BludgerTrack: 52.6-47.4 to Coalition

Six new national polls have emerged over the past few days, animating much discussion about the relative merits of the various polling methodologies on offer.

The latest BludgerTrack poll aggregate update incorporates findings from no fewer than six national opinion polls which have emerged over the past 48 hours, with published two-party preferred figures ranging from 50-50 to 54-46 in favour of the Coalition. The latter figure happened to come from the highest profile name in the game, Newspoll, and was derived from an enlarged sample of 1676. Newspoll was one of two live interview phone polls out of the bunch, the other being the comparably authoritative (to my mind at least) Galaxy, which had the Coalition lead at 52-48. The others used different methods, and on balance had more favourable results for Labor. The weekly Morgan “multi-mode” poll, combining face-to-face, online and SMS surveying, had the Coalition leading 51-49 on its headline figure. However, this was derived from respondent-allocated preferences, the generally more reliable method of allocating preferences as per the previous election result concurring with Galaxy in having it at 52-48. Like Newspoll, this came from a larger than usual sample of 4515. Also on 52-48 was an automated phone poll of 1676 respondents from Lonergan, a new outfit whose managing director Chris Lonergan was formerly a research director at Galaxy, and previously worked at Newspoll and Roy Morgan.

The best results of all for Labor were both 50-50, and both came from online pollsters: the well-established Essential Research (976 respondents from this week, with the published figure being a two-week rolling average) and relative newcomer AMR Research (1134 respondents), which to my knowledge has now conducted three national polls. Throwing all these numbers into the trend and applying the usual weights and bias adjustments, BludgerTrack comes out at 52.6-47.4 in the Coalition’s favour, the general picture being that the Coalition has gained at or near 1% over three consecutive weeks. The state projections find Labor stubbornly clinging to its swing in Western Australia despite a general perception that the best it can hope for there is to gain the seat of Hasluck, and that even that looks doubtful.

The following is a very random aggregation of electorate-level snippets that I’ll shortly be using to update the Poll Bludger seat-by-seat election guide. See also the post below for reviews of the regional Victorian seats of Mallee and Indi.

Brisbane (Liberal National 1.1%): Laura Tingle of the Financial Review wrote at the start of the campaign that “both sides presume Teresa Gambaro’s seat of Brisbane will fall to Labor” (with two other Liberal National Party seats, Longman and Bonner, said to be “at risk”). That presumption has almost certainly faded since then, but Kevin Rudd has likely had half an eye on the seat in seeking to elevate same-sex marriage as an election issue. Patricia Karvelas of The Australian reports that Australian Marriage Equality has distributed 70,000 flyers in the electorate calling on Gambaro to declare her support.

Bennelong (Liberal 3.1%): Kevin Rudd has twice visited the seat famously lost by John Howard in 2007 and Maxine McKew in 2010, evidently hoping that his popularity among the electorate’s many Asian voters will lead to a boilover. During the first of these visits he promised to make Korean a priority language for the national curriculum. Labor’s candidate for the seat is Jason Yat-Sen Li, a businessman and high-profile figure in the Chinese community. In 1998 he ran as the lead Senate candidate of the Unity party, which was established to combat the rise of Pauline Hanson.

Bass (Labor 6.7%): Labor MP Geoff Lyons last week said he was “sincerely sorry• for telling an assembly of high school students that his Liberal opponent, Andrew Nikolic, has “misled” journalists about his role in the military. Lyons had claimed Nikolic had been a “bureaucrat” in Canberra for the last 25 years, a period encompassing his tenure as deputy commander of Australian forces in the early days of the Afghanistan war and commander in southern Iraq in 2005.

Solomon (Country Liberal 1.8%): Kevin Rudd last week made a contentious bid for support in the Darwin-based electorate by promising that within five years a “northern economic zone” would be established in the Territory, to which businesses would be lured through a corporate tax rate a third lower than the rest of the country. This looked notably similar to an idea the Coalition had floated earlier in the year with encouragement from Gina Rinehart, which had Lindsay MP David Bradbury contemplating “gold-plated footpaths in Karratha while people are stuck in gridlock in Sydney”. In a radio interview the following morning, Bill Shorten had to concede that the announcement had been news to him.

Macquarie (Liberal 1.3%): On August 10, Heath Aston of the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Liberal internal polling had the party gravely concerned about Louise Markus’s outer Sydney seat. As the report noted, Labor candidate Susan Templeman has been “conspicuous in Mr Rudd’s western Sydney campaign events”.

