Highlights of day one

Two new polls, one new poll aggregation, and some ads.

A quick replay of yesterday’s polling:

• Essential Research has two-party preferred steady at 51-49 to the Coalition, from primary votes of 38% for the Labor (down one), 43% for the Coalition (down one) and 9% for the Greens (steady). The survey finds only 44% saying they will definitely not change their mind, with 30% deeming it unlikely and 21% “quite possible”. Respondents were also asked to nominate the leader they most trusted on a range of issues, with Tony Abbott holding modest leads on economic management, controlling interests rates and national security and asylum seeker issues, and Kevin Rudd with double-digit leads on education, health, environment and industrial relations. Kevin Rudd was thought too harsh on asylum seekers by 20%, too soft by 24% and about right by 40%, compared with 21%, 20% and 31% for Tony Abbott.

• Morgan has Labor down half a point on the primary vote to 38%, the Coalition up 1.5% to 43%, and the Greens up one to 9.5%. With preferences distributed as per the result at the 2010 election, the Coalition has opened up a 50.5-49.5 lead, reversing the result from last week. On the respondent-allocated preferences measure Morgan uses for its headline figure, the result if 50-50 after Labor led 52-48 in the last poll.

• BludgerTrack, which was formerly updated weekly but will now be brought up to date whenever substantial new data arrives, records no change on two-party preferred from the addition of the two new polls, although the Greens are up on the primary vote at the expense of Labor. However, there’s a fair bit of movement on the state seat projections, with Labor up one in Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania and down one in Queensland for a net gain of two seats. That leaves two state-level projections at which one might well look askance: a finding of no gains for Labor in Queensland, against three gains for them in Western Australia. Whereas poll results in the weeks after the Rudd takeover had Labor outperforming the national result in Queensland as often as not, I now have five data points over the past fortnight all of which have them below. And while three gains in Western Australia certainly seems hard to credit (for one thing, the model is not adequately accounting for Labor losing the Alannah MacTiernan dividend from 2010 in Canning, which at present is rated a probable Labor gain), all five data points from the past fortnight show Labor improving on the 2010 result – a pretty solid result given how noisy small-sample state-level data tends to be.

• As far as I can tell, Labor and Liberal each had one television ad in business yesterday, and they read from much the same tactical script: both are positive, showcase the leader, and appear tailored to launching the parties’ rather nebulous campaign slogans. Kevin Rudd speaks to us of “a new way”, Opposition Leader style, while the actual Opposition Leader makes like Luke Skywalker and offers us “new hope”. The latter effort is a fairly obvious exercise in image softening, but what most stands out for me, having grown accustomed over the years to “face of Australia” advertising being served with a thick layer of political correctness on top (Qantas being an acknowledged leader in the field), is that all but a very small handful of the 50 or so faces in the ad are white.

UPDATE: ReachTEL has published the results of an automated phone poll of 702 respondents in Kevin Rudd’s electorate of Griffith, and it points to a 4% swing to the Liberal National Party paring his margin back to 4.5%. The primary votes from the poll are 45.6% for Kevin Rudd, 41.0% for LNP candidate Bill Glasson and 8.0% for the Greens.

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.

1,369 comments on “Highlights of day one”

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  1. I am a self-funded retiree and I don’t feel sorry for myself.

    When, by dint of erosion of the nest egg by one means or another, I become an old-age pensioner, I won’t feel sorry for myself either.

    Life’s too short.

    Plus, compared with the inhabitants of a nearby ‘informal settlement’ I live like a king.

  6. [1128
    New2This]

    I operate an export-oriented food processing business where we make innovative, high-value-added, branded consumer products for sale to quality-conscious consumers in selected markets around East Asia. Beyond that I am a business owner who thinks the LNP are either completely disingenuous, horribly loopy, or both.

  9. 1067
    William Bowe
    [>God I swear Tisme is the biggest assclown ever to grace this blog.

    What about TheTruthHurts and GeeWizz?]

    iqsrlow (sp?) was pretty hard to beat for sheer nastiness.

  10. Boerwar@1151

    I am a self-funded retiree and I don’t feel sorry for myself.

    When, by dint of erosion of the nest egg by one means or another, I become an old-age pensioner, I won’t feel sorry for myself either.

    Life’s too short.

    Ditto

  12. [Malcolm Turnbull ‏@TurnbullMalcolm 3m
    @AlboMP great – let’s set the date. Press Club keen to host it. Sooner the better.]

    Gawd.

