BludgerTrack: 50.3-49.7 to Coalition

After substantially narrowing last week, this week the two-party preferred poll aggregate gap all but disappears, while leaving the Coalition some breathing space on the seat projection.

It’s been a quieter week on the polling front in the wake of last week’s bonanza, with only the regular weekly Essential Research and fortnightly Morgan added to the mix. The new additions do nothing to halt the momentum to Labor which emerged in the previous result, with shifts of 1.3% shift on the primary vote and 0.5% on two-party preferred. The latter gain is blunted by the fact that the Greens are down 1.2%, having failed of late to replicate a series of stronger results in early to mid-November. The two-party preferred measure is now being calculated with newly available preference flow results from the September 7 election, replacing modelled preference projections used previously. This hasn’t made much difference to the national result, but it’s helped eliminate an anomalous gain for the Liberals on the seat calculation in South Australia. The other change on the seat projection is an extra gain for Labor in New South Wales. It should be noted that the model continues to leave the Coalition well ahead of Labor despite the position of near-parity on two-party preferred, indicating the impact of “sophomore surge” effects on the BludgerTrack model in the seats Labor most needs to win. See the sidebar for full results.

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.

2,516 comments on “BludgerTrack: 50.3-49.7 to Coalition”

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  1. I imagine that the Liberal political theorists right about now would be calling for Peta Credlin to be kicked to death. Or burned to death. Or put in a chaff bag and thrown into the sea to drown. Or maybe bashed to death with baseball bats.

  2. Saw this on twitter.

    [So, the #CredlinCabal in the PMO have taken to ridiculing their own MPs,like Sen Sandy McDonald, publicly now? This won’t end well. #auspol]

  3. Ms Credlin is probably wondering when Textor is going to advise the world about her resemblance to Pilipina porn starlettes of the seventies.

  4. Calls for N-War with Iran
    ______________________
    A Repug Member of HoReps //the member for “Moronville”no less..and Sheldon Adelson self-proclaimed as” the richest Jew in America” both call for the dropping of a Nucleur bomb on Iran as a soluition to that problem…even though that might cause millions of deaths…how can such maddies sommand such attention in the USA..and preach that The Bomb solves all problems

    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/04/1260099/-Extremist-Rep-Duncan-Hunter-R-Moronville-has-a-plan-Nuke-Iran#

  5. Not a bad article from Rob Burgess, but forgetting he is very much part of “the media” –

    [ The age of the slogan is finally over

    Just because the national media embraced the role of he-said-she-said automatons during the 43rd parliament is no reason to assume it will continue to do so. Prime Minister Tony Abbott is learning that very quickly.

    Journos and commentators who were happy, for whatever reason, to regurgitate slogans such as ‘end the waste’, ‘scrap the tax’ and ‘stop the boats’ to help chuck out the ‘worst government ever’ with its addiction to ‘debt and deficit’ are just not playing ball any more.

    And they are being served up a smorgasbord of errors and broken promises to pick apart.

    Abbott did promise to match Labor’s school funding model, dollar for dollar, for four years – before reducing that to one year, de-funding it, re-funding it and re-instating something like Labor’s policy again.

    He did promise 12,000 public service job cuts that he now thinks are mostly covered by Labor’s pre-existing efficiency dividend. Oops.

    And he did poison voters’ view of Australia’s modest federal debt – before asking to be allowed to borrow a lot more.

    Moreover, having denounced the Greens as economic fringe-dwellers, the Coalition last night relied on their support to agree to a deal to remove the debt ceiling altogether in return for more transparent reporting of what’s being put on the national credit card.

    And it’s all being reported by journalists. Which is a nice change.

    Moreover, as voters, those Australians deserve so much more from so-called journalists than calls to throw the prime minister into the harbour in a chaff bag; to replace a market-based carbon pricing scheme with a much more expensive one (in per-tonne terms); to mis-represent the size of the national debt; the belittling of world-beating economic growth … and so much more.

    And as much as the Abbott government finds it very different being in government as compared to being in opposition, one can only hope that news directors and editors around the country will wake up to the urgent need to put things in better perspective.

    Treasurer Joe Hockey’s call on public debt, though hypocritical, is not the ‘fiscal emergency’ we have been led to be believe by the front pages of newspapers.

    Yesterday’s national accounts did show the economy continuing an almost unprecendented run of growth – something we should all be grateful for.

    ….Improving productivity and competitiveness, dealing with the ageing population, catching up on infrastructure, fixing industrial relations and funding the federal and state budgets won’t be done with slogans.

    Tony Abbott knows that. And with the shellacking he’s getting in the media it seems journalists are starting to understand that at last. ]

    http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/12/5/national-affairs/age-slogan-finally-over

  6. The shambolic handling of the scheme continued yesterday when Federal Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce said WA would roll out the loans. The announcement caught the State Government off guard, with no formal agreement in place.

