James J relates that Newspoll has published two further aggregated marginal seats polls to join the survey of five Sydney seats published yesterday. One targets the four most marginal Labor seats in New South Wales outside Sydney – Dobell (5.1%), Robertson (1.0%), Page (4.2%) and Eden-Monaro (4.2%) – plus, somewhat messily, the Sydney seat of Kingsford Smith (UPDATE: It gets messier – the Dobell and Robertson component of the poll was conducted, and published, two weeks ago, while the remainder is new polling from the other three seats). The collective result is 53-47 to the Liberals, suggesting a swing of 7%. The primary votes are 48% for the Coalition and 36% for Labor. The other targets the three most marginal Labor seats in Victoria, Corangamite (0.3%), Deakin (0.6%) and La Trobe (1.7%), showing the Liberals with a 53-47 lead and suggesting a swing of about 4%. The primary votes are 34% for Labor and 47% for the Coalition. Each of the three has a sample of 800 and a margin of error of about 3.5%. The Australian’s display of all three seats of results including personal ratings and voter commitment numbers can be viewed here.
Also today:
• Morgan has a “multi-mode” poll conducted on Wednesday and Thursday by phone and internet, which is different from the normal face-to-face, SMS and internet series it publishes every Sunday or Monday. The poll appears to have had a sample of 574 telephone respondents supplemented by 1025 online responses. The poll has the Coalition leading 53-47 on two-party preferred with respondent-allocated preferences (54-46 on 2010 preferences) from primary votes of 30.5% for Labor, 44% for the Coalition and 12% for the Greens. Of the weighty 13.5% “others” component, Morgan informs us that the Palmer United Party has spiked to 4%. The Morgan release compares these figures directly with those in the weekly multi-mode result from Sunday night, but given the difference in method (and in particular the tendency of face-to-face polling to skew to Labor) I’m not sure how valid this is. Morgan also has personal ratings derived from the telephone component of the poll, which among other things have Tony Abbott ahead of Kevin Rudd as preferred prime minister.
• JWS Research has some scattered looking automated phone poll results from various Labor seats which include one piece of good news for Labor – a 57.2-42.8 lead for Kevin Rudd in Griffith, for a swing against Labor of a little over 1% – together with a rather greater amount of bad news: Wayne Swan trailing 53.8-46.2 in Lilley (a 7% swing), Chris Bowen trailing 53.1-46.9 in McMahon (11%), Rob Mitchell trailing 54.7-45.3 in his seemingly safe Melbourne fringe seat of McEwen (14%), and Labor hanging on to a 50.6-49.4 lead in Bendigo (9%), to be vacated by the retirement of Steve Gibbons.
• The latest Galaxy automated phone poll for The Advertiser targets Kate Ellis’s seat of Adelaide and gives Labor one of its better results from such polling, with Ellis leading her Liberal opponent 54-46. This suggests a swing to the Liberals of 3.5%. The samples in these polls have been about 550, with margins of error of about 4.2%.
UPDATE: Galaxy has a further two electorate-level automated poll results, showing the Liberal National Party well ahead in its Queensland marginals of Herbert (55-45) and Dawson (57-43).
Isn’t it obvious? Lib Hq tells News Corpse where its polling says Labor in trouble, then NC commissions Newspoll to do a poll of that seat.
Labor must point out the dishonesty and arrogance of Abbott’s decision to now delay releasing his figures till hours before teh polls:
[Tony Abbott, whose campaign has been buoyed by Labor’s failed attack on the Coalition’s supposed budget black hole, has revealed he will not release detailed costings of his policy promises until the last few hours before the poll.
As both sides braced for the final week of election 2013, an increasingly confident Mr Abbott revealed his complete policy costings would be kept under wraps until ”the end of next week”.]
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/libs-stall-on-costings-as-labor-stumbles-20130830-2sw97.html#ixzz2dUXOldIR
This is a broken promise. Abbott said he would release the details in time to be scrutinised. Now he will not. Why keep them hidden if they are legitimate? What about all the postal votes and early voters? Apparently several hundred thousand people have already voted, with Abbott’s policy details nowhere in sight. The Liberals do pan to cut, cut cut, and they are keeping the evidence hidden till polling day.
Rudd, Bowen or Albanese should point out that Abbott and Hockey are falling far short of the standard set by Costello in previous campaigns.
