Tasmanian and federal leadership polling

Polling on federal voting intention in Tasmania is, once again, not good for Labor. Also featured: Seat of the Week, starring the once-safe Labor western Sydney electorate of Blaxland.

UPDATE (Saturday evening): GhostWhoVotes reports the Sunday News Limited tabloids have a Galaxy poll showing the Coalition leading 55-45, compared with 54-46 in Galaxy’s previous poll. Primary votes are 32% for Labor (down two), 47% for the Coalition (up one) and 11% for the Greens (up one). Under a Kevin Rudd leadership scenario, the primary votes are 38% for Labor, 43% for the Coalition and 11% for the Greens, with two-party preferred at 50-50. Nonetheless, only 34% said Gillard should make way for Rudd with 52% opposed (32-60 among Labor and 33-51 among Coalition supporters). Full results here.

Some bonus late-week polling to keep you going over the weekend:

• ReachTEL polling conducted for the Hobart Mercury points to a Labor wipeout in Tasmania and a comfortable win for Andrew Wilkie in Denison. After exclusion of the 6.8% undecided, the statewide primary votes are 48.8% for the Liberals, 28.2% for Labor and 11.3% for the Greens, suggesting a Liberal two-party lead of around 56-44 and a swing of 16% compared with the last election. The poll was conducted on Thursday night from samples of around 550 respondents per electorate for a statewide total of 2620, which probably makes it the most comprehensive Tasmanian poll ever conducted. Results by electorate (I have allocated the undecided components listed in the published primary votes in each case):

Denison: Andrew Wilkie 38.8%; Liberal 27.9%; Labor 21.3%; Greens 9.6%. The respective results at the 2010 election were 21.3%, 22.6%, 35.8% and 19.0%. Wilkie defeated Labor by 1.2% after preferences, but the published results suggest Labor would finish third behind the Liberals with their preferences securing a very easy win for Wilkie.

Franklin: Labor 38.4%; Liberal 47.1%; Greens 10.7%. The Liberals lead 51.0-49.0 after preferences, a swing of 11.8%.

Bass: Labor 25.5%; Liberal 56.9%; Greens 14.1%. The Liberals lead 61-39 after preferences, a swing of 17.7%.

Braddon: Labor 28.5%; Liberal 57.6%; Greens 7.6%. The Liberals lead 62.2-37.8 after preferences, a swing of 19.7%.

Lyons: Labor 27.5%; Liberal 54.1%; Greens 14.1%. The Liberals lead 59.0-41.0 after preferences, a swing of 22.5%.

• Another ReachTEL poll, this time targeting 1600 respondents in 11 seats in western Sydney on behalf of the Seven Network, inquired about Kevin Rudd’s popularity relative to Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott. Abbott led 64-36 over Gillard and 51-48 over Rudd, with enthusiasm for Rudd appearing to have cooled a little since ReachTEL conducted the same exercise three months ago. On that occasion, 42% said the return of Rudd would make them more likely to vote Labor against 25% for less likely. This time, the results were 36% and 31%.

• Roy Morgan has published a phone poll from a small sample of 475 respondents dealing mostly with party leadership, but also including voting intention results. The poll has the Coalition leading 59-41 on two-party preferred from primary votes of 26% for Labor, 50.5% for the Coalition and 12% for the Greens, remembering that the margin of error here is 4.5%. Further evidence of a Coalition-skewed sample came with a 47-35 lead for Tony Abbott over Julia Gillard as preferred prime minister, and a 27-65 approval/disapproval split for Gillard against 41-51 for Abbott. The poll also offered detailed material on preferred Labor and Liberal leader. Kevin Rudd led for Labor with 33% support against 14% for Julia Gillard, 11% for Bill Shorten and 10% for Stephen Smith. Tony Abbott did similarly poorly for preferred Liberal leader, finishing third with 18% behind Malcolm Turnbull on 47% and Joe Hockey on 19%.

• Roy Morgan has also scoured through two years of its polling to provide the “top 10 professions more likely to vote for each party”. This shows Labor’s base remains resolutely blue-collar, with the “new class” professions dominating the Greens list. Defence force members topped the Liberal list with police in sixth place, managers and finance industry types also featuring prominently.