Hindmarsh (Labor 6.1%): Samantha Maiden of News Limited reported on Sunday that strategists from both parties expected this western Adelaide seat to fall to the Liberals, despite Labor member Steve Georganas’s solid margin. The report quoted a Labor strategist saying of South Australia: “If any seat is likely to fall it is Hindmarsh. The older voters and the Greeks don’t like the same-sex marriage stuff.” Internal polling was also said to have had the Liberals hoping to take Wakefield from Labor’s Nick Champion (margin 10.5%), with Kate Ellis’s seat of Adelaide (7.5%) and Tony Zappia’s seat of Makin (12.0%) “less likely to fall but still in play”.

Dobell (Labor 5.1%): Troy Bramston of The Australian reported on August 12 that Labor polling conducted at the end of July had them leading 55-45, with Craig Thomson recording a primary vote of 6%, but that the party was “more pessimistic now”. The contest has become slightly more complicated still with the entry of former test cricketer Nathan Bracken as an independent, running with financial support from colourful advertising mogul John Singleton.

Kennedy (Independent 18.3% versus Liberal National): Labor made a late substitution in Bob Katter’s seat after its initial candidate, Ken Robertson, was deemed to have gone overboard in accusing Tony Abbott of being a racist who wanted a return to the White Australian Policy. The new candidate is project engineer Andrew Turnour.

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.

1,097 comments on “BludgerTrack: 52.6-47.4 to Coalition”

Comments Page 19 of 22
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  2. confessions
    [I’ve noticed in the last week or so that the usual Crikey gremlins that occur at this time have been absent.]

    I don’t think so. I had a post disappear at 8.00 am today.

    Aus women 2-65.

  4. Andrew Demetriou must be the leaker-in-chief.

    If so, he is more incompetent than ever I thought. And that is saying something.

    A decent independent inquiry is needed. Fukushima Switkowski has already shown his uselessness with his review. The bloke should never be given another job apart from emptying the latrines.

  9. triton,

    ASADA is being / has been given powers to deny silence, if 7.5 is to be believed.

    A Cronulla bloke went to ASADA with a legal bod and refused to answer (self-incrimination thingy). The rules were / are being changed.

  11. My 11 year old son just got irate at the Labor Grim Reaper ad yelling “What are we going to cut! Labor has spent way too much money and someone has to pay it back!”

    Where do these kids pick it up from? It’s certainly not from his parents.

  12. 5th Investec Test: England v Australia at The Oval
    Aug 21-25, 2013 (11:00 local | 10:00 GMT | 20:00 EST | 19:30 CST | 18:00 WST)

  17. So in summary today.

    1) Kevin thinks he is moses on one pedestal and then almost has a stroke ranting about the evil rich people’s PPL when his own treasurer got slapped in the face with FACTS last night on QandA

    “TONY JONES: Chris Bowen, you say it is not fair but actually mothers on low wages get much more under the Coalition scheme…

    CHRIS BOWEN: Yeah.

    TONY JONES: …than they get under the Labor scheme. That is exactly why people like Eva Cox and the Greens, for that matter, support this scheme. So Tony Abbott says a mother on minimum wages will be $5,000 better off. A mother on average wages $21,000 better off. So how can you say that is not fair? ”

    2) Kevin looks like he is having a stroke when talking about the lib candidate without having any facts. Yes Kev, who was it again that did deals with Craig Thomson ? Which party paid for his legal bills ? And they have the gaul to talk about jokes involving sex with stripper. Irony isn’t the ALP’s strong suit. And ironically it looked like the candidate was probably going to win the seat and still might.

    3) We have leftards on this site using expressions like Coalition “Barbie” and no a single remark. Had a non-leftard said it, OMF the faux outrage would be dripping from the ceilings.

    4) Kevin used the word “cuts” about another 54,000. Plibersek standing next to him look like she was standing on nails. Bet she was thinking what she would like to cut off Kevin.

    5) Combet gets aired and he still looks like he wants to swallow his tongue. How was your tax payer paid Holiday ?

    6) Gillard buys a $2M waterfront property. Guess there was no direct translation for 1 meter seas rieses in bogan.

    7) And back on the PPL, sort of ironic the unions are deathly quiet when only 4 weeks ago they were pressuring Kevin to match Abbotts scheme. That might be Kevin’s last week announcement and make it sound like his own. Bet that time he won’t release it in the NT.

