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. zoid

    Its getting to the point that I am running out of polite language to describe. Smorgasboard of Incompetence is too generous.

    Its more like a bunch of :monkey: could do better. At least they could do oratory well with that Shakespeare they have written

  2. Sean Tisme@249

    Why did the ALP ACT Legislature introduce a gay marriage bill they knew was illegal??

    Perhaps they should stop with leftwing stunts and actually start governing… I’ve noticed Labor state governments seem to introduce gay marriage bills on their death beds…

    Speaking of which, how does it feel to be one of the few supporters of the most incompetent Government in Australia’s history ?

  3. How is Turnbull going to fund Fraudband with further debt when, I understand, he’s going to let competing networks (like Rupe’s) cherrypick the best customers.

  4. “@GeorgeBludger: .@TonyAbbottMHR might be a wrecker of current business in Australia, but you @TurnbullMalcolm are wrecking future business #auspol”

  5. Carey,

    ACT Labor were told by all and sundry that their legislation was illegal and that only the Feds have the power to introduce marriage laws.

    Why then did they introduce it?? Because ACT Labor wanted a stunt… just like Tasmanian Labor(most unpopular government in history) wanted a stunt to distract their complete incompetence.

    The ACT ALP could have simply passed a motion in support of the Feds changing the law, but instead they wanted to try and big note themselves and do something which has come to it’s ineviatable conclusion.

  6. [Both Gillard and Rudd voted against Gay Marriage… both hard to digest facts for the left.]

    Which absolutely nobody on the left fails to acknowledge despite your pathetic attempt to spin to the contrary.

    More facts, less spin, please!

  7. Thanks zoid, YB, but I got this one…

    [The same cost to run the same equipment at the exchange that gets switched off idiot.]

    1. The exchanges won’t be switched off. So no gain there.

    2. There are more nodes, and each node has to a) convert light to electrical signals, and b) push the electrical signal down a copper wire, both of which consume a lot more energy than just shooting the light signal down a fibre all the way to the household. Lotsa power there.

    3. In aggregate, the N cabinets containing each node are less efficient to cool than the one exchange. Cooling is expensive – really expensive. Cooling many smaller units is much less efficient than one big exchange. Lotsa power there too.

    4. Nodes are distributed throughout the electricity distribution network – has anyone looked at the number of feeders that require upgrades to handle the increased load? Plus the cabinets’ cooling requirements will be correlated with peaks in residential loads – raising peak energy prices as well as incurring capital costs.

    5. It will cost more to operate a fleet for maintaining all of these cabinets, which are very conveniently spread out through the burbs, than it will to maintain just exchanges.

    So what exactly was your point, muppet?

  8. If all the bad news is being dumped on us before Christmas when is Abbott going to tell us about the GST going onto everything? Christmas Eve?

  9. @Sean Tisme

    It’s not a stunt, it is a political statement: the ACT government declaring its support for same-sex marriage. The Federal Government (the LNP) did not have to take the case to court – this will be a stain on its history. Same-sex marriage will become legal in the near future in Australia (possibly in three years!), and the LNP will be remember as the party that tried to stall this and support discrimination.

  10. I was always fearful that the Abbott Government would somehow be able to continue the con job they perpetrated on the Australian voting public when they were in Opposition (with the connivance of the Murdoch Propaganda Machine and the supine incompetence of the ABC) on into their tenure as the Government …. while always being of the view that the inherent weaknesses of Abbott and his vapid and incompetent ministry would eventually lead to an unravelling under the weight of real responsibility.

    I think that we can now say that this level of Governmental ineptness and failure so soon after coming to power is unprecedented in Federal politics, and such unskilled and ineffectual leadership has not been seen since the justifiably maligned McMahon Prime Ministership.

    How much worse can it get?

    Given the inferior personnel now crowding the Government front benches, and the already near total squandering of what little goodwill was extant in the community for Abbott and his cronies after the election, there is now no way back into the hearts and minds of the electorate for this already failed and discredited pack of clowns.

    The voting public make up their minds about Governments early in their tenure, and it takes a lot to shift the initial perceptions for good or ill, once they harden into political orthodoxy.