Seat of the week: Blaxland

The western Sydney seat of Blaxland has been held by Labor without interruption since its creation in 1949, and provided Paul Keating with a seat throughout a parliamentary career lasting from 1969 to 1996. The electorate currently extends from Bankstown in the south through Bass Hill and Regents Park to Guildford in the north. The area is marked by a strong Arabic presence, especially around Guildford, together with a large Turkish community around Auburn and concentrations of Chinese and Vietnamese at Fairfield East and Regents Park. The two strongest areas for the Liberals, Woodpark and Guildford West in the electorate’s north-western corner and Bass Hill and Georges Hall in the south, are middle-income and contain the highest proportion of English speakers. The abolition of a neighbouring electorate to the north caused the electorate to be substantially redrawn at the 2010 election, adding 24,000 of the abolished electorate’s voters around Auburn South together with 14,000 at Bankstown in the south (which had been removed from the electorate in the 2007 redistribution). Transferred out of the electorate were 20,000 voters around Cabramatta to the west and 18,000 around Greenacre to the south.

Blaxland’s greatest moment of electoral interest came with its inauguration at the 1949 election, when Jack Lang attempted to move to the new seat after winning Reid as a Labor renegade in 1946. He failed, and the seat has since been won for Labor by margins of never less than 8.8%. James Harrison held the seat for the 20 years before the arrival of Paul Keating, who was succeeded at a 1996 by-election by Michael Hatton. Hatton’s career proved rather less illustrious than his predecessor’s, and he was dumped by the party’s national executive ahead of the 2007 election. The ensuing preselection was won by the Right-backed Jason Clare, a Transburban executive and former advisor to NSW Premier Bob Carr, who prevailed over constitutional law expert George Williams and Bankstown mayor Tania Mihailuk. Clare suffered what by Sydney standards was a modest 4.4% swing at the 2010 election, reducing the margin to 12.2%, but the electorate’s five corresponding state seats swung by between 13.8% and 20.3% at the state election the following March, with Granville and East Hills falling to the Liberals and Bankstown, Auburn and Fairfield remaining with Labor.

Jason Clare won promotion to parliamentary secretary in 2009, and then to the outer ministry after the 2010 election in the defence materiel portfolio. He shifted to home affairs and justice in December 2011, further recovering defence materiel after Kevin Rudd’s failed leadership bid the following February. He was promoted to cabinet as cabinet secretary in the February 2013 reshuffle which followed the retirement announcements of Nicola Roxon and Chris Evans, again trading in defence materiel while maintaining home affairs and justice. His Liberal opponent is Anthony Khouri, a local businessman of Lebanese extraction who together with his brothers founded custom-made luxury car manufacturer Bufori. ReachTEL has twice conducted automated phone polls showing Khouri in the lead, by 54-46 in March and 52-48 in June.

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.

1,824 comments on “Tasmanian and federal leadership polling”

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  1. j.v.

    [Does your boss say Judaism isn’t a monotheistic Christian religion? ]

    I would hope so. Because it maybe monotheistic but it certainly isn’t Christian – just as Islam isn’t Christian, either.

  2. The damage from the destabilisation is done now. There is no way to create an appearance of unity between now and September 14.

    $1.08 on the coalition seems pretty good value now.

  3. The affiliated union approach in the new ALP:

    In a bus full of critics, if you kill most people in the bus by running off a cliff, you might be able to drive on in a fashion, for a while, with a steaming engine, but with no criticism, and Bill Shorten at the wheel.

  6. gorilla

    nah its been best of all possible worlds – survival to now, then another two glorious terms of more. very close to destruction of libs.

  7. @Gorilla/1752

    It depends if there is a change over as said by some people on PB in next two weeks.

    AS william said 51-49 to Labor, or maybe 50-50.

  9. I mean, where’s the dignity in winning, or almost winning? No way. Cojones are only grown from big, big losses.

  11. jv

    not interested. life is too short and world too urgent. no time for labor reform from defeat, not if new an example.

  12. [‘I don’t believe Christians and Jews have ever had a war.’]
    Just about every race/religion has started a war somewhere along the line, and this is no exception. The Khazars were a tribe in southern Russia that converted to Judaism and became a powerful state. They fought wars against Islamic and christian neighbors. Overall though, christian and muslim nations have started far more wars than jewish ones. Atheists have started wars too, so I am not trying to sound holier than thou 🙂
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazars

  16. Lebanon was effectively a Syrian puppet when Israel invaded in 1982. There were also christian ,ilitias but they we anti Syrian.

  17. JW o that’s great – yes irony can be very hard in medium like this!!! i think news is good good good. have thought that for a year.

  21. Sorry, Christian militias. Robert Fisk’s book goes through it all well. It was quite complex. Also, the Arab world is far from one big happy family, so Lebanon saw rival islamic groups fighting each other for control too.

