BludgerTrack: 51.5-48.5 to Labor

A reasonably good result for the Coalition in a Queensland-only poll from Galaxy makes the only difference worth mentioning to the BludgerTrack poll aggregate.

The only new national federal poll this week was the usual entry from Essential Research, and as you may have guessed, it’s done next to nothing to alter the reading on the BludgerTrack poll aggregate. However, we did get a federal poll of Queensland only for Galaxy, which gave the Coalition an above-par result in the most sensitive state in terms of marginal seats. That’s lifted them a notch on the seat tally, making an incremental contribution to the wearing away of Labor’s lead. Nothing new on leadership ratings this week, so that’s your lot.

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.

2,748 comments on “BludgerTrack: 51.5-48.5 to Labor”

Comments Page 3 of 55
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  2. [an irrational amygdala-driven lather]

    Just like that fuctard TBA. I love the “conscious vote”. TBA knows all about the “subconscious vote”. That’s where your amygdala votes for you.

    Those who know their scifi might know the term “Monsters of the ID”. Sums up people who vote Liberal despite their own rational self interest.

  4. [TBA knows all about the “subconscious vote”.]

    It is pretty much the entire basis of conservative politicking these days.

  5. Raaraa

    [We had some interesting tunneling projects done in Singapore under really tall buildings.]

    In London tunnels have been dug under the Barbican Tower Blocks (they’re 400 ft high).

  7. Raaraa

    [Interesting in Brisbane is that some of them are funded by local government.]

    You’d have to assume that it’s cheaper than trying to fix the arterial roads?

  11. cud chewer

    [And under heritage listed buildings with virtually no modern foundations.]

    Some residents were wondering if Lauderdale and Shakespeare would suddenly become only 200ft high. 😀

    But the worst that happened was that you can sometimes hear the rumble of the boring machines.

  12. According to the Guardian article Penny Wong has joined in the Labor nonsense group opposing abolishing group ticket voting.

    Very disappointed to hear.

    I can only hope that either the actual sensible heads (and that apparently doesn’t include Penny Wong!) in the ALP stay on top, or that the Greens save the ALP from themselves and vote for the Senate voting changes when they come up.

    If GTV stays because of ALP/Green stupidity I will be very unimpressed.

    But Labor Senate leaders, including Dastyari, the Senate opposition leader, Penny Wong, and the deputy leader, Stephen Conroy, are opposed to the changes.

    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/may/28/madness-for-labor-to-back-senate-voting-reform-says-sam-dastyari

  13. gaytaur@110

    It is no good the BBC writing pieces which essentially shame Oz as most of the great Oz public does not know, want to know or care what happens to the AS. Out of sight, out of mind.

    When our Great Leader can go to the UK and tell them to their faces that Oz has got in right when it comes to dealing with AS – as applied to those from Africa for the Europeans AND many of the chavs in Little England agree with him, it sums up the morality of it all.

  14. Tricot at 61

    Yes that is why I too use Poll Bludgers, its a form of sanity check, nice to have when you think the world is leaning too far right & out of whack.

  15. [If GTV stays because of ALP/Green stupidity I will be very unimpressed.]

    I still haven’t worked out what is wrong with GTV? Seems it could only upset the lazy and dumb?

  17. Cud Chewer,

    Most impressed by your alluding to that corny Sci Fi Classic, ‘Forbidden Planet’. 🙂

    Alas, Leslie Neilsen and Anne Francis are no longer around to help save Oz from Abbott’s I’d. However, Robby the Robot might be willing to lend us a hand.

  18. WWP –

    I still haven’t worked out what is wrong with GTV? Seems it could only upset the lazy and dumb?

    Pollbludger has done this discussion before; I’m not keen on trying to go around another time.

    The fact is the voting public do not know where their vote goes when they vote above the line. Yes, the deals are published and available for those who want to find out, but this is meaningless. The whole ATL/BTL dichotomy is all about making life easy for those who don’t want to spend a lot of time thinking about their vote – these people, and it is 95% of the vote, clearly are not the people who will spend the hour or so needed to properly understand what the preference deals mean (in the manner of what William does – incompletely, necessarily, because the permutations are messy). And just because people don’t go to the effort doesn’t mean that they don’t have a preference.