    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/unions-deal-pm-a-blow-with-call-for-more-parental-leave-20130615-2oaxq.html

    “Like the Abbott scheme, the Unions NSW proposal calls for superannuation to be paid on all paid parental leave payments.
    Unions NSW chief Mark Lennon said all employers would pay a levy into a pool from which women would draw top-up payments, to give them the equivalent of their wage, to a maximum of $72,400 a year.
    He said many families were finding it difficult to afford taking parental leave paid at the minimum wage.”

    One wonders if the ALP had released an equivalent of Abbott’s PPL policy it would have been visionary, wonderful, honey drippingly fantastic and all the drones would have crowded around his feet for a share of wisdom. Alas, the ALP has the NDIS which will suck in $20-30B when fully functional. Where was that money coming from again ?

  19. [Aug 21-25, 2013 (11:00 local | 10:00 GMT | 20:00 EST | 19:30 CST | 18:00 WST)]

    Awesome! That’s tomorrow after the forum thingy.

  20. [My 11 year old son just got irate at the Labor Grim Reaper ad yelling “What are we going to cut! Labor has spent way too much money and someone has to pay it back!”

    Where do these kids pick it up from? It’s certainly not from his parents.]

    Poor kids knows it won’t be mommy and daddy paying back Labors debt, it’ll be him and his mates.

  22. Dio

    ‘Of course, the journalists will never bell that particular cat so the AFL get away with serious misconduct.’

    Not exactly. There are a couple of camps here and one of those camps have been spraying fire at the Hird/Essendon mob and the other camp has been spraying fire at Demetriou/AFL.

    In terms of Danks, there has been as who should say, some interesting factoids floating about. Danks has been assuring everyone that he is totally innocent and that anyone associated with him, ditto. So far, of course, he has not felt any particular need to provide any of the facts that would actually prove that he is innocent. And threatening to sool his legal team on anyone who says that he is a bad guy.

    The 7.30 report did a bit of a report into Cronulla tonight. Two specific, definitely banned drugs were named. If so, and if it can be demonstrated that Cronulla players were injected with them, then three things will happen. The first is that Dank’s claims of innocence in relation to Cronulla will be considered with more than usual interest by ASADA. The second is that similar claims by Danks in relation to his Essendon activities, ditto. The third is that significant numbers of Cronulla players are going to find some free time to play more golf. The compounding pharmacist in the Cronulla case seems to have had, in Sydney parlance, a colourful career of sorts.

    I understand one of the issues with AOD is the form in which it was applied, specifically whether it was injected or ingested or becreamed. I have been told that it in supermarket foods, and that it is available on prescription from compounding pharmacists. If these stories are true, then in some forms it has been approved for human use.The second issue around AOD is that there is little or no evidence that it is performance enhancing. I assume that it was on the basis of these two issues that Watson felt free to go public. If so and if WADA come down like a ton of bricks on Essendon players, it will be back to lawyers at 50 paces.

  26. fess

    That ad with the lights being turned out on the groups who will face cutbacks. The kid gets it in the end.

    triton

    Looks like you can be fined for staying silent.

  27. Sean Tisme

    Posted Tuesday, August 20, 2013 at 9:08 pm | Permalink

    ==================================================

    I’m still waiting for that answer

  29. Ducky:

    Apparently there is a leaders town hall thing on tomorrow night. Broadcast on Sky and one of the FTA TV networks – can’t remember.

    Dio:

    I don’t get any Labor ads here, so haven’t seen it.

  30. CHEER UP!

    You know that meeting I referred to last night. Which I intended to attend.

    Well probably not.

    It happened this morning.

    TV was on politics, sound off.

    Attendee (Small Business Owner) says. Are you interested in this?

    Yes. You?

    Not so much. Bit busy. But take some notice.

    Did you watch last night’s umm ……?

    QandA?

    Yes; who do you think won it?

    The guy on the left.

    Bowen? Chris Bowen?

    Is that his name? Treasurer or something.

    Yes. Hockey was the other guy. Waffles a bit much for my liking.

    I am a swinging voter.

    Oh.? I’m Labor.

    What about PPL?

    What is that? Oh, right. First I thought it was okay, but now I don’t.

    Yes, why? Taxation implications? Equity?

    Yes.

    You know how I decide who to vote for? Any policy I agree with a put a mental circle around. Whoever gets the most circles, gets my vote.

    Oh. How many circles do you have now and in whose favour?

    A lot.

    For Labor.

    Would you like some more circles? I have quite a number in the office.

  31. All us lovely retirees will not only end up looking after our grandchildren we will also pay for the privilege of having them under Abbotts PPL

  33. What about Xenephon trying to blame footy betting for teams taking performance enhancing substances?

    Has there ever been such a loudmouthed lightweight ever when it comes to betting like Xenephon?

