BludgerTrack: 52.0-48.0 to Labor

This week’s BludgerTrack poll aggregate puts Labor well into absolute majority territory, marking their sixth consecutive improvement.

The latest weekly BludgerTrack update neatly reflects the results of the most recent Newspoll, ReachTEL and Nielsen polls in landing bang on 52-48 to Labor. The Labor primary vote has a four in front of it for the first time since BludgerTrack opened for business at the start of the year, albeit by the barest of margins, with a 1.4% gain this week coming off a drop for minor parties while the Coalition holds steady at 40.9%. The latest state-level data points have fuelled a blowout in the result for Queensland, and while there has certainly been some indication of softness for the Coalition there recently (notably the 11% swing which showed up in Nielsen), I’m pretty sure the present extent of it will prove to be aberration. The two weakest state swings for Labor happen to be where elections are due shortly, although you might argue that a Holden shutdown effect is yet to come through in South Australia.

This will probably be the last update for the year – certainly Essential Research will not be back until the middle of next month, and I imagine that’s it for Morgan as well. Newspoll has never been in the business of polling beyond early December, but hopefully The Australian will shortly offer state breakdowns from its accumulated post-election polling so a bit more ballast can be added to the BludgerTrack state dataset.

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.

3,089 comments on “BludgerTrack: 52.0-48.0 to Labor”

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  3. Absolutely priceless… Tony Abbott’s Christmas email…

    Dear Bushfire,

    I want to wish you and your family a very happy Christmas.

    Christmas is such a wonderful time of the year.

    It’s a time to reflect, to count our blessings and to give thanks for all the good things we enjoy.

    We are a good and generous people and I hope this Christmas we will remember everyone who is doing it tough and lend a hand where we can.

    You can watch my Christmas video message here.

    From my family to yours, I wish you a happy, peaceful and safe Christmas.

    Regards,

    {signed}

    Tony Abbott
    Prime Minister

    The message was slightly garbled, but I managed to find a cleaner version elsewhere on the net…

    Dear Bushfire,

    I am writing to you from my holiday lodge, located on a snow covered mountain in the French Alps – accommodation for which I paid every cent out of my own pocket – surrounded by flunkies, press attaches, political advisors, hacks, lurk merchants, Liberal Party barrackers and the pilot of my VIP plane parked in a hanger at the little airport in the valley below – all of whom YOU are paying for to be here.

    I want to wish you and your family a very happy Christmas.

    Christmas is such a wonderful time of the year, except if you’re a whale, a kid going to a state school, disabled, a low-paid hospital or childcare worker, unemployed, employed (but you work for GM or Toyota), Jewish, Muslim or aboriginal (and Andrew Bolt decides you’r not dark enough), struggling with health insurance payments, living in the Murray-Darling, or near the Great Barrier Reef, or just had your house burned to the ground in the Blue Mountains without it in any way being attributable to Global Warming, running a genuine charity, a cow about to be live exported, SBY, Kevin Rudd or Julia Gillard.

    It’s a time to reflect, to count our blessings and to give thanks for all the good things we enjoy, like a safe pair of hands in the form of my government, calm, considered anc courteous, Malcom’s #Fraudband, $320,000 per annum salaries for running the HRC, spivs and shonks posing as “financial advisors” who no longer have to take note of their customers’ best interests, 3,000,000 tonnes of silt dumped on the Reef, taxpayer-subsidized weddings, the intellectual consistency and political integrity of Christopher Pyne, Old Kero as Speaker, a bloke called “Hanger” running a stitched-up Royal Commission into my erstwhile political opponents, Dennis Shanahan, or brand new Mum’s, women of calibre all, earning $150,00 a year, who’ll get to have their dahling little Jemimas and Nicholases, AND keep the loot so that they continue live in the manner to which they have been told they should be accustomed.

    We are a good and generous people and I hope this Christmas we will remember everyone who is doing it tough and lend a hand where we can, like the struggling Health Insurance Funds who need record increases in premiums, Telstra who we are about to pay billions for selling us their copper network for the second time, ex-Liberal political hacks down on their luck, like Alexander Downer, Amanda Vanstone and Tim Wilson, now appointed to plum jobs because they are eminently qualified for the positions, or Climate Deniers, too long deprived of the public tit, needing a leg-up by being put in charge of the government’s Global Warming Action Plan, great sporting clubs like my own Manly Sea Eagles who so desperately require a new $12,000,000 grandstand, and impoverished multi-national confectionary maker, Cadbury’s, or struggling national heroes like Clive Palmer… Yes, we should help everyone we can, unless they are Indigenous Australians, having just had their educations de-funded and who are now being hounded by truant officers, boat people separated from their new-born children, GM or Toyota workers (too good to use just once in this letter), or South Sydney Leagues club, whose new grandstand isn’t as desperately needed as Manly’s is.

    You can watch my Christmas video message. Dozens of others already have. As a courtesy, chuck bags have been provided at all exits. Please dispose of them thoughtfully.