  15. I think Bob Carr will do well against Julie Bishop tomorrow night. The main problem for Senator Carr FM will be where to start 🙂

  16. imacca 1122

    God I swear Tisme is the biggest assclown ever to grace this blog.

    What about TheTruthHurts and GeeWizz?

    I still have a soft spot for Tabitha the Spam/Fembot. 🙁

    Tony fights for the addled
    His demise is foreshadowed

  19. 1137
    imacca
    [The argument that Foxtel will be a beneficiary of NBN access to distribute its product is true, but it misses the point that the NBN will allow other providers to compete where they currently cant over Foxtel owned cables. And that is the actual threat to Foxtel.]

    Exactly. Murdoch will (over time) lose his dominance as a content provider/distributor, and the financial and political advantages it currently brings him.

    Lets see how well he can actually compete on a much more level playing field.

  21. [who thinks the LNP are either completely disingenuous, horribly loopy, or both.]

    Both. Remember, Cory “Beasty Boy” Bernardi is a significant player in the Libs, and Mathias Corman seems to be an up and comer.

    Those two facts are enough to make me shudder at the thought of them being in Govt again until they have done the serious re-building they should have started straight after Howard and Costello were made has-beens.

  22. [Hopefully Stephen Conroy can brief Albo]

    Why?

    The fool wants Labor to lose!

    Besides, Albo will beat Turnbull. Albo presents truth and facts, he wins.

    Is that such a surprise?

  25. Well here is a conflict for a founding member of the Informal Party.

    On 7 September I will be attending a lunch with a group of friends, all dyed-in-the-wool Labour supporters.

    Apparently part of the lunch will be ‘rubbing J—-‘ who is the mother of one of the participants and who is a Labor Talisman.

  26. What in gods name is happening to the public service in this country.

    ATO’s revamped website an absolute mess, and now a massive stuff up between the ATO and CSA.

    I wonder how many man hours have been lost for private sector employers over the last month dealing with these 2 depts.

  28. t

    ‘I wonder how many man hours have been lost for private sector employers over the last month dealing with these 2 depts.’

    Lordy, Lib Hacks doing tag team. This is a bit of esoterica, which is a plus.

    The answer to your question is ‘How many hours does the private sector spend on avoiding and evading tax?’

  30. Conroy briefing Albanese would have to be a plus for Turnbull. AA has plenty of smarts and it would be a very good debate.

    Zoidlord I basically agree on the interest rate politics. Agree Howard started the ball rolling and it is really the greatest non-event in the last 20 years. Interest rates will go up and down and governments have very little influence over the movements. Also there is no “right” level of interest rates and they will move based on what economic factors are doing much of which is dependent on global influences.

    Basically the whole interest rate argument is bullshit (pardon the French).

  31. Senator Assange does sound better than Mr Assange.

    Would it create a diplomatic incident with Australia if the Brits persist…

  34. [What in gods name is happening to the public service in this country.

    ATO’s revamped website an absolute mess, and now a massive stuff up between the ATO and CSA.

    I wonder how many man hours have been lost for private sector employers over the last month dealing with these 2 depts.]

    If the ATO is anything like the rest of the public service the website and all and sundry technical work would have been done by the private sector through contractors or consultants.

  36. Boerwar@1175

    Well here is a conflict for a founding member of the Informal Party.

    On 7 September I will be attending a lunch with a group of friends, all dyed-in-the-wool Labour supporters.

    Apparently part of the lunch will be ‘rubbing J—-’ who is the mother of one of the participants and who is a Labor Talisman.

    The old keys in the jar eh boerwar? Saucy devil.

  38. [Conroy briefing Albanese would have to be a plus for Turnbull.]

    Conroy has the detail of nearly 6 years on the portfolio, complete with numerous Senate QTs, Estimates, interviews etc.

    I would hope that Conroy is briefing Albo.

  41. Boer

    Do you know who Julie Bishop used to remind me of when she used to nod her head, presumably to say yes to the government, in QT?

    One of the first chics I ever dated in the backseat of my old Ford Escort, of course a much, much younger version of herself though 😯 that’s what she’s good for, not being a minister, certainly not FA Minister!

  45. For those following The Essendon drug saga, Mark Ricciuto said yesterday that a very reliable source advised him that James Hird has to resign or will be sacked as coach in next few days.
    This was dismissed and categorically denied by Essendon. Now the word around Melbourne town is that by Thursday Hird will be outski.

  49. [One of the first chics I ever dated in the backseat of my old Ford Escort, of course a much, much younger version of herself though 😯 that’s what she’s good for]

    Jesus christ Centre, leave off the sexist crap!

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