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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  1. I’m guessing the reason the LNP keep banging on about the “carbon tax” is not because they think it’s particularly unpopular (because it isn’t), but because they’re lining it up as their excuse if the economy slips into recession.

  2. Jackol @ 2102
    Like some others here, I oscillate between believing they’re either machiavellian plotters or just plain stupid.

  3. Confessions, Rossmg,

    That’s the opposite problem Napthine has. The only opinion people seem to have of him is that they want him out 😛 (getting a bit too ahead of myself, maybe)

  4. Abbott really has no self-awareness at all does he:

    “It was a real crisis, as opposed to the confected crises we often see reported and talked about, this was a real crisis and suddenly I was called on to resolve it,” Mr Abbott said.

    Right, so in recent times – say up to September 7 – where were most of the “confected crises we often see reported” coming from? And I’m assuming he’s also happy to imply that basically any “crisis” on his current watch is confected and of no substance.

    And of course a story that he probably thinks is meant to highlight the qualities of Glasson ends up being about his own heroism – “suddenly I was called in to resolve [a real crisis]”.

  5. zoomster@2083

    In came a new principal. The whole air of school changed…largely, I believe, because he spent so much time walking around the school and looking into classrooms. A kid sent out for misbehaviour knew it wasn’t a matter of IF the principal saw them outside of class and asked why….it was a matter of when.

    I’ve always believed that a principal and vice principal should spend a large part of each day walking the corridors.

    Beginning teachers get the support they need, and all students know that classrooms cannot easily get out of hand, because the P and VP will cruise by any minute.

    This is great for the academically inclined, it means they get the education they are after, and the dropkicks know that the long arm of the law is never far away.

    The P and VP get a real understanding of what is going on in the school, and teachers who are doing a great job know that it is known, and the teachers who are underperforming, for whatever reason, get either help and support, or where that fails appropriate measures are taken.

  6. Booo 🙂

    [On this day: Chappell’s historic bowl underarm bowl]

    Australian captain, and brother, Greg Chappell reported instructed Chappell to deliver the legal but unpopular move to save the match. A dismayed McKechnie blocked the ball but it was all over – Australia won

    Advertisement

    Thirty three years on, Chappell’s move is still hailed as a glorious day for Australian cricket but across the Tasman it’s another story – then-Prime Minister Rob Muldoo called it “the most disgusting incident I can recall in the history of cricket]

    http://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/on-this-day-chappells-historic-bowl-underarm-bowl-20140201-31tp2.html

  7. [The government pays $15.5K per kid in public and $8.5K in private.

    I’m sure it’s more complicated than that as the government kids might have more needs on average than the private kids but that is a big difference]

    It might be right but I would be surprised, what would interest me would be the marginal cost of a single additional student in a state school and whether it is greater or less than the subsidy to the private schools.

  8. Diogenes quoted me

    [The picture is about 16 years old.]

    Then …

    [Isn’t that illegal? False representation or something. ]

    I’m totally fooling RW men into being civil. There ought to be a law against it for sure, but this is twitter.

  9. Just Me

    Posted Saturday, February 1, 2014 at 6:28 pm | Permalink

    AA @ 2087

    Let me see, the Indonesians let a rickety old unseaworthy boat leave, and in return they get one of those little beauties, for no net cost.

    Guess that showed them that we really mean business, huh?

    I wonder how long the Australian taxpayer is prepared to let that arrangement stand?
    =======================================

    When Abbott said he would buy boats in Indonesia…he failed to mention they would our boats to begin with and he meant buy back the boats

  10. zoomster@1975

    Diog

    life is all about horses for courses. I’m a very good teacher, too — but I know I’d make an even better politician. Alas, it is not to be.

    Obviously our great humility and modesty stands in your way. 😐

  11. Poroti

    [Thirty three years on, Chappell’s move is still hailed as a glorious day for Australian cricket but across the Tasman it’s another story – then-Prime Minister Rob Muldoo called it “the most disgusting incident I can recall in the history of cricket]

    I can’t recall anyone regarding it as a glorious day for Australian cricket. Nobody — not even Chappell who spoke of the mental exhaustion and ennui that predisposed the decision claimed it was so. Everyone I’ve spoken to with an interest in cricket regards it as a shameful event.

  12. US,

    That may be a bit ambitious 😛 I think they’ll get a clear majority (at least at this point, you can never know what’s going to happen over 10 months, Andrews himself being a Left faction leader who got there because of in fighting between the SDA block and the AWU within the right. They may also produce another bad policy designed for media attention).

    It does, however, lead to the question of can Labor get a majority in the LC like the Liberals did. I extremely doubt it, but I’d say it’s possible.

  13. Diogs,

    You are such a hypocrite!

    You post under a pseudonym and use a picture of Giovanni Falcone as your avatar and have the temerity to criticise Fran who uses her own name plus an image likeness of herself as being somehow a crime.

    I may not agree with much of Fran’s posings, but she at least is prepared to put her real name to her jottings. And, that is something to be admired.

  14. [AussieAchmed
    Posted Saturday, February 1, 2014 at 6:16 pm | Permalink

    Could this be true?