    Mr Joyce then refused to discuss the eligibility criteria or the time frame for applications just weeks after stripping $10 million from WA’s original $60 million package without consulting local authorities.

    ————————————————

    What a disgrace!! So much for caring for the people of the land and Australia’s food security and exports

  7. If you have ever been faced with wanting to delete your browser cache, cookies, or history, you know that the path to the browser dialog where this can be done involves a number of steps. However, there is a simple keyboard combination that will get you there faster. (Hold down all three keys.) It is
    Ctrl+Shift+Del
    This shortcut works for Internet Explorer 8 and 9, Google Chrome, and Firefox 3.6 and up. The graphics below show the dialog that opens in each of the three types of browser when the shortcut is used.

  8. Qld PUP leader:

    [“Bogans have … inherited the earth and the world is full of them demanding their right, in an odd way, to be heard,” Dr Douglas wrote in the emails, published in The Courier-Mail.

    “The interesting observation about Boganland is not just how common it is now but how the sufferers just copy one another so quickly with each trend …

    “It is no longer satisfactory that they will just buy (and wear) ugg boots, watch Big Brother, choke on a diet of grease, dye their bright purple (sic), tatoo (sic) and rejoice in their ignorance.”]

  9. leone

    Posted Thursday, December 5, 2013 at 8:36 am | Permalink

    Another cunning ploy from the masters of the pea and thimble trick.
    ——————————————

    So this shambolic lying Govt is replacing a $1billion plan with a $345million plan and claiming some sort of glory.

    What a nest of vipers.

  10. Abbott has called in Murdoch to do a hatchet job on the East Timorese:

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/east-timors-tribulations-fuelled-by-darwins-great-lng-pipedream/story-fn59nm2j-1226775480888#sthash.H1LrjctA.dpuf

    [While East Timor’s leaders are envious of Darwin, their bid to have the Treaty on Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea torn up risks becoming another case of the country stirring up a foreign dispute that distracts attention from the main game of addressing mass poverty at home.

    ASIO’s swoop on the Timorese government’s Australia-based legal representative on Tuesday gave Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao more political ammunition to hurl at Australia. He condemned it in the strongest terms as “unconscionable and unacceptable conduct” and called on Tony Abbott to give a full explanation and to guarantee the safety of its witness, the former ASIS spy.

    All ASIS agents undertake not to disclose details of secret operations — an agreement that would have been breached and subject to stiff penalty if the former agent has revealed information about any activity in East Timor.]

  11. Colon the Arrogant Lying Liberal Emperor in WA is going down the same path as Abbott – blaming the media and voters for his broken promises

  12. zoomster @ 88
    [Howard was only NOT a one term PM because he got the votes in the right seats. ]

    The main reason he nearly lost was that he’d fulfilled his legaslative agenda withing the first year or so and was only marking time for much of the latter two thirds of his first term. That’s when he latched onto the GST as his purpose for being reelected. In many ways 2001 was a repeat of 1998, but he lucked out with 9/11 and the Tampa and took full advantage.

    Abbott’s problem is that while Howard had only a modest agenda for government, there actually was one. Abbott only has some 3 word slogans. Blocking of the carbon tax repeal, etc, until after the new senate sits may keep these on the boil for another six months or so, but then what? There don’t appear to be any plans, nor much interest in formulating any.

  13. Kinkajou@121

    Ocean protector GPS cut off?

    Yes.

    I don’t know why, but this annoys me more than anything else the LNP government have done. I hate being cut off from information, and especially when it is done for spite.

    I assume Morrison is to blame. Can’t have people working out whether the OP is picking up AS ahead of the weekly non-event, can we?

    I’d better not say any more about Morrison.

    The Labor opposition’s phrase in a piece in SMH yesterday, ‘mean for the hell of it’ doesn’t begin to scratch the surface.

    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/scott-morrison-being-mean-for-the-hell-of-it-to-asylum-seekers-labor-20131204-2ypst.html

  14. This stage of the political cycle in 1996 was the immediate aftermath of the Port Arthur massacre, something Harold Macmillan might have called an ‘event’. John Howard dealt with that very well, taking on some of his rural constituency in the process. His handling of the Port Arthur massacre and the introduction of tighter gun laws and the gun buy-back scheme gained him a lot of good will.

    In the following year or so there was a raft of ministerial sackings and resignations resulting from ‘difficulties’ some had with the Ministerial Code of Conduct. Many apparently thought it was just something to wave around during an election campaign. John Howard eventually fixed that problem by quietly dropping the Code.

