The last of the major polls go as follows:
• A Newspoll survey conducted on Wednesday and Thursday from over 2500 respondents has Labor on 33%, the Coalition on 46% and the Greens on 9%, for a commanding Coalition lead of 54-46 on two-party preferred. Full breakdowns here.
• Nielsen concurs with Newspoll on both major parties’ primary votes in its poll of 1431 respondents conducted on Wednesday and Thursday, but has the Greens two points higher at 11%. Both The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald have exasperatingly declined to provide breakdowns, but from what I can gather from the printed copy, the poll has the Coalition ahead 56-44 in New South Wales and behind 51-49 in Victoria, while in Queensland Labor’s primary vote is on just 27% (under two Senate quotas, for those of you with an eye on that kind of thing).
• Morgan has a poll of 4937 respondents conducted by SMS, online and live interview phone polling which has Labor at just 31.5%, with the Coalition on 44%, the Greens on 10.5% and the Palmer United Party on 6.5%. This pans out to 53.5-46.5 on respondent-allocated preferences, but to 54.5-45.5 on the previous election preferences method used by Nielsen and Newspoll.
BludgerTrack has been updated with all of the above, and it continues to offer a rosier assessment for Labor than the betting markets in particular would suggest (though note that I’ve knocked on the head my idea of revising the preference model to grant Labor a bigger share of the Palmer United Party vote in Queensland, which has made two seats’ difference). As I’ve noted a number of times, this is mostly down to the consistent tendency of electorate-level polling to produce worse results for Labor than that national and statewide polling that are the bread and butter of BludgerTrack. To illustrate this point, and also for your general convenience, I offer below a complete listing to all such polls published during the campaign. Averages are also provided for the swings in each state, and by each pollster. What this suggests is that the automated phone polling by Galaxy, which has generally produced highly plausible results, has not been too far out of line with national polling, and it has generally offered highly plausible results. The live interview phone polling of Newspoll looks to have performed similarly, but that’s because its sample includes the unusual cases of New England and Lyne. Beyond that three automated phone pollsters who are relatively new to the game, and whose consistent findings of huge Coalition swings should accordingly be treated with caution.
Key: NP=Newspoll, RT=ReachTEL, Gal.=Galaxy, Lon.=Lonergan, JWS=JWS Research.
