trust?
109
The Howard Government did increase HECS though.
The cut is student contact hours is might be correlation but is probably not direct causation. Fewer contact hours probably partly frees up time to be politically active.
“It’s important I be there again to create the debate, to make sure they are listening to the Australian people.”
Ms Hanson said Mr Abbott had acted against her by setting up a fund to bankroll legal action against One Nation that ultimately saw her and her fellow party co-founder, David Ettridge, jailed in 2003.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/one-nation-co-founder-suing-tony-abbott-for-15m/story-fncynkc6-1226622032265
I wonder if Craig Thomson will be accepting Abbott’s vote in future?
davidwh, you have a good point. Just thought it would be nice to see them get a dose of the own tactics.
Agree with Mike Hilliard.
Abbott’s hypocrisy needs to be thrown back at him.
Remember how the govt shouldn’t Thomson and Slipper’s tainted vote?
Well respond in kind ALP. Get stuck in to the fool.
Tom @ 113
Cuts in hours were not causation but there was little or any complaint – even when many elective subjects went to very second year rather than every year.
The 1980s were very complacent – I, like Shellbell, was at Sydney Uni – by the mid 80s – nothing was happening. And at the time, fewer contact hours didn’t mean more politics – it meant more time in the pub or at the beach.
A good opinion piece in The Age on the need to start planning for a post-China mining boom economy in Australia.
[Instead of using the strong dollar as an excuse to wean themselves off China, politicians in Canberra and corporate executives from Sydney to Perth are urging the central bank to come to their rescue. Gillard and others are essentially abdicating their responsibilities to RBA governor Glenn Stevens.
Australian leaders should instead be using this time to prepare the country for the day when Chinese demand inevitably begins to dry up. The government should be taking advantage of the lowest benchmark rates in 53 years to borrow and invest. Funds are required to rebuild crumbling infrastructure and upgrade the education system, to encourage a shift to higher value-added manufacturing and to promote innovation.
Australian industry, too, must find ways to remake itself: ways to compete, create jobs, increase productivity and address the risks posed by climate change. At a time when the strong dollar is “decimating” exports, says Terry Davis, group managing director at Coca-Cola Amatil, “the only answer is better research and development”. As Swiss and German companies have, Australian firms must seek out value-adding niche industries that are more reliant on human capital.]
http://www.theage.com.au/business/the-economy/australia-needs-to-wean-itself-off-china-20130417-2hzf2.html#ixzz2QgfVS7U0
The NBN is a good start. Cutting uni funding is not.
If only those in charge of rolling out the NBN had comprehended the need to train new people to install it three years ago, it might have been winning votes by now.
Henry I doubt Abbott would care much if Labor rejected his tainted vote.
[“If my claims are found by the court to be true then Mr Abbott may need to step aside and avoid bringing any embarrassment to the highest public office in Australia.
“For Mr Abbott, this is karma and I expect to be inundated by lawyers offering their services pro bono so I receive justice in this matter”].
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/2013/03/19/18/32/one-nation-co-founder-to-sue-tony-abbott
Uni politics was pretty dead at UQ and QUT in the early 80s too. I contacted Young Labor then, but was so unimpressed with them that I never joined the party till years later. Their sole aim was to become a delegate to an NTEU conference. The student politicians didn’t care about the uni students or their needs, just their planned political careers, so the uni students gave up caring about them too.
Perhaps I am being too hard. Labor luminaries like Mike Kaiser got their start in that environment. He was the same then as now.
david, it’s obviously not about that (although his own party could reject his tainted vote, right?).
It’s about pointing out Abbott’s hypocrisy in these matters.
Slipper and Thomson were tainted figures before they were charged according to Abbott so the same logic should surely apply to Abbott.
So does Etteridge not have the funds to pursue his case? If not, he certainly doesn’t know how to play poker.
I f Anna Burke and Alan Griffin are headed for the long jump, how many seats will Labor retain in Victoria?
Socrates @ 119
Interesting piece you quote. Part of the problem has been that the RBA has done all the heavy lifting and there has been no fiscal push to help the dollar down. Whowever is in power after September 14 will have an interesting budgetary time in the next term.
If the case against Abbott ever gains momentum, and given the CMC’s documented findings, it’s highly unlikely, then expect Gillard-Slater & Gordon accusations to rise again. I do think that publicised legal battles (Thomson, Slipper-Ashby) have done their damage and now can do more damage to the accusers, unless and until they are proved in court so I doubt that this will do Abbott any harm. And of course how enthusiastically can Labor support One Nation founders.
[I f Anna Burke and Alan Griffin are headed for the long jump, how many seats will Labor retain in Victoria?]
Bruce is really super landside territory. Anna Burke may well go and the Libs definitely believe that they can win the seat. There is low hanging fruit in Corangamite, Deaking and La Trobe – Chisholm is a branch or two up – but beyond that there is not much the Libs can win – they possibly have an outside chance in Bendigo or Corio – but very outside.
Labor would still have lots of seats in Victoria after that. They may win Melbourne back as well.
[And of course how enthusiastically can Labor support One Nation founders.]
Ranga solidarity won’t wash …
Henry only the very loyal Liberals would be in any doubt about Abbott’s hyprocricy. I just don’t believe that trying to make political points over this issue is likely to get much traction unless there is something more sinister than we already know that is yet to come out. It has all pretty well been dealt with years ago.
It’s already on record that Abbott set up the trust and raised the money to prosecute the case against ON. While the ethics of that are open to question I don’t see where there is anything illegal about the process.
The matter has already been dealt with by the CMC and Abbott was found not to have a case to answer.
Given all that I am not really sure what Etteridge is going to present that hasn’t already been presented in various jurisdictions. And the timing just seems too conceived.
But it does seem to get some folks excited.
Mick77
Abbott has alot ot answer in the slipper ashby brough and the lnp have been found to conspire against slipper, labor has nothing to answer for
newsltd/ Abbott coalition can not afford the ashby appeal to lose
Who is paying for ashby
Abbott will have slipper and one nation to come back and haunt him
Instead of slipper, Thomson or Gillard resigning
wouldnt it be hilarious Abbott was the one who end up resigning from parliament
Abbott was slipper’s leader , with the allegations slipper is facing
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/one-nation-co-founder-suing-tony-abbott-for-15m/story-fncynkc6-1226622032265
davidwh
Abbott lie4d about the slush fund and its on record
Abbott needs to step down
where is wilkie , to threaten an censure motion against Abbott 🙂
just thought I would point out in case mr bowe
does not know
when you get a call from reach tell its phone automated
my point is the would not know what age group they are calling
I had a call re the upper house here, nothing about age
or are you male or female from memory
but then there is no one at the end of the phone to say
what did you say
so the popularity contest re abbott
may have been eldeley people
and was the question ask to male and female
may be he would like to comment on that
Press pack demanding policy release from Hunt and Hockey
I am waiting for an statement from wilkie, as he does with his threat against the government
Wilkie should ask the liberal party to change leaders before parliament resumes if they do not
Wilkie will put a censure motion against the leader of the opposition and liberal party
guytuar
they have not thought one up yet
still got pencil in mouth wondering
what the heck they will write
Just on Anna Burke in Chisolm, somehow I have some scepticism for leaked Liberal polling published in the Australian.
Not sure why.
At end of presser Hockey asked about what appears to be racist tweet by LNP Dennis Jensen MP
Claims he has not seen it.
what press
that will be a first for them if they bother to ask about policy
what is it with these press people don’t they want a great aust. also
they have family,, parents and wives and children
don’t they want a good education for them
stop selling us out and start asking questions
for the sake of your own family
now that’s what I would like top say to them