  15. [In the interests of fairness, it should be pointed out that the last Labor government only got a second term because of successful negotiations with the indies…]

    Indeed a dose of truth is needed……

    In the interestes of fairness, real fairness, it should be pointed out that the last Labor government would have had a clear majority and not needed to prostitute itself to get a second term, if they had not back-stabbed a first term PM who had just saved the country from recession, for absolutely no reason apart from internal factional politics.

    That is the insanity of it all….. the factional warlords in extreme arrogance and self importance almost immediately after Labor returning to power set about undermining and backstabbing the PM in order to install their person and regain full factional power…it should have been criminal and some of those people put in prison.

  16. Why is Labor trying to give 33,000 Illegals permanent residency?

    They really are the best friends the people smugglers have ever had.

  17. Mumble:

    [Try to imagine the morning after election night 2016. Will anyone care about a few stumbles in late 2013?]

    No-one seems to be taking Abbott’s threat of a DD seriously, except a few hacks in the (now completely tabloid) press talking up chaos and confusion.

    “DD as early as April,” etc.

    But, with all the polling going south, you can see the compelling force of the “No DD under any circumstances” camp.

    Apart from a reasonable chance of Abbott losing a DD – something that would be a prerequisite for restoring the popular NBN, vital schools and educational funding and the other looming cuts that Joe has in mind – there’s the distinct possibility that it wouldn’t make any difference to the balance of power in the parliament. It might even make it less favourable to the Coalition.

    As SBY chortles to himself over Australia’s discomforture with East Timor – poetic justice that it involves spying, the Howard government and erstwhile best buddies who put one over Indonesia at the time – the punters might just long for a return to a stable government that doesn’t trash-talk its own economy, blame everyone for its problems but itself, and insult our nearest neighbours. They might long for it before it’s too late, before Labor gets settled in as an opposition.

    Already the Labor side is being looked at as the grown-ups in the room. What before was a “gabfest of five years or reviewing”now looks like, beside Pyne’s Shonkski, statesmanship of the highest order. Wouldn’t want to let all that corporate memory just be frittered away.

    Rudd and Gillard are gone, the leadership is solid (if stolid), they’re making good points (although not hitting too many fours and sixes, the singles, twos and threes are accumulating), and most of all… they know when to shut up.

    They’re not shy of their achievements – which are now being appreciated in their absence – and maybe, just maybe, if a DD was called a few months down the track, they could come close to winning government back.

    Now, that would be a fascinating outcome.

  18. TP

    Nice what if. However the fact is you cannot say that because we do not know how Rudd would have done with ministers resigning as they would not work with Mr Rudd.

    We know ministers would have resigned because they were crystal clear about that.

    That is the problem with what if hypotheticals we do not know. Its fiction. Not reality.

  19. [The editorial proves one thing: we in the infantile leftist media have done it. We’ve won. We finally broke the Australian’s brain. It can only be a matter of time before the entire Australian right-wing intelligentsia is committed to institutions, as was our plan all along.
    . . .
    It’s sort of sad to see the way it now babbles on about Paul Kelly’s “penetrating insight and peerless authority”, its rheumy gaze fixated on some magical sky-castle where this means something. It’s poignant the way it thinks it is “blessed” to have Dennis Shanahan around, like a dementia patient whose only friend is a tea-towel he thinks is Jesus.

    It’s touching the way it references Greg Sheridan as a point of pride rather than a production glitch that continually allows erotic political fan fiction to be published on its opinion page. And it does bring a tear to the eye to see the venerable publication laid so low that it publicly admits to employing Judith Sloan.]

    https://newmatilda.com/2013/12/04/broke-australians-brain

  20. Another point Mumbles has missed. Government popularity counts now because of two upcoming by elections. One of those having an impact on Senate balance of power and thus on how Abbott can govern

  21. Re ST @ 132 – not that the Liberals ever respevct anyone else’s mandate when it doesn’t suit them, but:
    * Tony Abbott has a ‘mandate’ to abolish carbon pricing.
    * He also has a ‘mandate’ to reduce CO2 emissions to meet the agreed 2020 target, but has no credible plan to meet it. In fact not even an ‘incredible’ plan. ‘Direct Action’ is just a half-baked collection of wish-list items based in part upon unproven technologies.

    Now we know that Abbott will drop the target and possibly ‘Direct Action’ as well, but let’s take him at his word for now.

    The two mandates are incompatible. Labor supports the one that’s best for the country and will vote to keep the mechanism in place that has a chance of achieving it. Abbott should come on board.

  22. Qantas workers are the highest paid airline workers in the country. Why then were the union heavies striking for higher pay a few years back shutting Qantas down? They just can’t help themselves can they.

  23. The mandate the electorate actually meant to give the Abbott government may differ from the mandate the government thinks it was given.

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