BludgerTrack: 55.0-45.0 to Labor

With nothing much doing in polldom this week, the momentum to Labor established by the post-budget results carries over into this week’s BludgerTrack poll aggregate reading.

With just about every pollster in the game taking the field last week to gauge budget reaction, there is a corresponding lull this week, the trusty weekly Essential Research being the only new data point nationally. Since this of itself doesn’t bear much weight in the model, the change since last week is more to do with pre-budget polling fading from the system than any recorded shift from last week to this. The trendlines instead move a little further along the trajectories set for them last week, with Labor up a further half a point on the primary vote, the Liberals down correspondingly, and a lift for the Greens boosting the two-party preferred shift to 0.8%.

There has been one substantial new poll result this weak, and that’s been a relatively mild result for the Coalition in Galaxy’s Queensland-only poll (which, interestingly enough, was exactly replicated in the small-sample Queensland component of this week’s Essential poll). However, the BludgerTrack model only uses state-level polling to determine the manner in which the national vote is apportioned between the states, so the effect of this result has been to soften Labor’s numbers in Queensland while fractionally improving them everywhere else. Since Queensland’s is the mother lode when it comes to marginal seats, the swing in the national result has yielded Labor little gain on the total seat projection, as gains of one seat each in New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and South Australia have been counter-balanced by a loss of three in Queensland.

The other BludgerTrack news for the week is that the retrospective poll tracking charts have as promised been extended to the start of the Howard era, the results of which you can see on the sidebar. There is no new data this week on leadership ratings, so the results on the sidebar remain as they were a week ago.

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.

1,869 comments on “BludgerTrack: 55.0-45.0 to Labor”

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  1. If Abbott is there when the next election is called; he will lose. Labor will go hard on the lies and this first attempt as a budget. The present budget, even if all implemented there is not going to be a significant impact in reducing the deficit, even less with the present intent of the upper house. What can he possibly do to gain the trust of the public after this debacle and at the same time keep faith with his hard right companions?
    If Abbott is found to have a health issue (Nodding syndrome?) and is replaced, apart from the lack of any notable untainted candidates what are they going to do to get the public on side? Trash all that they are presently standing for and pretend the lies were only Abbott’s and Joe’s lies, I don’t think the public would buy it.

    The Labor party has a rich bag of choices to differentiate them from the LNP for the next election as long as they keep discipline and are sensible in what they offer.
    The biggest problem for the LNP is the future leadership to take them to an election. I have not seen anyone say that so and so is an outstanding future leader that can take them to a winning position in 2016. Politically Abbot is dead in the water as is the treasurer. Who’s budget was it Abbotts or Joes?
    The period from now to the next budget will be worth watching for the twists and turns of the LNP

  2. briefly

    [The LNP have completely miscalculated. They thought there would be widespread if grudging acceptance of the budget by some and rejoicing by others. Instead there is near universal dismay.

    No party that values its future should go near the budget. Palmer is certainly not stupid enough to become Abbott’s enabler.]

    Absolutely agree with you!

  3. [1493
    zoomster

    briefly

    I predict Abbott will be gorn long before that – if he lasts until the end of the year I’ll be surprised.]

    The Liberal party-room lack the gumption to remove Abbott. There is no-one of standing available to challenge him. He will hold on.

  4. Lizzie,

    [Hehehe
    adam rozenbachs
    Tony Abbott to tow back volcanic ash from Indonesia. #auspol]

    TURN THE TEPHRA!

  5. briefly@1500

    1498
    Wakefield

    PUP have everything to gain and nothing to lose by opposing the budget completely. They do not need to bargain with Abbott. The Senate majority – Labor, Green, PUP, DLP and X – will make windfall political gains at the expense of the LNP by simply rejecting the budget plans.

    The budget is so deeply unpopular that any party that supports any part of it will be tainted by its odium.

    The LNP have completely miscalculated.

