The Poll Bludger’s federal election guide is now live and accessible from the link on the sidebar. Featured are profiles of all 150 House of Representatives electorates, in one shape or another. Comprehensive profiles are featured for Labor seats up to around 12% in margin and Coalition seats up to around 3%. Much of the content will be familiar to those of you who have been following Seat of the Week over the past year, although ongoing political tumult has required a considerable amount of revision. Things remain to be fleshed out for some of the safe Labor seats and a lot of the non-marginal Coalition ones, but at the very least each page comes equipped with candidate lists and graphics showing census results and voting history.
A review of BludgerTrack is in order while I’m here, as we now have a full week of campaign polling after yesterday’s slightly delayed publication of Essential Reserch. It’s clear that the evenly matched polling which followed the return of Kevin Rudd, and which was starting to look alarmingly sticky from a Coalition perspective, has unpeeled over the past fortnight. Close observation suggests this has not entirely been a phenomenon of the election campaign, the Coalition having already pulled ahead over the weekend of an election date announcement which came on the Sunday, after much of the polling had already been conducted. Aggregating the polling over the period has the Coalition already a shade over 51% on two-party preferred, to which they added perhaps a little under 1% over the first week of the campaign. The Greens seem to have made a neglible dividend out of the government’s harder line, their vote being stuck in the 8% to 9% range on BludgerTrack since the beginning of June.
Looking at the progress of state breakdowns over that time, the outstanding change is a 4% swing away from Labor in all-important Queensland, consistent with the notion of a “sugar hit” that got added impetus from a home-state feel-good factor, and is now fading across the board. After showing as many as six gains for Labor in Queensland in the weeks after Rudd’s return, Labor’s yield on the BludgerTrack projection is now at zero, and briefly fell into the negative. So it’s not hard to imagine that Labor strategy meetings last week might have been spent contemplating ways to hold back the Queensland tide, and easy to understand why the name of Peter Beattie might have come up. The most recent data points suggest this may indeed have improved Labor’s position by as much as 3%, but it will be a bit longer before this shows up on BludgerTrack, if indeed it doesn’t prove illusory.
Elsewhere, Labor support looks to have come off to the tune of 1%-2% in New South Wales and South Australia and perhaps slightly less in Victoria. The interesting exception is Western Australia, where there has essentially been no change on a result which has Labor well in the hunt to poach two Liberal seats. The main political story out of the west over this period has been hostile reaction to a post-election state budget highlighted the a bungled cut to an excessively popular solar panel subsidy scheme. This has made the Barnett government the target of public attacks from federal MPs who have been open in their concern about federal electoral impacts. It may perhaps be worth noting that Western Australia is the only state without a daily News Limited tabloid.
A Newspoll result on best party to handle asylum seekers has been the most interesting item of attitudinal polling to emerge over the past week, since a point of comparison is available from a few weeks ago rather than the pre-history of the Gillard era. Whereas the Coalition fell on this measure from from 47% to 33% after the government announced its Papua New Guinea solution, the latest poll has it back up to 42%. Labor has nonetheless maintained its gain from the previous poll, having progressed from 20% to 26% to 27%, with the slack coming from “another party” and “don’t know”. Even so, the re-establishment of a solid double-digit lead to the Coalition is interesting, and a challenge to the notion that the recent poll move away from Labor has entirely been down to a “fading sugar hit”.
UPDATE (Morgan phone poll): Morgan has a small-sample phone poll of 569 respondents conducted on Monday and Tuesday night which headlines results on personal ratings, but if you burrow into the detail there’s a wildly off-trend result on voting intention with the Coalition leading 57-43 on two-party preferred from primary votes of 52% for the Coalition, 31% for Labor and 9% for the Greens. Reflecting what was obviously a bad sample for Labor, the poll has Kevin Rudd’s lead over Tony Abbott as preferred prime minister narrowing to 46-43 from 52-36 at the last such poll a month ago. Rudd is down five on approval to 40% and up nine on disapproval to 49%, while Abbott is up four to 42% and down six to 48%.
LOL: Apparently its now “negative” to point out the obvious risk of major cuts to services when Abbott has to find 70b.
People arent that stupid.
[Tom Anderson @TomAnderson62 50s
Palmer united party candidate #indivotes pic.twitter.com/m4D8f320Pi ]
He resembles Warren Truss.
No doubt about Tony in the Moral judgement question department.
Another of his shining stars, who unfortunately did not go overseas and marry her lover Lawler, has some more questions to answer.
[Since then self-proclaimed “whisteblower” Kathy Jackson has herself come under quite a bit of scrutiny as her intentions seem to become more dubious with each peek into her own past behaviour. The end result of this is that she is now under police investigation for allegations that could make claims against Thomson look like a kid being accused of pinching milk money.
Wixxyleaks has been provided with documentation that shows further evidence of wild spending patterns from figures provided to the Australian Tax Office by Kathy Jacksons branch of the union whilst she was its Secretary.
These statements show massive cash withdrawals, exorbitant spending on multiple credit cards, bar tabs and huge spends on liquor, there is massive spending at Coles Express on who knows what, there are thousands of dollars in Child Care payments for Jackson’s children despite her telling Chris Uhlmann on the ABC’s 7 30 that members never paid for her child care, an unexplained discretionary fund, restaurants, and some rather pricey camera equipment.
Below is a link to file that has images of random BAS expense reporting, as well as a spreadsheet showing the irregular expenses including credit card payments, cash withdrawals of close to $30,000 and child care payments for the Jackson children.]
http://wixxyleaks.com/2013/08/15/tougher-than-leather-craig-thomson-and-his-accusers-wild-spending-of-hsu-funds/
ruawake 2246
You obviously don’t understand how votes following a How to Vote Card work when being distributed after being eliminated from the count.