    No way 😆

  37. I’ve just been checking the early prices for the 3rd last round of footy on the weekend.

    More cash to be made me thinks 😀

  38. Sean could you please answer AA on the UA’s or he will still be going on about it long after the next government is sworn in.

  39. I just received some more bumph through the mail from Michelee Rowland — her “pledge to keep delivering”.

    Personally, I don’t see that Ms Rowland is likely to deliver any service I’m interested in having delivered, or if there is one such, I’d prefer someone else delivered it.

    Certainly, if she stopped delivering her pamphlets to my household, I’d value that.

  42. davidwh

    Posted Tuesday, August 20, 2013 at 9:20 pm | Permalink

    Sean could you please answer AA on the UA’s or he will still be going on about it long after the next government is sworn in.
    ———————————————————-

    yep. He’s avoided answering many questions I’ve asked, this one I’m not letting go…

    I’ve got plenty of time now that I am retired…

  45. One wonders if the ALP had released an equivalent of Abbott’s PPL policy it would have been visionary, wonderful, honey drippingly fantastic and all the drones would have crowded around his feet for a share of wisdom.

    Had Labor proposed such a scheme it would have been pilloried as irresponsible and unaffordable. There would have been screaming headlines in the Murdoch papers highlighting how the company tax hike would destroy the economy through cost of living increases and job losses.

    As for the NDIS, that is a classic Labor initiative. That’s what civilised societies do when they can afford it. I am happy to pay the additional tax to support those who can have a good life and contribute with a bit of help from the rest of us.

  47. Antony Green is on the money here

    [What Happens if a Candidate Withdraws from a Contest?

    This afternoon the Liberal Party announced that its candidate for the NSW Hunter seat of Charlton had withdrawn from the election.

    The candidate, Kevin Baker, withdrew after it emerged he had been associated with an online forum for car enthusiasts several years ago which reportedly included jokes about domestic violence and public sex with strippers. Baker and the Liberal Party will do no more campaigning in the electorate and activity on polling day will only concern getting out the Liberal Senate vote.

    So what happens to the election in Charlton? Does a vote or preference for Baker still count?]

    http://bit.ly/1anmKkH

  48. Abetz leaves the door wide open on cutting penalty rates: employers intensify pressure

    If Tony Abbott is elected in September, his big business buddies will threaten penalty rates for thousands of retail and hospitality workers.

    The Australian Retailers Association said between 30 to 40 retailers recently met opposition frontbencher Eric Abetz and told him that they want to see the end of penalty rates.

    His response? Support. Senator Abetz has not ruled out a Coalition government intervening in support of an employer application to the Fair Work Commission.

    Executive Director Russell Zimmerman said yesterday the retail sector “ cannot afford” penalty rates of 100 per cent on Sundays. “ We would ask them [a Coalition government] to support a case for the reduction of penalty rates on Sunday.”

    Tony Abbott signalled in April he intends to use the weight of the office of Prime Minister to drive down penalty rates if he wins in September.

    When asked about abolishing penalty rates at a Liberal Party organised forum in Kingston, South Australia, Mr Abbott indicated he believed the only way to bring this about would be for a Federal government to pressure the independent umpire to strip back penalty rates.

    Echoing Mr Zimmerman’s comments, John Hart, Chief Executive of ‘Restaurant & Catering’, said his organisation would want the Coalition to make a submission supporting attempts to cut penalty rates.

    This isn’t the first time we’ve heard these sentiments – Tony Abbott, Eric Abetz and Julie Bishop have all made similar comments

  49. davidwh

    Posted Tuesday, August 20, 2013 at 9:25 pm | Permalink

    I’d answer it for you AA but I don’t want to spoil your fun 😉
    ——————————————————-

    please don’t.

  50. Well Bludgers it’s looking like the souffle can’t rise twice. Kev is looking flaccid, limp and lifeless second time around.

    Meanwhile Tony Abbott has continued doing his impression of a normal human being, fooling most Australians more because they want to be fooled than because of the skill of his performance. Labor just has to go after the circus of the past three and a bit years.

    For better or for worse we are about to enter the age of old creepy and his discomfortingly misplaced modern machismo. A modern beast-man, a creature fit only to howl at the moon, stuffed inside an overly-exercised human skin, only the eyes offering a glimpse – as though through a dirty window – of the haunted monster within. Oh, we shall weep for our salvation.

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