    As a result the tories will be left whining that they cannot get most of their nasty stuff through the Senate – with their opponents pointing at the even nastier things they want to bring in.

    Business won’t have got what they expected either.

    But the lies and then telling voters they heard something different from what was ‘promised’ – thats the most damaging thing – they have blown themselves out of the water.

    How do you talk your way out of that come the 2016 election?

  6. roger

    As a non practising Catholic as well I agree with you.

    My view is also that the removal of Pell to the Vatican was not a coincidence given the issues of the child abuse RC.

  7. It looks like many of the right wing Minor parties a fronts for the IPA. If PUP hadn’t stood at the last election, more IPA candidates may have won Senate seats and Abbott would have had a lot more compliant Senate.

    The left should do everything possible to expose the dirty dealings of the IPA.

  8. Predicting the end of the Abbott Government is an easy assertion to make given the current state of the polls, the overwhelmingly poor performance of the Government and the reaction to the recent budget.

    However, predicting the outcome of an election two and a half years away is a mugs game. While I understand that things look rather bleak for the Libs atm, this may change for a number of reaons.

    Firstly, external events a la another twin Towers type incident which changes the focus of the world we live in could happen at any time.

    Secondly, the Libs might learn from their mistakes, the population may be more forgiving when over time the issues of importance today fade as people get used to the new order, and the Opposition may disintegrate because of policy, scandal or misfortune.

    My view is that if a pendulum swings hard in one direction (as has occurred to the Libs since the last election), it can swing back just as strongly if the circumstances change.

    Despite the universal condemnation of this Budget by the various opposition groupings there will be scope for taxx cuts in time for the next election. Remember, John Howard won a lot of elections promising tax cuts over a labor Opposition promising a better world.

    This is not saying Labor are probably in front atm, just that there is a lot of policy work still to be done and Labor need to prove they can keep their ambition faction under control.

  9. This is what will happen in Australia very soon, Coalition Government will claim the budget a success (apart from knocking millions of families into the poverty).

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10861087/Government-claims-digital-success-with-Universal-Credit.html

    “Universal Credit is a new welfare benefit, pioneered by Iain Duncan Smith, that aims to replace six existing benefits – jobseeker’s allowance, employment and support allowance, income support, working tax credit, child tax credit and housing benefit – with a single monthly payment. ”

    When Hockey claims that there are too many different payments and says he wants to simplify, this is what he means.

  10. @briefly said

    Palmer is certainly not stupid enough to become Abbott’s enabler.

    Clive seems to be making solid gains by opposing the budget and I don’t think he risks much by continuing to do so. The upside for Clive is:

    1) A DD election in which PUP will make gains
    2) A couple of years of dysfunctional govt – then an election in which PUP will make gains.

    The Libs have created a problem where the ALP, Green and PUP all stand to gain by sitting back, opposing the budget and running the Abbott is a lying meme…. and the Libs have expended all their political capital whilst painting themselves into this corner.

    I really did not think they would be this foolish in Govt.

  11. GG

    I do agree with you that there is such a thing as counting your chickens.

    However as you can see its not looking like Abbott can recover. His agenda is just too radical and hurts too many people.

    Its WorkChoices in the first term.

  12. Adam Bandt ‏@AdamBandt 9m

    .@alan_john_moran So, does IPA support $11bn in fossil fuel subsidies? Or does your free-market radicalism stop when it comes to big coal?

  13. A speaker on Big Ideas (24) Paul Gilding, was talking of the “death spiral” of the coal industry. Abbott will, no doubt, step up his support for Gina.

    What was that he said about coal being “dangerous” if it was left in the ground???

  14. [Bushfire Bill
    Posted Saturday, May 31, 2014 at 10:53 am | Permalink

    BW,

    [Your entire post relies on the presumption that the comment was racist. I don’t believe it was. It was inappropriate at best, in my view.]

