BludgerTrack: 52.5.47.5 to Labor

With only one new poll to go on, the weekly BludgerTrack aggregate finds the trend to Labor that kicked in around November still hasn’t abated.

It’s been a disappointing week for poll junkies, with the phone pollsters including Newspoll evidently waiting until after the Australia Day long weekend before ending their New Year hibernation. Since this is an off-week in Morgan’s fortnightly cycle, that just leaves Essential Research. All told, there have only been three poll results published so far this year – two from Essential and one from Morgan – so you’re more than welcome to take BludgerTrack with a bigger-than-usual grain of salt for the time being. For what it’s worth though, the one new data point has driven the Coalition to a new low of 39.3% on the primary vote, and pushed Labor’s two-party lead to a new high of 52.5-47.5.

That might seem counter-intuitive given that the one new poll had the Coalition leading 51-49, but there are three factors which have made it otherwise. First, in adjusting the pollsters for their house biases, a unique approach has been adopted for Essential Research to acknowledge that its bias is in favour of stability, rather than one party or the other. For example, Essential overshot on the Labor vote during the election campaign as momentum swung towards the Coalition, but it’s been doing the opposite since the Coalition started heading south in November. So rather than the usual method of determining bias with reference to past performance in late-campaign polls, I’m plotting a trend of Essential’s deviation from BludgerTrack so its bias adjustments change dynamically over time. With Essential stuck at 51-49 to the Coalition while other pollsters are being fairly unanimous in having Labor leading 52-48, you can pretty much work out for yourself what the Essential bias adjustment currently looks like.

The second point is to do with rounding. While Essential’s two-party result was unchanged this week, the primary vote had the Coalition down two points, Labor down one and the Greens up one. Most of the time that would mean a one-point shift to Labor on two-party preferred, but this is one of those occasions where the shift went missing after the remainders were pared away. However, BludgerTrack doesn’t actually use pollsters’ published two-party results, instead determining primary vote totals and deriving a two-party result from them using 2013 election preferences. So the Essential result looks like a slight shift to Labor compared with last week, so far as BludgerTrack is concerned. The third point is that Essential’s numbers are a two-week rolling average (though last week’s result, being the first from the year, was a sample for that week only), so any change that occurs in a given week is a bigger deal than the published numbers suggest.

So it is that BludgerTrack gives Labor a 0.5% gain on the two-party preferred projection and a boost of three on its seat tally. The state relativities haven’t changed much since last week, so the Labor seat gains are evenly spread, with one each provided by Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania. Full results as always on the sidebar.

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.

2,463 comments on “BludgerTrack: 52.5.47.5 to Labor”

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  4. William Bowe@1962

    And neither did observers such as Mumble


    Given your use of the plural, I’d be interested if you could identify a second.

    I could remember mumble clearly as one and am sure I have read similar opinions but can’t recall who by.

    I will have a bit of a look around over the next few days and see what I can come up with.

    Anything else I can do to help you get that PhD? 😛

  5. [1743
    zoomster

    Number of those receiving the DSP has dropped by nearly 8000 in the last two years –

    http://www.scribd.com/doc/202081752/Jenny-Macklin-Mp ]

    LOST: Script for the up-and-coming B-grade movie, The Scary Budgetary Nightmare, starring Disabled Parasite as The Villain.

    Would the finder please return to CC & Co, professional fellatrios to the Rich and Insatiable.

    REWARD: The standard thirty pieces, and no questions asked.

  8. zoomster@1970


    ‘Cash for Clunkers’ and the Citizens Assembly are good examples of how the media determined people’s opinions. Both were perfectly defensible policies in the context of the time, but (like the pink batts scheme) the media labelled them ‘disasters’, reported them as such and therefore it became accepted that they were.

    I had absolutely no trouble (as a candidate in 2010) in selling ‘Cash for Clunkers’. In fact, I used it to highlight how much more expensive ‘Direct Action’ type responses are compared to carbon pricing.

    Gee do I have some bargains for you! 😛

    I reacted physically as soon as I heard ‘cash for clunkers’ and ‘citizens assembly’. I didn’t need anyone to tell me they were dogs of policies.

    HIPS OTOH was entirely defensible and Rudd pissed me off when he failed to properly defend it.

  9. fess

    farnsworth only touches on it in passing – and note he claims that the voters lost during 2010 ‘peeled off to the Greens’. Of course, if they had, Labor would have remained a majority government.

  11. mikehilliard@1978

    Of course the regular vacuous acolytes chimed in with their awe


    Jealousy will get you nowhere.

    What is there to be jealous of?
    Is it the spray of bullshit or the adulation it engenders in some? 👿

  13. bemused

    as I said earlier, gut reactions are not a good way to judge policies.

    There’s plenty of policies I thought were duds at first glance, which on closer examination (using evidence, something you seem to struggle with as a concept) I found to be sensible and well thought out.

  15. zoomster:

    Like Mumble, I thought Farnsworth was too invested with the cult of Rudd. That cultism saw Mumble look silly (having banged on for 3 years about Gillard’s inability to campaign, and how we all needed to have Rudd back, he must’ve been agog at the bloody awful campaign Rudd ran only 3 years later).

