BludgerTrack: 55.9-44.1 to Labor

The regular weekly reading of the BludgerTrack poll aggregate adds nothing of substance to last week’s result.

As is often the case in the week after a political upheaval, we’re starved for polling this week because everybody took to the field last week to get results out on the eve of the Liberal spill motion. That just leaves the regular weekly Essential Research result, which has made next to no difference to BludgerTrack. This week’s reading is the tiniest bit more favourable to the Coalition on two-party preferred than last week’s, but Labor makes a gain on the seat projection anyway, the vagaries of the state breakdowns having pushed it over the line for a ninth seat in 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.

2,364 comments on “BludgerTrack: 55.9-44.1 to Labor”

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  3. Edwina StJohn@4

    A leadership change might also be the chance/cover for Labor to evacuate Bowen from Shadow treasurer. Doesn’t know a basic thing like a tax free threshold don’t you know ?

    BTW ‘Steady Eddie’ – Nice call on the Qld result –

    [ Edwina StJohn

    Posted Monday, January 19, 2015 at 6:21 am | Permalink

    Three (3) more years of Campbellism coming up ! ]

  4. Who says the news is not massaged?

    The West newspaper, owned as part of Stokes Seven West Media conglomerate, tucked news of the parent company’s $1.2 billion dollar loss in a puff piece on AFL football in the finance pages.

    Noting that some $900 million was in “write downs” – what ever that is meant to mean, it also reported that newspapers, including the West were losing money.

    I guess if you own the newspaper you can decided where to hide potentially embarrassing news.

    Oh dear, that surely doesn’t happen. You are becoming too much of a cynic Tricot.

  6. ESJ

    What an intellectual illiterate you are.

    Anyone who criticises Bowen yet supports Hockey is either lndescribably clueless or a mere troll.

  7. BK@47 & Dave@53,
    In a typical Fairfax way, the article is only going after Newman and holding him responsible for the loss of he media organisation’s political party (LNP). It is similar to the treatment of Abbott by sections of the media recently: ‘the policies are fine, sorry about our leader. Once we get rid of him, the IPA agenda can be put back on track’.

  8. I just rang my once dyed in the wool Liberal supporter, to remind her that she had to vote on Saturday in the Newcastle ward 3 by election.

    I told her that I logged on to the site and had info on the candidates if she was interested. she said she had already made up her mind and was going to vote Labor.

    I told her after looking at the candidates profiles me a true blue Labor supporter would, If I was Voting would probably vote Green 1 Labor 2.

    What do you think

    http://www.elections.nsw.gov.au/elections/city_of_newcastle_ward3_by-election_21_february_2015/candidates

  9. Tricot@54

    Who says the news is not massaged?

    I guess if you own the newspaper you can decided where to hide potentially embarrassing news.

    Oh dear, that surely doesn’t happen. You are becoming too much of a cynic Tricot.

    Indeed – Look at all of this bubbling away in the UK –

    [ Telegraph took down story on HSBC accounts ‘black hole’, says Peter Oborne

    ….Peter Oborne, the Daily Telegraph’s former chief political commentator, alleged in his outspoken resignation article was that a story about financial analysts claiming there was a “black hole” in HSBC’s accounts was removed from the paper’s website.

    Oborne said he had learned that the online story, by the Telegraph’s then banking editor Harry Wilson, was swiftly removed from the website “even though there were no legal problems”.

    …Oborne claimed the removal of Wilson’s story from the Telegraph website was part of a pattern of behaviour. He alleged the paper had discouraged stories critical of HSBC since the start of 2013, when the bank suspended its advertising with the paper following a Telegraph investigation into accounts held with HSBC in Jersey.

    He said one former Telegraph executive told him HSBC was “the advertiser you literally cannot afford to offend”. ]

    http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/feb/18/peter-oborne-telegraph-hsbc-accounts

    and

    [ Peter Oborne: what I have seen is unprecedented in a quality newspaper

    …Oborne detailed what he perceives to be the Telegraph’s failure to maintain its historic standards. The editor had been replaced by a “head of content”. A front-page story had confused deer hunting and deer stalking. And, rather more profoundly, Oborne said, the Barclay brothers had presided over a “collapse” in the separation of advertising and editorial.