    Using the term ‘darky’ and an analogy to what a group of ‘darkies’ in a racist film were saying to make a point about “quittin’ time’ is racist. Hiding behind literature makes it all rather cute and, for the willing, ‘contestable’.

    I am rather pleased that the management understood what the commentators did not.

    [No-one mentioned “coons” or “niggers”, only you did. “Straw men” would be a better word for them. You keep bringing up things the commentator did NOT say.]

    There is no difference between ‘darky’, ‘coon’ and ‘nigger’. They are all racist terms, used by racists to denigrate black people.

    But somehow we are supposed to think that ‘darky’ is not really racist (perhaps just a bit on the uncle Tom side, which was how the ‘good’ ‘darkies’ were presented in ‘Gone With the Wind’). They loved their slave masters, they really did. But we are expected to believe that ‘nigger’ and ‘coon’ are, somehow, ‘straw men’.

    Perhaps ‘darky’ is not quite as racist as ‘nigger’ and ‘coon’? The reason I raised the latter two terms is that there is no particular reason not to, if using ‘darky’ is racist.

    [I’m sure we’ll never agree, but for the record, my position is that he should have known the reference was inappropriate, if only because the PC’ers and do-gooders would be swarming out of the woodwork to condemn him for things he did not say at all, and which – if he had said them – might have made their case.]

    Given where this is going, it does rather look like we will never agree.

    If being anti-racism means being labelled by people such as yourself ‘PC’ or a ‘do-gooder’, so be it. I came within a whisker of being seriously bashed for the same sort of objections in our very own ‘Old North’ on quite a few occasions. Calling out racism in the flesh can be a risky business – especially in places like Katherine, which, at the time ran to setting up its own little Ku Klux Klan chapter. (Those guys preferred ‘coon’ over ‘darky’, btw, so perhaps you have some sort of point.)

    The teacher I fronted in a staff room once also preferred ‘coon’. Your choice of racist terms is a matter of personal preference, I suppose.

    [But he didn’t say those words, and to my mind the case against him is diminished.]

    ‘diminished’? Is there some sort of hierarchy of racist terms operating here?

    ‘darky’ = ‘coon’ = ‘nigger’ = human beings being denigrated by racists.

    His modus operandi was, as you yourself noted, use of the analogy. The issue here is whether using an analogy justifies using a racist term ‘darky’ (or ‘coon’ or ‘nigger’) and using racist stereotypes, because it has appeared in the literature somewhere or other.

    Using exactly the same rationale and exactly the same justification, there is no particular conceptual reason not to move on with using terms like ‘nigger’ and ‘coon’.

    Here are some meanings that Rugby League commentators can use to target a Google search of the literature when they want to use some analogies to explain how the game is going. I have added some suggestions for when and how the terms might be used to clarify what is happening in the game:

    ‘Naggers: Acting in a lazy and irresponsible manner.(team not working hard enough)

    Niggerlipping: wetting the end of a cigarette while smoking it. (he is rubbing the ball on the grass like a…)

    Niggerlover: Derogatory term aimed at Whites lacking in the necessary loathing of Blacks.(Clear reference to an umpire giving a bad decision)

    Nigger luck: Exceptionally, but undeserved good luck.(He kicks for a goal, the ball jags back and with ….)

    Nigger-flicker: A small knife or razor with one side heavily taped to preserve the user’s fingers. (?)

    Nigger heaven: Designated places, usually the balcony, where Blacks were forced to sit, for example, in an integrated movie theater or church.(Clear reference to sitting on the substitute bench with your green fluoro shirt on while you are waiting to get a game…)

    Nigger knocker: Axe handle or weapon made from an axe handle.(King hit behind play, dangerous tackle, shoulder charge, dog shot…)

    Nigger rich: Deeply in debt but flamboyant.(Cronulla…)

    Nigger shooter: A slingshot.(?)

    Nigger steak: A slice of liver or a cheap piece of meat.

    Nigger stick: Police officer’s baton.

    Nigger tip: Leaving a small tip or no tip in a restaurant.