    The ALP have failed, spectacularly, twice in recent memory with their deals – electing Steve Fielding and then Bob Day. Almost no ALP voters would have chosen to preference these people above other more progressive candidates. These clear, and significant in terms of their actual on-the-floor-of-the-Senate impact, failures should not have happened, and would not have happened without GTV and Labor deal-makers (like Conroy) punting on the wrong order of random nutter elimination.

    The voting system should do the best job at representing the will of the voters. That has many conflicting aspects, but the voting process has to be simple and easy as a practical matter (which GTV and ATL voting do satisfy at the moment), but should also as best as is possible elect Senators with the most support, and GTV clearly fails to do this regularly.

  21. I have to agree with Jackol here. Why appeal to people’s ignorance. Most don’t even know there is a problem, but will start complaining about how some Senator gets in through a “handful of votes” and is getting paid their “hard-earned taxpayer’s money”.

    IMHO, OPV for the Senate (both ATL and BTL) is the way to go.

  22. GTV is a plague on Australia democracy.
    Its why people that no one voted for get elected.
    It has to go.

    Simple solution: use the NSW model, optional preferences above the line, optional prefs below the line.

    Hacks should have ZERO say in where peoples votes end up. Its that simple.

    Its no surprise that some hacks want to keep it – it takes power from voters and gives it to unelected party officials. Its an abomination.

  23. The foreign exchange markets are conducting their own plebiscite today on the outlook for the Australian economy…and they’re selling:

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-28/capex-data-abs-march-quarter/6503522

    [The Australian dollar is falling after the Bureau of Statistics released a disappointing update on business investment plans.

    The ABS estimates that capital expenditure (capex) fell 4.4 per cent in the first quarter of 2015.

    The key second estimate for next financial year’s investment plans is $104 billion, which is 1.4 per cent higher than the initial estimate, but a whopping 25 per cent lower than the equivalent estimate for this financial year’s capex.

    Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had been expecting a 2.2 per cent fall in actual capital expenditure, and a $115 billion estimate for capital spending next financial year.

    The disappointment saw the Australian dollar drop to 77 US cents by 11:35am (AEST), down from daily highs around 77.6 US cents shortly before the 11:30am release.]

    Investment is in serious trouble. This augurs badly for the Q3 National Accounts, due out next Wednesday. The investment forecast data also suggests the Commonwealth Budget for 2015/16 is already out of date.

  24. So they have been instructed to do dumb.

    [Mass surveillance makes us subjects of the state. That’s chilling
    Richard Ackland

    …………The executive producer of SBS World News, Andrew Clark, recently advised his staff to avoid “turn off” stories about the Middle East, refugees, Indigenous Australians and Ebola.

    He’s looking for “quirky” stories. He added: “Tonight it could be Katrina Yu’s rent-a-partner story or Naomi’s sex blackmail yarn.”]
    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/26/mass-surveillance-makes-us-subjects-of-the-state-thats-chilling

  25. poroti
    Labor have been pretty comprehensively suckered on this one. The main target of that legislation is the government of the day’s political enemies.

  27. [The voting system should do the best job at representing the will of the voters.]

    It represents them perfectly they just chose to vote effectively ignorantly, that is a voter problem not a system problem.

    I remember as booth captain going in with the lib and the returning officer watching this poor lady try to cast her vote. I’m pretty sure the lib conned her into voting liberal when she wanted to vote labor, maybe that was a system problem, maybe that was a voter problem, but the ticket stuff is definitely a voter issue not a system issue.

  28. briefly,

    But just think of the opportunities. It’s time to take on some risk and short everything: banks, the dollar, and the miners!

    You could make a pile!!

  29. [GTV is a plague on Australia democracy.
    Its why people that no one voted for get elected.
    It has to go.]

    What complete and utter rubbish TBA award to you.

  31. briefly @123:

    [Investment is in serious trouble. This augurs badly for the Q3 National Accounts, due out next Wednesday. The investment forecast data also suggests the Commonwealth Budget for 2015/16 is already out of date.]

    Every Budget is…but yes, this one seems moreso than most. As I recall, didn’t Joe Hockey require that the forward estimates assume an unemployment rate of 4% in 2015/16 and beyond, and 2.5% real GDP growth this year, and 3.0% each year thereafter?

