BludgerTrack: 52.5-47.5 to Labor

Public relaxation over summer, the quirks of a shallow pool of poll results, actual improvement in the government’s standing – whatever the cause, the BludgerTrack poll aggregate has again recorded movement in favour of the Coalition.

Week two of BludgerTrack for 2015 adds only the latest Essential Research result to last week’s numbers from Essential and Roy Morgan. This is pretty thin gruel so far as poll aggregation goes, but nonetheless, let it be noted that BludgerTrack finds the latest result to be a lot more like the Morgan poll than Essential’s strong result for Labor last week, and thus shifts a little further the Coalition’s way. The 0.4% move on two-party preferred translates into three gains for the Coalition on the seat projection, namely one seat each in New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia. Nothing new this week on leadership ratings.

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.

2,676 comments on “BludgerTrack: 52.5-47.5 to Labor”

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  2. GG

    hahaha

    I am single and live with a Staffy……and a few chooks, quails and water dragons

    We are all just “mates”.

    No male or female has ever wanted to be Mrs Swamprat….

  4. Also on Qld election thread

    teaser from the Oz (pay walled)

    MICHAEL MCKENNA
    CAMPBELL Newman is in the fight of his political career, with the LNP facing massive swings, an exclusive Newspoll has found.

  5. citizen@404

    Also on Qld election thread

    teaser from the Oz (pay walled)

    MICHAEL MCKENNA
    CAMPBELL Newman is in the fight of his political career, with the LNP facing massive swings, an exclusive Newspoll has found.

    And here is part of it.

    [CAMPBELL Newman is in the fight of his political career, with the Liberal National Party facing massive swings in regional Queensland, an exclusive Newspoll has found.

    Just a week out from the state election, the poll conducted for The Weekend Australian reveals a swing of up to 13 per cent in key LNP-held seats across Queensland.

    Dozens of LNP seats would fall to Labor next Saturday if the backlash against the first-term Newman government was carried across the state.

    The Newspoll of voters this week in the electorates of ­Ipswich West, 40km outside Brisbane, Keppel, near Rockhampton, and Cairns in the far north, reveals the LNP’s primary vote has plummeted since it swept to power in 2012 with the biggest majority in an Australian parliament.

    In those key seats, Labor’s primary vote has jumped 16 points to 47 per cent in the three seats, held by Labor before 2012, with the LNP’s vote collapsing more than eight points to 43.5 per cent. On a two-party preferred basis, Labor leads the LNP 56 per cent to 44 per cent — a swing of 13 per cent.

    But insiders from both major parties say that their own polling shows the contest is far from over, with some voters still wavering, big variations in the swings across the state and the impact of preference flows still hard to pick.]

  11. There are lessons for all conservative governments (Abbott, Newman) in these stats.

    [Unpublished state government figures obtained by The Saturday Age reveal the recidivism rate for 2013-2014 is at a 10-year high of 40 per cent, up from a low of 34 per cent four years ago.

    The figures raise questions about the merits of the Baillieu/Napthine government’s zero-tolerance approach to law and order, and the spending priority given to prisons over education, housing and rehabilitation and post-release programs.

    Victoria’s prisoner return rate is nudging the current national average, which is just over 40 per cent. The state’s target is to remain under the national average, which it did for the last decade.]

    http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victorias-prisoner-return-rate-soars-20150123-12wtaq.html

  12. Spent a few days in Adelaide on way back from NT recently.

    Very sobering to see that the bushfire got within a few hundred metres of Gumeracha and the Big Rocking Horse. Glad that you didn’t get burnt out nearby BK.

    Also moving to look at the war memorial at Hahndorf and see that about half the names of those from the district who served in the two World Wars had German surnames, including some of those who died. I know someone whose forebears in Western Victoria had this happen where children of German immigrants fought in WW1 against Germany, creating much family angst.