[ New2This
Posted Saturday, August 31, 2013 at 6:28 am | Permalink
The nightmare is nearly over…
]
You have probable only ever seen the Liberals squander the tax income that comes when an economy in going through good time.
They have there own records to beat, highest interest rates, highest unemployment, highest debt levels all Liberal records, I am sure the Liberals can build on one.
My fear is they will go for highest level of unemployment.
I am going for 54 seats (page and Richmond are probably the difference) but you have stated the obvious beautifully Meher baba
Saturday 7 September – the party of icac meets the voters.
I’ve heard a common complaint that Abbott hasn’t been releasing many policies. This isn’t quite true. A good summary is available here:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=358295170968209
Socrates, don’t you think the time for this is over? Policies, costings, promises who cares? Joe Punter sees one very disciplined party and one that is a complete rabble. This perception was infallibly defined by the knifing of PMJG and nothing can change it now. 54 seats max for ALP.
Thinking further about the Uni Canberra research on Australia’s low cost of living, and still improving economy, plus The Economist recommending Labor, this makes two campaigns in a row where the selling of Labor’s own economic success has been distinctly under-whelming, and an after thought in an overall negative campaign. Why?
With two different leaders involved, I think some of this must be put down to campaign strategy, and those who run it, namely Bruce Hawker. Hawker is the common denominator, and was also heavily involved in the NSW State Labor campaigns that became so odious. Why does he still get the gig?
The campaigns are not that clever, just a repeat of a previously successful approach under Carr as Premier. But that approach has not worked since 2010, with Labor going backwards in that campaign, this one, and the last NSW State election. If you repeat the same behaviour and expect a different outcome, isn’t that a definition of insanity?
The campaigns focus on negative messages, and sympathise with those “doing it tough”. But this cynical posturing to Howard’s aspirational classes completely undercuts Labor’s ability to sell its genuine achievements. The truth is most people are not “doing it tough” and the average Australian is richer than the average person in ANY other OECD country. That is a fantastic achievement, but you hear it more from bloggers and academics than anyone in a Labor campaign team. Like most of Cabinet, Hawker has never studied economics, and it shows.
So after the wreckage clears, and Labor finally gets around to cleaning out the ces-pit of its parliamentary members and NSW branch administration, can we also get a new campaign team. Having friends in Labor’s hierarchy does not entitle you to a job for life, no matter how badly you do your job, the example of Mike Kaiser excepted. Labor will never recover till the current generation of political klutzes (not just the ones in parliament, the idiots in the office too) are replaced.
OK – yawn
[Saturday 7 September – the party of icac meets the voters.]
The Coalition and Labor are now running a joint ticket?
Oh wait. I get it. You are doing the dumb partisan hack thing while completely ignoring history and the real problems of NSW.
Socrates – if labor loses this election, nobody will be more responsible than Wayne Swan, and Julia keeping him in the job.
OC 157
Yes it probably is too late now, but I was just reflecting on why that is so in post 158.
Labor has never been more successful in its history as an economic manager than now, yet still can’t sell its message regardless of who is the leader. So there are two problems. Being a squabbling rabble is one. Some of the squabblers being genuinely incompetent at politics is the other.
The party of Murdoch meets the voters
K17
[Socrates – if labor loses this election, nobody will be more responsible than Wayne Swan, and Julia keeping him in the job.]
Let the blame game begin in the hate-filled party.
Kevin one seven
That is true too re: Swan. I cut him a lot of slack while Treasurer in the hopes he would improve, but he never did. Under him Treasury did a superb job, yet he as completely unable to sell it. The time-specific promise of a surplus was a millstone around the parties neck.
His last budget in May 2013 was also terrible. I said here then that many project funds had been put off till 2016. That was denied by some here, but has proven true. Has Swan not heard of political cycles, and doing the hard things in the first year so you can see the benefits by the election? Swan did the opposite. I have never seen a government promise ot spend so little in the lead up to an election.
Poor Tony Abbott. He will be the first Prime Minister in a generation to lead Australia into a recession, all as a result of his own economically reckless, structurally unsustainable and wrong-headed policies.
Lev Lafayette (your Facebook link)
[This content is currently unavailable]
That’s weird Fran, its fine for me
[
KEVIN-ONE-SEVEN
Posted Saturday, August 31, 2013 at 8:08 am | Permalink
Socrates – if labor loses this election, nobody will be more responsible than Wayne Swan, and Julia keeping him in the job.