    He reserved particular fury for the failure to adequately cover the recent HSBC scandal, or a number of other controversial stories involving the bank, which is a major Telegraph advertiser. And he said the chief executive, Murdoch MacLennan, had conceded that advertising affected editorial but protested that “it was not as bad as all that”. ]

    http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/feb/18/peter-oborne-daily-telegraph-newspaper-unprecedented

  10. BK

    One link shows the symbol for multiplication – html code 215, apparently, e.g. ×. That’s just the visible text. Underneath, the actual url uses the letter x. If you click the link it works because you’re using the proper url, if you copy and paste it you get the visible text which includes the multiplication symbol which doesn’t work.

    The other both shows the escaped utf-8 code for multiplication and uses it in the url – doesn’t work, either clicking or copy and paste.

    Here is a link where the visible text is completely different from the URL

  12. There is, perhaps, some combination of overly smart client or server software going on that has recognised something in the form of 640×280 and transformed it automatically.

    In fact, my preview shows a multiplcation symbol where I typed the letter x.

  13. sohar@57

    BK@47 & Dave@53,
    In a typical Fairfax way, the article is only going after Newman and holding him responsible for the loss of he media organisation’s political party (LNP).

    Most of the article is free character assessment from campbell’s erstwhile ‘mates’ and campbell blaming them for the electoral massacre.

    Some good lines there as well –

    [ Two others accused Newman of not understanding how political power should be used responsibly. “Probably why he only ever got to major in the army,” one quipped. ]

    The failure of policies are pretty evident to most most people by the flogging from voters.

  16. DN

    [There is, perhaps, some combination of overly smart client or server software going on that has recognised something in the form of 640×280 and transformed it automatically.]

    Perhaps you and BK are using the same operating system and/or browser and it does the transformation of the “x”. Sounds like something an Apple product might do.

  19. Dave@59

    Thanks for that. I had a read of that amazing piece of news manipulation on BBC World yesterday.

    In the English case, the outburst was put down to sour grapes from the journo on quitting. This doesn’t alter the facts of course.

    Perth/WA is essentially a one paper town and while the circulation of the West is in free fall like so much of the pulp media, many here take what they read in the West as gospel.

    The classic came when Abbott was first elected. An improvement in one bank’s consumer sentiment index, fortuitously at much the same time as Abbott’s election, was emblazoned on the front page as due to miracle worker Abbott.

    That the West had been shouting loud and long for Gillard to go and Abbott to come, of course, was merely coincidental.

    A little later, when consumer confidence went backward, little mention was made of this, and certainly there was no link to Miracle Abbott.

    Papers, their owners and editors are free to write what they like, support who they like, and place items in the paper where they like, but to try to kid us this is ‘news’ is where we cynics are allowed free rein.

    Mind you the dross which is served up as local TV news from 4.30 pm onwards is even worse – not so much for manipulation but the sheer mundane stuff which passes as news.

  20. Apologies for posting too much from Twitter, but Possum really sums it all up on the census proposal

    Possum Comitatus @Pollytics
    Abolishing the Census – you stupid, stupid, stupid, shitweasels

    Possum Comitatus @Pollytics
    You know what happens if you scrap the Census? The data is still needed, but gets made up by people that bring you industry multipliers of 9

    Possum Comitatus @Pollytics
    Or traffic forecasts that have killed nearly every PPP road build, population estimates made by people that employ Bernard Salt

    Possum Comitatus @Pollytics
    This mob really are pretty ordinary in an era of profound ordinariness

  21. Isn’t the Human Rights Commissioner independent of the executive branch? How can the Minister demand that a political staffer attend a meeting between the Commissioner and an Opposition frontbencher?

  26. Rr

    [This lecturer reported that Andrew Nikolis wrote to his employer to complain after his criticism was published in the Examiner.]

    Classic dickhead.

  29. daretotread

    From a Vic state gov site.

    [‘The first population counts of Australia were known as musters and were made as early as 1788. Musters involved all members of the community gathering at specified locations to be counted. These were important as a means of matching food and other supplies to the number of people needing them. The first census in Australia as we now know them (recording people at their dwelling) was held in New South Wales in November 1828. ]

    http://guides.slv.vic.gov.au/content.php?pid=81642&sid=605792

  30. The reason Abbott and his cronies don’t want to count people is that they couldn’t care less about them. Counting money, on the other hand..