  15. Good morning Dawn Patrollers – and again I have to struggle with dial-up speed downloading! Strewth it’s painful. It seems there has been a major system failure of a type BigPond has never experienced before. They have been very open and honest with me and I give them credit for that.

    Lenore Taylor on Abbott’s trust deficit disaster. She gives him quite a bit of stick!
    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jan/23/tony-abbotts-trust-deficit-disaster-is-paralysing-his-government
    James Massola has similar thoughts as he looks ahead into Abbott’s 2015.
    http://smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/2015-shaping-up-to-wake-political-opponents-from-midterm-slumber-20150123-12woyo.html
    Why the Liberals can’t kill Abbott.
    http://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/opinion/topic/2015/01/24/why-the-liberals-cant-kill-tony-abbott/14220180001407
    Why women are more religious than men.
    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/23/its-not-surprising-women-are-more-religious-than-men
    Mike Seccombe in The Saturday Paper (making a welcome return from its break) – Inside Dutton’s asylum seeker endgame.
    http://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2015/01/24/inside-peter-duttons-asylum-seeker-endgame/14220180001417
    Also in The Saturday Paper Sophie Morris suggests the government should increase its own consulting times.
    http://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/health/2015/01/24/medicare-reform-plans-adrift/14220180001410
    Richard Glover implores us to ditch the stereotypes on Australia day.
    http://www.smh.com.au/comment/lets-be-honest-about–australia-and-ditch-the-stereotypes-20150123-12txce.html
    In praise of Tony Abbott (tongue in cheek of course!)
    http://theaimn.com/praise-tony-abbott/
    The US Republicans show their true colours with these abortion bill tactics.
    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/22/republican-abortion-bill-believe-many-women-lie-about-rape
    This something that is worth doing. Sounds like the Australia Card doesn’t it?
    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jan/23/digital-shopfront-to-make-government-access-as-easy-as-internet-banking

  16. Section 2 . . .

    Peter Martin tells Joe Hockey that Australians pay less tax than he talks about.
    http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/too-much-tax-middle-income-australians-pay-11-cents-in-the-dollar-says-the-australian-council-of-social-service-20150123-12w9s1.html
    The three worst things the Liberals did yesterday.
    http://www.ellistabletalk.com/2015/01/23/the-three-worst-things-the-liberals-did-yesterday-176/
    Is a pop star’s bank balance in direct proportion to the size of her bum?
    https://newmatilda.com/2015/01/23/real-booty-myth
    This is WorkChoices 2.0
    http://smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/unions-vow-to-mobilise-as-abbott-plans-to-make-industrial-relations-a-major-election-issue-20150123-12x1zo.html
    How dare you question Robert Allenby – from Peter FitzSimons.
    http://www.smh.com.au/sport/golf/how-dare-you-question-robert-allenby-20150123-12wyif.html

    *** Sorry but the cartoons are impossible to download at the moment – as are a few of my other favourite sites

  17. From the Saturday Paper briefing.

    [With the Australian public unmoved by the government’s flouting of international humanitarian law, Mike Seccombe asks whether the cost of offshore detention ($400,000–$600,000 per asylum seeker per year) may prove too much for Dutton’s combative approach, insensitivity to criticism and obdurate determination.]

    Turning refugees into rebels is proving very expensive, isn’t it…

  18. [ Oil fell in New York on speculation the death of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia won’t signal any change in strategy for the world’s largest crude exporter.

    Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, who succeeds Abdullah on the throne, said he would maintain his predecessor’s policies. The kingdom will not cut production to boost prices because other producers will fill the gap, Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Al Saud said. U.S. crude inventories rose the most since 2001 last week, according to a government report. ]

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-23/oil-pares-gains-as-new-saudi-king-says-policies-won-t-change.html

  19. From BK’s link to Chris Wallace’s article at the Saturday Paper.

    Terrible article – full of journo ‘tricks’.

