Morgan: 50-50 (and the return of BludgerTrack)

Morgan finds Labor drawing level with the Coalition, although Bill Shorten shouldn’t go measuring the drapes at The Lodge quite yet. The return of your favourite poll aggregate finds no change on the election result.

Morgan published its fortnightly poll yesterday, which for whatever reason was limited to face-to-face and SMS polling, excluding its usual online component. This caused the sample size to come in at 2077, about 1000 short of the usual. The preponderance of face-to-face polling in the result might help explain the poll’s unusually weak showing for the Coalition, who are down two points on the primary vote to 41.5%. Labor and the Greens are each up half a point, to 35% and 10.5%, with the Palmer United Party up a point to 5.5%. The only meaningful two-party figure provided by Morgan is respondent-allocated, which at 50-50 is much as it would have been with a preference distribution based on the recent election.

An aberrant poll result marks an auspicious occasion for BludgerTrack to return to the sidebar, fresh from its almost-accurate projection of state seat totals at the federal election. Bias and accuracy measures have been freshly recalibrated, and a preference allocation model implemented which accounts for the Palmer United Party’s share of the “others” vote. There are currently only 14 polling data points in the mix (and only five with specific numbers for the Palmer United Party), including eight from Essential, four from Morgan and one each from Newspoll and ReachTEL. This is to say there is a paucity of live interview phone polling, which was again the best performing method at the election. At present the trend seems to be one of stability in the first month and Labor decline in the second, but the disturbance to the stability comes down entirely the Newspoll result.

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.

2,094 comments on “Morgan: 50-50 (and the return of BludgerTrack)”

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  1. Psephos@2048

    Another great read is by Carmen Calill an Australian feminist publisher.in London…. who leaned an eztraordinary story about a French fascist called Dartiere(and his Australian wife)


    It is indeed an excellent book. His name was Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, but he made the de Pellepoix bit up to sound more aristocratic. He was a loathsome toad. His wife was from Launceston, if I recall. She called herself “Madame la Comtesse” with no justification at all.

    Great to see common ground between deblonay and Psephos. 😀

  2. 2045

    Also back before the Church dropped its teaching on usury, money lending was done by individual or small groups of businessmen who had to charge higher rates of interest and be very strict with repayments in order for their business to survive. Banks have scale to spread losses over that individual lenders do not.

  3. [Can anyone explain?]

    The expression “anti-Semitism” was coined to describe hatred of Jews. It has no other meaning. It has never meant “hatred of all Semitic peoples.”

  5. Psephos@2053

    Can anyone explain?


    The expression “anti-Semitism” was coined to describe hatred of Jews. It has no other meaning. It has never meant “hatred of all Semitic peoples.”

    What then is the basis of it?

    It can’t be racial as there are other branches of the Semitic race. And a lot of Jews would be about as Semitic as I am.

    Is it religious?

    Is it cultural?

  6. Darquier’s predecessor as “Commissioner for Jewish Affairs” under Vichy was a man called Xavier Vallat. When he died sometime in the 1970s, the Jewish lawyer Serge Klarsfeld (who had tried for years without success to have Vallat prosecuted) sent a wreath to his funeral in the form of a large yellow floral Star of David.

  7. [What then is the basis of it?]

    What is the basis of anti-Semitism? It has its origins in Christian anti-Judaism, but in the 19th century it morphed into a racial hatred of Jews as an ethnic group. There’s a huge literature on this.

  8. bemused

    It’s rather hard to unpick the usage for semitic The earliest references are to “shem” (shich in Hebrew means “name” cf: Shemiel name of God, cont. Samuel) Shem was by lore one of the three sons of Noah.

    The languages of the region have been called “Semitic” since at least the late 18thC.

    Possibly for this reason, since about the mid 19th, Semite has referred to Jews, Arabs, Aramaeans and Assyrians.

  10. [Possibly for this reason, since about the mid 19th, Semite has referred to Jews, Arabs, Aramaeans and Assyrians.]

    Yes but this is irrelevant pedantry. No-one hates the Semitic peoples as a class, and no-one hates Jews because they are Semites. Anti-Semitism is hatred of Jews. Get over the linguistic point and deal with the actual meaning of the word.

  12. Deb,

    Yes that is what i was referring too, even earlier than that was the cases i think if might have been Edward the i or ii who after using the Jewish community to raise money decided to turf them out of the country and claimed their assets.

  14. Banking and Italy

    The UK(Scots) economic historian Neil Ferguson in a recent BBC series on”The Ascent of Money”looked at the growth of the first banks in Florence and Venice in an earlier episode of his remarkable series,and the development there of the first bond markets

    The Catholic Church ,given it’s links with people like the Medici family was eventually “persuaded ” to drop Usuary from the list of mortal sins(of which there are still plenty to go around …and most more fun than money lending)

    He recounted the remarkable story of a Scots banker who turned up in Paris on the eve of the Revolution with many great stories of making lots of money for investors…an early pyramid scheme…and then fleeced the King and the Royal Court..and wisely fled to Venice..and lived a good life there on the proceeds….where some years ago I chanced on his elaborate Tomb in a little Church near the Piazza

    I wondered who he was and why he was there…and Ferguson’s program answered a long forgotten question for me ??