  22. Socrates

    I don’t think you mean that anyone as a non-believer has started a war against believers in the cause of non-belief. Because that hasn’t happened to my knowledge.

  23. [Was Lebanon run by Christians in any of the wars between Israel and Lebanon?]

    Lebanon has never recognised Israel, so strictly speaking there can’t be a war between them. Lebanon played a minor role in the Arab invasion of 1948, but wisely stayed out of the 1967 and 1973 wars. The 1982-85 Israeli invasion of Lebanon was aimed at the PLO and its Muslim allies, and the Lebanese Christians were Israeli allies.

    Under Lebanon’s confessional system, the President is always a Christian, the Prime Minister is always a Sunni Muslim, and the Speaker is always a Shi’a Muslim.

  25. 29 = The Death Zone.

    Gillard now climbing without Oxygen. Can she summit before hypoxia sets in?

    Will the Sherpa’s desert her in the face of the mountain spirits?

    Avalanche coming – will she be there to face it?

  26. [If its 47/29 then it will come in around 57/56 to 44/43. Worse than I expected.]

    David you are always seem to be trying to appease the Labor voters here, it’s becoming a bit unpalatable.

    Either you believe Gillard will win or you don’t.

    She’s been toxic for 3 years now. She was toxic last week. She’ll be toxic next week.

  27. Looks like a Blue-Tie, Menugate backlash.

    Voters HATE desperate… and they especially hate DESPERATE SMEARS.

  28. The situation in Lebanon was much simpler in 1948, in fact prior to the civil war Lebanon was quite modern. The problem started mainly after Israel took control of much land controlled by Palestinians, creating many refugees who settled in Lebanon. Things got worse after the 1967 war when Israel took control of the west bank.

  29. The thing is that as soon as we establish a firm base, then the party will bounce off that base to …who knows? If only we could establish the base. Conroy, and Swan and Shorten have planned this all along. Just get the base.

  31. Jv

    True, I just meant that individuals who are atheists have started wars, as have theists. I think it is dangerous to claim moral superiority for any belief system, theistic or not.

  32. Evening All

    What a terrible poll 🙁

    I guess we’ll get Newspoll tomorrow night, if it’s the same as the other two the caucus meeting on Tuesday (I think) will be fascinating.

    I’d love for Julia to hold on, there is a slim chance she could actually win the election. Abbott is extremely unpopular, even with Liberal voters, but with less then 100 days to go it would take a massive turn-around + it would need everyone fighting their hardest.

    I’m not sure she has that

    That’s two polls in a row now showing Kevin at 50/50 – it will be very hard for MP’s to resist the change. I will understand 100% if they switch

    Poor Julia, she doesn’t deserve this 🙁

  33. Boerwar

    What about the blitzkrieg theory, with the MSM doing the aerial bombing?

    The only antidote to a Pincer Movement that I can see, is that the ALP is split anyway, and it is very difficult to herd cats or create an outskirting flank.

    What do you think?

  34. @womble/1782

    The best thing is to put Julia back in Education ? I think she was last time since Peter Garrett won’t serve under Rudd.

  36. Socrates

    Yes, except I don’t do the equality thing between ‘belief’ and non-belief. That is, “My irrationality is as valid as your science.”(I don’t reckon you do either)

  37. [The thing is that as soon as we establish a firm base, then the party will bounce off that base to …who knows? If only we could establish the base. Conroy, and Swan and Shorten have planned this all along. Just get the base.]

    All part of the Labor master plan… bomb in the polls!

    Ha… love your work mate

  39. ALP primary vote among men down 7 to 24.

    In view of the events over the past week can this be interpreted as “she asked for it”? Makes me ashamed to be a man.

  40. on the other hand – a big loss for Labor, a split in the party so they can rediscover what they actually believe in might be a good thing in the longer term

    but Abbott on the way through would be a disaster 🙁

    Vote 1 Green, Vote 2 PUP – you know it makes sense 😉

  43. [I’d love for Julia to hold on, there is a slim chance she could actually win the election.]

    Surely you don’t believe this?

    Two weeks ago I gave Rudd a 10% chance of being reinstated.

    Reckon it’s now most likely. I mean, look at those figures.

  46. womble,

    You are not up to Fifth Column status. You need to produce your membership card before you will be considered.

  47. Zoidlord – if Rudd takes over I think it’d be better for everyone if Julia left parliament, including her 🙁

    Seems Australia, or large parts of it, really aren’t ready for a female PM

  48. Sean I don’t particularly want Gillard to win. I just want Abbott to win less. Also while William permits I will appease whomever I like 😉

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