BludgerTrack: 52.6-47.4 to Labor

The latest weekly poll aggregate points to a continuing deflation of the post-budget Labor poll blowout, and reallocates a chunk of the Labor swing from New South Wales to Victoria.

Two new poll results this week from Nielsen and Essential Research have contributed to a continuation of the moderating trend of Labor’s post-budget poll lead, which sees the two-party preferred result in BludgerTrack come in at 52.6-47.4, down from 53.5-46.5 last week. The peak reading of 55.0-45.0 was recorded four weeks ago, a fortnight after the May 13 budget. The Coalition also has the lead on the primary vote for the first time in six weeks. Labor retains a reasonably comfortable majority on the seat projection, although the numbers once again illustrate how difficult the model considers the electoral terrain to be for Labor, as the present projection of 79 seats is four fewer than Labor managed with an almost identical two-party preferred vote when Kevin Rudd led it to victory in 2007.

There were some striking results in the state breakdowns in Nielsen this week, and BludgerTrack reflects this in having the swing in New South Wales moderate considerably, cutting their projected seat gain from 11 to seven, while in Victoria the gain is up from four to seven. Further shifts beneath the surface find Labor up a seat in Queensland, but down one in both Western Australia and South Australia. The Nielsen poll also furnishes us with a new set of leadership ratings, which after accounting for the model’s standardisation procedure are almost identical to last week’s results from Newspoll. The movements on last week are accordingly very minor.

Last week I offered a closer look at Palmer United’s polling trend, so this week I thought we’d home in on the Greens. After watching their vote fall from 11.8% at the 2010 election to 8.6% in 2013, polling has shown the party on a steady upward trend, with a short-lived spike occurring in April. While this was partly driven by one outlier result from Nielsen, all of the other polling conducted at that time has them clustered around the high level of 12%. All of these results were conducted in the immediate aftermath of the Western Australian Senate election, at which the party’s vote was up from 9.5% to 15.6%. The party’s polling in Western Australia has remained strong, the present BludgerTrack reading of its primary vote being 15.8%. Coincidentally or otherwise, the downward trend that followed the WA election spike coincided exactly with the federal budget.

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.

1,028 comments on “BludgerTrack: 52.6-47.4 to Labor”

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  1. “@olliemilman: National day of protest to be held by CSIRO staff today over government funding cuts to research, potential job losses etc”

  2. So, a person who purchased his way to power meets with a person who lied his way to power and, over a cup of English Breakfast, they decide what Australian democracy is going to do about AGW.

    Good luck with that.

  4. BK

    i think LTingle got to press a bit too quick, ie before Lateline, and thus has mad a mistake.

    She says that Palmer will repeal the carbon “tax” but seek and ETS amendment.

    He said the opposite on Lateline, ie that the repeal legislation will go through and he’ll seek an ETS amendment on another piece of legislation in the 11(?) Bill bundle ….. I forget which one he nominated.

    But he said that the repeal of the carbon “tax” itself was not contingent on anything, and gave the reason as relating to the nature of the Bill bundle and how Abbott is presenting it.

  5. Morrison must like awake at night discussing with Jesus about new ways to bastardise the powerless people in his jails.

  8. Boerwar, did you hear Professor W Maley on RN today, regarding Morriscum’s Bill to assess the probability of danger etc if sent home ie if the probability of danger is <50%, home they go.

    Maley was of course referring to the stupidity of reducing the send-home decision to a mathematical decision.

    He gave an excellent analogy.

    He said that if the probability of Com Cars being machine gunned on the way to Canberra Airport was a mere 49%, there would not be many MPs phoning for a Com Car.

  9. [
    He said the opposite on Lateline, ie that the repeal legislation will go through and he’ll seek an ETS amendment on another piece of legislation in the 11(?) Bill bundle ….. I forget which one he nominated.
    ]

    psyclaw

    I think this may be what you were referring to.

    [
    In a later interview on ABC’s Lateline, Mr Palmer made clear that repeal of the carbon tax was contingent on energy producers refunding to consumers the benefits of the repeal of the tax.

    But it would not be contingent on the other measures Mr Palmer proposed on Wednesday night, such as the proposed emissions trading legislation.

    The proposal to introduce the ETS in the Senate would be attached to the bill that would repeal the Climate Change Authority and the PUP would attempt to have that passed by the Senate.

    “We want a scheme that is conditional upon other countries and doesn’t become operable until those countries do that, introduce a similar measure,” he said.

    Mr Palmer also said his party had not adopted a final position on whether to oppose or support the abolition of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.
    ]

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/shock-and-gore-clive-palmer-shows-his-hand-20140625-3atpd.html#ixzz35hJ3UDuf

  12. I’m still unsure with how this will all pan out with Clive, but I’m happy that RET, CCA and CEFC will remain. Perhaps credit should go to JG (or correct me if I’ve got the wrong person) on pushing the Clean Energy Bills in separate proposals.