NEW SOUTH WALES N ALP L-NP GRN 2PP SWING Dobell/RobertsonNP 13/8 505 35 50 8 46 -7 Lindsay Lon. 14/8 1038 32 60 3 36 -15 Lyne NP 14/8 504 26 51 7 41 +3 New England NP 14/8 504 24 53 5 34 +1 Kingsford Smith RT 15/8 610 38 47 10 48 -7 McMahon RT 15/8 631 45 50 2 47 -11 Blaxland RT 15/8 636 50 47 3 52 -10 Bennelong RT 15/8 631 28 64 8 35 -12 Macquarie JWS 15/8 710 35 51 8 45 -4 Lindsay JWS 15/8 578 35 57 3 39 -12 Greenway JWS 15/8 570 44 46 1 51 0 Banks JWS 15/8 542 43 50 4 47 -4 Werriwa Gal. 20/8 548 41 48 5 48 -9 Reid Gal. 20/8 557 38 50 9 47 -6 Parramatta Gal. 20/8 561 44 45 4 50 -4 Lindsay Gal. 20/8 566 41 50 3 46 -5 Greenway Gal. 20/8 585 45 46 3 49 -2 Barton Gal. 20/8 551 44 44 9 52 -5 Banks Gal. 20/8 557 40 47 6 48 -3 Barton Gal. 20/8 575 44 44 9 52 -5 Banks Gal. 20/8 575 40 47 6 48 -3 K-S/Page/E-M NP 26/8 601 37 47 11 48 -7 ALP marginals* NP 26/8 800 34 52 7 43 -9 McMahon JWS 28/8 482 44 52 3 47 -11 Average swing -6.1 * Parramatta/Reid/Banks/Lindsay/Greenway. VICTORIA N ALP L-NP GRN 2PP SWING Deakin RT 15/8 619 36 50 13 47 -4 Corangamite RT 15/8 633 36 54 10 44 -6 Melbourne RT 15/8 860 35 24 35 Indi RT 15/8 611 18 47 6 Corangamite JWS 15/8 587 36 48 10 47 -3 Aston JWS 15/8 577 29 59 8 37 -12 La Trobe Gal. 20/8 575 36 45 12 49 -3 Corangamite Gal. 20/8 575 35 52 9 44 -6 Chisholm Gal. 20/8 575 46 45 7 48 -8 ALP marginals* NP 28/8 800 34 47 13 47 -4 McEwen JWS 28/8 540 35 47 6 45 -14 Bendigo JWS 28/8 588 40 40 9 51 -9 Average swing -6.9 * La Trobe/Deakin/Corangamite QUEENSLAND N ALP L-NP GRN 2PP SWING Griffith RT 05/8 702 48 43 8 46 -12 Forde RT 08/8 725 40 48 4 46 -2 Forde Lon. 15/8 1160 34 56 4 40 -8 Forde JWS 15/8 568 33 54 4 40 -8 Brisbane JWS 15/8 607 36 50 9 46 -3 LNP marginals* NP 20/8 1382 32 54 5 40 -8 Forde NP 20/8 502 38 48 5 46 -2 Griffith Lon. 21/8 958 38 47 11 48 -10 Griffith NP 22/8 500 37 48 12 48 -10 Lilley JWS 28/8 757 40 48 5 46 -7 Griffith JWS 28/8 551 48 40 7 57 -1 Blair Gal. 29/8 604 39 40 8 50 -4 Dawson Gal. 29/8 550 34 48 4 43 -5 Griffith Gal. 29/8 655 41 37 12 54 -4 Herbert Gal. 29/8 589 36 47 6 45 -3 ALP marginals** NP 30/8 800 38 42 8 49 -4 Average swing -5.9 * Brisbane/Forde/Longman/Herbert/Dawson/Bonner/Flynn/Fisher ** Moreton/Petrie/Lilley/Capricornia/Blair/Rankin/Oxley WESTERN AUSTRALIA N ALP L-NP GRN 2PP SWING Brand Gal. 29/8 660 42 42 10 52 -1 Hasluck Gal. 29/8 553 34 46 10 45 -4 Perth Gal. 29/8 550 47 35 13 58 +2 Average swing -1.2 SOUTH AUSTRALIA N ALP L-NP GRN 2PP SWING Hindmarsh Gal. 22/8 586 41 44 10 50 -6 Wakefield Gal. 26/8 575 44 35 7 55 -6 Adelaide Gal. 29/8 571 40 39 12 54 -4 Average swing -5.0 TASMANIA N ALP L-NP GRN 2PP SWING Bass RT 22/8 541 30 52 8 42 -15 Braddon RT 22/8 588 36 51 4 43 -14 Denison RT 22/8 563 19 24 11 Franklin RT 22/8 544 30 39 16 51 -10 Lyons RT 22/8 549 30 47 11 44 -18 Bass RT 03/9 659 28 54 10 41 -16 Average swing -14.7 AVERAGE SWING BY POLLSTER N SWING Galaxy 22 -4.3 Newspoll 10 -4.7 JWS Research 13 -6.8 ReachTEL 16 -8.6 Lonergan 3 -11.3
Clean up Australia Day is here… 🙂
You mean like with a loaded dice?
Welcome back to tHe dark ages Australia.
[1
New2This
Posted Saturday, September 7, 2013 at 5:13 am | PERMALINK
Clean up Australia Day is here… ]
🙂 happy Election Day .
After ruminating for quite a bit, I have found my and my families interests are best served by putting a 1 above the line for the Pirate Party. They have a highly admirable platform, the best that I have seen.
“Die” for the pedants.
Just voted at the consulate in Chicago!
