BludgerTrack: 54.9-45.1 to Coalition

The lately weekly poll aggregate finds Labor continuing to rise groggily from the canvas. But has something gone awry for them in South Australia?

With fresh results added from Newspoll, Essential Research and Morgan, this week’s BludgerTrack poll aggregate moves about half a point in Labor’s favour for the third week in a row. Since the immediate wake of the leadership crisis, Labor has recovered 2.1% on the primary vote and the Coalition has lost five on the seat projection after getting to within a hair’s breadth of triple figures four weeks ago (although the Coalition primary vote is down only 0.6%). The trend is now discernible to the naked eye on the sidebar charts, although it’s far too early to interpret it as anything more than a correction.

I’ve also been able to update my state relativities with data kindly provided by ReachTEL, and the revised projection shows one state bucking the trend. Last week I noted an apparent downturn for Labor in South Australia, and observed the addition of further data could cause their position there to sink rapidly. The latest result, small of sample though it may be, has done exactly that, coming as it does on the back of four successive poor results for Labor in Nielsen’s state breakdowns. Labor’s standing in South Australia has accordingly fallen 1.0% below the national result, after being all but level in last week’s projection and 3.1% higher at the 2010 election. This is illustrated in the charts to the right, which track South Australia’s deviation from the national results over the current term for the Labor and Coalition on the primary vote and for Labor on two-party preferred. However, it should be cautioned that this wasn’t reflected in the January-March Newspoll result, which had by far the largest sample. Since the data points are weighted according to sample size, Newspoll has prevented the trendline from sinking considerably further.

Labor holds six out of 11 seats in South Australia, and while each of them looks safe enough on the Mackerras pendulum, all but one was held by the Liberals at some point during the Howard years. The three seats gained with the election of the Rudd government in 2007 all swung heavily to Labor in 2010, so that the margins surpassed what are now Labor’s two most marginal seats: Adelaide (7.5%) and its western coastal neighbour Hindmarsh (6.1%), both held by the Liberals from 1993 until 2004, when they were respectively gained for Labor by Kate Ellis and Steve Georganas. The seats gained in 2007 were Wakefield (10.5%) on Adelaide’s northern fringe and hinterland, Makin (12.0%) in its north-east, and Kingston (14.5%) in its outer south. Wakefield was created in its current form in 2004 when what had traditionally been a conservative semi-rural seat absorbed much of abolished Bonython in Adelaide’s Labor-voting outer north. David Fawcett managed a surprise win for the Liberals in 2004, and found his way back into parliament via the Senate after his defeat by Labor’s Nick Champion in 2007. Makin has gone with the government of the day since its creation in 1984, being held by Trish Draper through the Howard years and Tony Zappia since. Kingston was won by the Liberals at their two best elections in 1996 and 2004, but has otherwise been a Labor seat, the present incumbent being Amanda Rishworth.

For what it’s worth, Mark Kenny of The Advertiser reported six months ago that polling conducted for the Liberals by ReachTEL showed Labor set to lose Hindmarsh and Makin on swings of 12% and 17%. Simon Benson of the Daily Telegraph reported a fortnight ago that the Liberals were about to conduct polling in Wakefield after Holden cut 400 jobs at its Elizabeth plant, while Peter van Onselen in The Australian related that Labor plans to poll Hindmarsh and Adelaide were knocked on the head by the Prime Minister’s office due to fears the results would leak.

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.

2,030 comments on “BludgerTrack: 54.9-45.1 to Coalition”

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  5. [1975
    morpheus

    Gillard, Swan and the sheltered workshop that passes as the ALP have been responsible for some of the most abhorrent and negative personal insults in the last 3 years.]

    Why, you are mistaken, m. The blossoms tendered by the Government are as nothing, merely kisses blown in fun. The LNP are simply too coy, too bashful, to court the Government in turn. Instead they pout and sulk, blushing pups the lot.

  7. [Rummel

    Purely as a matter of interest (to me anyway) would you have voted for Kev if he had been restored to the leadership?]

    I had a bet going with Bemused that if Kev got up again i would hand out how to votes at any ACT/STHNSW booth with a Labor PBer of his choice. So yes, i would not put in that effort to vote Abbott, with the exception if Turnbull got up. I liked Kev because he was not a union party hack and that made him less scary against the Liberal attacks of the union boogie men taking over…. and then guess what happened to Kev!

  9. ML:

    [Oh really? {…} Ditch the witch” in Australia
    versus “Ding, dong the witch is dead” in England]

    Yes. I responded in detail. You did not.

    In case you have forgotten April 14:

    [Can someone explain to me why “Ditch the witch” is bad, but “Ding, dong, the witch is dead” is good?]