    ]

    The story would be right. The reductio ad Hitlerum is crap.

    However, if a person does die in one of those lifeboats then the minimum charge under international maritime law would have to be manslaughter.

  15. Bugler@2117

    I remember a few polls about a year or so ago that had the gap at 55-45. Napthine temporarily bridged it to about 50-50 but the gap has been growing again since. Its because they changed the horse, but not the jockey. People see through it after a while.

    I just hope that Mary-Anne Thomas resigns her candidacy at the very least so Labor can put its best face forward. There was a petition for that just recently

    I think the question of a LC majority will depend on how the Greens fair. If Labor can win anything between 40-45% of the PV at their expense, they may just get it.

  16. Fran Barlow

    There was a famous butcher right in central Auckland who had a larget sign up outside his shop the next day. “Prices Lower Than Chappell.”

    I went to their next match in Auckland. There was quite an “atmosphere” 🙂

  17. AussieAchmed
    Re the picture of one of our lifeboats being called a death boat

    It is stretching the point, but three people died crossing a river after they hit land in one of our boats. They disembarked at a remote location and were left to fend for themselves and three died.

    It was in the Telegraph article linked here earlier today

    Three people died while crossing a river in the jungle.

    http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/first-closeup-look-at-a-lifeboat-the-abbott-government-is-using-to-stop-asylum-seeker-boats/story-fni0cx12-1226815411712

  18. Just saw the ABC news with a report of Shorten and who he visited in Europe. Then a view of JulieB with the biggest sneering smile on her face, talking of Tony choosing Asia and Shorten choosing Paris, as if it was an illegal pleasure jaunt.

    Nobody can persuade me she’s a nice person. Yuk!

  19. Re Don @2076: Foreign Minister Julie Bishop says PM Abbott’s first overseas official visit was to Jakarta and OL Bill Shorten’s is to Paris, then London.

    I note in passing that our relations with France and the UK are still fine. Our relationship with Indonesia, however….

  20. US,

    Well, I doubt on polling day they’ll get 55%2PP, but even if they do I think Andrews wouldn’t abuse it and stuff up. Mary-Anne Thomas probably won’t have too much effect in terms of changing the result. There is the abolition of Doncaster for the Liberals to deal with. I’d prefer if these things weren’t imposed, though.

    I will note I don’t totally understand what’s happened, as I’ve alternately heard Psephos say seats like Dunkley, La Trobe and Deakin in Victoria have left faction MPs/candidates because the left controls most of the branches in these seats, but Macedon has an MP imposed because it’s “allocated” to the Carr Left. It doesn’t make sense to me.

  21. Steve777@2130

    Re Don @2076: Foreign Minister Julie Bishop says PM Abbott’s first overseas official visit was to Jakarta and OL Bill Shorten’s is to Paris, then London.

    I note in passing that our relations with France and the UK are still fine. Our relationship with Indonesia, however….

    Errr abbott’s own first overseas trips as LOTO were to Europe as well. The UK tories were ‘polite’ IIRC but not impressed with him.

  22. [Who gets to keep the lifeboats when they beach in Indonesia?]

    I asked this question a while ago and never received a response.

  23. mikehilliard@2136

    Julie Bishop, what was the famous tweet?

    Narcissistic bimbo I recall.

    Dud FM is how I regard her

    Sheridan’s, “worst FA Shadow Minister he can recall” and Shanahans – ‘Damaged Goods’ aren’t bad either.

  24. Re the fate of the lifeboat
    According to the news report the Indonesian Navy got one..

    Twenty men heaved the boat to the beach. It was not leaking but they were unable to start it because the keys were missing.

    The boat was towed to the port of Pelabuhan Ratu and has been impounded by the navy.

  25. confessions

    From what i gather, Abbott is very pleased with the reportage in today’s paper, of the life boat and asylum seekers finding itself stranded on a remote island. Words fail me

  26. @PV/2143

    That will be an interesting problem for Morrison/Abbott/Bishop….

    Key lost at sea.

    And then the problem of the boats being impounded by foreign nation, something Abbott & Co haven’t thought through.

  27. Steve Gibbons, former member for Bendigo, was the one who tweeted that about Bishop, I should specify. I remember 7:30 made a massive deal about it when Bishops AWU attack completely failed. Apologising to Gillard because they were wrong, not only every day that week and broadcast defamatory comments about her, was far too much for them to stomach.

  28. Why is bishop laughing???? So what if Shorten went to London and Paris in his first overseas visit? It does not mean anything, it does not mean that he does not understand Asia or anything like that. give the man a break, he has only been in charge of his party for little over 3 months.

    Tony on the other hand, with his chronies have been in our faces for the pure sake of annoying us for over 4 years now. Tony has been in public life for over 20 years now. We know exactly what sort of a dumb racist bogan he is. It is too late to change our judgement about that. He should go crawl in a bush and leave us alone instead of throwing temper tantrums about it.

  29. They had to tow it because the keys were missing. Presumably the Indonesian Navy asks us nicely for the keys and we put them in the mail. Or not, or silently without saying or something.

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