Election guide and BludgerTrack review

The Poll Bludger’s guide to the 150 House of Representatives electorates is now in business. Also featured: a closer look at the BludgerTrack poll aggregate’s movements since the start of the campaign.

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%.

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.

2,674 comments on “Election guide and BludgerTrack review”

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  1. zoidlord

    Posted Thursday, August 15, 2013 at 8:38 pm | Permalink

    @guytaur/2343

    All the liberals are the same, Andrew Laming parked in a disabled car park earlier this year if I remember.
    ———————————————————–

    Being a Liberal is a disability???

  2. AA

    [Clauses 32‑36 of the Intergovernmental Agreement on the Reform of Commonwealth‑State Financial Relations set out the administration arrangements applying to the GST.
    ]

    The IGA has no force in law. The Commonwealth can make, or unmake, any law to do with taxation as it has this power Under s51 of the Constitution.

    There may be a political downside to break promises etc, but there is no impediment at law.

    Abbott said it 4 times tonight -that the states need to agree – and Sales is not over her brief enough to challenge him on it.

  3. Guytaur
    [Abbott is losing the election]
    Well one of us obviously has to adjust our beer glasses. I actually thought you were being sarcastic about how “well” Labor is going in Qld. Beattie’s odds in Forde are now around what the previous ALP’s candidate’s odds were, so good captain’s pick there. (1.55/2.30 ALP/LNP)

  4. ‘That snarky one liner wouldn’t work, Rosemour. Abbott would just deny what he said and it would turn into a bout of “he said/she said” negative politics, which he will look like the victim of.’

    Abbot would deny something he said on TV which you can watch on Youtube?

    He could I suppose.

    So Carey, you’re suggesting the ALP never use Abbott’s own words against him if there is political advantage in it?

    You do want the ALP to win, right?

  5. sprocket_

    Posted Thursday, August 15, 2013 at 8:44 pm | Permalink

    AA

    Clauses 32‑36 of the Intergovernmental Agreement on the Reform of Commonwealth‑State Financial Relations set out the administration arrangements applying to the GST.

    The IGA has no force in law. The Commonwealth can make, or unmake, any law to do with taxation as it has this power Under s51 of the Constitution.

    There may be a political downside to break promises etc, but there is no impediment at law.

    Abbott said it 4 times tonight -that the states need to agree – and Sales is not over her brief enough to challenge him on it.
    ————————————————–

    I think that was pointed out in an earlier post.

    I just thought I would have a look at the legislation and post what I thought would be interest not to support any position I have

  6. Rosemour, for someone who smugly acts as though they are some wise political sage above everybody else here, you’re showing some ridiculous naivete if you believe that snarky remarks about Abbott win elections.

  7. [For Labor its gone from massive wipeout as seen in Queensland to Too Close to Call. For Labor that is going well.]

    Thats how I read it,and Im pretty sure thats how itll stay, whoever wins. Polls may yet come to change my view, but at present Im going with 51-49 as per recent Essential. Thats close, punters.

    Tasmania doesnt have enough seats to truly decide anything, but its true there seems be be a swing on there. Good on Giddings for saying that.

  8. I mean seriously, you want to dig up a gaffe from several years ago. That’s the kind of thinking that gets the ALP into the position that it’s locked out of government everywhere!

  9. The ALP caught a disease under Beazly’s leadership called Timidiosis politicosis pissweakitis from which they haven’t yet recovered.
    I fear the pummeling they’re going to take next month will make the condition worse.

    Dr Bruce Hawker MD GURU Syd, doesn’t seem to have the appropriate treatment.

    He could be a quack.

  10. AA

    [I think that was pointed out in an earlier post.

    I just thought I would have a look at the legislation and post what I thought would be interest not to support any position I have]

    The Commonwealth/State relations are very interesting, and I can recommend the Budget Papers and the COAG website. When it comes down to disputes, the Cth holds all the cards as it has the taxation and corporations powers which give it control of the money.

    The real constraint on the Feds doing what they want is the Senate, where the Executive can have its program delayed or rejected. As PM Abbott will soon learn with his repeal-a-thon.

  11. “@PaulEErickson: Heard @ReachTel polled Melb tonight.

    Didn’t ask whether @AdamBandt should support Turnbull in a hung parl, so it wasn’t for the Greens.”

  12. Rosemour
    If that really is your site then you’re far too intelligent and educated to be in among the Labor rabble on PB. No wonder they give you a hard time … they don’t handle realism very well.

  13. mari

    I’m 57 and I’m a green/labor….labor/grenn voter have been for years. I have nothing to hide.
    How about you?

  14. So, Beattie a clear favourite to win Forde.

    Can’t really say I’m shocked.

    [Beattie’s odds in Forde are now around what the previous ALP’s candidate’s odds were, so good captain’s pick there. (1.55/2.30 ALP/LNP)]

    Mostly false: They were 1.75/ 1.95 before Beattie. And Tab has it 1.4 to 2.8 actually 🙂

    Speaking of politifact: the rate Rudd’s claim that the Federal govt can change GST without the states “true”.