    Nigger in the woodpile: A concealed motive or unknown
    factor affecting a situation in an adverse way.

    Nigger work: Demeaning, menial tasks.’

    Now not all these would be useful in the heat of the game, but I am sure that creative commentators could find relevant examples in the literature and then do some apt analogising.

    And, for the record, I did, at times in our ‘Old North’ get the following:

    ‘Niggerlover’.

    My guess is that a ‘do-gooder’ or a ‘PC’ person is just being a wishy-washy ‘Niggerlover’.

  15. @guytaur/1523

    HAHA, I’ll eat a hat if that’s true.
    (But then again, I suspect the budget will remain, just an unpopular leader/front bench shuffle).

    BUT then again, it’s Bob Ellis.

  16. “@political_alert: Greens Leader Christine Milne will hold a doorstop on suggestions PM will try to negotiate his budget through the Senate, 2pm Sydney #auspol”

  17. dave

    [I want to see the tories decimated as well with their reputation for economic management in tatters around their feet.]

    They already look like they’ve got an Exocet in the butt.

    Three years of Tones and Hockey copying ‘Dave & George’ will waste a whole generation of nutty Lib politicians.

  18. “@AshGhebranious: rt @2GB873 BREAKING: Sydney Betting Agencies have odds of 5:4 that Abbott will be dumped as PM by September this year? #MyLiberal #auspol”

  19. Google Earth gets you down and dirty on ‘gunung sangeang’ should you wish to ‘fly’ close for a look. This stuff was taken before the eruption.

  20. @InsidersABC: On the #insiders panel this week: @KarenMMiddleton @dwabriz & Brian Toohey. @frankellyabc interviews Christopher Pyne. #insiders #auspol

  21. BW,

    [My guess is that a ‘do-gooder’ or a ‘PC’ person is just being a wishy-washy ‘Niggerlover’.]

    You don’t really like it when someone challenges you, do you?

    Your whole tone is plonking and patronizing, as if only you have all the answers.

    Once again you have used words I did not. You have likened anyone who uses words you disapprove of as KKK candidates, from the mines or whatever of Katharine, who would rather burn crosses and lynch “niggers” than discuss issues.

    Most of your example were of extreme scenarios, ill-befitting a simple piece of inappropriate football commentary. But you see thin ends of wedges everywhere, don’t you?

    Today “old darkies”, tomorrow, if this isn’t nipped in the bud, ABC footy commentators will be talking about “the nigger in the front row”, “the coon at outside center” and about how we should have a few KKK-style lynchings to improve the flow of play.

    You’re blowing this all out of proportion. My thoughts on the matter are that the use of the word “old darkie” – in the context in which it was used (i.e. NOT talking about an Aboriginal player, or the state of race relations in Australia, but merely a recollection of a scene in an old movie from 1939) merits at the most extreme simple disciplinary action, with perhaps an on-air apology, not the suspension of two otherwise intelligent and insightful top commentators from the air on an indefinite basis.

    I don’t believe that the use of the term “old darkie” is evidence of an inner racial hatred that should be expunged from the airwaves.

  22. GG a little while back.

    I too think calling the demise of Abbott 2 plus years out from the election a little premature.

    However, I suspect things will not be so good for the Victorian Libs, while, even before the Budget, the usual pendulum was swinging away in both Queensland and NSW.

    What we don’t want to get to is the case the Big Kimbo had to put up with – that is wall-to-wall Labor States which actually militated against Labor federally with cries of “Too much power in the hands of one party” and calls from Howard to help him not feel so lonely.

    On the face of it, while the Vics might go Labor, there is just too much fat on the bones of LNP in Queensland and NSW to see them out of office in one term.

    As the WA State election is even further away than the next Federal election, it is pure crystal ball in WA – though I am prepared to speculate that Colin Barnett will retire before the next one in WA.

    If iron ore prices drop to $60 a tonne all bets are off in WA.