If ALP get 20,000 votes and LNP 30,000 with KAP 15,000 and PUP 5,000 the PUP get distributed.
Assume KAP 4,000 LNP 800 and ALP 200. Then KAP has 19000 which are distributed to either the LNP or ALP as per the person’s preference (not what KAP says). So if most of those 4000 PUP followed their HTV and went 3200 LNP and 800 ALP the totals would see the ALP needing 14001 of the KAP original 15,000 votes to win 35,001 to 34,999.
Again the KAP HTV has no bearing on the distribution of PUP votes.
@Gaffhook/2253
Good thing BAS was invented.
Abbott declares on 7:30 report that he’s not going to put out his costings until the last week.
Abbott declares on 7:30 report that he’s not going to put out his costings until the last week.
Is Leigh going to neck him?
[Tom Anderson @TomAnderson62 5m
Sophie I am a conviction politician. Give a voice for Indi. Governments should do no harm #indivotes]
[Tom Anderson @TomAnderson62 4m
Sophie #indivotes freedom of opportunity, freedom to live fulfilling lives. Need to compromise. Work within party. I will stand up when need]
Sounds like she’s giving your standard IPA style speech.
Abbott accepts there are more cuts
For BK:
https://twitter.com/TomAnderson62/status/367943054172225536/photo/1
the post turtle going back to his real solutions manifesto
Aw shucks, thank you confessions!
Just what I need!
[Abbott declares on 7:30 report that he’s not going to put out his costings until the last week.]
How convenient!
With the Murdoch empire behind Rabbott, any scrutiny of the costings by economists and the ALP will be starved of oxygen.
[Natalie Kotsios @NatalieKotsios 6m
Mirabella: i believe in representing the mainstream values of indi #indivotes #auspol @bordermail]
She doesn’t seem to do it very well if her tantrums in parliarment are any indication.
he doesn’t sound too healhty himself needs water now
Labor needs to go hard on this now that Abbott has said there will be cuts, and will not release till last week.
Tony Abbott in action http://www.austinrabble.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=567&d=1342487930
The empty vessel .. nothing in the bag
ausdavo
Palmer and Katter have said they will have a tight exchange of preferences. If PUP voters follow the HTV and put KAP second, KAP gets the votes. Its not that hard to understand.
BK:
There might be more yet to come!
[Tom Anderson @TomAnderson62 10s
BTW Sophie did say all that earlier whilst keeping & maintaining a straight face. #indivotes]
Train wreck interview for Abbott
Labor now need to point out that:
1. How much will be cut.
2. Where will they be cut.
3. How long will these cuts last?
4. And Finally, why did it take so long for Mr Abbott to admit this?
Latham wins iDIOt of the Day.
[
“It showed very bad judgement and it shows he has low standards,” Latham told Melbourne radio station 3AW of the comments.
“Tony had the beer goggles on and in politics they say it’s showbiz for ugly people and I don’t think she’ll be out of place.”
]
Abbott lieing again on changing GST
Guytaur I agree 100%
“@GrogsGamut: Jesus. Show some bloody courage on the GST and at least limit any changes till the next term. #abc730 #bloodypolitcs”
Confirmed: there will be cuts under Abbott, we won’t be telling you about then till as late as possible
The Member for Indi looks bored already.
https://twitter.com/TomAnderson62/status/367945845200531456/photo/1
possibly might be increasing tax bad bad interview monkey
Bad turn of phrase to use “addicted” in reference to Labor’s tobacco excise tax.
Why are school principals a “he” Mr Abbott
“@GrogsGamut: Keep watching, Tony Abbott might actually disappear by the end of this interview #minutetarget #abc730”
Major cuts – telling you late as possible.
No increase in tax – therefore it’s ALL CUTS
Great interview by Abbott.
Leigh just let the News Corp – Liberal $90 billion NBN lie through to the keeper
Leigh bells the cat on the DEBATE.
“@samanthamaiden: Abbott unveils demand future prime ministers source all furniture from Harvey Norman including modulars, nursing chairs and lazy Susans”
I gather from twitter that ABbott referred collectively to school principals as ‘he’?
Come on, Leigh! What state will say no to a bucket of money? He gave you three or four chances! The states are no impediment to changing the GST.
Abbott is getting sick. Let’s see how he is tomorrow.
“@StephenLongABC: @GrogsGamut small target, big cold. Tony Abbott might keel over soon with that croak and cough. @abc730”
The Lberal $90 billion lie is only a little worse than the Labor $70 billion lie.
“@KarenMMiddleton: Leigh Sales says Tony Abbott & Kevin Rudd cld come in to @abc730 & debate. May I say they are also welcome to @sbsnews to do same. #anytime”
Tony went all Bob Katter in the end, he’s such a creepy weirdo…
Tony went all Bob Katter in the end, he’s such a creepy weirdo…
Peter Brent @mumbletwits 26s
We do all know the GST can simply be changed by federal legislation, don’t we?
[Tom Anderson @TomAnderson62 50s
Sophie speaks at #indivotes “no level of unemployment or poverty is acceptable ” need to create opportunity. Best form of welfare is a job]
[Tom Anderson @TomAnderson62 18s
Profit is not a dirty word. It is the enabler of healthily thriving community. Allows for corporate philanthropy says Sophie #indivotes]
Don’t agree changing the GST legislation would be simple.
Abbott nailed that interview, you could see knew it at the end too!