    I don’t know how Farnsworth coped with the Rudd implosion as I’d stopped reading him long beforehand.

  17. Diogenes@2002

    The point Diogenes is if there isn’t a verdict on Thommo he will brazenly proclaim his innocence and deterrence isn’t just about the individual but also the expectations of the community.


    Don’t you think what he’s been through is a bit of a deterrence? I’d think any union hack thinking of getting creative would think twice.

    His legal expenses alone will be financially crippling.

  18. bemused@2061

    I think BB at least can string a coherent argument together, no offense but you seem to be all over the place.

    Let’s let those who enjoy others post enjoy them & say so, why knock them is my point

  19. [Julia Gillard
    Adam Goodes – Australian of the Year. An inspiration to all of us in fighting prejudice. Awesome footballer too! JG]

    On Facebook.

  20. Not really knowing much about Adam Goodes he seems like a humble, proud man. I hope the Murdoch minions don’t decide to back the ugly sentiments seen on Catallaxy, although I doubt it.

  21. zoomster@2003

    Diog

    ‘Clash for Clunkers’ was a program which had been trialled elsewhere and had been found to be as cost effective as solar in lowering emissions (and arguably better, in that the return from removing an old car from the national fleet is immediate, whereas solar takes several years to ‘pay off’).

    That is just sheer nonsense.
    The US did it for the stimulus effect on their car industry.
    For a good economic analysis of it, see John Quiggin here: http://johnquiggin.com/2010/07/25/votes-for-clunkers/


    The Citizens Assembly was meant to be a way of educating the general populace about the issues surrounding climate change and the ways to tackle it – which, given the present confusion and misinformation on these subjects, would have been a worthwhile exercise.

    Yes, the “Action Research” approach.
    I think at the time hardly anyone found it convincing and took it seriously.
    It had numerous potential difficulties and naturally, and mercifully, sank without a trace.


    These policies weren’t abandoned because they were inherently bad policies but because the hung Parliament (ironically) made them unnecessary, as it presented an opportunity for ‘real’ carbon pricing (which is a lot cheaper than CforC).

    They were just plain daft.

    I don’t think even the loons would have accepted them.

  24. Add me to those prepared to put in a good word for Niccolò, a much and unfairly maligned man.

    He was explicit that leaders should try to do the right thing whenever possible, but should be prepared and able to make and enforce hard choices whenever necessary, and only to the extent it is necessary.

    Seems like sound practical political advice to me.

  26. I am not sure what Australia Day activities are being run in other cities but here today that the NSW police will have a large force present at the Sydney Big Day Out equipped with drug sniffing dogs (lucky them), the aim being to arrest stoned teenagers. I remember going to the first Big Day Out about 1993-4 (can’t quite recall exactly) & as far as gigs went it was completely benign. It was more dangerous going to French’s Tavern!

  27. Confessions

    Despite the Swans success, Sydney is still rugby league HQ and the Telegraph is their mouthpiece. if they can downplay Goodes’ award they will and if the likes of Piers Ackerman can slag off at him and the award even better.

  28. [Peter Brent ‏@mumbletwits 2h
    Not one IPA member or former Lib staffer got a gong. Not one! Political correctness gone mad.]

    Seriously? If so, Brandis will be after the Australia Day Council or whatever it’s called.

  30. Edwina,

    [Apparently n.korea has very clean air because it doesn’t have any industry.]

    What happened – did they bring in a Carbon Tax as well?

    Maybe Pyongyang could sister up with Whyalla, and with your new status, you could be their joint patroness.

  34. bemused

    quoting someone who is quoting someone else is scarcely ‘a good economic analysis’.

    Yes, it was far more expensive as a form of abatement than carbon pricing – as I said. At the time, however, where carbon pricing (which Gillard was aiming for) was a far distant hope, as an interim measure it stacked up quite respectfully against other forms of action.

    Carbon pricing was the goal – which is why C for C was dropped as soon as it was realised that the goal was closer to achievable than originally thought. In the interim, however, Labor wanted to demonstrate it was still committed to cutting emissions (rather than doing nothing).

    The problem was (and is still, with Abbott’s Direct Action plan) that almost any form of abatement other than a carbon price is very expensive. But when you don’t have a carbon price, something is better than nothing (and on those grounds, CforC is comparable to the solar panel subsidies we’ve had in the past, which most people accept as sensible).

  35. himi@2008

    bemused@1959

    —
    I thought the cash for clunkers idea wasn’t too bad – it was inspired by a program that was quite successful in the US, though it too was demonised by the right. Whether it would work well as a stimulus program in a country that doesn’t have as much car manufacturing as the US does is a valid question, but the basic idea isn’t bad.

    I was quite unhappy with the citizen’s assembly idea, because I was really hoping they’d go straight to an ETS or similar, but given the way the debate had been pushed by Abbott it was an understandable if disappointing equivocation.

    Most of the other stuff (the “real Julia” things and so on) were just a fairly under-prepared PM learning on the job. The way they get portrayed in these kinds of debates is quite ridiculous. That’s one of the reasons I tend to agree with people who say that Gillard suffered both quantitatively different but also qualitatively different treatment from other prime ministers.

