BludgerTrack: 51.6-48.4 to Labor

A flurry of post-budget opinion polls adds up to a solid increase in the Coalition’s standing, with Tony Abbott’s personal standing now rivalling his least-bad results since his short-lived post-election honeymoon.

Every pollster under the sun took the field this week, and the collective verdict from the six pollsters as aggregated in BludgerTrack is that the Coalition two-party vote has lifted 0.7% in the wake of the budget. The result on the seat projection is even more striking, with Labor now reduced to minority government territory, although the presence of Adam Bandt and Andrew Wilkie on the hypothesised cross-bench suggests that 74 seats would still be enough for them to form government. The Coalition has had considerable bang for its post-budget buck on the seat projection, because state breakdowns (including published ones from Ipsos and Morgan, and unpublished ones from ReachTEL and Essential Research) suggest the biggest gain has been in marginal seat-rich Queensland, whereas Labor’s vote has held firm in the less strategically important state of Victoria. All told, the Coalition is credited with two gains in Queensland, and one each in New South Wales, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania. New results on personal ratings were provided by Newspoll and Ipsos, and they offer no sign that Tony Abbott’s remarkable recovery from the depths of February is abating, his net approval rating now being no worse than it was before last year’s budget. However, they also suggest that Bill Shorten’s recent downward slide has levelled off.

Apropos of not very much, here’s a display of Newspoll’s post-budget polling results going back to the late 1980s. The scatterplot shows the strong relationship that exists between the results for personal financial impact and overall economic impact, with this year’s result indicated by the pink dot.

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.

1,547 comments on “BludgerTrack: 51.6-48.4 to Labor”

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  1. CM
    The Irish Constitution has provision for two forms of constitution.
    This is a constitutional referendum to change section 41 “Protection of the Family” to define marriage as a contract between two adults regardless of sex
    There is also provision for a “normal” referendum. 40% of senators may petition the president to refer contentious legislation to the people. It is one of the president’s few discretionary powers on whether he hears the petition. In the nearly 80 years of the current constitution this provision has never been used.
    The constitution was writtrn by a man with an enigmatic psychological profile and it certainly shows it.

  2. The push for an Australian constitutional referendum on the federal power to regulate marriage will now be strong.
    But how should we regulate marriage?
    SSM is a given
    Should we define the age of consent?
    What of bigamy which is a valid concept/right for a significant proportion of the population?

  3. “@Pollytics: If only @SDAunion would survey their members & represent their actual beliefs (you know, like the rest of do in this thing called modernity)”

  4. There is a lot of Guiness drunk in Dublin every night.

    And for ESJ – how do we define past and future marriages for people of trans-dender

  5. Regarding the seismic fall from (Holy) grace of the Irish Catholic church, i think its influence was always marginal, behind closed doors.

    I am well equipped to know this since I am an ardent Father Ted fan. I’ve always loved non fiction shows, especially when most others think it is fiction.

  6. If it gets up in Ireland, a referendum will roll home here.

    Our major political parties just need to get out of the way: the people want it.

  7. If conservative Catholic Ireland handsomely beats you to introducing gay marriage, you are clearly not the tolerant modern society you thought you were.

  8. [If it gets up in Ireland, a referendum will roll home here]

    I’m sure Ireland is fortunate to not have a political leader as morally bereft as Tony Abbott, who can poison anything good.

  9. Marriage is not a constitutional issue so there is no need for a referendum, Ireland has a long history of being a European trend setter as far back as St Patrick.

    I take issue with people who claim Australia is intolerance, I don’t see Gays being tossed from the top of high buildings.

    We over use emotive language, which doesn’t achieve anything.

  10. lefty e

    This Pell chap you speak of . Is he the Pell wot was our PM’s “personal confessor” ? They make a great pair.

  11. mexicanbeemer

    [I don’t see Gays being tossed from the top of high buildings]

    A bit extreme, but don’t underestimate this government to make an argument for it.

  12. MB
    What of Section 51.xxi
    If the parliament won’t take the lead in regulating marriage the people/constitution might.
    It would be possible to amend this section wth wtte of “but so as not to exclude SSM”

  13. 1504

    In Iceland, the president can refer any law to a referendum. This was used against laws to pay the UK and Dutch governments for stumping up the money to pay, with Icelandic taxpayer money, the UK and Dutch account-holders in collapsed Icelandic backs the money they were owed by the banks, which were not government guaranteed by Iceland, that collapsed.

    1506

    The High Court ruled, when the ACT marriage laws were struck down, that legislating marriage equality was within the power granted under 51xxi. That means that there is little point about dragging out arguments over whether the Commonwealth has the legislative power to legislate marriage equality, which is good but with the unintended consequence that I now have little reason to point out that 1900 was before the UK pricked the annual blister of the deceased wife`s sister (it becoming legal to marry a deceased wife`s sister in 1907).

    Therefore, if Australia were to have a vote of the voters on the subject, it would likely be a national vote only (no state level majorities needed) plebiscite like the conscription plebiscites of 1916 and 1917.

  14. BlurbUllage@1482



    Re: Lizzie and refugees,

    That Acehnese fisherman, for his humaity, should be elected President of the future republic of Australia.