    From my family to yours, I wish you a happy, peaceful and safe Christmas. When Margie starts talking to me again, and we get in some serious powder skiing before retiring to the Presidential Chalet, I’m sure our family’s will be too.

    Regards,

    {Signed}

    Tony Abbott
    Prime Ministe    r

  5. [You know, the debt we had to have, the cuts we had to have, are now funding their bullshit.]

    It’s so they don’t get shot and have their wives/kids abducted and raped you moron.

  6. zoidlord, they are hardly improvements.

    It’s not comfy armchairs, it’s security cameras, better locks and the like.

    I think that is sensible given the people they have to deal with.

  8. @Sean/2905

    Easy solution, don’t create stupid blanket laws.

    @don/2906

    They only have to deal with it considering the laws they created in the first place!

  13. don

    ST wants guilt by association laws.

    The crime problem with Bikies is easily addressed by doing what the right never wants to do. Take the business model away by having the drugs available at pharmacies.

    No big money for Bikies to chase then

  18. From the Hugh White article:

    [Abbott doesn’t get it. He still thinks we and our close mates in the Anglosphere hold all the power.]

    And still believes it is the Anglosphere’s God-given right to do so, the ‘natural’ order of things.

  20. [The crime problem with Bikies is easily addressed by doing what the right never wants to do. Take the business model away by having the drugs available at pharmacies.]

    How naive and simplistic.

    Are you suggesting that honest, reputable pharmacists should be made to supply methamphetamine users across their counters? Or would it be voluntary (in which case none of them would)?

    Would you be happy for bikie gangs to move into the pharmacy sector? Why wouldn’t they, given the supply of their commodity would – I assume, under your arrangement – be legal?

    Maybe then they could start firebombing rival pharmacies, and tattoo parlours would enjoy a renaissance?

  21. @guytaur/2917

    Have a safe flight and Merry Christmas & Happy New Year.

    @Jake/2920

    Things like Marijuana are legal in some countries, and even legal in some states in USA.

    Here is some latest news on that:

    Colorado:
    http://www.freep.com/usatoday/article/4168959
    http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/money/57296178-79/denver-marijuana-comedy-colorado.html.csp
    http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/2fa6fb3c-66a1-11e3-aa10-00144feabdc0.html

    I guess it depends on the drugs.

  22. Jake:

    … honest, reputable pharmacists …

    Those “honest” and “reputable” pharmacists who are perfectly happy to stock and promote ear candles, homeopathy and all sorts of other scams.

  23. [Things like Marijuana are legal in some countries]

    Yes, I purchased some hash at a cafe in Maastricht in the Netherlands. It was a thoroughly decrepit hovel, filled with zombies.

    […and even legal in some states in USA.]

    Oh, well that makes it perfectly OK then.

  24. [Those “honest” and “reputable” pharmacists who are perfectly happy to stock and promote ear candles, homeopathy and all sorts of other scams.]

    Well, if a pharmacy is knowingly trading in scams, it wouldn’t, by definition, be honest, would it?

  25. OK, now we are finally getting somewhere.

    Someone should tell Ken that kangaroos are non-placental, non-monetremic, marsupial mammals.

  28. [The crime problem with Bikies is easily addressed by doing what the right never wants to do. Take the business model away by having the drugs available at pharmacies.]

    Half of the ice was made from sudafed bought from pharmacies

  29. StephenD

    I walked into the local chemists once in winter. Behind the counter was an entire wall devoted to cough medicines.

    “Do any of them actually do anything?” I asked the pharmacist.

    “Nope,” she said.

  30. Well, nearly time for a family Christmas do so I will wish you all a merry christmas.

    Stay safe on the roads.

    And a very special season’s greetings to William Bowe.

  31. [The parents of the dead victims support the RC]

    So either their judgement is clouded by grief or lawyers talk of compensation, or perhaps they are prepared to use their childrens death as political fodder. It is very stupid of them and very very sad.

  33. [I walked into the local chemists once in winter. Behind the counter was an entire wall devoted to cough medicines.

    “Do any of them actually do anything?” I asked the pharmacist.

    “Nope,” she said.]

    In which case, the pharmacist was honest and reputable.

  34. [Sean Tisme
    Posted Tuesday, December 24, 2013 at 1:24 pm | Permalink

    Abbott using parent’s misery for political gamesmanship is pretty poor form, but if you want to highlight Abbott’s complete lack of political judgement I suppose there is no-one to stop you.

    The parents of the dead victims support the RC
    ]
    No doubt the parents were ripe for the picking, but one can only feel contempt for the man that did the picking.

  35. [Sean Tisme
    Posted Tuesday, December 24, 2013 at 2:28 pm | Permalink

    You know, the debt we had to have, the cuts we had to have, are now funding their bullshit.

    It’s so they don’t get shot and have their wives/kids abducted and raped you moron.
    ]
    So the new laws increase social risk. If that be the case why introduce the laws.