From overseas looking in I think it has actually been a fairly nuanced election. Underneath the hyperbole, all the major parties are basically in consensus about a mixed-market economic model I suspect most citizens are happy with and the debate is how to most efficiently raise and spend tax dollars. Not many countries get that level of competency.
I don’t mind the ALP this time round but I completely understand why a lot of people are over them. Voters are smart – they know what they want – so we’ll see!
To all the volunteers working the polling places handing out HTVs today – thanks! Unsung heroes of our democracy. Hopefully one day we can just put a booklet of HTVs inside each voting booth and save all that paper.
Now I just need to find a live feed of the ABC in about 13 hours!
And so we reach a day in our history which will be less edifying than most.
A landslide victory of epic proportions to a party with a relatively weak leadership team which has not prepared well over the past six years for a return to office (and with perhaps one their main saving graces, Arthur Sinodinos, likely to miss out on a Senate seat because he is running third behind two other candidates I imagine 95% of you couldn’t even name). It is led by a man who – despite being 55 years old – is strangely immature in some respects and whose key political and moral drivers (which he has tried very hard to keep hidden) are not aligned to those of most Australians or even those of most Coalition supporters. As we have seen with the PPL, it’s the “left wing” side of Tony that brings him into conflict with his party. Expect to see more of that.
But good luck to the Libs: they’ve run a brilliant strategy for four years. We have seen a lot of the likes of Bruce Hawker and Simon Banks and other so-called political strategists strut around on endless TV panels. But, seriously, they don’t deserve to lick the boots of the husband and wife team of Brian Loughnane and Peta Credlin: especially when you consider the doubtful raw material these two had to work with.
Labor, of course, has self-destructed. Bringing back Rudd does not appeared to have “saved the furniture”. Maybe Labor will lose 22 seats tonight, but could have lost 25 under Gillard. I guess that
might comfort a few people (I especially the three who hold on to their seats). But how would Labor have gone without Rudd and his hangers-on constantly undermining Gillard. The Libs learnt from the Howard-Peacock era and maintained a tight discipline. Labor looked like a divided rabble. And look what’s happened.
Of course, some might ask where Labor would be now if they hasn’t removed Rudd in 2010? It’s a good question in some respects, but most people who were on the inside in those days would assure you that – after two and a half years in the job – Rudd was leading the country, and Labor, nowhere. Now he’s come back to finish the job of taking Labor there. The rest of us get Tony.
Where now for Labor? As I have suggested before, since 1996 the party has clung ever more tightly to its declining industrial and factional base, and largely driven away the educated middle class element that flooded into the party in the Whitlam era and flourished under Hawke-Keating. This element has increasingly shifted to the Greens. I spend a fair bit of time in universities and I find that the people who teach our kids and their most impressionable ages divide between an emerging younger group of IPA-style ideological rightists and a larger , but older, group of baby boomers and gen X types who almost all vote Green. There don’t seem to be a lot of mainstream Labor supporters around campuses nowadays.
Who will lead Labor next week? To mix a couple of Shakesperian allusions, I do prophesy the election lights on Bill “et tu Brutus” Shorten: who has been puffed by Victorian Labor insiders as a future PM for the best part of 15 years. To me, he seems to be a bit of a show pony and a bit of a policy lightweight (outside of the disability area, where he performed very well). He also has a rather annoying sort of pipsqueak voice. But there aren’t a lot of other options ATM, and one thing Shorten does have is a lot of poise in front of the cameras, which will help him. But he certainly needs to patch things up with Conroy.
He also needs a good strategist. I wonder how much Peta would want to switch sides?
The Australian is running leaks from Labor HQ, laying Blame squarely on Kevin Rudd .
Pass the pop corn, tomorrow will be fun.
Election coverage on ABC 24 is available world wide on the Internet for all of us expats and travellers overseas.
I will get in early and congratulate you on you work over the several last weeks, William.
[quote]9.The Australian is running leaks from Labor HQ, laying Blame squarely on Kevin Rudd .[/quote]
Yeah. According to Newscorp, Labor is exasperated with the return of ‘Old Kevin’.
