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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  2. Abbott is struggling with this, his underbelly is exposes. Labor have a great opportunity here. I would avoid the simple ‘throw money at it solution’ and focus on the ‘we will fight for workers jobs’. The fact that Abbott has had no meeting with Holden is extraordinary.

  3. “@latikambourke: Deputy Liberal Leader Julie Bishop says the headline figure in next week’s mini-budget will be ‘Shocking.’ #MYEFO”

  14. Abetz wants the Senate to keep sitting till the carbon tax is repealed, but Christine Milne points out that coalition senators moved boxes of stuff out of their offices this morning as they prepare for the Christmas break.

  15. “@jamesmassola: Milne interrupts Abetz attempt in #senateqt to extend sitting by pointing out she saw Coalition senators arrive with packed suitcases today”

  20. Hi Bludgers all

    I’ve been extremely busy and haven’t had much time to post, but read when I can.

    It’s a very interesting time and there’s surely lots of things to talk about.

    So, given that, why is it that – every time I come on hear to read stuff – the major topic of conversation appears to be whatever it is that a rather uninformed and blustering poster who calls himself Sean Tisme has had to say on this, that or the other?

    There are many posters on here whose opinions I find interesting and informative. But always much less so when all they are doing is wasting their time trying to refute that one particular poster’s inanities.

    His main motivation in posting is presumably to see what sort of reaction he gets. So don’t react.

  21. The senate voted on the Christmas extended sitting thing yesterday, they voted it down. Was Abetz asleep through that vote or has he been ordered to go back and try again.

  22. GG

    Hird’s wife is obviously not someone to trifle with!!

    [Demetriou recently strongly denied Hird was being paid by the Bombers or AFL, but since then Tania Hird has claimed her husband is still being paid as part of the accepted sanction.

    On Wednesday, she told News Corp that her husband agreed to a sanction with pay in lieu of taking the AFL to court.

    “Of course he’s being paid, that was the deal,” Mrs Hird said.

    “Andrew Demetriou knew it, the AFL knew it.”

    Mrs Hird also accused the AFL of “threatening” her husband and the Bombers and wanted the governing body to “stop distorting the truth”.]

  23. [Corey Bernardi won’t like this at all]

    Poor Corey. He’ll have to get his miserable hordes working hard over Christmas on a meanspirited email campaign to counteract the HC on that ruling.

    Meanwhile we can at least take some glee in that part of the decision.

  26. [But always much less so when all they are doing is wasting their time trying to refute that one particular poster’s inanities. ]

    Guilty as charged 😀

  32. Psephos@334

    The High Court judgement is actually quite radical. Read ss32-38. Marriage now means whatever we choose it to mean!
    Corey Bernardi won’t like this at all.
    http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/2013/55.html

    Indeed. Because of that judgement, whenever people say that SSM can never truly be “marriage” because “marriage” is intrinsically between a man and a woman, I can point out to them that the High Court doesn’t agree. The court recognises that same-sex marriage is an in-principle valid concept that is recognised as such in other countries; it just happens that it is not legally recognised at the moment here.

    Of course it was a stupid argument anyway since legal institutions shape public understanding of the definition of marriage, so to use that supposed public understanding as an argument against changing the legal institutions is automatically fallacious.

  33. leone, I didn’t hear the exact motion but they are now debating whether to vary sitting hours (but days I don’t know). Labor + Greens will defeat it.

  34. So am I right that the libs are going to spend 45 bill on building only 70% of a crap system. Doesn’t that make it, basically, as expensive as Labor’s, but a lot worse?

  37. Leone

    Thanks. I’m not very observant. I haven’t seen any of those products. 100 workers is a lot in Charmhaven in 1 hit at Christmas time.

  42. The LNP have obviously decided to dump their truckload of shit sandwich announcements before christmas, and then hope they can come back in 2014 and hope everyone forgets over christmas and new year. Labor needs to bury them in the next week – I think the line ‘Tony Abbott’s government is not the one people though they were voting for – they promised they’d (insert the many broken promises and lies here), but have done the opposite. It is abundantly clear that they never intended to keep these promises. They deliberately and knowingly lied, and then tried to tell us that we were stupid and has misunderstood his promise. What else will Mr Abbott do in 2014 that he said he wouldn’t? He said workchoices was dead, buried and cremated, but his top adviser and the people who helped him knife Mr Turnbull and funded his campaign want it back. etc etc”. Labor needs to get people discussing the libs lies over christmas BBQs, and planting the idea that abbott’s days are numbered.

    I watch in awe at how incompetent they are – they make Gillard look like a PR genius (she wasn’t – she was good at doing, not grandstanding and sloganeering).

    I look forward to goading my bogan-in-law rellies about how well abbott is doing at christmas – not even the staunchest and dumbest herald-sun knuckle-dragger liked him much even before the election. problem is, they’re probably PUP or other nut-job voters now, but their preferences will always go lib before labor. most of them only survive thanks to some form of welfare, and will certainly need state pensions in retirement, but somehow they have been convinced that the libs best represent their interests (i.e. their bigotries) – they see labor and the greens as ‘new class’ educated elites. I probably don’t help.

  45. I have wondered whether Abbott will come out and support a conscience vote on SSM, making him seem big and not afraid of differing opinions and would smash the stereotype of himself he, or at least his advisers, seem/ed to want to distance him/themselves from. Then again, it would possibly alienate his only supporters ATM, who, from experience, appear to largely be people who also believe Muslims are attempting to steal Christmas.

    Re: McTernan; TBH it only makes me think of the “Thick of it” and doesn’t really surprise me. I get the feeling that if you involve yourself too deeply in the inner workings of the cynical, higher levels of politics you forget how people are expected to behave. Though I must admit it’s odd considering reports of people’s perception of Gillard herself when they worked for her seem to be the opposite. Even her enemies didn’t seem to be able to pin her saying something particularly nasty on her.

  46. When do Turnbull Cabinets start sprouting on street corners all over Australia. If I was the libs, I would desperately try to camouflage them because they will be a very prominent reminder of a crap network. Any suggestions?

  49. Watching Abbott answering questions, he reveals himself to me as a rather nasty, smirking smart-arse, who repeats himself too much to sound genuine. This may be completely false impression, of course. 😉

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