    Her opening is:
    [Chatter among well-heeled Liberal voters on their annual New Year’s pilgrimage to the ski slopes of Europe and North America tells the story.]
    Now unless Chris personally takes her hols in those places [how much do they pay journos?] and hobnobs with the Aussie nobs and they trustingly confide in her, this is not a first hand anecdote but merely a journo device to introduce a story.
    Very suss.
    And I do rather get irritated by the vox populi trick of a couple of people being selected by a journo, out of about 13 million possibilities, to supposedly illustrate a POV of millions.
    Another journo trick.

    And then there was this:
    [Abbott’s reversal of fortune between opposition and government is a deep mystery, perplexing Liberal politicians, staffers and supporters alike]

    Name them.
    If its so mystifying and widespread then precise specific info about who says what should be compulsory for a journo – otherwise we may suspect its not entirely true might we not?

    So we are half a page into the article before we get anything vaguely resembling meaningful reporting and analysis. And even then its debatable stuff.

    I really had hoped the Saturday paper would be better than this.

    At the bottom it says “Paul Bongiorno is on leave.”
    Get him back, he’s needed.

  23. Morning all.

    PvO still gunning for Abbott.

    [Peter van Onselen @vanOnselenP · 16m 16 minutes ago
    I’ve asked PMO which Melb hotel the PM stays at which he said on 2GB doesn’t open its restaurant on Sundays bc of penalty rates. No response]

  25. [I was teaching a Masters class in Perth at the time and when the sudden change was reported online one of my students piped up and enlightened the class. Laughter was all that followed. Dysfunction has been normalised to the extent that generations who haven’t witnessed first-hand the quality administrations run by the likes of Howard, Paul Keating and Bob Hawke have lowered their ­expectations of the political class.

    This is a disturbing new cultural reality: we cannot afford for dysfunctional government to become normative given the challenges Australia faces in transitioning our economy, combating the global economic problems and adapting to take advantage of the Asian Century.

    The more immediate political difficulty for Abbott is that he is now being mocked. A political leader can endure through robust disagreements and even hatred in sections of the community ­(Howard faced such emotional ­responses for much of his prime ministership).

    But when respect in the mainstream starts to be replaced by mocking (or the view that they are not up to the job) leaders find that their base starts to erode. Without a base what does a leader have left? And how do they effectively govern a country?]
    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/scoring-cheap-points-does-not-become-a-prime-minister/story-fn53lw5p-1227195150737

  27. Abbott may whinge about the intractable Senate, but an upper house may be the only thing keeping his government from a dictatorship. (See also Fitzgerald on Newman.)

  29. BK

    Are the bigpond troubles just in your local area, or universal? My downloads have been a little slower lately but I’m blaming my mature computer.

  30. [Interviewed on Sydney radio on Friday, the prime minister said he thought the lower penalty rates would allow more businesses to open on weekends, providing more jobs.

    “If you don’t want to work on a weekend, fair enough don’t work on a weekend. But if you do want to work on a weekend, and lots of people, particularly students, particularly young people, want to work on a weekend, you want the places to be open to provide jobs,” he said, pointing out that the hotel he uses in Melbourne closed its restaurant on Sunday night because it couldn’t afford to pay penalty rates and that he had found it difficult to find a bottle shop open over Easter for the same reason.]

    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jan/23/coalition-faces-uphill-task-convincing-even-their-supporters-on-penalty-rates

    This qualifies as a patented Abbott BrainFart ™ on multiple grounds

  32. confessions

    That article is based on a wrong assumption. The Labor period of government was good administration. The author is equating leadership soap opera with competence.

    ACT, Tasmania and South Australia and NSW have had competent government as well.

    Its more a question of why does the media continually ridicule good government?

