The BludgerTrack pendulum swings back to Labor this week following moves away from the Coalition in both Newspoll and Essential Research – although not Roy Morgan, which was little changed on what for it was an unusually strong result for the Coalition a fortnight ago. Newspoll in particular was a surprise packet, but it should be noted that Labor once again appeared to get the better of rounding on its two-party result. If a simple application of 2013 election flows is made to Newspoll’s rounded primary vote numbers, the result that comes out is 52-48 rather than 53-47. Even so, Newspoll has driven a shift of 1.0% on the BludgerTrack two-party preferred and caused six seats to flip on the seat projection – two in New South Wales, and one each in Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia.
I say “moves away from the Coalition” rather than “moves towards Labor” advisedly, because this particular crop of polling actually found a degree of softness for both major parties. Both are down on the primary vote, the balance being absorbed by the Greens and especially “others”. The “others” result from Essential this week was at an equal high since it began reporting Palmer United separately last November. Newspoll’s didn’t change, but it was high in absolute terms – something it’s been making a habit of lately, as Kevin Bonham explains.
The other manifestation of collective major party weakness came from Newspoll’s leadership ratings, which have caused fairly substantial shifts to the relevant BludgerTrack readings. The uptick to Tony Abbott that was showing up in recent weeks has well and truly been blunted, and a weak result for Bill Shorten has also caused his upward trend towards parity on net approval to disappear. With both leaders down on net satisfaction to about the same degree compared with last week, there is little change this week on preferred prime minister.
[THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS……WHERE ARE THE VICTORIAN STATE POLLS?]
LOL. Come to WA where polling is haphazard to say the least. 🙂
The ALP will gain the two newly created seats easily. Against this I’d give away Ripon (with Helper’s retirement) and Bellarine. But that’s it – the ALP should be able to hold Wendouree, Monbulk and Yan Yean, and then pick up, at the least Carrum and Frankston FTW.
Well stick your finger down your throat and lets see them then….
593
2 of the 5 seats the ALP need to gain, using a uniform swing, are ALP held as is another seat further along the pendulum.
Sir Mad Cyril@599
You cannot count on winning with a bare 50%, to be sure, you need a margin above that to cover any anomalies caused by factors like boundaries. If the Libs had done a little better in SA, they would have won.
What about 53% to 47%?
That is landslide territory in the Howard 1996 and 1983 and bigger than the Rudd 2007 share of the TPP vote.
Re Vic elections
_____________
Speaking with a friin Ballarat …a Former MP…he told me a very interesting story frpom Ballarat
It seems that the Lib candidate in one of the two seats…both Labor held….but both marginals…that the Libs candidate in Wendouree has virtally given up on his campaign…doing very little,,and saying to insiders that the party’s internal polling there …is very bad…that in a marginal seat,they might have hoped to win after the redistribution in which they actually gained
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The Other item, is the closure of the factory In Portland which makes wind-towers…a major in industry in a small regional town where jobs are scarse indeed
Napthine ..who is local MP spoke there today and seems he got a hostile recption from some of the 150 workers .laid of yesterday…due to Abbott’s mad policies…and we know that all polls show Abbott to be deeply unpopular in Victoria
[
You cannot count on winning with a bare 50%, to be sure, you need a margin above that to cover any anomalies caused by factors like boundaries. If the Libs had done a little better in SA, they would have won.
]
They got 53% 2PP. Landslide territory normally.
E
[Well stick your finger down your throat and lets see them then….]
What, all jumbled up? Well ok …
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[you can never underestimate the value of incumbency.]
I don’t mean to howl, but I think that these days the value of incumbency is routinely and seriously overestimated.
Especially at a state level I think there are increasing numbers who will vote against the government.
Jinx
Pardon me.
I wonder if the anomalous result will next time encourage more soft ALP voters to switch, or will make soft Lib voters think they might as well vote for the ALP if they are going to win regardless…
Martin B – i’d agree on Ripon, but despite the pendulum I’d rate the ALP a better prospect of holding Bellarine than winning Carrum, where apparently the local MP has a bit of an Aussie battler thing going. Still I suspect one or more of the other Frankston line seats, such as Carrum, Mordi and Bentleigh will also fall.