]
Swan’s job was to manage the economy which he did well, it was the job of others to sell it, which has been done poorly.
JG had to deal with two oppositions. One of which has completely undermined the Labor party and the letter is not L.
Such appalling analysis of the situation underlines just how incompetent you lot are.
Not The Treasurer’s job to sell the economy and economic management? Bizarre
There have been 30 “marginal” ALP held seats polled so far this election campaign.
By my claculations, the average swing in those 30 seats, using the most recent swing in those seats which have been polled more than once, is 8%.
An 8% swing, using Antony Green’s calculator, gives ALP 37 seats to LNP 110 seats
Unavailable for me, too.
Fred
Did you get on at $21?
Socrates:
[That is true too re: Swan. I cut him a lot of slack while Treasurer in the hopes he would improve, but he never did.]
Hard to dispute, though to be fair to Swan, from the moment you know who declared he was a fiscal conservative, he was going to have to start back-pedalling.
As I’ve said several times here, from 2001, the die was cast for the ALP. The ALP should have repudiated the position after it was smashed in 2001, but it kept hoping for a miracle by changing leaders. Even in 2004, past the smashing and the ejection of Latham they failed to absorb the lessons.
The reality is that 2007 was an excellent chance to draw a line under the Howard years, to reject the entire paradigm and promise a new course. With hindsight, September 2008 would have made this appear prescient, but instead, the regime’s response was (predictably) purely technocratic. At no point before or after did the regime attempt to engage its base and the fringe in the political contest — largely because they didn’t think there was one and partly because they want politics to be entirely about their personal fortunes.
Sadly (for them anyway) this last attribute of their politics was played out in the most brutal form, at least twice, and to their serious cost.
Fred = Fran of course, sorry!
On a different topic, three members of the Uni of NSW ethics committee have resigned.
[The future of dozens of critical research projects at the University of NSW are in limbo after the chairmen of both the university’s human research ethics committees and a deputy chairman resigned this month.]
http://www.smh.com.au/national/critical-projects-at-risk-as-three-quit-20130830-2sw9b.html#ixzz2dUPjkKE1
This follows cuts to the admin support for the committee. I find this typical: cash strapped unis are having to cut (thanks again, Wayne!) but it is being done stupidly, by corporatist managers masquerading as academics, who rely on massive amounts of unpaid overtime by academic staff to keep the system afloat. Meanwhile huge sums are spent on grandiose building projects.
The academics on ethics committees all serve in a voluntary capacity, with the workload entirely additional to their day job. They have to do a huge amount of work, with hundreds of research projects and drug trials requiring assessment, often with large amounts of material to read, and legal and ethical consequences if anything is missed.
I have said many times here that the structure of Australian academia needs to be reformed, not just funding restored, but Labor has not faced up to this challenge, imagining that Gonski and getting more students into less well funded Universities will solve everything. It won’t. Sadly, after next Saturday, it will be too late.
meher baba and OC
I agree.
[Mick77
Posted Saturday, August 31, 2013 at 8:23 am | Permalink
Fred
Did you get on at $21?]
I have accepted I have lost my betting pool, never bet agaisnt the polls!
People better off under Labor, says study.
http://m.theage.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/life-is-much-better-under-labor-after-all-says-study-20130830-2sw8l.html
I put “marginal” in parentheses only because 5 of the 30 had ALP TPP votes >60% and another 13 had ALP TPP votes >55% (so the majority, 18/30, would not normally be considered marginal seats).
Fran 174
True, and we are about to get a government led by an ignorant and quite nasty man as a result. It is hard to feel sorry for them; there are some in Labor’s ranks I will be genuinely glad to see out of a job. I feel sorry for the rest of us.
Have a good day all; I better do the shopping.
William or Kevin or Antony or Mark the Ballot:
Has anyone done an analysis of the association between margin and swing at the last (or any other) election?
I can only do an eyeball analysis using an excel bar chart, and it looks to me like marginal seats had bigger swings than safe ALP seats.
I know the polls say otherwise, but i am still seeing a 50/50 result with Turnbull in the mix. We shall have to wait and see what happens next Saturday I guess
Morning all.