  36. How interesting!

    Federal judge allows same-sex weddings in Utah to continue

    [The federal judge who threw out Utah’s ban on same-sex marriages has refused a state request to block gay weddings while the matter is taken to a high court.

    U.S. District Judge Robert J. Shelby on Monday denied a request by the state that sought to bar gay weddings until the appeals process is completed.

    State officials are expected to seek action by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. The appellate court had refused to issue a stay Sunday, saying it would wait until Shelby ruled.

    Shelby last week held that the state’s ban on same-sex marriages was unconstitutional, setting off a flurry of matrimonial activity as marriage licenses were sought and some weddings took place.

    After the judge’s ruling Monday, officials in some parts of the state began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples who began lining up as early as 6 a.m., according to local media reports.

    {…}

    In a 53-page ruling, Judge Shelby held that Utah’s ban on same-sex marriage, passed by voters in 2004, violated the right of gay and lesbian couples to due process and equal protection under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

    “The state’s current laws deny its gay and lesbian citizens their fundamental right to marry and, in so doing, demean the dignity of these same-sex couples for no rational reason,” Shelby wrote. “Accordingly, the court finds that these laws are unconstitutional.”]

    So there you go. In Australia, the citizenry have no constitionally-protected rights of course, but I suspect most people here, if asked, would say that the principles of “due process” and “equal protection before the law” ought to be respected.

    Now it’s clear that in a place where this requirement constrains the law, a properly constituted court has found that barring same sex marriage violates this principle.

  37. Time to go for me :

    Special Thanks to my fellow apprentice Angel **Mari** who helped me when our Dawn Patrol Maestro BK was AWOL 🙂

    To ALL PB’s – all the best for Xmas tomorrow – hope Santa brings you the present you want – but especially Good Health and Happiness for each of you …..

    XMAS CHEERS, badcat 🙂

  38. Newman was on a political winner with his tough on bikies stand, until he went too far.

    A father being arrested for having a drink with his son is a bit much, dressing bikies in pink is petulant and puerile.

    We charge people for what they do, not who they are. Also please note most of the charges brought against bikies in Qld use the old existing laws, not Bliejie’s VLAD crap.

  39. [So there you go. In Australia, the citizenry have no constitionally-protected rights of course, but I suspect most people here, if asked, would say that the principles of “due process” and “equal protection before the law” ought to be respected.

    Now it’s clear that in a place where this requirement constrains the law, a properly constituted court has found that barring same sex marriage violates this principle.]

    Yeah our fear of a bill of rights and our ongoing inexplicable love of the English / German monarchy has retarded legal maturity as expected.

  40. frednk,

    [So the new laws increase social risk. If that be the case why introduce the laws.]

    Sounds like a Coalition slogan – simplistic and misleading.

  42. 9badcat
    Posted Tuesday, December 24, 2013 at 4:32 pm | PERMALINK
    Time to go for me :

    Special Thanks to my fellow apprentice Angel **Mari** who helped me when our Dawn Patrol Maestro BK was AWOL 🙂

    To ALL PB’s – all the best for Xmas tomorrow – hope Santa brings you the present you want – but especially Good Health and Happiness for each of you …..

    XMAS CHEERS, badcat :)0

    Just had a quick look at PB before I go out and who do I spy but my wonderful apprentice who I was bemoaning yesterday seemed to have disappeared. Have a great Christmas badcat and an even better 2014

    Bye

  44. [ Jake
    Posted Tuesday, December 24, 2013 at 4:41 pm | Permalink

    frednk,

    So the new laws increase social risk. If that be the case why introduce the laws.

    Sounds like a Coalition slogan – simplistic and misleading.]

    simplistic and misleading.

    Three words there.

    If the laws lead to the need for more security they can’t be much good. What is the goal? No bear with your kid and more security; that seems to be the result.

    To use a phrase made famous by a simple Queens-lander; please explain.

  46. If the laws lead to the need for more security they can’t be much good. What is the goal? No bear with your kid and more security; that seems to be the result.

    Threats of violence are not the appropriate or acceptable initial response to the imposition of new laws.

    Politicians should not feel intimidated by such threats in passing legislation or not passing it. The various bits of Queensland legislation being thrown at the bikie “issue” may well be terrible legislation – that’s something that should be debated. Threats of violence form no part of that, and if the police assess such threats as being credible it is entirely appropriate that politicians at risk should have their home security beefed up at taxpayer expense.

  48. [

    Threats of violence are not the appropriate or acceptable initial response to the imposition of new laws.

    Politicians should not feel intimidated by such threats in passing legislation or not passing it.
    ]

    But if the laws were useful the threats would be valueless. That does not seem to be the case.

  49. Many thanks William for tolerating all of us each and every day.

    Have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year.

    When do we come back again?

    Thanks bludgers we may not always agree but a lot of us get company from this site and couldn’t do without it.

    Stay safe and enjoy being with those you love.

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