    Well I wouldn’t quite go that far, but I really think it would be great if his village could be identified and a fund set up, to which decent Australians could donate, to provide some practical assistance to that fisherman, his colleagues and village. Medical centre perhaps?

  15. [ their pig-headed immorality and cowardice on the issue of asylum seekers. ]

    As against the Greens irrelevant purity.

    You are a dickhead who is trying to be nasty and insulting and just winding up looking rather puerile Nicolas.

  16. Albert Ross@1496

    guytaur – Ireland’s politicians today are less Catholic and less conservative than most of the MPs in federal parliament.

    The breaking of the political power of the Catholic Church so convincingly will open the way to eventual reunification with the North.

  17. 1524

    The Commonwealth Parliament, or at least one chamber or the other and the Government (this provision was used under Whitlam to put forward referendums and the ALP during its 1913-1914 stint as the opposition with a majority in the Senate tried but failed because the GG (I presume on the advice of the PM, Cook)), is needed to put forward a constitutional referendum.

    I am sure the states, from time to time (especially under conservative governments), regret not having a mechanism for state parliaments (say a minimum of a majority) to initiate referendums.

  18. Speaking of confessions, would anyone here like too hear some dark, deep ones?

    I’m in a mood, to spill the beans in front of an audience I consider compassionate and understanding.

  19. i am nt convinced by the reasons shorten does not stand aside or even became leader – he obviously was not then or now the best or only candidate … and last one to speak of party order

  20. SMH

    Ms Bishop said she was told repeatedly during a recent visit to Europe that illicit money was flowing from people smuggling and other transnational criminal enterprises to terrorists including the so-called Islamic State.

    Migrants sit on the deck of their boat as they wait to be rescued by Acehnese fishermen in Indonesia this week.
    Migrants sit on the deck of their boat as they wait to be rescued by Acehnese fishermen in Indonesia this week. Photo: AP
    Her comments came as the Abbott government faced criticism over the Prime Minister’s blunt refusal to resettle any of the thousands of minority Rohingyas or Bangladeshis at the centre of a growing refugee crisis in south-east Asia.

    Ms Bishop emphasised she was not suggesting that people-smuggling networks in the south-east Asian region or networks targetting Australia were directly funding terrorism.

    ———————bishop is trash … backing up nopey leader with this

  21. briefly @1472:

    [Nicholas

    Do you enjoy running interference for the LNP?]

    Largely what I was thinking. I am – as many of you know – a Green, and I’ve been keeping rather quiet of late about my disagreements with Labor.

    Why? Because I may not think Labor’s the best thing since sliced bread, but by $deity they’re better than the LNP! There’s a time to pull together to bring down the worst Government in Australian history, and a time to hash out disagreements. This is the former.

  22. pswlaw

    [As I pointed out earlier, it is clear to any open minded, unbigotted, objective observer that child abuse has been a traditional practice of the Catholic church ]

    But only them.

  23. At sometime between midnight, and when the cold steely fingers of dawn infiltrated the night, of the first of January 1998, a good friend of mine and myself departed a train at Boondall station.

    As we drunkenly stumbled towards the overpass, we heard a blood chilling scream, not a scream by itself, but the word NO followed by a wimpered, PLEASE DON’T.

    We ran, this friend and me, up all those stairs, around the corner and along the chain mail fence and found a girl, a young girl, no older than 20 years.

    Standing over her, were four boys, no older than 20, youngest maybe 15, a fifth youth was writhing on top of her.

    I and my friend, proceeded to do unspeakable violence upon those young men.

    Deep, dark violence of a kind I imagine most here would never have seen, but of a type I have seen many times since.

    I still have a scar, nearly 2 decades later, on the second knuckle of the index finger of my left hand, where it ripped apart against the jagged remaining fragments of teeth in the upper jaw of one young rapist.

    So I sat with the girl for a long time afterwards, on the hardwood steps of Boondall train station, waiting for the police to come, they never came.

    At a point, I took off my sweaty, blood and booze soaked t-shirt and wrapped it around her shoulders as she shivered and sweated in the balmy queensland dawn.

    A new year, and what a grand new year for all of us there.

    The police never came, never came… guess they were busy, so my friend went back to my house and called her a taxi.

    The taxi came.

    I gave the driver $20 and she left.

    She had at one point told me her name.

    I cannot remember her name.

    I wish I could.

  24. Labor is crap because of arguments like “Don’t run interference for the LNP!” A party which is only marginally less austerity-driven on macroeconomic settings than the LNP does not deserve support much less praise. Its performance on social issues is woeful too.

    Labor is great if you aren’t unemployed, a single mother, an asylum seeker, a scientist (jobs have been cut under Labor Governments – don’t try to deny it, Briefly), a public servant (lots of job cuts there under Labor), or a person who believes citizenship implies universality of access to high quality services and support in times of need.

  25. Nicholas is a serial pest.

    If Labor doesn’t win the next federal election, it will be a result of overtly negative and idiotic nitwits like Nicholas.

  26. Nicholas is a serial pest.

    If Labor doesn’t win the next federal election, it will be a result of overtly negative and idiotic nitwits like Nicholas.

  27. @BlurbUllage/1546

    And we have the same positive/ignorant idiotic nitwits like yourself in the Labor Party, wondering why they continue to bend over for the Coalition Party, which is why they loose elections.

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