  15. The Ascent of Money was an interesting series, Ferguson can tell an interesting story but he does push a particular economic viewpoint which is pro-british and western and is underpinned with a Conservative world view but then again bias is not a problem if it is clear for all to see.

  16. Psephos@2060

    Possibly for this reason, since about the mid 19th, Semite has referred to Jews, Arabs, Aramaeans and Assyrians.


    Yes but this is irrelevant pedantry. No-one hates the Semitic peoples as a class, and no-one hates Jews because they are Semites. Anti-Semitism is hatred of Jews. Get over the linguistic point and deal with the actual meaning of the word.

    I am not being simply pedantic, but wanting to understand just what it is exactly that the hatred is directed at.

    Are Jews a distinctive racial group? I wouldn’t have thought so.

    I guess another way of looking at it is to define just what the anti-Semites understand a Jew to be.

    Jews I have known have been quite diverse in ethnic appearance and other characteristics including religious attitude.

  18. Psephos

    [Get over the linguistic point and deal with the actual meaning of the word.]

    You know full well I love linguistic points.

    That said, there can be no doubt that as a matter of practice, the term anti-semitism is almost always a term used to describe hatred of Jews specifically, whatever their ostensible ethnicity.

  19. [ “Tories” helped bring freedom to the people of East Timor]

    I have to say that I find it hi-lah-rious when the right trumpet Howard’s legacy of gun control or East Timor: the only good parts of his legacy is when he was forced into adopting leftist positions against a political lifetime of opposition.

  21. [Are Jews a distinctive racial group? I wouldn’t have thought so.]

    Recent genetic research shows that most Jews have a common ancestry. Given that they have practised strict endogamy since the 4th century AD, that’s not surprising.

    Anyway, anti-Semitism has nothing to do with what Jews are, but with what anti-Semites think they are. “Racial” anti-Semitism was a product of the racial theories that dominated European thought in the late 19th century. It was also due to the fact that after Jewish Emancipation, many Jews stopped thinking of themselves as a religious minority, and started to recall that in ancient times they had been a nation. Zionism was the direct result of that change of self-definition.

  23. Hitler’s Vienna…by Brigitte Hamanan
    Oxford Uni Press 1999
    ____________________

    about the place where Hitler got most of his strange ideas and his anti-semitism
    ___________________________
    This book …a very large and quite costly one …now in English by a distinguised Austrian historian looks at that part of Hitler’s early life which has not had such attention as his latter years…yet it was fundamental to all his thinking

    Vienna ..in the late 19th century was a seething pit of strange ideas and groups,and the centre of the decaying Hapsburg Empire in its last stages of collapse…flooded by Jews fleeing persecution in Russia ,a host of gipsyies ,a destitute working class moving towards socialist ideas and a totally inept and corrupt Hapsburg regime at the top

    Here Hitler, a friendless lad from the provinces made his way and lived a poverty stricken existence( as did a great many others)on the fringe of society

    Out of this grew a medley of distorted ideas and fantasies
    yet there were momemts when his life could have taken a turn for the better
    Vienna was a forcing ground for anti-semitism and nationalist dreams of a “German way” to rule Europe

    In the same city Hitler could have met(but didn’t)..Lenin and Trotsky in exile or Nellie Melba or Klimt or Herzel the founder of zionism… or Dr Freud just embarking on his celebrated career….Freud would have found young Adolf a wonderfull case study and might have changed the course of human history had he done so
    This is a remarkable book which throws a light on a whole chapter of human history….terrible though it is

    a must read for anyone interested in it’s many facets of Hapsburg Vienna and Hitler’s life there

    Hamann is also the author of a bio of the Empress Elizabeth(“sissy”) the wife of the Emperor Franz Joseph

  25. Of course, the distinction between religious anti-Judaism and racial anti-Semitism is more apparent to us than it was to many of those at whom it was directed. The worst anti-Semitism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was in Russia (which then included Poland), and was a mixture of both religious and racial hatred by the Orthodox masses, manipulated by the Czarist regime to provide a scapegoat for popular discontent. The most important event in the early history of Zionism was not the Dreyfus affair, but the Kishinev pogrom of 1905, which created pressure for mass Jewish emigration from Russia. That was the source of the “second Aliyah”, the major Jewish migration to Palestine in the decade after 1905.

  26. [This book …a very large and quite costly one]

    My copy is a Tauris Park paperback. It doesn’t have the price on it anymore, but it was no more than average for a 500 page paperback. Anyway, I agree it’s a very useful study. But the best is Ron Rosenbaum’s “Explaining Hitler” which I recommend to anyone who wants to try to understand him.

  30. [we all have a common ancestry.]

