BludgerTrack: 50.9-49.1 to Labor

Four new polls collectively cause a shift in the Coalition’s favour in the weekly poll aggregate, and take some shine off the Greens’ recent improvement.

BludgerTrack makes a fairly solid move to the Coalition this week on the back of relatively strong results for them in Newspoll and ReachTEL, to the extent that they are now ahead of Labor on the national seat projection, without going so far as to make it to a majority. Labor retains the lead on two-party preferred, but the model grants the Coalition a natural advantage in seat allocation because the decisive marginal seats will be defended by its first-term members. The change returns the two-party vote to where it was three weeks ago, before a 1.2% spike to Labor the following week. However, Labor has gone two seats backwards on the seat projection since then, because of changes in the way the votes are distributed between the states. The Coalition primary vote gain comes off the total for the Greens, which had experienced a spike over the previous fortnight, while Labor’s is essentially unchanged. Three new sets of state-level data were available to the model out of the four polls which published this week, which have caused Labor to drop two seats in Queensland and Tasmania, and one in New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and South Australia.

Some will be asking how Labor’s two-party vote comes to be at 50.9% when no published result has put it below 51%, for which much of the explanation lies in Newspoll’s rounded two-party numbers this week. As Kevin Bonham observes, the 51-49 result had poll watchers scratching their heads, as a crude application of 2013 preference flows to the published primary votes (Labor 34%, Coalition 41% and Greens 11% and 14% others) puts the Coalition slightly above 50-50. I don’t doubt that Newspoll has done its rounding properly – the result could be explained by primary vote rounding, minor party vote shares and the poll’s internal distribution of state results – but there can be little doubt that Labor was rounded upwards. Then there was Thursday’s 51-49 result from ReachTEL, a large sample poll with a good track record that the model takes seriously, but which is corrected for a slight Labor bias. The model grants Essential and Morgan together about as much weight as a single Newspoll or ReachTEL, and they had much the same results as each other after the fairly considerable Labor bias adjustment for Morgan. So the aggregate this week can roughly be seen as combining a 50-50, a 51-49 and a 52-48.

Newspoll provided a new set of results for the leadership ratings, which have unfortunately come to be dominated by the pollster since Nielsen dropped out of the game. As such, this week’s moves reflect Tony Abbott’s stronger performance in Newspoll, suggesting a second shift in his favour to supplement the one which occurred after MH17. He also widens his lead as preferred prime minister, although Bill Shorten’s net approval rating remains stable and fairly respectable, and solidly higher than Abbott’s.

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.

1,100 comments on “BludgerTrack: 50.9-49.1 to Labor”

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  2. davidwh

    [
    Kevvie probably still thinks he can get Ban Ki-moon’s job 🙂 ]
    No hope for that job now Abbott has farted at Putin and is doing Tarzan call over the Middle East situation. So go with the flow, Vote 1 Helen Clark 🙂

  8. Predictions about voting intentions 20 and 30 years are inherently speculative. There’s really no way of knowing how voting intentions will evolve over such long time frames because we cannot predict all the events that will shape them.

    But we can make some forecasts about future events and try to think through how they will influence political processes and choices.

    The biggest influences are going to be

    Demographic changes – the aging of populations in many countries, including this one, China and most of Europe and the change in its cultural composition and distribution considered globally;

    Climate change – the environment, population distribution, resource allocation and competition, our economy and the balance of power in the world economy are going to be transformed by the consequences of now-irreversible climate change;

    War – Sadly, it seems there is no escape from conflict. I think the effects of the two factors mentioned above will only accentuate conflicts and increase the risks of great-power conflict.

  11. Re the voting patterns of different age cohorts.

    The general view within the engine rooms of both major parties is that it is largely a waste of time targeting electors aged over 55 as the propensity to change your vote from election to election drops away sharply with age.

