BludgerTrack: 52.4-47.6 to Labor

ReachTEL plus Essential plus Morgan equals no change at all in the weekly BludgerTrack poll aggregate.

New results from ReachTEL, Essential and Morgan have finally put some meat on BludgerTrack’s New Year bones. However, their entry into the pool has had very little impact on the voting intention numbers, which hopefully means the model was doing its job. Both major parties are up a bit on the primary vote after being down a bit last time, but only Labor has made up the difference, the Coalition still being 0.8% off their starting point. With the ups and downs of the minor parties amounting to minor statistical noise, two-party preferred stays exactly where it was following Labor’s half-point gain a week ago. Things are calm on the surface, but the infusion of new data has helped smooth out the eccentricities of recent state-level projections, most notably the extravagant swing to Labor that was showing up in Queensland for a few weeks there. That shaves three off a still ample tally of Labor gains, suggesting Bill Glasson has his work cut out for him at next Saturday’s Griffith by-election. The seat projection has the Coalition down this week a seat each in New South Wales and Victoria, which taken together with the Queensland adjustment makes a net gain of one seat nationally.

ReachTEL had personal ratings this week which I’ve yet to remark on, and can finally little to say about now that I am because the charges are very slight. The best headline writers could do was talk up a 1.8% increase in Tony Abbott’s “very good” rating and a 2% drop in Bill Shorten’s. The latter might be part of a trend, but there’s little reason yet to think that the former is. ReachTEL doesn’t get included in the BludgerTrack leadership polling aggregates, as its five-point scale and compulsory answering mean it can’t readily be compared with other outfits. Nonetheless, there has been a change in the BludgerTrack ratings this week, not because of new data, but because I’ve implemented a means of standardising the polls to stop the trendline blowing around in response to the house bias of the most recently reporting pollster. This has had the effect of moderating the downward turn in Bill Shorten’s net approval rating, which continues to hang off a single Essential Research result, the only leadership poll rating to emerge so far this year. Presumably that will be changing very shortly as the bigger polling outlets emerge from hibernation.

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.

2,468 comments on “BludgerTrack: 52.4-47.6 to Labor”

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  3. Pseph from last night
    Franco did have foreign volunteers. After their unsuccessful “march on Dublin” (I am not joking) many of the Irish Blue Shirts under General Eoin O’Duffy formed the Irish Brigade for Franco. It is claimed that more were killed by friendly fire than by the Stalinists.

  6. Tweet from Tony Eastley

    Note to journos reporting on #abc – the allegations are not the abc’s allegations, but complaints taken to Indon police and reported by abc.

  9. Of course, a forward thinking government would offer SPC all the assistance it wants — on condition it shifts operations upstream.

    A fruit industry which relies on irrigation water isn’t going to be viable in ten year’s time (if it really is now).

  10. [Im still waiting to hear from LNP supporters: in your mind, why is the Abbott government so far behind in the polls, and so early?

    Genuinely interested.
    ]

    Seeing I am a LNP Tory in the minds of some here I am happy to tell why I think they have lost so much support. Basically the last few months has been the most amateur start by any government I can remember. Their strategies seem to be all over the place assuming they actually have proper strategies. They have been a poor government so far.

    The only thing that surprises me is that people may have believed it would be something better.

  13. [rossmcg
    Posted Thursday, January 30, 2014 at 10:18 am | PERMALINK
    Another exclusive for the hard working reporters at the Australian … Just type up the government press release. Their counterparts at news corpse in the UK must be green with envy. They had the break the law to get a story.]

    It’s just possible that the government press releases are composed at Murdoch media and given to Ministers to distribute.

  15. [Mind you, apart from the usual ‘this is happening because Julia Gillard is teh Evil’ stuff, all he promises to do is get rid of the carbon tax, so the SPC workers should have been reading between the lines.
    ]

    Although both the workers and cocacola would have expected the usual reward from liberals for becoming liberal props in a political campaign. It is like the paid the ransom and hockey now wants to kill the hostage. Very unsporting.

    How about a couple of inquiries – one into the long term impacts on foreign relations of two clowns as PM and FM and an inquiry into the economic impact of an incompetent PM and Treasurer.

  16. Now I am sure some here will interpret my last two posts as some kind of veiled support for the government afterall I write in Swahili 🙂

  17. [Now I am sure some here will interpret my last two posts as some kind of veiled support for the government afterall I write in Swahili
    ]

    Swahili – I would have said forked tongue!

  18. Citizen

    Hadn’t thought of that, it is very plausible. After I posted I realised what an old fashioned concept typing up a story from a press release was. Now they just cut and paste from the email. Don’t even have to type.

  19. davidwh

    I see you as a very reasonable and articulate man.

    Whatever party you support your posts are not in the least vitriolic and are informed.

    You are a valuable addition to this site.

  21. Re 156: Tony Abbott apparently thinks that the ABC should self-censor any news unfavourable to the Government. Maybe he thinks that the ABC should propagate the Government line, like Pravda in the Soviet Union, although he already has the Murdoch media to do that.

    Of course the asylum seeker burns story was news. No self respecting news organisation would ignore it. Even more so the Indonesian spying scandal and the CFMEU-bikie story, although I assume that Abbott has no problems with the latter.

  22. I think Murdoch and minions should be pretty careful throwing around the word “treason”. I’d bank on hacking and conspiring to hack the heir to the throne’s phone meeting the conditions for a prosecution, myself.