Everything@606
A lot of votes can be wasted in ultra-safe seats.
deblonay
[Napthine ..who is local MP spoke there today and seems he got a hostile recption from some of the 150 workers .laid of yesterday…due to Abbott’s mad policies…and we know that all polls show Abbott to be deeply unpopular in Victoria]
The LNP is so extreme and irrational in so many areas and are actually very radical in the Australian tradition (i.e. unfair, anti-science, pandering to the top elite and foreign companies) it is surprising the ALP is just a breathe in front in the polls.
Sir Mad Cyril@608
Yes, probably the most extreme example I can recall.
Maybe. I tend to see the Frankston line as swinging against the government for the next 20 years or so but I have no specific knowledge on Carrum.
[The LNP is so extreme and irrational in so many areas and are actually very radical in the Australian tradition (i.e. unfair, anti-science, pandering to the top elite and foreign companies) it is surprising the ALP is just a breathe in front in the polls.]
Baillieu’s ‘Do Nothing’ strategy wasn’t completely crazy…
Martin B
My comments were about Australia, not Victoria. 🙂
I know nothing about Victorian politics, though i love Melbourne.
[but I think that these days the value of incumbency is routinely and seriously overestimated.
Especially at a state level]
Given we haven’t seen a lot of first term state govts tossed in recent years, your argument doesn’t hold much merit.
Abbott wants to make Australia the Saudi Arabia of Coal. Overseas multinationals digging up stuff to sell overseas, no other significant industries apart from building and construction. And a poorly paid underclass to do the dirty work. And, if he really gets his way, medieval social policies.
[Steve777
Posted Thursday, October 23, 2014 at 10:33 pm | PERMALINK
Abbott wants to make Australia the Saudi Arabia of Coal. Overseas multinationals digging up stuff to sell overseas, no other significant industries apart from building and construction. And a poorly paid underclass to do the dirty work. And, if he really gets his way, medieval social policies.]
….is that ALP spin for “cut reckless spending and balancing the budget”?
There’s more commentary on the VIC election than Federal polling …. william if we can’t have any Victorian polling can we at least have a specific page for the Victorian election?
If a first-term (or any term) government is returned that is not, itself evidence of ‘the value of incumbency’. The question still remains whether the election result turned on underlying relativities, or whether (some) people voted primarily for the government, regardless of those relativities.
The ‘value of incumbency’ is that, all else being exactly 50-50 some people will be swayed by government announcements at the last minute, or decide to stick with the known.
The Libs lost with 47% of the vote in SA because they didn’t target the right voters. Marshall was too busy trying to look like Abbott’s right-hand-man that and running a small-target campaign that he failed to win over Adelaide voters (who aren’t fans of Abbott at all.) However, his appearance of a hardline conservative and frustration with a Labor State Government that seemingly only cares about Adelaide meant he resonated well with the conservative rural voters.
Consequently, the Libs won about 2/3 of the country vote (where their seats are) and only won 48% of the Adelaide vote (where the seats they need are.)
It’s really not that hard to understand, to be honest. If SA Libs tailored their message to appeal to Adelaide voters (which Redmond did a better job of than Marshall – despite the latter being a moderate faction MP from an inner-city seat), they would’ve won. Instead, they just tried to be like their Canberra counterparts and assumed they’d cruise over the line.
To my knowledge, no one has suggested that South Australia has malaportioned or gerrymandered electorates, although I recall Chris Pyne after the last SA election throwing a tantrum and threatening to punish South Australia for not handing over government to the Liberals (although he probably would have done so even if Labour had won 75% 2PP).
But that’s the way the wirst form of representative democracy (single memember electorates) works. The situation might be alleviated by increasing the number of electoratex from 47 to, say, about 60, to break up / reallocate some of the concentrated conservative rural vote.
And I agree on the Vic polling. It’s getting ridiculous. Maybe fewer QLD polls and more Vic polling, considering the date!
More Vic polls would be good but can’t begrudge the Qld polls! Especially if they include Ashgrove.
[ “cut reckless spending and balancing the budget” ]
Is that Lis spin for screwing workers, the elderly and the sick so instead of fixing the structural deficit they created in the first place?
EveryLiberalThingy
[….is that ALP spin for “cut reckless spending and balancing the budget”?]
Are rightist’s brains hard wired to: when in doubt vomit a slogan?