    The thing which tends to grow with age on average is wealth. Greater wealth (even of the largely useless sort which is mainly tied up in the family home) will, all other things being equal, makes one more inclined to vote more conservatively. However, there is undoubtedly a group of people – especially the more educated part of the community – who will gradually abandon their youthful lefty views as they get older, but will hang on to a propensity to vote Labor until they die.

    People like Kevin and William would surely understand these things better than me, but my gut feeling is that the impact of greater wealth will affect more older people than will the continuing loyalty to Labor. So I do expect the boomers to become steadily more pro-Liberal as they age, albeit at perhaps to a reduced extent than the generation before them.

    So, in short, I find zoomster’s theory a bit too positive for Labor.

  12. zoomster

    Sorry I didn’t reply to you many posts ago. I fell asleep!

    I am quite annoyed at the number of so-called Labor supporters who can’t take a deep breath and play the long game. I assume that they are the young ones, but there are a few hot-headed older ones around, I think.

  13. [111
    meher baba

    Re the voting patterns of different age cohorts.

    The general view within the engine rooms of both major parties is that it is largely a waste of time targeting electors aged over 55 as the propensity to change your vote from election to election drops away sharply with age.

    The thing which tends to grow with age on average is wealth. Greater wealth (even of the largely useless sort which is mainly tied up in the family home) will, all other things being equal, makes one more inclined to vote more conservatively.]

    What happens then when the distribution of wealth becomes more and more unequal? When many people become relatively worse off as they age? What happens to voting intentions when older people have little wealth to defend?

  14. lizzie@112

    zoomster

    Sorry I didn’t reply to you many posts ago. I fell asleep!

    I am quite annoyed at the number of so-called Labor supporters who can’t take a deep breath and play the long game. I assume that they are the young ones, but there are a few hot-headed older ones around, I think.

    There are many “reverse watermelons” on this site – i.e. red on the outside, but green in the centre.

  16. [Sorry I didn’t reply to you many posts ago. I fell asleep!]

    I generally find zoomster’s posts interesting and they have never made me fall asleep 🙂

  20. Re the Greens. While I think dtt’s overall scenario is a bit too doomsday from the Labor perspective (Libs would be delighted), I do agree that the party is going to put increasing pressure on Labor seats in some selected areas: particularly the inner city strongholds of the Labor left factions.

    The problem for the Labor left is that, a generation ago, they were able to wrest the inner cities from the old Right because they had much greater appeal to the emerging population of yuppies. But there were always significant areas of difference between the yuppies and the Labor left, and the key one was environmental protection. The key factor here is the CFMEU. Once upon a time, the NSW BLF was a pro-environment union. But the large behemoth that is the CFMEU today is nothing of the sort.

    More generally, there are a number of other concerns that excite the Labor left that have no resonance or even negative resonance with the yuppies: two obvious examples are support for the Australian manufacturing industry (except in SA, where everyone cares about it) and support for public housing (which many yuppies see as being support for the people who cause them to have to spend a fortune on burglar alarm systems).

    It’s all another strong argument for Labor party reform. If the Left faction could break itself free from the CFMEU and the AMWU (and I realise its a big ask) it could start reaching out again to the constituency which has drifted away to the Greens.

    It’s particularly clear to me living in Tassie, where I respectfully beg to differ somewhat with Kevin (whose strong distaste for the Greens perhaps slightly skews his judgement). What has clearly happened down here over the past two decades is that the Left faction/CFMEU-dominated State Labor Party has lost almost every last middle class/educated voter that it ever had. I mix with the inner city elite here, and I don’t know anyone who will admit to voting for State Labor (some of them will still vote Labor in Federal elections).

    The State Labor Party has zero appeal to these people. It’s main constituency these days appears to be the unemployed and other welfare recipients in the poorest parts of the major cities and towns. There is a residual blue collar voter base, but much of this declining demographic has shifted to the Liberal Party (something that is also observable in parts of the mainland).

    What I think these trends are possibly going to do in the longer term is to push the Labor Party – especially at the Federal level – into being more of a middle class social democratic party of the moderate right, which will depend on the support of parties further to the left (the Greens and, perhaps in the longer term, some sort of residual far left union party which breaks away from Labor).