  23. [David Donovan ‏@davrosz 8m
    Been told senior ABC staff were told to “go easy” on the Coalition to curry favour as they were expected to win. How’s that working out?]

    If true, then they are damn fools for allowing themselves to be so easily intimidated and compromised.

    Far better in this case to have gone down fighting and retain their personal and professional integrity. Instead they now have none of either, and are still going to get it in the neck from Abbott just as hard.

  24. This tweet is from Sharman Stone Lib MP

    [Cadbury’s Tas plant was granted $15m by the Coalition in 2013. Its USA owned parent Mondelez’ earnings net of tax was $1.5billion in 2012]

  25. The flurry of Abbott statements, supported by Murdoch media, points to a Newspoll this weekend.

    Presumably in the minds of Abbott and Murdoch these are all ‘good news’ stories that will guarantee a lift in the government’s support in the Newspoll.

    However Abbott is no Howard. All of Abbott’s statements (ABC, unions, wind power) are aimed at those types who would support him anyway. There is nothing to entice the majority of Australians. Abbott is just looking as if he is skewing towards the extreme right.

  30. Regarding the building industry:

    I asked a couple of builders for quotes to do some shop refitting for me.

    After comparing the quotes I rang the successful tenderer and asked if he could commence in three weeks.

    The answer “yes, if you add 20% to the quote I’ll bump one of my other jobs back a week otherwise it will be 3 months”. (20% was another $2,000).

    Well PB’rs what do we call that response?

  31. [160
    davidwh

    Seeing I am a LNP Tory in the minds of some here I am happy to tell why I think they have lost so much support. Basically the last few months has been the most amateur start by any government I can remember. Their strategies seem to be all over the place assuming they actually have proper strategies. They have been a poor government so far.]

    It is a lot more than just being disorganised and amateurish. There is a vindictive authoritarian tribalistic streak running deep in this mob that is making the populace very uneasy.

  32. Re 175: interesting point. Abbott has done nothing since he won government to convince those who didn’t vote for him, or those who who voted Liberal with little enthusiasm because they wanted to get rid of Labor, that his Government is a safe pair of hands. Quite the opposite. He seems to be playing to his support base and paying off his backers, in the process breaking those commitments that he never intended to keep.

  33. Oakeshott Country@153

    Pseph from last night
    Franco did have foreign volunteers. After their unsuccessful “march on Dublin” (I am not joking) many of the Irish Blue Shirts under General Eoin O’Duffy formed the Irish Brigade for Franco. It is claimed that more were killed by friendly fire than by the Stalinists.

    How sad. 😆 😆 😆

  36. Davo

    Just get a few of your bikie mates to drop round and tell him he will start in three weeks and the price will be cut by 20 per cent.

  37. careful with that Swahili DWH #166 they’re socialists in Tanzania you might catch it!

    Really lovely people I met there too.

    wapi punda milia? (where is the zebra?)

  38. 182

    Abbott also seems to be annoying parts of his support base with the Graincorp decision and moving towards Indigenous recognition in the Constitution.

  41. davidwh@162

    There is also a saying that is apt for the situation. “A fish rots from the head”.

    We need MT but it won’t happen

    MT has the intelligence to be able to do better, but there is nothing else to recommend him. He has basically sold out.

  42. bemused

    [MT has the intelligence to be able to do better, but there is nothing else to recommend him. He has basically sold out.]

    Spot on

  43. [136
    Steven Grant Haby

    Just Me – Clive will be a nasty thorn in the Abbott rump if he keeps tweeting smackdowns like that!]

    A strange world indeed when Clive looks like the good guy to progressives. But politics always did make for strange bedfellows.

    If Clive is Our Saviour, then so be it. All Praise The Clive, and pass the (political) ammo.

  44. I imagine that Abbott will keep having inquiries and royal commissions into the former government and unions until the polls turn his way.

  45. On the ABC and “balance” versus “unbiased-ness”:

    Let’s say you have a new tyre put on your car. Due to the inherent nature of the tyre manufacturing process, the re-tyred wheel is typically “unbalanced,” in that the centre of gravity is not the centre of the wheel.

    So, how is the tyre “balanced”? By adding a weight to one side. That is, by adding bias to one side.

    If the ABC aims to be balanced, then, when a massively unbalanced argument is put forward a bias must be applied to the other side to balance it out.

    So, when a convergence of scientific evidence shows X to be true, but old mate Antivac from Windy Hill Tobacco Farm thinks X is false — put plenty of weight on old mate to “balance” that scientific consilience. Everyone likes a contest, don’t they?

    By this reasoning, balanced is actually the opposite of unbiased.

  48. [I think Murdoch and minions should be pretty careful throwing around the word “treason”.]

    I think that foreigner-by-choice Murdoch and minions should be pretty careful throwing around the word “treason”.

    FTFY

  50. victoria@174

    This tweet is from Sharman Stone Lib MP

    Cadbury’s Tas plant was granted $15m by the Coalition in 2013. Its USA owned parent Mondelez’ earnings net of tax was $1.5billion in 2012

    That tweet actually identifies a large part of the problem.

    Whilst ever our industry is foreign owned, with key decisions made overseas, we are at the mercy of overseas boardrooms and can be held to ransom.

    Why on earth did SPC, which I think stands for ‘Shepparton Preserving Co-Operative’ sell out and become owned by a foreign company? It is but one of many.

    This is a recurring pattern and I think it is about time it was reversed.

    I agree with the Govts position on Graincorp and they should have blocked Saputo.

    Am I an economic nationalist? You bet I am!

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