[
Just like how left-wing hacks view everyone on the right as racist, inbred rednecks or slimy tax-dodging lawyers.]
False equivalence Carey …
[
Just like how left-wing hacks view everyone on the right as racist, inbred rednecks or slimy tax-dodging lawyers.]
False equivalence Carey …
[11
shellbell
Posted Saturday, September 7, 2013 at 6:05 am | PERMALINK
I will get in early and congratulate you on you work over the several last weeks, William.]
I will second that and add a thanks for another election running PB.
The only poll that counts is…oh, right. 😀
rummel
Posted Saturday, September 7, 2013 at 6:01 am | PERMALINK
The Australian is running leaks from Labor HQ, laying Blame squarely on Kevin Rudd .
———–
newsltd still spreading propaganda
doesnt look good for its puppett abbott today mitt romney feel like
Thanks stanspeaker@10 I was hoping that would be the case
meher baba:
[Of course, some might ask where Labor would be now if they hasn’t removed Rudd in 2010? ]
Far better than they stand now. Of course, they could have removed him prior to 2010 or after 2010 or indeed have chosen someone else — almost anyone else — in 2006 and stood even better.
so far we know rummel , Sean Tisme, Mod Lib
are or have already voted for labor
i will be voting for labor today and trying to convince people todo the same 🙂
Yes, well done Mr Bowe.
I’m certain that both your substantive contributions here and your moderation would be demanding tasks. You do this with AIUI no significant tangible reward, and for mine, do it very well.
Thanks …
(I’m sure you’d have preferred 1500 words with sub-heads but I’m off to a different “PB” today to render service so this will have to do. 😉 )
take away the pro coalition media polls big margin of error
labor primary will be 37-39%
Coalition 42-43%
labor retain government
i am very confidence
[quote]Far better than they stand now. Of course, they could have removed him prior to 2010 or after 2010 or indeed have chosen someone else — almost anyone else — in 2006 and stood even better.[/quote]
If Rudd hadn’t been removed in 2010, nothing would be done. Gillard was the one who introduced the NDIS, the NBN, Gonski and whatever else Labor did. Rudd was resposible for fuelwatch, grocery watch, and a laptop for every child.
Getting rid of Rudd in 2010 was the correct move, the biggest mistake they made was failing to kill him off. Because of that, Rudd was able to distabilise enough to cause a minority Gov last election and the rest was history.
[quote]I will second that and add a thanks for another election running PB.[/quote]
Thirded.
MB,
I admire your enthusiasm and positivity but you really will need some help tonight. A good bottle f Hentley Farm wine will do it for you.
Not sure which disaster to watch tonight – Abbott winning or Port get flogged – rather the latter happen than the former!
There was one point I forgot to make in my mini-essay above, which is that – with the ALP having driven its non-machine (ie: non-union/non-factional) element away during the 1990s and 2000s – they arguably needed to bring in a leader like Rudd to provide a sort of veneer of Whitlam era-style middle class intellectuality to broaden Labor’s appeal. Beazley had played something of a similar role, and even Latham for a short while. One of Gillard’s main problem was that she looked and, especially, sounded like Woody Guthrie’s “union maid”. She was actually a more independent thinker than that, but she struggled to get that side across to the public.
This is where Shorten will struggle a bit too: people look at him and see a union official. The only out-and-out union official who has been politically popular in living memory was Hawke: and he was anything but your average union official.
Several other suggested future Labor leaders – eg, Albo, Bowen and even Burke – also smell strongly of the machine
The two current senior Federal Labor politicians who do have something of a different aura about them are Jason Clare and Tanya Plibersek. Not a bad leader/deputy team in my book, even if they both come from NSW. Of course, Clare is in trouble in his seat.
It will probably end up being Shorten/Plibersek or Shorten/Albo: but the latter is far too machine-like.