    I actually don’t think this would be a bad scenario for political stability in Australia: I think a Labor-led informal coalition of the Left would perhaps have more chance of winning elections than the current broad spectrum Labor Party.

  22. briefly@113: what evidence do you have that the distribution of wealth in Australia is becoming more unequal? On any measure, it is far more equal now than it was in the 1950s and 1960s when I was growing up.

    There are certainly some obscenely rich people around these days who flaunt their money far more than did the wealthy in the past. But the average standard of living for the average Australia is far, far better than it was not very long ago.

  23. [102
    poroti

    davidwh

    Kevvie probably still thinks he can get Ban Ki-moon’s job 🙂

    No hope for that job now Abbott has farted at Putin and is doing Tarzan call over the Middle East situation. So go with the flow, Vote 1 Helen Clark :)]

    We’ve had quite a range over the years…

    http://www.un.org/sg/formersgs.shtml

    [Under the Charter, the Secretary-General is appointed by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council. Mr. Ban’s predecessors as Secretary-General were: Kofi Annan (Ghana) who held office from January 1997 to December 2006; Boutros Boutros-Ghali (Egypt), who held office from January 1992 to December 1996; Javier Pèrez de Cuèllar (Peru), who served from January 1982 to December 1991; Kurt Waldheim (Austria), who held office from January 1972 to December 1981; U Thant (Burma, now Myanmar), who served from November 1961, when he was appointed acting Secretary-General (he was formally appointed Secretary-General in November 1962) to December 1971; Dag Hammarskjöld (Sweden), who served from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in Africa in September 1961; and Trygve Lie (Norway), who held office from February 1946 to his resignation in November 1952.]

    Is it time to have an appointee drawn from the disassembled British Empire? Perhaps. How about someone from the Cook Islands? I propose Trinidad and Tobago!!

    [The island of Trinidad was a Spanish colony from the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1498 to the capitulation of the Spanish Governor, Don José Maria Chacón, on the arrival of a British fleet of 18 warships on 18 February 1797. During the same period, the island of Tobago changed hands among Spanish, British, French, Dutch and Courlander colonizers. Trinidad and Tobago (remaining separate until 1889) were ceded to Britain in 1802 under the Treaty of Amiens. The country Trinidad and Tobago obtained independence in 1962, becoming a republic in 1976.

    Unlike most of the English-speaking Caribbean, the country’s economy is primarily industrial, with an emphasis on petroleum and petrochemicals. The country is also one of the wealthiest in the Caribbean, due its large reserves of oil and gas.

    Trinidad and Tobago is known for its Carnival and is the birthplace of steelpan, limbo, and the music styles of calypso, soca and chutney.]

    Calypso…can’t be a bad thing.

  24. zoidlord@110

    @Zoomster/107

    No your not, because Kevin is talking about young voters, not older voters.

    The demographic angle was introduced non-specifically with reference to the discussion on Greens-vs-ALP in #78. Then later some posters talked about older voters and the discussion may have switched over into left-vs-right and drifted off its previous track.

    When it comes to the Greens and demographics the big angle is that very young voters strongly support them. They don’t keep doing so; it’s an effect specific to the idealism of youth and a lot of them switch by their mid-20s. Beyond that there is not all that much variation in Greens support until you get up to the pre-boomers (70+).

    I suppose there is some argument to be made that the pre-boomers singularly don’t “get” the Greens because they have never been part of a radicalised or post-radicalised generation and that on that basis there might be some increase in latent Greens support once they’re all gone. But not that much.

  25. zoidlord@110

    @Zoomster/107

    No your not, because Kevin is talking about young voters, not older voters.

    Zoidy… Young voters progressively age.
    I was a young voter once and am now in that age group that fills you with horror. My voting hasn’t changed in that time. That of others has.

