BludgerTrack: 51.2-48.8 to Labor

Another strong result for Labor from a major pollster pushes them to giddy new heights on the BludgerTrack poll aggregate, which has now branched out into leader satisfaction and preferred prime minister.

A strong result for Labor from Newspoll sees blue and red cross paths on the BludgerTrack two-party preferred aggregate, with Labor seizing its first substantial lead since the aggregate opened for business late last year. Labor has also been boosted to one shy of an absolute majority on the seat projection, with the Coalition crashing to 70. The state breakdowns find Labor back to 2010 territory in Victoria, and doing rather a lot better than that in Queensland and Western Australia.

While mostly the work of Newspoll, part of the shift to Labor is the result of a modelling tweak to deal with the particular difficulty posed by Essential Research, which instead of favouring a particular party over time appears to have a bias towards stability. Bias adjustments based on its pre-election performance have accordingly been correcting for a lean to Labor that disappeared together with the Coalition’s polling ascendancy. So I will instead be plotting the trend of Essential’s deviation from the model’s results, with the bias corrections adjusting over time.

The other big news on the BludgerTrack front is that it is now tracking leadership ratings as well as voting intention. Such data is available fortnightly from Newspoll and monthly from Nielsen and Essential Research, which at this state leaves a fairly shallow pool. It is nonetheless clear from the sidebar that meaningful trends are already evident. I am excluding from consideration the personal ratings from ReachTEL, whose refusal to give respondents an uncommitted option leads to idiosyncratic results.

In other news, Crikey subscribers might care to enjoy my article yesterday on the inquiry into the missing WA Senate ballots.

UPDATE: Kevin Bonham offers an excellent review of what the polls say, and what they mean (and don’t mean).

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.

2,310 comments on “BludgerTrack: 51.2-48.8 to Labor”

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  1. bemused

    yes, picked up the mistake myself seconds after posting.

    I blame being educated in the pre-VCE era. (We didn’t do any grammar at all – to speak of – in the seventies. I taught myself the rules of grammar when I had to teach it).

  2. DisplayName
    Posted Saturday, December 14, 2013 at 8:49 pm | PERMALINK
    Probably was worn out posting all those links in the morning, mari.

    Which I appreciated as his fellow apprentice, I know how hard it is to find the links in a hurry, which is why I am in awe of the Master BK.

  3. [DisplayName
    Posted Saturday, December 14, 2013 at 8:50 pm | PERMALINK
    How was your trip?]

    It is still fantastic.

    [RT is Resurgent Turkeys. He used to be a leftie basking in the warm sun, but having seen the dark, slithered off into the shadows to become a righty.]

    Haven’t we all?

  4. What about a Royal Commission into the undoubted close links between the Liberal Party and a certain multinational corporation. That corporation’s UK branch is known to be riddled with corruption and criminality and it would be amazing if it only extended that far. A re-elected Labor government should treat NewsCorp the same way that Coalition Governments treat building unions.

  5. [Rossmore
    Posted Saturday, December 14, 2013 at 8:51 pm | PERMALINK
    Welcome back ML …. would you give the LNP a gold star for their first 100 days?]

    Thanks, I haven’t really been in the loop much over the last couple of weeks, but have occasionally lurked here and seen the glee so I imagine Abbott is faltering badly! No skin off my nose as most of you know….

  6. Mod Lib
    [Haven’t we all?]
    Some of us still cling tightly to our painstaking assemblages of rationality and decency rather than let go and swim with abandon in seas of chaos and ignorance.

    [It is still fantastic.]
    What, they have internet where you are? You’re not communicating by smoke clouds or something are you?

  7. Mod
    [… have occasionally lurked here and seen the glee so I imagine Abbott is faltering badly! …]
    Eh? Such faith in us. Astonishing!

  8. [What, they have internet where you are? You’re not communicating by smoke clouds or something are you?]

    They even have WiFi in Laos!

    Whodathunk?

  9. [Eh? Such faith in us. Astonishing!]

    Beneath the political hack exterior always lies the remnants of rationality….so I take your words for it that the government is on the nose (the polls and davidwh merely provide “bonus” proof, it is really in PB I trust!).

  10. My 20 somethings nieces both proudly announced today they’d done all their xmas shopping online. Their 50s something uncle now buys all his clothes now on line from the Marks and Spencers in the UK. Probably a sure sign all investors should get out of DJs and Myer.

  11. [DisplayName
    Posted Saturday, December 14, 2013 at 9:02 pm | PERMALINK
    I thought it was all primeval landscapes brimming with primitive savagery beyond our fair shores.]

    Is Poroti here?

    If not, I would say that you must be referring to New Zealand.

    If yes, then scratch the above :devil:

  12. [ No skin off my nose as most of you know…. ]
    not like whether a carbon price was a tax or not! now it’s only destruction of manufacturing and lies about the NBN and Gonski and a whole bunch of broken election promises

  13. [They even have WiFi in Laos!

    Whodathunk?]

    Me since I’ve been there. They even have running water, ‘real’ food, and electricity as well!

  14. Heading to off PB’s, still find the death of Holden a strange beast to deal with. One Stop Shop is about as good as it sounds, RC into insulation is wank.

  15. Rossmore@2132

    It’s the apostrophe wars, bring it on. Bemused is a serial offender here … I’ve given up alerting him to his frequent use of it’s, when he really means its. He’s not alone, most of the PB community fall for the dreaded apostrophe error. Makes me weep.