    Even if it’ll take a while before an ETS pushes a carbon price above $0, it’s still be better than giving polluters free money.

  13. Pyhrric victory for Abbott on carbon tax. It was going to end anyway.

    Palmer has driven a stake through the heart of Abbott’s climate change scheme.

    I am not as pessimistic as some here.

    Ridding the economy of the carbon tax is a double edged sword for Abbott. When people don’t get their $550 p.a. saving they will be demanding answers.

  14. Sir Mad

    Yep, you’re correct, the legislated refund was the only contingency re the repeal.

    That should not be too hard a pill for Abbott to swallow.

    But LTingle said he linked his ETS proposal to the repeal and I think that on Lateline he did not do that.

  15. raaraa

    Having the CEFC gives renewables a fighting chance against subsidised fossil fuel sources.

    Also where Palmer shows sense is in realising the world is going to ETS schemes and we should not lock ourselves out of that

  16. The economist Joseph Stiglitz who was interviewed on Jon Faine program earlier, made the comment that china has no choice but to go down the clean energy path due to the very serious problem of pollution

  17. Faaark me , one of the woman of substance telling stories of pensioners stuck in one room due to the carbon tax. Some of them “war heroes” .

  19. Just on the latest update of Bludgertrack, does anyone think that in the real world Labor can win seven seats in Victoria?

  20. [Craig Emerson ‏@DrCraigEmerson 10h
    Right, PUP won’t insist on its ETS bill passing in scrapping the carbon price. So no carbon price, no ETS. No wonder Govt happy #lateline]

  21. Those saying that an ETS is dead and buried think Labor has no spine.

    Of course Labor will tweak the current ETS and bring it back when next in government if this one gets repealed.

    There is no choice climate change exists.

  22. victoria@66

    The economist Joseph Stiglitz who was interviewed on Jon Faine program earlier, made the comment that china has no choice but to go down the clean energy path due to the very serious problem of pollution

    Victoria, Stiglitz made Abbott look like a total fool.

  23. I am eternally surprised at how entrenched the support is for the Liberals and Campbell Newman amongst people who rely on social security payments for part of their income to the extant that they have to inform Centrelink of their changed financial circumstances. I think these people believe that they got there by individual effort which should be rewarded. Whereas I think you shouldn’t vote Liberal unless you own the Liberal Party and can dictate your legislative requirements.

  24. [guytaur
    Posted Thursday, June 26, 2014 at 9:55 am | PERMALINK
    Those saying that an ETS is dead and buried think Labor has no spine.

    Of course Labor will tweak the current ETS and bring it back when next in government if this one gets repealed.

    There is no choice climate change exists.]

    Sort of like the way they had to have two goes at Medicare before the conservatives finally realised they couldn’t hold back the tide.

  26. [Ridding the economy of the carbon tax is a double edged sword for Abbott. When people don’t get their $550 p.a. saving they will be demanding answers.]

    I agree Lynchpin. Abolition of the carbon tax is not a get-rich-quick scheme.

  28. Interestingly fran kelly just said on ABC radio that clive palmer is a very good friend of fhe democrats in the US. She said wtte that Palmer is a huge fan of JFK and she believes that his real intention is to be a good global citizen

  30. I think the Victorian Liberals are gorn! and will easily lose 7 seats because

    Liberals have not done enough with train system, only replaced 1 level crossing at Springvale road, another 273 to go and upgraded New St from swing gate to boom gate on a minor arterial road in the Liberal heartland – they had promised an overpass which amused the engineering minded locals who reckon the water table is 1.5 metres below the sand.
    Trains are more frequent in the south east but because the train system has so many level crossings, unable to add more services without severe disruptions to traffic flows on major arterial roads

    Liberals rolled back protection of National Parks and re introduced duck shooting and i think environmental protection resonates with community.

    Under current government domestic violence by people breaking AVOs increased when Liberals stopped program when victims were issued with things similar to Medic-Alerts which they could hit to summon police assistance if their perpetrator came near them. These devices changed behaviour, their use deterred perpetrators from stalking their victims.

    Liberals have not been able to protect manufacturing jobs and the NDIS administration promised for Geelong probably won’t happen – making regional unemployment more dire

  31. For eg

    OF all the business and charitable ventures that Clive Palmer likes to trumpet, few are more prized than his directorship of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation.

    But Mr Palmer’s admiration for the 35th American president does not come cheap; when he joined the board of US political, cultural and business elite responsible for overseeing the presidential library and museum on the Boston waterfront in 2010, it came after a decade as one of their most generous financial donors.