    Only a very long way back. Most Jews have a common genetic ancestry in the Eastern Mediterranean 2,000 years ago – that is, in Ancient Israel. Interestingly, so do many Palestinians, suggesting that they are descended from the Ancient Israelites and not from the Arabs who migrated into the area in the 7th century AD.

  31. “Only a very long way back. Most Jews have a common genetic ancestry in the Eastern Mediterranean 2,000 years ago – that is, in Ancient Israel. Interestingly, so do many Palestinians, suggesting that they are descended from the Ancient Israelites and not from the Arabs who migrated into the area in the 7th century AD.”

    Pretty sure I could trace my heritage there as well then… I believe Moses Seiver, my great great grandfather was Jewish.

    Our common ancestry is only around 70 000 BC, following the eruption of Toba, not that far back. Humans have low genetic diversity

  32. Interesting to know there is a paperback of”Hitler’s Vienna”
    I bought the hardback copy some years ago when first published and it was quite expensive

  33. William, Linz is indeed a pretty town. Hitler was born in Braunau, but he spent his childhood in several other places as his father was posted to different border towns. His accent was not Austrian but south-east Bavarian, which he acquired at primary school in Passau. When his father retired, the family settled at Leonding outside Linz, where Hitler attended secondary school.

  34. [Only a very long way back. Most Jews have a common genetic ancestry in the Eastern Mediterranean 2,000 years ago]

    Actually estimates for the Most Recent Common Ancestor of all living humans is only about 2-4k years ago. I unde

  35. [Only a very long way back. Most Jews have a common genetic ancestry in the Eastern Mediterranean 2,000 years ago]

    Actually estimates for the Most Recent Common Ancestor of all living humans is only about 2-4k years ago. I understand that’s not quite the same thing.

  36. [I bought the hardback copy some years ago]

    I usually try to wait for the paperback, but I don’t always succeed.

    The Holy Grail for history buffs of this period is the official German history of World War II, now published in English. It’s in 10 volumes of 1500 pages each, selling for $550 per volume. I’m hoping someone will give it to me for Christmas.

  37. [Actually estimates for the Most Recent Common Ancestor of all living humans is only about 2-4k years ago. I understand that’s not quite the same thing.]

    4000 years ago? You must be kidding. Humans were already living all over the globe then. The generally accepted date for the migration of homo sapiens out of Africa is about 65,000 years ago.

  38. Yes, but human populations have been in continuous contact almost everywhere, a lot more than some might expect. I assure you it’s not my work, look it up.

    As I said, the MRCA doesn’t share much genetics with any particular living person, so that’s not some claim about genetic inheritances generally, whatever that might mean.

  39. How can a Tasmanian Aborigine and a Patagonian Indian have a common ancestor 4000 years ago? Both populations were cut off from other human populations long before that.

  41. I don’t know who wrote Sean’s potted history of Dutch New Guinea but it has some glaring holes and biases. The question of the territory’s future was the major pre-occupation of Australian External Affairs throughout the later part of the 50s and early 60s. Menzies or more particularly Casey took great efforts to support the attempts of the Dutch to maintain a little bit of empire – this was of course doomed but the Dutch had made no attempt to establish an alternate independent nation. The final result was inevitable. I have no idea and I doubt if anyone has of how strong the support for independence is but I suspect the concept of a nation state is not a particularly strong one in the highlands.

  43. Good morning Dawn Patrollers.
    Ronaldson sounded like a dork when presenting this so-called “crackdown ” on rorts.
    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbotts-travel-rorts-reforms-labelled-weak-20131109-2x8lu.html
    Abbott will have to resort to laying minefields if he still wants to “stop the boats”.
    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/prime-minister-tony-abbott-backs-down-in-asylum-seeker-standoff-with-indonesia-20131109-2x8n8.html
    http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/abbotts-boat-policy-fails-test-20131109-2x8w5.html
    Peter FitzSimons’ weekly column.
    http://www.smh.com.au/comment/kyle-sandilands-jackie-o-cant-expect-listeners-to-stay-loyal-20131109-2x8bj.html

  44. And from the Land of the Free –

    Old iconic photographs brought to life with colourisation.
    http://americablog.com/2013/11/old-iconic-photos-colorized-brought-life.html
    Some cartoons on Rand Paul’s plagiarism.
    http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2013/11/09/cartoons-of-the-day-rand-paul/
    And Jon Stewart has some fun with it.
    http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/daily-show-rand-theft-caught-o
    Bill Maher and Anthony Weiner on the GOP and ObamaCare.
    http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2013/11/09/video-bill-maher-anthony-weiner-scuffle-w-gop-guest-obamacare/
    Bill Maher’s New Rules.
    http://www.mediaite.com/tv/bill-maher-when-did-christian-values-change-from-%E2%80%98love-thy-neighbor%E2%80%99-to-%E2%80%98fck-off-and-die%E2%80%99/
    More Bill Maher.
    http://www.mediaite.com/tv/bill-maher-clashes-with-gop-panelist-over-whether-tea-partys-finally-peaked/

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