I mean the LNP has doubled the deficitin one year, increased unemployment and lowered confidence, as well as put a lot of fear in the poorest people.
What is your slogan for that?
Lib spin
Your point is well taken Carey, but if 53% of South Australians wanted a Coalition win and the ALP won it suggests there is a problem with the seat distribution. Whether you win seats in rural or urban regions is another matter as I see it.
I gotta give cred to the Canadian media today (from what I’ve read around the Internet).
Kudos for focusing on the heroes and not the terror suspects.
Well, unless you make it a single, statewide electorate, you’re still going to get the disparity. The rural voters will vote overwhelmingly Liberal and the Adelaide voters voting slightly in favour of the ALP (but having more representation because that’s where overwhelming majority of the state lives.)
In fact, even if it were statewide PR, I can’t guarantee a Lib win as minor parties would start to be a factor.
Admittedly though, this year’s results actually were a notional Liberal majority as the two independent (at the election) seats were Liberal on 2PP.
In a completely pure ‘no value of incumbency’ electoral model you’d still expect a significant autocorrelation of successive election results because a good team/campaign/leader in one election is still likely to be good 3/4 years later.
Is there group of people in Australia politics more self-righteous and smug as the Greens?
They would give Chris Pyne a run for his money in the Smug Olympics.
I am open to electoral reform and I agree it’s not a good look. I am just trying to explain how it happened, so minds don’t wonder into the realm of conspiracies and accusations of electoral wrongdoing.
EveryLiberalThing
[Your point is well taken Carey, but if 53% of South Australians wanted a Coalition win and the ALP won it suggests there is a problem with the seat distribution. Whether you win seats in rural or urban regions is another matter as I see it.]
What garbage!
The single member system means there is no required correlation beween seats one and votes one.
It is a stupid, unrepresenatative system.
I am all for governments winning with minority votes. The more often minority votes win majority seats the more likely people will come to discard this 18th century rotten borough Westminster electoral system
South Australia is basically Adelaide plus a huge back yard. Of South Australia’s 1.7 million people, 1.3 million live in the Adelaide metropolitan area (77%).
Whose the dude in your Avatar Carey?
[Is there group of people in Australia politics more self-righteous and smug as the Greens?]
Ooh, pick me, pick me.
Is the answer: “ALP supporters who comment on the Greens on internet forums”???
Oops one = won
I was just trying to point out that while “you get the votes you win the seats” usually occurs, there are exceptions.
[There’s more commentary on the VIC election than Federal polling …. william if we can’t have any Victorian polling can we at least have a specific page for the Victorian election?]
I’ll take the discussion about the Victorian election tonight over any of the banal Greens v Labor, morbidly introspective commentary about other commenters, and rapid fire tweet reposting that has come to characterise PB comments during the day.
And I say that as someone who rarely bothers to scroll back but for some reason I chose to do so today. Never again.
[Well, unless you make it a single, statewide electorate, you’re still going to get the disparity. ]
You could do some of those kooky US Congress type electorates so that every seat was based in the city but had a corridor snaking out to encompass a part of the rural population.
[Whose the dude in your Avatar Carey?]
It’s Peter Mannion from The Thick of It. A really funny (sarcastic, cynical and grumpy) character who reminds me of myself at times.
Sir Mad Cyril@644
Yes, things are not finely balanced 50 – 50. I have acknowledged that.
Carey Moore explained it very well with his local knowledge.
I don’t think the Libs will be quite that dumb in Vic, but I do think the ALP will get comfortably over 50% 2PP, and certainly enough to win.
Martin B@642
Ooh, pick me, pick me.
Is the answer: “ALP supporters who comment on the Greens on internet forums”???
1) Who says I’m a ALP supporter?
2) This is pretty funny considering all the Greens supporters in here lecturing the rest of us about what terrible people we are for not supporting their ideals 100%.
If the seats were divided so that every seat had an equal 53-47 split, then 100% of the seats would be won by the Coalition. And then a small swing back to Labor would result them winning 100% of the seats.
Or, if the seats were divided every seat went 100% for one party, then the seats would fall with a 53-47 split… but every seat would be safe for the incumbent party.
You’d have to direct the Electoral Commission to actively ensure that there would be a contest by giving each party ultra-safe seats as well as marginal seats. And even then the voters would screw it up.