    One wonders the impact of any boundary changes to Federal electorates in WA and if these will help Labor one jot.

  23. The question is whether the loss of huge ice weights will cause new episodes of vulcanism.

    ‘Scientists led by Newcastle University in the UK studied the impact of the collapse of the giant Larsen B ice shelf in 2002, using Global Positioning System (GPS) stations to gauge how the Earth’s mantle responded to the relatively sudden loss of billions of tonnes of ice as glaciers accelerated.

    As expected, the bedrock rose without the weight but at a pace – as much as 5 centimetres a year in places – that was about five times the rate that could be attributed by the loss of ice mass alone, said Matt King, now at the University of Tasmania (UTAS), who oversaw the work.’

    http://www.eco-business.com/news/fire-and-ice-melting-antarctic-poses-risk-volcanic-activity-study-shows/

  24. The late great Charlie Jones (Last of the True Labor Men?) was Minister for Transport at the time of PNG’s independence. Negotiations with Reg Ansett to ensure a sustainable air service were going poorly and Somare was upset. Charlie is alleged to have said:

    “Look Michael, you can argue until you are black in the face but Ansett is the Nigger in the woodpile”

    Boom-tish

  25. Boerwar

    Greenland is also going , as Abbott would say, “Up and up and up”

    [Greenland Rising Rapidly as Ice Melts

    Now, scientists at the University of Miami say Greenland’s ice is melting so quickly that the land underneath is rising at an accelerated pace.

    Some coastal areas are going up by nearly 1 inch per year, the scientists announced today. If current trends continue, that could accelerate to as much as 2 inches per year by 2025]
    http://www.livescience.com/6462-greenland-rising-rapidly-ice-melts.html

  26. We’re all racists of some kind or other. I’d like to think most of us try to do the right thing though, and this is to be commended.

    The same applies to feminism. Many here were brought up in an era when “housewives” did most of the work around the family home, and stayed home to do it.

    We have attitudes ingrained into us that are hard to weed out. Every now and again we slip up and say or do something we regret. We can’t be perfect.

    I guess my defence of the two ABC commentators is centered around the imperfections we all have, and which we all exhibit from time to time. We can only hope to improve our behaviour and our speech and learn from our mistakes.

    I would like anyone here who does not have occasional irrational or unfair thoughts based on race or gender to please put their hands up and say so. Anyone who’s never said something race-ralated or unkind on a gender basis can join them. Such perfection is rare, and should be celebrated and commended.

    I reject the idea that one jarring or inappropriate comment as part of the by-play of a football broadcast necessarily evidences a dark soul, or a deep-seated racism, a tip of the iceberg that wants to scream “coon “and “nigger”, restrained only because the consequences would be too severe.

    We’ve all made Irish jokes, Polish jokes, rabbi jokes etc, during our lives. We’ve all had a bash at Yanks and their clumsy ways. Some people hate the Japanese because of what they did to their grandfathers. There are a thousand prejudices we collectively harbour. We can’t keep prejudice out of all social situations.

    If everything, however slight, is jumped on censoriously and punished as a sacking offence, then only witch hunts will result. Absolutism does not admit the possibility of rehabilitation. It only drives the “offender” underground, and possibly makes him or her dig in their heels.

    David Morrow and Warren Ryan (the two commentators) are not bad people or race hating bigots, and while Ryan deserves some kind of counselling for his choice of words (with a perhaps an on-air apology to follow), David Morrow being suspended for simply laughing is far too much. He was probably thinking “Oh shit! Not again!” as Ryan said what he said, and laughed out of embarrassment or shock.

    The whole episode has been blown out of proportion. There are far better remedies for this than taking the two men off air, or condemning them as wanna-be Klu Klux Klan thugs.

  27. ‘fess

    [Not a happy gal.}

    Done this many times trying to get out of Canberra.

    If your not on the A/C that depart at 6 am (they arrived last night) you’re often stuffed until 11 am.

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