    Yes, I hang my head in shame and confess to being a recidivist. A habitual apostrophe offender.

    Now just wait till I spot your weakness. 😛

  16. confessions
    At least we didn’t have to pay for Abbott’s expenses to attend Fred Nile’s wedding – or I hope not. I wonder if Bananaby was invited. A wedding just isn’t a wedding if he’s not there.

  17. [Luang Prabang?]

    Yep. Went to remote villages up the Mekong as well. I even got to have tea with Australia’s Ambassador to Laos. 🙂 He was way cool.

  18. zoomster@2151

    bemused

    yes, picked up the mistake myself seconds after posting.

    I blame being educated in the pre-VCE era. (We didn’t do any grammar at all – to speak of – in the seventies. I taught myself the rules of grammar when I had to teach it).

    Yes, I was one of those lucky ones educated pre-70s when we actually had to learn stuff, including grammar. 😉 And it was mostly learnt in primary school.

    The sciences have fared no better than the humanities and have now been almost completely debased.

    I felt a little cruel after taking that swipe, but you did lead with your chin. 😀

  19. leone:

    Is it normal for the PM to officially write to lesser MPs in state parliaments when they get married? How about when they have children?

    I can understand using the office of PM to congratulate Premiers and Chief Ministers on such occasions (esp as they are expected to have a working relationship with them), but cross bench MPs in state parliaments does seem odd.

  20. Mod Lib 2159 … hard times indeed for genuine small l liberals. Even Turnbull seems compromised with his curate’s egg of an NBN policy, that seems to have put the entire IT industry offside. It was his chance to draw a line between himself and Abbott but he passed the opportunity. I suspect he knows he will never be PM. Like Costello, perhaps he just doesn’t have the ticker…

  21. Steve777@2158

    What about a Royal Commission into the undoubted close links between the Liberal Party and a certain multinational corporation. That corporation’s UK branch is known to be riddled with corruption and criminality and it would be amazing if it only extended that far. A re-elected Labor government should treat NewsCorp the same way that Coalition Governments treat building unions.

    Get the cops to beat them up? Sounds good to me. 😀

  22. [confessions
    Posted Saturday, December 14, 2013 at 9:12 pm | PERMALINK
    Luang Prabang?

    Yep. Went to remote villages up the Mekong as well.]

    The Mong villages?

    The waterfall trip or the caves? I did the waterfall as they said it was better (and it was pretty lovely).

    Did you go up the hill in LP for the sunset and do the alms giving for the monks in the morning too?

  23. BTW:

    I am thinking of changing my name in the new year so that I don’t frighten the natives here so much with the “Lib” bit.

    Suggestions?

    I was thinking Turnbully or Malnotcontent….

  24. confessions
    I can understand a PM writing a letter of congratulations to a cross-bench federal MP or Senator, that’s just good manners. But for a PM to write such a letter to a state politician of no great importance is just weird.

    Maybe Barry O’Farrell made Abbott do it. Sort of ‘I’ll support your grubby little proposal but you’ll have to get that idiot Nile off my back. He wants you to……..

  25. Mod Lib@2186

    BTW:

    I am thinking of changing my name in the new year so that I don’t frighten the natives here so much with the “Lib” bit.

    Suggestions?

    I was thinking Turnbully or Malnotcontent….

    How about ‘Turdball’…

  26. leone@2187


    confessions
    I can understand a PM writing a letter of congratulations to a cross-bench federal MP or Senator, that’s just good manners. But for a PM to write such a letter to a state politician of no great importance is just weird.

    They probably agree with each other on quite a few things and that the 1950’s were “a lot better”.

    Thats where both their policy outlooks are.

  27. [Did you go up the hill in LP for the sunset and do the alms giving for the monks in the morning too?]

    I have two photos on my sideboard of the sunset up that hill, which I can see as I type. I skipped anything explicit to do with monks given I’m an atheist.

    I can’t recall exactly which villages we went to up-river except that it was very confronting. I was very uncomfortable with what we saw, even though we were taken into people’s homes and got to eat with families. The poverty contrasted with our riches was extreme.

    And remember that this was in the immediate wake of the ASEAN meeting which had been held in Vientiane only the week before. The Laotian govt had reportedly pushed all poverty off the main Vientiane streets in the weeks leading up to ASEAN, and forced women to dress ‘traditionally’ if they wanted to be on the main street or in the markets.

  28. Didn’t we learn that the ALP NBN was actually about twice as expensive as advertised?

    Isn’t that what I was predicting (to much ridicule, as usual) all along?

  29. Setting up this RC is a precedent that will almost certainly come to bite the Liberals in the bum when Labor returns to power.

    There is no statute of limitations for RCs so the Iraqi wheat scandal, Sinodinos’ rapid resignation from a slew of not-for-profits, anything and everything to do with Murdoch, the destruction of the Australian automobile industry, political donations by the mining industry to the Liberals, the cover of cruelty to cattle and sheep, the various deaths and near-deaths at sea, whatever all become potential grist to the politically-motivated RC mill.

    M.A.D.

  30. Confessions

    I am staggered the PM, Joyce and Brandis were not AT Nile’s wedding. surely an opportunity to network and claim some expenses

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