    For the Abbott Government the debacle of the GMH closure will prove to be the ‘bridge too far’ over which the Australian people refused to follow.

  11. Commbank:

    CommBank FX ‏@commbankFX 3h

    #AUD may endure intraday volatility as we expect AU employment to increase slightly & unemployment rate to tick higher #insight #mktmover
    Retweeted by CommBank

    More bad news to come I think.

  12. I suppose Hockey knew that there would be a blowout in Fraudband when he was warning us about the dreadful MYEFO to come. There must come a moment in his life when he starts to understand that the responsibility for the overspending is his. Surely!

  13. This story exposes so much that is wrong with Pyne’s (and Abbott’s) attitude to private and public schools:

    http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/2013/12/12/05/47/boys-leave-elite-sydney-school-over-sex-acts

    [Three 14-year-old boys from Cranbrook have agreed to leave the elite Sydney private school after a sexual incident involving a 14-year-old girl.]

    A private school can just sweep away any debris that might tarnish its reputation. Where is the commitment to rehabilitation of minors who do the wrong thing?

    Where do these boys go for their education? Do they just turn up at a public school and get enrolled? Does Pyne assume that public schools should be obliged to accept the discarded dregs from private schools? What about the influence the boys might have on other students at a new school?

  14. Given that the SMH seems to be favoured media outlet to quote here these days I thought the following article deserved to be posted particularly seeing how much attention misogyny received in the last three years.

    [Obscene language of Julia Gillard media adviser John McTernan revealed in emails leaked to ABC]

    [His emails to staff included crude references to female genitalia when discussing one of US President Barack Obama’s aides, his own staff and journalists]

    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/obscene-language-of-julia-gillard-media-adviser-john-mcternan-revealed-in-emails-leaked-to-abc-20131211-2z657.html

  15. From day 1, TA indicated that he will destroy the NBN. Todays numbers mean absolutely nothing. Destruction of the NBN commenced without any review or any matters related to cost.

  16. CTar1

    Very kind if you to think of that but great excitement here. OH made lunch and I ate it while watching JC belt Turnbull’s NBN plan all over the Park.

    PJK and JC in the one day. Wow! I’m recovering well now 🙂

  17. “@tim_chr: .@JasonClareMP: “John Curtin released more security information during WWII than this government has released about the boats.” #auspol”

  18. As expected the High Court has ruled that the ACT’s pseudo-marriage law is invalid. This was the correct decision and a progressive one, because returning to the pre-1960 regime of different marriage laws in different jurisdictions is thoroughly retrograde. The marriage equality campaign was foolish and misguided to pursue the mirage of state/territory legislation, which was never going to succeed and is not genuine marriage equality anyway. This ruling clarifies that there is only one pathway to marriage equality, and that is by electing a federal Parliament that will amend the Marriage Act.

    Supporters of marriage equality should be pleased with the High Court’s ruling, because the Court found that ” “Marriage” in s51(xxi) includes a marriage between persons of the same sex.” This clarifies that the federal Parliament does have the power to legislate for marriage equality, contrary to the fears of some that a referendum would be necessary. The Court has made clear that state/territory pseudo-marriage laws are not a path to marriage equality, but has made the correct path – federal legislation – easier.

  19. According to the Herald:

    In the areas of Australia presently served by fixed lines 26 per cent would receive direct fibre connections, instead of the 100 per cent originally planned, 44 per cent would be serviced by fibre to the node and fibre to the basement, 30 per cent would be serviced by pay television coaxial cables.

    The bottom line is: Rupe gets to cherry-pick 30 per cent of the network and they spend 40-odd billion creating an inferior network which is only 70% as big as the proposed NBN.
    Have I missed something?

  20. Psephos,

    Well put.

    While the proponents of same sex marriage and especially those couples that took advantage of the mirage of an opportunity last weekend will be disappointed, nothing that was decided to today stops those people continuing their relationship in whatever way that suits them. All that has happened is that the law has prevailed and been upheld.

    I will say that their honeymoon lasted longer than the current Federal Government’s though.

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