    Oh… I see you are still continuing your war on “you’re”. Keep it up! You had ESJ joining you the other night. 😛

  27. lizzie@118: Most, but not all, prominent mainland Green politicians are “watermelons” – green on the outside, but red on the inside. The Tasmanian Greens are markedly different. For them, the environment is their overriding concern. They tend to adopt relatively left-wing positions on many other matters (eg, boat people), but they are typically not socialists in any significant way.

    On the mainland, we have seen the phenomenon of Green politicians who describe themselves as “social greens”: ie, they confess to being not primarily motivated by environmental concerns. Look through many of the public and parliamentary pronouncements of the likes of Adam Brand, Scott Ludlam and SH-Y and you will recognise the largely unreconstructed viewpoints and attitudes of campus radicals (and having once been one myself, I recognise these only too well). It’s probably easier for people to see this with SH-Y than Ludlam, whose good looks and suave demeanour can tend to distract attention from his pretty extreme views.

    Lee Rhiannon – due to having parents who were stalwarts of the Stalinist Socialist Party of Australia – serves as the pinup girl for those right-wing people who like to sneer at “watermelons”. But, unlike the “social greens”, she actually came into politics through the environment movement. The true watermelons tend to have more of a Trotskyist rather than a Stalinist tinge (for the right-wing bloggers, this is a distinction without a difference, but that’s unfair).

    It’s the socialist tendency within the Greens that makes it hard for someone like me – an economic rationalist who cares about the environment more than any other issue – to support them. But they do seem to be doing ok without me.

  28. guytaur@65

    zoomster

    Your whole denial is as much tea leaf reading as that of DTT.

    We know pollls are saying Pyne is gone at the mext election.
    We do not know if this will actually happen.

    We don’t even know they are saying this. The only poll that said Pyne was losing that I have seen was an extremely dodgy NTEU commissioned robopoll by Labor’s main internal pollster UMR, that used faulty preference allocation methods and was probably still bollocks even with that taken into consideration.

  29. An interesting observation from a short trip up a street near where I work.

    I was walking up to pick up some mail. There was a Greek looking guy in a smart blue uniform with his motorbike up on the footpath with one of those knife sharpening electric things (not sure what to call it but he was sharpening knives for the shop owners). He was sharpening a pretty big knife as I walked past.

    Being alert for anything suspicious as our PM has told us to do, I looked around to see if anyone was alarmed. Nope no was alarmed. Everyone seemed to be quite relaxed going about their business or eating outside at the tables. No one paid any attention to him except me – he looked at me and I looked at him and smiled.

    Now imagine if this was a Middle Eastern gentleman with full beard. I suspect we would have had the SWAT/Riot/the entire police force out in Camperdown to subdue this wanna be terrorist.

  30. @bemused/125

    But that was my point bemused, something that Zoomster is not getting, as you age, your voting intentions change, but the Labor party is not changing with them.

  31. Meher Baba,

    I have heard your theory before – and certainly it is folk wisdom. We have all heard the mis-attributed quote (paraphrased) ‘if you aren’t a socialist when you are young you don’t have a heart, if you aren’t conservative when you are older you don’t have a brain’.

    However, what evidence is there that this is true. All of the studies that I have read say the conversion to conservatism with age is greatly overstated and possibly not true at all. Do you have any evidence backing up your statement that growing wealth causes an increase in conservative voting behaviour?

    In short – where is the evidence for your statements. I don’t meant to sound accusing but I have heard these urban legends for years but never seen a study which backs it up; although I am open to the idea.

  35. [122
    meher baba

    briefly@113: what evidence do you have that the distribution of wealth in Australia is becoming more unequal? On any measure, it is far more equal now than it was in the 1950s and 1960s when I was growing up.]