    Certainly I don’t think the “real Julia” is any worse than Rudd’s mea-culpa about the home insulation program. I was a Rudd supporter at the time, but the way he bowed down to the crap spewed by Abbott and the media about that made me really question both his political and policy judgement.

    himi

    I covered most of this ground in a couple of other recent posts.

    I agree 200% about Rudd’s mea-culpa. He tried to do a “Peter Beatie” and it just didn’t work for him. (For the life of me I don’t know how Beatie got away with it either.) It is certainly not the approach I would have recommended.

    I don’t think Gillard’s treatment was all that different to what other PMs have received and the current one is receiving from cartoonists and increasingly from journalists.

    She appeared hesitant, lacking in confidence and unconvincing. PMs all need a certain amount of chutzpah. Keating had it in spades. Rudd had enough. Gillard lacked sufficient.

    If she was under-prepared, why was that? Why did she want the job? Hadn’t she been in Parliament a similar time to Rudd?

  36. Peter Brent ‏@mumbletwits 2h
    Not one IPA member or former Lib staffer got a gong. Not one! Political correctness gone mad.
    ==========================================

    No doubt the Liberals trolls will out accusing the Australia Day Council as a lefty organisation

  37. Bob Ellis on
    “Twelve years as a slave” an extraordinary film
    _____________________________
    A shattering and moving film which looks at the fate of a young free black who is kidnapped and enslaved and taken to the South in the years prior to the Civil War
    A terrible life,…but typical of millions of blacks in the US …and in part a view of US history which still haunts the US today

    Visitng my sons family in Chicago last year we realised that in the leafy outer suburban area in which he lives…very upmarket indeed ,,,on our nighly walks my wife and I had seen families out in their nice gardens or walking like us in the summer breeze…very Partridge Family…but not a black face amongst them…a

    seperate as Soweto even with a black man in the White House

    In Chicago the apartheid line…an econonomic one… is a clear as can be..and the current fashion in the deep South is to fly the flag…as so many do in the USA…but these day they fly…as I saw in Tennessee…the old Confederate Flag..what do we make of that today ?

  38. …an example of ‘good economic analysis’ btw is Kevin Bonham’s article on social security.

    Seriously, Dr Bonham, we have a sufficient number of psephologists around – we have too few people who can properly analyse and critique policy, and do so in a way that non experts can follow.

    More, please!

  41. Interesting point AA re Australia Day Council.

    It was run up until about six months by GRaeme West – former NSW Labor Minister until he left the organisation in an unannouced fashion.

  42. Edwina St John
    _____________
    while you big sex ghange op may have been a success(was it ?)…it seems to have made no difference to the level of your comments try harder

  43. deblonay

    SBS ran a series of documentaries about ten years ago about the woman who run the Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes program in the US – in one interview, she deplored the fact that, although her neighbours were lovely people, they would actively exclude a black couple should they move into that street.

    A friend of mine who spent some time living and working in Chicago said living in the US was great – as long as you had health cover, were white, and never walked down certain streets.

  44. National Aust Day Council

    So obviously swarming with lefties.

    Chairperson Adam Gilchrist

    Deputy Chairperson Shelley Reys Director/Non-Executive Director Elizabeth Kelly
    Director/Non-Executive Director Ian Frazer
    Director/Non-Executive Director Bruce Walker
    Director/Non-Executive Director Carol Schwartz Director/Non-Executive Director Jason Glanville Director/Non-Executive Director Robbie Sefton
    Director/Non-Executive Director Janet Whiting
    Director/Non-Executive Director Samina Yasmeen

  45. Diogenes@2031

    I think you mean the ends justifying the means.
    This essentially what Machiavelli advocated and it is not a satisfactory ethic for modern political leadership.


    Machiavelli didn’t really say that. He showed what kind of means were effective.

    And he was really saying that the means CAN justify the ends, which is obviously true.

    His argument was that to have a good society, you must have good laws. To have good laws you must have a strong Prince to impose them. Therefore whatever increased the power of the Prince was good.

    “The Prince” was of course written as a job application to Lorenzo de Medici. I believe he was not successful in his application. 😛

  46. Bugler@2082

    I thought Mike Smith was head of the CBA, rather than ANZ. Do they swap around or all look the same?

    Smith is the ANZ MD. Has been for sometime – kidnapped, ransomed in South America somewhere? at one stage while working for a Bank there before he came to Australia.

    Mike Carlton has described Smith as ‘porcine’ which is close to the money.

  48. Someone is going to say that given Abbott was accused by the left of being sexist because of the under-representation of women in his Cabinet, why haven’t the left said Australian of the Year is racist as the indigenous are over-represented (9/58, about 16%).

  50. confessions@2057

    Given your use of the plural, I’d be interested if you could identify a second.


    Malcolm Farnsworth was a second.
    http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3854854.html

    Not that it means anything anyway. Mumble was predicting a Labor win in week 2 of the 2013 election campaign, even as it was obvious that Rudd was drifting if not struggling.

    He was high up on my list to check, but thanks for sparing me the effort.

    I will leave it as that for William.

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