If, as now seems likely, Labor is wiped out, please tell me that Joel Fitzgibbon is one of those swept away in the tide. Ditto for the sitting member in Griffith. Bowen looks gone, but it’s a pity nothing can be done about KCarr.
The sooner the party is rid of these craven, self promoting opportunists, the better.
The reason for the question above, is that it would enable some way to manipulate a marginal seat poll to try to guess what the corresponding national TPP vote would be, particularly when you have 1 in 5 seats in the nation having individual seat level polling…
Mick77
[Fred = Fran of course, sorry!]
HSC is approaching and I’ve been much too busy, but it’s on my list of things to do.
[confessions
….
The sooner the party is rid of these craven, self promoting opportunists, the better.]
There is certainly on self promoting opportunist who the party is rid of as she is leaving at this election! :devil:
I was reminded yesterday that Abbott was the one who wouldn’t allow sanitary pads to be exempt from GST because they are a luxury. How out of touch with his wife and three daughters is that man!!
victoria:
Wouldn’t a 50-50 2PP result on current seat numbers still deliver a coalition majority? Albeit a slim one.
Mod Lib:
Nicola Roxon was a great minister.
Mod Lib
Why, is Mirabella retiring?
According to JWS, our new addition as member for McMhon is at the loopier end of the spectrum.
[A Liberal Party candidate proposed a radical new policing system in which criminal suspects would be injected with satellite-trackable microchips shot from a ”high powered sniper rifle”.
Ray King, who is contesting the western Sydney electorate of McMahon, was behind the idea, which he claimed would improve productivity of the NSW Police Force.
Mr King, a former police commander in Liverpool, landed in hot water on Friday over critical comments he made about burqas at an election campaign function where guests included the disgraced former detective Roger Rogerson and current assistant police commissioner Frank Minnelli.
In 2011, Mr King outlined his ideas in a 12-page essay, Microchipping of human subjects as a productivity enhancement and as a strategic management direction of NSW Police.]
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/libs-plan-to-microchip-suspects-by-sniper-rifle-20130830-2sw8k.html#ixzz2dUhR885j
[The coalition aims to save $100 million over four years by denying asylum seekers free government advice on lodging claims and launching appeals.
Asylum seekers will no longer be entitled to taxpayer-funded help on claims or appeals under the coalition’s border control policy, News Corp Australia reports.]
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/national/18730375/coalition-to-cut-asylum-seeker-legal-help/
[lizzie
Posted Saturday, August 31, 2013 at 8:33 am | PERMALINK
Mod Lib
Why, is Mirabella retiring?]
We all wish…
Good morning Dawn Patrollers and it is.
Fitzgibbon: Hunter has been Labor since 1910 but has changed its borders dramatically – it is almost as if it has followed the coal industry up the valley. It originally included the outskirts of Newcastle to Cessnock but now goes from Cessnock to Denman.
It was the seat of two LOTOs and the first PM. I think uniquely it has had 2 father/son combinations the James hillbillies and the Fitzgibbon cowboys.
I would love to see Fitzgibbon go but at nearly 13% it is probably not going to happen.
The different polls seem to be saying much the same thing, except for Rudd’s seat that is. If Rudd holds on to Griffith and ends up as opposition leader; for how long will Labor tolerate him? IMO Bill Shorten would be the ideal leader.
[ confessions
Posted Saturday, August 31, 2013 at 8:35 am | Permalink
The coalition aims to save $100 million over four years by denying asylum seekers free government advice on lodging claims and launching appeals.
Asylum seekers will no longer be entitled to taxpayer-funded help on claims or appeals under the coalition’s border control policy, News Corp Australia reports.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/national/18730375/coalition-to-cut-asylum-seeker-legal-help/
]
Apparently the budget paper has the cost at $3.0 million.
Obviously the Liberals expect a lot more arrivals under their policies.
I have a sneaking suspicion the ghosts of June 2010 and June 2013 will re-emerge next week.
It may be time to launch a new progressive party out of the ruins. Maybe Bomber Beazley can come back and lead New Labor ?
confessions
I will be bitterly disappointed to see Abbott as PM. He is our very own George W Bush. Will do a great job of looking after the movers and shakers and crumbs for everyone else. The US citizenry are paying for it now and will continue to do so into the future. That is what is at risk here in Oz.