    Income and wealth distribution has become more unequal since the 1990s and, if the LNP get their way, will become more unequal in the future.

    http://www.tai.org.au/content/income-and-wealth-inequality-australia

    http://www.treasury.gov.au/PublicationsAndMedia/Publications/2013/Economic-Roundup-Issue-2/Economic-Roundup/Income-inequality-in-Australia

    It’s complicated, but well worth looking at. There are competing trends. Some processes have tended to reduce inequality and others to accentuate it. Rising workforce participation and strong employment/income growth rates and a progressive income tax system have produced more income equality while the increasing importance of investment income and changes to welfare allocation have tended to increase inequality.

    What happens when income growth falters (as it is now); when workforce participation starts to fall (as it is now); when the welfare system becomes more restrictive (as the LNP now propose)?

    So far, the increase in inequality has not disturbed the LNP vote. This may be because even though inequality has increased, incomes have grown strongly in any case. Indeed, the principal political claim of the LNP has been the ability to grow incomes.

    What will happen to political affiliation if income growth fades out at the same time as inequality widens?

  37. DTT is losing it if he/she believes the Greens will win either ACT seat any time soon.
    In Fraser in 2013, primary vote was ALP 44.66%, LIB 31.62%, GRN 14.07%.
    Canberra was ALP 41.06%, LIB 37.87%, GRN 12.67%.
    Bearing in mind, 2013 was a disastrous result for Labor generally, so the ALP primaries are likely to be lower than usual.
    Hard to see the ALP losing those seats any time soon. Unless the Greens give up trying to get a Senate seat here (because they have no hope).

  39. tielec@131: very good questions indeed. Again I would defer to statistical wizzes like William and Kevin, but I was under the impression – from talking to party machine types – that there is a good statistical basis for the proposition that people’s voting patterns become more fixed as they get older.

    And there is absolutely no question that the current cohorts of older Australians are far more inclined to vote “blue” than “red” or “green”.

    A really good sort of life cycle statistical study would be required to prove or disprove the proposition that this current cohort of older people has steadily become more conservative over time. I think it is a reasonable supposition, but one alternative explanation that can’t be ruled out is that right-wing voters tend to live longer than left-wing voters.

    It’s also a little bit hard to get a handle on what exactly constitutes a “right-wing” or “left-wing” voter. In some parts of Australia – Queensland, WA and NSW spring to mind – the right side of politics has frequently done a lot better at the Federal level than at the State level. Take a person now aged 65 or older who voted for Neville Wran in his three election victories but for Fraser in his three victories: and there must have been many, many such people. Could you say at that stage in their life they were a Labor voter, Liberal voter or swinging voter?

    Anyway, I agree that it’s difficult to prove, but I think my supposition that voters generally get more conservative with age is a reasonable one.

  40. [132
    lizzie

    meher baba

    Thank you. I also am an environmentalist but not a radical socialist. So I don’t know where I fit now.]

    It certainly qualifies you as rational.

  41. Meher Baba,

    There have been longitudinal studies conducted in Britain. I’ve done some research into IQ using these groups myself and they have been participants in many different studies. From memory (which is unreliable) there might have been a small move towards economic conservatism and no change in social conservatism from these groups as they aged.

    In fact most of the research I have seen shows that people tend to be a product of their formative years, and change little over their lifespan. Currently older voters are more conservative because of their experiences and environment while growing up. As a psychologist I find this consistent with social psychology and other psychological findings.

    Unless you can find some solid studies backing up your opinion I would not accept the general consensus that people become more conservative as they age. I think it is rooted in ‘common-sense’ assumptions that older people are more rigid and inflexible, scared of change etc… There is little to no evidence that it is true and some evidence that contradicts it.

  42. meher baba@120


    It’s particularly clear to me living in Tassie, where I respectfully beg to differ somewhat with Kevin (whose strong distaste for the Greens perhaps slightly skews his judgement).

    I don’t have any stronger a distaste for the Greens than I do for any of Labor, Liberal or PUP. At the last Tasmanian state election I distributed my preferences between these four parties as equally as I could. I put the candidates within each of these parties in order of preference and then went through picking the top one from each of my orders randomly by party.

    I’ve disliked some individual Greens reps and liked others. Probably more I feel positively towards than negatively.