    I responded:

    [As an atheist and someone who rejects metaphysics, I am never going to celebrate the death of another. Once someone is dead, they have no rights or claims upon the living, be they worthy or repulsive or anything in between.

    The only relevance of the dead to the living is their legacy, and that only as exemplar or cautionary tale (or more typically, a bit of both). Calling someone “a witch” or “a b|tch” in order to derogate them trades on, inter aliamisogyny and consequently, nobody with a passion for inclusive society should do it, or wink at it.

    In relation to Thatcher of course, two things should be noted. Firstly, and most obviously — she’s dead, and therefore isn’t ‘somebody’. All that remains is her legacy – which is that of someone who disputed the existence of bonds between people most regard as integral to civilised life: “there is no society, only individuals” was her Randian assertion. To the best of my knowledge, this is not Gillard’s view and I suspect it’s not even Abbott’s view, (whatever his actions imply).

    The invocation of the 1930s song Ding Dong the Witch is Dead to summarise the sentiment of some people expresses their relief at the formal end of the Thatcher period, and their hope for the possibility of a new and more inclusive polity.

    The sentiment is at the moment, ill-founded of course, because, regrettably, Thatcher’s legacy was passed on to Major and then Blair and Brown and now Cameron-Clegg. Yet those singing this very traditionally framed song are expressively wishing for such an end.

    It is a feature of life that those blighted by exclusion, oppression and brutality, often express their sentiments in forms shaped by their oppressors. Just as ‘an eye for an eye’ goes back to Hammurabai, so too those who choose brutopia as their standard for dealing with others can scarcely be surprised if a simulacrum of their paradigm passes the lips of their victims. If you mess people up, they are unlikely to respond to you as enlightened people.

    In the story of The Wizard of Oz, the ‘wicked witch’ imposes brutal austerity — her persona pervades everything, and her death permits happiness, fulfilment and the promise of plenty. There is an echo in Wizard of Oz of the traditional peasant response to the advent of spring after a long painful winter.

    Thatcher’s ‘conservatism’ struck at ancient notions of community — rather than merely those peculiar to leftists. She was seen as inflicting a long, painful and needless winter. Her very memory evoked primal pain.

    Those who described Gillard as a witch were, by contrast, not her victims. She’d harmed none of them nor yet even promised harm. The beginning and the end of their reference to her as ‘witch’ was the simple active desire to attack someone they saw as ‘progressive’ or in some modest way, subversive of their freedom to pollute the planet. They had nothing better than to invoke the kind of traditional cultural angst at women that appears in the antecedents of western culture as far back as Adam and Eve and was replayed at places like Salem much later.

    Their appeal was not to trampled upon usages of ancient community or in favour of inclusion, but to longstanding animus to meddling women.

    If you cannot use your knowledge of context to see that then you have rather less insight than I’ve hitherto supposed.]

  10. CTar1, ML…the LNP grow apoplectic when Labor govern well. It offends their innate sense of their own superiority and inspires rage.

  16. Diogs @ 1998

    How fascinating 🙂

    The two main points to surface thus far that I can see are 1) Tom reckons he lost $300k on the race and 2) Singleton would not name names of the people Tom had allegedly told the mare couldn’t win.

    I believe Singo because he declared before the race that he believed his horse had problems and would finish last.

    As for Tom losing $300k – I don’t know how much of a defence that will hold.

    Maybe bookies can lose on the book but gain by other sources if you get my drift 😉

    The established fact is that Waterhouse has conceded that the mare did have problems, she failed to inform Stewards, yet started in the race!

    Let’s stay tuned 😀

  20. Centre
    Yeah, that was weird. Who chooses barrier 11? And what were they doing choosing barriers anyway, a barrier draw is like, ya know, a draw.

  23. Puffy I agree.

    You only choose barrier 11 if your horse will come across to lead or be very close to the lead or comes from well behind and wants galloping room – neither which applies to More Joyous.

    I think Gai was showing off and wanted to be acclaimed genius if it won 😉

  24. briefly @2010

    Hahahahahahahahaha… Sense of superiority …. Hahahaha. Considering the mighty large high horses grazing around this paddock fed and watered by the “true believers” I hardly think pointing the finger at those that actually have insight does your argument any benefit. A bigger aggregate of perpetuating self righteousness I have yet to see except maybe in the watermelons.

  26. Another thing on the link Diog referred to – is that Singo reckons this is the third time that it has happened to him 😆
    😆

    *night

  27. Morpheus,
    It is too late at night for reading all those letters.

    Can you please use three word slogans, just like you Dear Leader?

  29. Just arrived back in Sydney this evening after a few weeks away from politics, having been to the national folk festival and the Australian Body Art awards. Then immediately off to have a few beers for my cricket club’s most successful season ever ( 3 premierships out of 4 grades).

    Fran, I enjoyed your post about the witches. I felt you were a bit brief though.

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