  32. sohar@80

    The reason Abbott and his cronies don’t want to count people is that they couldn’t care less about them. Counting money, on the other hand..

    People are just a cost center.

  33. Nicholas,

    [Isn’t the Human Rights Commissioner independent of the executive branch? How can the Minister demand that a political staffer attend a meeting between the Commissioner and an Opposition frontbencher?]

    As an independent statutory body, you would think that the HRC was immune to arbitrariness from the AG. I just find it very concerning that Dreyfus and Triggs asked the staffer to leave but were refused and told it was a directive from Brandis.

  34. Brandis:

    “If a member of the staff of the attorney general should sit in on a briefing where there is a statutory right, then a fortiori the member of the staff of the attorney general ought to sit in on a briefing which is given as a matter of convention or perhaps as a matter of courtesy. That was done, and I am told that my deputy chief of staff, Mr Josh Faulks, did sit in on that briefing and he did not in any way, shape or form seek to interfere with the conversation. He was merely present, as is appropriate.”

    a fortiori

    Fark me.

    Brandis is such a tool. And even with the poncy pointless legalese his argument is complete bunk.

  40. Re Morrison being a moderate.

    This is something I have read and heard sometime ago. His upbringing may give a clue to this. However, more recent influences like his choice of church may have an effect on where he currently sits in the right spectrum.

    I personally know several people who once sat slightly to the left of Gramsci in their 20’s now reside slightly to the right of Ray Hadley. The change? Parenthood? Moving to the Burbs? Or joining their local Hillsong type church?

    There is a chicken/egg conundrum tho.

  41. Jackol,

    So, a statutory right to briefings of the AG by the HRC includes the right to sit in on all communications the HRC has with everybody.

    That would place the AG completely within the HRC, which is a far cry from the right to briefings.

  43. Re BK’s link. Curiouser and curiouser.

    If I change the capital x (?) to a lower case x in the above, in the address bar on my browser, it works. And it pastes correctly into the leave-a-reply box. I think.

    But the original with the big x (I don’t think it is just a capital, it seems to be some other code) does not copy and paste correctly into the PB leave-a-reply box.

  45. Simon @ 90

    Seen it in my friends too.

    I think the answer is money. It’s very easy to believe in redistribution when you’re the receiver (becuase you’re young and poor).

    Once you get a bit older and a few more steps up the greasy pole and realise that redistribution means giving away (for you personally), it suddenly seems less attractive.

    There’s always the option of groupthink, too. Some people just seem to parrott back extreme versions of their peer groups political views as a social tactic. Their marxists at Uni and become far-right once they move to a leafy suburb in Nappy Valley.

  46. ajm@70


    Possum Comitatus @Pollytics

    Possum Comitatus @Pollytics
    Or traffic forecasts that have killed nearly every PPP road build, population estimates made by people that employ Bernard Salt

    PPP translation:

    Public Private Partnership (PPP) model for road projects.

  47. Jeez, between this:
    [Peter Martin says this government is considering scrapping the national census to “save money”.* ]

    this:
    [the Liberal National Party (LNP) won a multi-million-dollar medical contract last year without a tender, amid serious concerns about the integrity of the process and poor value for taxpayers.]

    and this:
    [Tony Abbott has rejected a complete crackdown on food testing and labelling in response to the hepatitis A outbreak from imported berries, saying it was the responsibility of business “not to poison their customers”.]

    …I’ve been put in a seriously argumentative mood today. Although I am happy to see Possum taking the opportunity to stick it to that pseph-sociologist-demographer hack Salt.

  48. Jake – I think Brandis has made a slightly different hash of his (il)logic. He started out by talking about what happens with briefings of the opposition by ASIO, and then leapt to the conclusion that briefings of the opposition by the HRC are y’know, the same kind of thing, and so the same conventions should apply. Because everyone knows that the HRC is just like ASIO.

    He said ministerial advisers always sat in on the legally required briefings to oppositions from Asio, and that made it all the more obvious that they should sit in on briefings provided not as a legal requirement, but as a courtesy.

    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/feb/18/labor-objects-to-george-brandiss-staffer-overseeing-meeting-with-gillian-triggs

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