    I prefer the Greens’ policies on most so-called social issues to those of other parties by a country mile. I do wish they would realise that when it comes to the detail of environmental issues (i) they are not entitled to their own facts (ii) they and their Wilderness Society and other ENGO pals are not the sole arbiters of what conservation values are important.

    What you say about the attitudes of the middle-class in Hobart in terms of them having left the ALP in the past is quite true. But a lot of them are also looking to leave the Greens in the past if they can find an alternative who they trust. Federal Denison Green vote in 2013 was below 8%. That middle class almost all switched to Wilkie in what had once been one of the Green-est electorates in the country.

  43. briefly

    I like to think so. 🙂
    That is why I find the “loon” appellant particularly insulting to people like my late OH, who spent his whole life working for conservation and the environment.

  44. Meher Baber and Zoomster exemplify the flaws which have placed the ALP in its current predicament.

    The problem with Labor is that they focus first and foremost on tactics – and proceed to screw up. They start their “thinking process” by asking: ‘What tactical gambit would look good in the current situation and win us plaudits from press gallery hacks?”. Step two: ‘What policy initiative would enable use to implement that tactic?’ Step three: ‘What principles can we talk about to justify the policy?’

    What is the end result? They come across as incoherent, vacuous, cowardly, and insincere. And they bungle. Time after time after time. They lose public trust.

    Their core problem is they do the thinking process backwards.

    They ought to start with principles: What do we want society to look like in the decades ahead? How will people earn their living? To what degree will people trust and cooperate with each other? What will be the sources of people’s satisfaction with their lives?

    Then they should develop precise, coherent policy proposals to put those principles into effect.

    They they should consider the tactical moves they need to make to get their policies enacted and embedded.

  45. zoidlord@130

    @bemused/125

    But that was my point bemused, something that Zoomster is not getting, as you age, your voting intentions change, but the Labor party is not changing with them.

    So you want the Labor Party to change in step with one cohort of voters?

    Interesting proposition.

  46. I should say I would consider Mr Bonham or Mr Bludger’s opinion on whether or not people grow more conservative as they age an authoritative one, and would acquiesce to their expertise.

  47. [
    “Thank u for your opaque and utterly unhelpful response” says Ludlam to Brandis. “Just provide us with a plain english answer” tries Ludlam.]

  48. briefly@135: I did some work on this in the distant past – Gini coefficients and all the rest. I think it is very difficult to get a statistical fix on trends in inequality. There are so many variables: Do you use household income or individual income? How do you adjust for age and family type and lifestyle choice? (For instance, there are many people – eg, tertiary students who have moved out of home for the first time – whose low incomes match their spending requirements). How do you account for the “wealth” tied up in the family home? An age pensioner in a million dollar house will look poor in terms of income and wealthy in terms of assets.

    If you look primarily at working-age families, there is little doubt that the proportion of the population which might be described as “working poor” has largely disappeared since the 1980s, through the advent of double income households, higher employment rates and a wide range of social expenditures by governments. The social expenditures have also greatly improved the lot of most welfare recipients. The expansion of superannuation has also greatly increased the wealth of many people who previously would have had nothing but their equity in their own home.

    One can play with statistics all one likes, but I think Australia is clearly a generally more equal place than it was a few decades back.

    You are right to question if this is going to last. The China boom appears to be over, and this will have unpredictable impacts across the economy. The biggest impact will be on post-retirement people. I think that the declining rate of growth in the proportion of the population of working age will help to keep employment levels relatively high. But that rate of growth has been an enormously powerful engine in the creation and sustainment of wealth. So that growing element in the population which is more dependent on wealth than on employment for its standard of living – in particular, our old friends the boomers – are going to suffer if investment returns and asset values stagnate or fall.

    If they generally feel less wealthy, will these older people be less inclined to vote Liberal? Perhaps, but another factor that tends to make people more politically conservative is a greater sense of vulnerability. These two effects might perhaps cancel each other out.

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