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/investigations/clive-palmers-5m-gift-to-honour-the-jfk-legend/story-fnk76wj3-1226933826649?nk=9bd1bf6156a1e40b2ee7e8020bc3ede6

  32. Remember when Clive promised to block repeal of Carbon Pricing ..unless Abbott re-instated benefit to orphans of war veterans?

    No mention of that last night…

  33. Billie

    Tory support among the older welfare recipients has long puzzled me too. May be its like that prosperity theology (I think) that someone mentioned the other day that draws people to some of the Christian churches. If you believe in God he will make you rich stuff.

    Maybe the oldies swallow the line that only the Tories can make Australia truly wealthy and when that happens they will get their share.

    This budget should have killed off that notion.

    How quickly they forget that is was labor who delivered a big age pension increase. And now the Tories want to limit the growth.

  35. [“To be fair to the PM, our agenda we announced yesterday was a surprise to him but with any good idea, he’s taken time to get some advice and that’s what you would expect him to do,” Mr Palmer said.

    His comments come as climate groups warn that Australia may be left with no plan to tackle climate change if the Senate votes to repeal the carbon tax but rejects the Coalition’s direct action policy.

    Mr Palmer announced on Wednesday that his Palmer United Party Senate team would back the repeal of the tax only if legal guarantees are in place to ensure energy companies pass on savings to consumers.]

    http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/clive-palmer-says-tony-abbott-is-not-evil-and-needs-time-to-consider-the-pups-climate-change-stance-20140626-3auh8.html

  36. lizzie

    Fiona was awful. Reading a speech not one of her strengths. Her images of pensioners huddled in a single room because of the carbon tax were a scream.

    Best bit was she repeatedly stumbled when trying to read out “For those opposite who cannot count past 10 without taking their socks off.” . Made her look like someone who would need to take her socks off.

  37. [Just on the latest update of Bludgertrack, does anyone think that in the real world Labor can win seven seats in Victoria?]

    Taking three – Corangamite, Deakin, La Trobe – would be an excellent result, and it’s hard to see how any others except maybe Dunkley could be in play. (Or if they are, the ALP won’t have to worry about counting seats to get to 76…)

  38. poroti

    I’ve noticed that a number of the Coalition MPs who are given Dorothy Dixers to read have a great deal of difficulty reading them. 😆

  39. Strange that Palmer was mentioned in connection to JFK. I remember playing at Palmer’s house in Williamstown (Vic) – with Clive and his siblings – as a child when news came through that JFK had been assassinated.

  40. [Shane Oliver AMP
    So a carbon ETS is possibly back on the agenda. The debate around pricing carbon is becoming a bit like ground hog day…]

  43. Senator Xenophon was highly critical of the notion of legislating for an emmissions trading scheme (ETS) on the ‘never-never’.

    “This is a bit like selling your car to someone you don’t know over the internet, on the basis they might pay you when they feel like, at a price they set,” Nick said. “And I’m frankly quite surprised that climate champion Al Gore has signed up to a non-plan that would see Australia do nothing on climate change.”

    Senator Xenophon said one of the worst aspects of the announcement yesterday was it would introduce enormous investment uncertainty to any sector that was energy-intensive.

    “This would be a disaster for Australian jobs and the entire economy. The timing of the non-plan is unknown, as is its form, its pricing, compensation and coverage. It’s a mess,” Nick said.

    http://nickxenophon.com.au/media/releases/show/palmer-gore-announcement-more-ham-than-plan

  44. [Canberra has the highest average income of any of the 300 regions that make up the OECD. http://t.co/cO6HN31UsV%5D

    It’s a bit of an artefact of the regional division, isn’t it? Most of the regions are much larger population units than the ACT. Not really surprised at the result, not sure it’s all that meaningful.

  45. Yes, Victoria. Didn’t know Clive too well, but he lived next door to some close friends. His father had a giant television transmitter in the back of the house and a private cinema. Williamstown was very work-class in those days, so they stood out.

  47. poroti and lizzie
    I managed to watch less than one minute of Fiona’s stumbling delivery and was taken by the evangelical belief in the magic $550.
    Labor should be all over this, mounting a “$550 watch” to keep on the case.

  49. [It shows the Canberra Press Gallery would not have a clue of average. Let alone less than average]

    How many of the Gallery live permanently in Canberra? That’s probably true, but I’d suspect it would be as much about the enclaves they inhabit in their hometowns as the enclave that is Canberra.

  50. [I am not as pessimistic as some here.]

    Neither am I.

    I’ll have more to say on it later, but remember, Clive’s not stoopid like some.

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