The Labor left and right factions made a terrible mistake during the 90s in driving all the “trendies” out of the party. Not because there are lots of these people: as we can see from the Greens polling, they are 10 per cent of the polulation. But their strong presence in the ALP from the mid-60s through to the mid-90s broadened its appeal and softened its image. The old blue collar vote is declining, and the younger generation of tradies is becoming rich through the mines and rather likes Abbott.
Labor must change tack or else wither away slowly.
This is hilarious. Kevin Rudd and his supporters have been undermining his own party with leaks for YEARS and have a big responsibility for the bad much of the bad polling Gillard was getting and now they did barely better.
Disregarding the headline grabbing outliers. Labor under Gillard were sitting on 46-54. I wonder how well they could have done if Kevin Rudd and his supporters weren’t leaking and destabilizing the party.
meher baba@25
I agree. However, there is an exception to the rule there. A union man who could have done well was Greg Combet, but he’s gone as well. Thanks, Kevin.
Morning.
I wonder if there have been worse polls for a government on the eve of an election.
Kirky @ 24
do not take the media opinion polls as facts , they are propaganda
Triton
Tonight will be class as labor’s best victory ever , despite newsltd/abbott coalition attempts
labor retain government
Coming out of today’s likely gut-wrenching loss for the ALP, I do believe they need to
a) take reform of party processes attending member recruitment, internal governance and integrity, policy development and candidate selection seriously.
b) make it their aim to be a party of the consistently centre-left rather than the centre-right
If they were to shift in social policy — gay marriage, euthanasia, drug law reform, asylum seekers, — they would look a good deal more progressive even if they changed not a thing in fiscal policy. If they could junk surplus fetishism — and Abbott himself seems to have abandoned that before even achieving government, they’d save themselves a lot of policy grief.
Bobalot,
Spot on, late last year Julia was level pegging with the Coalition until Rudd started again. Totally destructive influence on the party for past three years!
One thing I want is for him to lose his seat with the party to only lose around 10 seats. Get rid of the white ant.
It’s down to preference flows that will determine TPP, with so many minor parties with a substantial aggregate vote it is fluid so lots to wait for and watch after 6pm.
Latest update: http://bit.ly/17EKfmd
My prediction? Yesterday I thought it might be in the high 50s for the number of seats won by Labor. Today, with this latest suite of polls, I suspect the low 50s for Labor is more likely. But the high 40s cannot be ruled out.
Meguire Bob. Don’t listen to kirky@24. Hentley Farm wine won’t do the job tonight. I think you need to get your hands on some Acapulco Gold.
(On second thoughts, having read your predictions this morning, perhaps you already did!!)
Fran Barlow@31
I’m not sure what fantasyland you live in. Most people (like as in 80%) are totally against a more generous asylum seeker policy.
The ALP are not going to become the Greens on this. On this issue, they are simply reflecting the public will.
My absolute award for most consistent unflagging rolled 24 carot gold support for a party goes to…….BOB MEGUIRE top marks. I will piss myself (and be v v happy) if you are right
Fran@31. I can’t believe it! I think I actually agree with you. Labor does need to orientate itself a little leftwards (soft Tanya Plibersek left, not old style union-lovin’ Gillard-Kim Il Carr-Albo-Dougie sort of left).
Except on asylum seekers: electoral poison with the swinging voters, I’m afraid.
meher baba
I find your analysis entirely believable. There have been hints of a modern left party in Labor over the years, but the “machine men” as you call them, have ruled. Rudd seemed to give a fresh perspective for a while.
River:
[If Rudd hadn’t been removed in 2010, nothing would be done. Gillard was the one who introduced the NDIS, the NBN, Gonski and whatever else Labor did. Rudd was resposible for fuelwatch, grocery watch, and a laptop for every child. ]
As someone who worked closely with our TSOs (two of them) over the life of the program (to be abandoned this year) I found it overall to be a good one. It wasn’t, FTR “a laptop for every child” — only 9-12 got them.
I wasn’t a fan of the program initially, regarding it as sub-optimal expenditure in IT in schools, but today I regard it as a net positive in practice. The TSO role that came with it was a clear win for tech support in schools, but would not have come without the laptops.