  33. fredex

    Agree in part re the article by Chris Wallace. She is firm that the Libs cant and wont dump Abbott because of their own response to Rudd/Gillard leadership imbroglio

  35. Confessions

    And another thing with PVO. Does he in any way realise that the sharp deterioration of our politics can be traced back to when Abbott took over as OL. He is a rottenest apple ever

  36. I don’t know about the eastern states, but in WA trading laws prevent bottle shops from opening on good friday and I think easter Sunday.

    They also can’t open before lunchtime on Anzac day regardless of what day it is.

  37. [lizzie
    Posted Saturday, January 24, 2015 at 9:05 am | PERMALINK
    sprocket

    In what outback township did he spend Easter?]

    Why is he wanting to get on the booze over Easter?

  38. lizzie
    BigPond conducted a system upgrade that has gone badly wrong. It has affected a lot of areas apparently. It is affecting new connections and shape changes I believe.

  41. Abbott “If you don’t want to work on a weekend, fair enough don’t work on a weekend”

    Marie Antoinette “If the people are saying they don’t have bread, let them eat cake”

  43. fredex

    And another thing that was interesting in the Chris wallace article, is that she states that it is Abbott who is the far right wing idealogue and that Credlin/Loughnane are very moderate. Abbott’s antics on Medicare co payment are all his own work. Really?

  44. fess

    So it’s trading laws, not wage rates.

    sprocket

    TA is well-known for his lack of planning skills. Often revealed in these “I’m your mate” kind of remarks.

  45. William Kezza, RE Chan et al – Where did I say I supported the death penalty let alone an eye for an eye? I don’t but I have no control if another country has the death penalty nor do you. Also where did I say drug users (or anyone for that matter) were devoid of responsibility for their actions? I didn’t. These two drug trafficking master minds (that’s what they are no matter how their live may have been different only if…..) must also take responsibility for breaking the law in a country that does have the death penalty. I don’t accept the argument that if they didn’t traffic drugs some else would or that their behaviour is “excusable” because they are only part of the drug cycle. There we also references to tobacco and alcohol – yes problematic and responsible for many deaths and misery but both legal in this country. I don’t accept the “my drug is better than yours” argument. But that has nothing to do with the debate. If one was to drink alcohol in Iran and face the death penalty then you take responsibly for your actions. You break the law you face the consequences.

  47. lizzie:

    We do have fairly draconian trading laws. Large retailers for eg are not permitted to open on Sundays unless they are located in certain areas.

  48. “Free” education?

    [As students prepare to return to class next week, welfare groups say families are struggling to meet rising back-to-school costs. Many students are expected to miss out on funding after the Education Maintenance Allowance for low-income families was scrapped at the end of last year, and the Schoolkids Bonus will be abolished next year.

    Parents Victoria said welfare agencies were inundated with requests for help from distressed families facing mounting costs at the start of the school year. “You’ve got all the agencies trying to fill the gaps, but not everyone qualifies for support,” executive officer Gail McHardy said. “And those agencies have made it very clear that they run out of assistance very quickly because they just can’t meet demands upon them.”

    Children’s charity The Smith Family estimates the cost of sending a child to a public primary school is more than $2000 a year, excluding excursions and camps or discretionary items such as school photos, computers and tutoring. Fees for certain subjects are higher, and some schools have requirements that each child must have a laptop or tablet. At private schools these costs skyrocket.]

    http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/backtoschool-costs-stretch-vulnerable-families-finances-20150123-12wqof.html

  49. Lizzie @429. I thought my computer was getting old and slowing down the Internet speed. Some time ago I downloaded a speed test (Ookla) and have been running it on and off. I did it the other day as I thought the downloads were slowing down. It gave me the current speed but I also noticed a results button which I clicked. It showed the results of all the test I have run in the past and was surprised to see a consistent result over time.

    I guess we get used to the speeds we get and always think our machinery is slowing down over time.

  50. Yesterday evening when the news item came on outlining the PC review into wages and conditions and penalty rates, all three of my kids started ranting and raving. Never seen anything like it 😀

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