  15. [If that really is your site then you’re far too intelligent and educated to be in among the Labor rabble on PB. No wonder they give you a hard time … they don’t handle realism very well.]

    Give it a rest!

  16. Rosie or less

    WOW is this a you dare I dare, I am an old duck who enjoys life and dread to think what will happen if Abbott gets in, Off now for my final lunch before I leave Scotland

  17. CareyMoore:

    [That snarky one liner wouldn’t work, Rosemour. Abbott would just deny what he said and it would turn into a bout of “he said/she said” negative politics, which he will look like the victim of.]

    I disagree on general grounds. I hear this “but the opposition will jst say that …” line so often and it’s entirely unimpressive.

    Of course if someone takes a swing that in their opinion stands to prejudice their standing within audiences they think they will need, they are going to try a rebuttal of some kind. This doesn’t mean it will work, where work means “neutralise all reputational harm”.

    In practice, very few rebuttals ever achieve that — which is why the LNP have gone non-stop at the regime with negative campaigning for the last 3 years. The regime hasd tried rebutting but it clearly hasn’t entirely worked. Some of the mud has stuck — admittedly in part because you know who started pretending he was Peter Beattie, but with the Murdoch led press in the other corner.

    Even rebuttals that do neutralise damage temporarily won’t do it permanently, so it’s still worth doing. If an analogous incident arises or the complaint is still in public discourse, then this looks like a pattern — hence the sexism attack. These things can define Abbott as a sexist as surely as Gillard was defined as a liar and double dealer, and every subsequent attack turned on that.

    There simply is no appreciable downside to doing stuff like this, because in this case, the attack can be shown to be germane, given the LNP’s disinclination to release their costings — “the carefully written down stuff”.

  18. Mari
    [WOW is this a you dare I dare, I am an old duck who enjoys life and dread to think what will happen if Abbott gets in, Off now for my final lunch before I leave Scotland]
    Maybe you oughta stay on in Scotland if that’s the way you feel.

  19. The fact of the matter is simple:

    – The Government’s record in the last three years, at least in public perception, is dire. What with musical chairs leadership and unpopular policies such as the carbon tax.

    – So far Rudd has been light on any bloody substance, preferring instead to try and rely on some celebrity status which is rapidly fading away because a) he is not the greener grass on the other side and b) voters actually start caring about issues at elections.

    – Labor’s resources are severely limited which means limited advertising and the logistics of campaigning becomes harder. The Coalition, on the other hand, have a huge piggy bank at their disposal.

    – The vibe, believe it or not is “It’s time!” and everybody knows it. One of the reasons the Murdoch papers blatently chose sides is they knew that’s what the readers want to see.

    – As the election is slipping away, the desperation is showing among Labor, making them do some ill-advised things.

    There are other factors but one thing is for certain: they are not losing because they’ve neglected to dig up a gaffe from early 2010!

  20. That blog’s been abandoned for years. I am too lazy to take it down (rather, I’ve forgotten the login info). If Crikey allowed me to edit my damn profile, I’d remove the link.

  21. Just before I go Thank you Rosemour I am having a good trip
    but coming to an end now, will be pleased to gt back to OZ
    after Dubai

    MICK77

    Simple question is why should I stay in Scotland, I assume because I don’t agree with what you say? Toughen up Micky! 😀

    OK now off

  22. OK, the review of Leigh Sales interview is obviously needed.

    Ahem .. throat clearing moment here.

    Mr Abbott was at odds tonight to answer questions on his policy position & costings. Just 23 days out from the election it is still as close to impossible for the average voter to have a clear idea of what the Coalition government is prepared to axe in order to pay for it’s over commitment to big business & the Murdoch press. The ill health of the leader of the opposition, evident in tonight’s appearance will come as a major concern to the loyal Liberal voters as without his single minded determination to wreck the joint & push through one of the most negative campaigns in Australia’s history all is lost. The next 2 weeks will be a trying ordeal for Mr Abbott as he try’s to convince the public that he has a better offer or indeed anything to offer at all.

  23. Rosemour & Carey
    I’ve no idea who was saying what to whom at the end of the confusion, but my first post to Rosemour @ 2375 stands.

    And on a serious note you have a very noble occupation, and obvious talent; good on yer. And you’re also a reasonable double for Billy Connolly. Just a shame about your politics!

  24. Carey @ 2391:

    Well said!

    Simon Jackman concludes in his latest:

    [But even if we assume that collectively the polling industry is totally unbiased, with pollster-specific biases “averaging out” to zero, we get only a slightly higher estimate of Labor vote share: 49.2% +/- 1.1pp, corresponding to a 4% probability that Labor is outperforming its 2010 result (50.12% TPP).

    Under either set of assumptions, current polling points to the Coalition almost surely winning. The polls would have to be wrong in a way that we haven’t seen in previous Australian election cycles for any other conclusion to hold.]
    http://www.theguardian.com/world/the-swing/2013/aug/14/polls-easy-coalition-win-wrong?CMP=twt_gu

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