I have some environmental concerns attached to all that techno-junk being created — li-ion batteries are not easy to recycle AIUI, but on the whole, I give the program a B+.
Despite all the dire polls, the one from the Guardian based on polling mobiles seems much more optimistic and Jason Li is doing well in Bennelong. Don’t expect to win but may not lose as badly as predicted.
[Bobalot,
Spot on, late last year Julia was level pegging with the Coalition until Rudd started again. Totally destructive influence on the party for past three years!]
Agree Kirky
The main negativity in Julia’s polling was that caused by rudd and peoples fear that he could replace her as shown out now in the polling for rudd.
if rudd was subject to the same undermining he did to julia polling would be far worse.
87 seats to lnp, labor to learn from rudd, never place too much hope or give too much power in one person.
i think Juulia will be getting many phone calls from labor mps and ex-mps apologising for being so wrong and not purging the party of the rudd cancer earlier
Bobalot
[I’m not sure what fantasyland you live in. Most people (like as in 80%) are totally against a more generous asylum seeker policy.]
No poll I’ve ever seen supports that claim. Also, when you control for people who might vote ALP (excluding the rusted on Libs) you’d get an even more pro-asylum-seeker compassion position.
Equally, absent pictures of boats and gaols, there would be nothing to keep the threat active in people’s minds. The whole issue is just one large right-wing populist troll.
And FTR Meher, I’ve met and chatted with Albo one-to-one — and he’s no hard leftist.
castle
I didn’t realise, until I read it in a small accessible part of the Oz, that Hawker is being paid by Rudd as a personal strategist. Whether true or not, it seems plausible.
It supports the message Rudd gave, in his Kitchen Cabinet Afternoon Tea, that he gets his support and confidence from his family, which is why he bounces back after defeats. They appear to live in their own world.
Out on the hustings, the asylum seeker issue is one where I found some lifelong Labor supporters telling me they couldn’t vote for labor this time because of the harshness of the latest policy.
Tony Abbott’s three biggest lies. Mike Carlton
http://m.smh.com.au/comment/lies-damned-lies-and-australias-future-20130906-2taav.html
[11
shellbell
Posted Saturday, September 7, 2013 at 6:05 am | PERMALINK
I will get in early and congratulate you on you work over the several last weeks, William.]
Yes, thanks William for another terrific election coverage. Pity it hasn’t been the same as 2007 of blessed memory, but it’s still the best election site.
And I’d also like to thank Fran Barlow whose comments are always interesting, courteous and literate.
Erasmus
[Out on the hustings, the asylum seeker issue is one where I found some lifelong Labor supporters telling me they couldn’t vote for labor this time because of the harshness of the latest policy.]
I’ve found the same, and also found that even ALP spruikers were privately embarrassed by it. Where I teach, the ALP-leaning school community is appalled. A dozen are voting informal.
I’d have held my nose and preferenced the ALP if their asylum seeker policy had not included mandatory detention and rendition.
Re: Meher Baba’s analysis of ‘where to’ for the ALP
Yes, this accords mostly with what I have been thinking (and I’ve written a few comments along these lines).
I actually have become more pessimistic – I am struggling to believe that the ALP can find the way out of its mess – but then I’m a pessimistic kind of guy.
If the ALP can’t change its spots now, the only hope for non-lunar-right political Australia is for a new centreish/leftish party to arise, and that will take a decade to get established if anyone can get around to doing the hard yards to getting it going – and there’s precious little sign of anyone putting up their hand.
MT was mentioned as a wasted opportunity for such a party – I’m not 100% convinced that was ever possible, but there seems a bit of a wasteland of any other chances out there.
Fran suggested:
Yes, this all seems sensible, obvious … and unlikely to be taken seriously.
Of these I’d have to say candidate selection is absolutely the biggest issue. Of course having an engaged and growing membership helps a lot with this, but … if the ALP don’t push out all of their dead wood time-servers and machine men from winnable spots, they will have no hope at all.