  33. [ As I recall, didn’t Joe Hockey require that the forward estimates assume an unemployment rate of 4% in 2015/16 and beyond, and 2.5% real GDP growth this year, and 3.0% each year thereafter?]

    Whatever the number were, is was certainly prestidigitation.

  34. WWP @127:

    [It represents them perfectly they just chose to vote effectively ignorantly, that is a voter problem not a system problem.]

    Voting is like paying taxes in at least one respect: You should know your options and be able to choose them quickly and easily.

    The current system fails to achieve this, although I’m not sure that what’s suggested is any better. When it comes to the Senate, Labor really does only have itself to blame for preferencing right-wing microparties (see: Family First) ahead of left-wing microparties in the forlorn hope that the [i]quid pro quo[/i] they get in return will mean anything.

    After all, how often did Senator Fielding (elected on 2% of primary votes off ALP preferences) vote with Labor?

  35. WeWantPaul@127

    The voting system should do the best job at representing the will of the voters.


    It represents them perfectly they just chose to vote effectively ignorantly, that is a voter problem not a system problem.

    I remember as booth captain going in with the lib and the returning officer watching this poor lady try to cast her vote. I’m pretty sure the lib conned her into voting liberal when she wanted to vote labor, maybe that was a system problem, maybe that was a voter problem, but the ticket stuff is definitely a voter issue not a system issue.

    Can you elaborate as to what sort of “conning” took place here? It sounds like a really serious allegation that should have been reported.

  36. WWP, it sounds like you’re describing a crime – not a limitation that the system needs to adapt to.

    Assuming, of course, it actually happened – you did, after all, use the phrase “I’m pretty sure”

  37. [Can you elaborate as to what sort of “conning” took place here? It sounds like a really serious allegation that should have been reported.]

    I did immediately. It was my view that the voter asked for which was the labor candidate and the liberal pointed to the liberal candidate and before I could respond the voter voted. I looked at the returning officer who shrugged. The voter then went on to vote for Labor in the LC.

    I told the returning officer I wasn’t happy and reported it immediately according to the booth captain handbook. We won by a lot in the end. So it didn’t matter.

  38. I wonder if some of the people here who are arguing against a plebiscite on marriage also argue for a yes/no plebiscite on the question “Should Australia become a republic?”

  39. Pedant, I think TBA’s definition of a plebiscite is Abbott quietly mentioning he’s for/against something on the eve of polling day, if it’s looking like they’re going to win. Then, regardless of how narrowly he wins, by what 2PP or whether it’s a majority or minority government, claiming it was a referendum on the issue.

  40. WWP –

    but the ticket stuff is definitely a voter issue not a system issue.

    The system exists to achieve the desired result (something approaching democracy) based on the actual behaviour of the voters. The voters, like customers, are never wrong. There are no “voter issues”, only “system issues”.

    If an education campaign would help to improve voter awareness, then the system needs to ensure that education happens. If it doesn’t, that’s a system issue, not a voter issue. That’s just an example, and I don’t believe for a second that an education campaign about GTV would go any way to fixing the fundamental problems with GTV.

    If the voters, in practice, only wish to invest a certain amount of effort in deciding and implementing their vote, the system needs to be based around that.

    And the nonsense that is GTV was created as a solution to informal voting (just a “voter issue”, according to you, that really didn’t need to be “solved” at all) in the first place. It wasn’t the only solution, so let’s try the other more obvious solution – OPV.

  41. I hoped the returning officer followed up on it, WWP. Sure you won with a considerable margin, but if this practice was common, it could have an impact on marginal electorates.

  42. With that being said, you implied it happened in the LA. This could have happened regardless of what electoral system is being used.

  43. [I hoped the returning officer followed up on it, WWP. Sure you won with a considerable margin, but if this practice was common, it could have an impact on marginal electorates.]

    There are fairly limited numbers of very vulnerable voters needing assistance that show up at your run of the mill polling station. I’m sure (or rather I hope)in a nursing home or other care facility the returning officers would have better skills.

  44. [ claiming it was a referendum on the issue. ]

    Hah! After he really followed up well on that concept after the Victorian election? 🙂

  45. Good afternoon all.

    Just to jump back to the topic of this thread, William’s BludgerTrack – for which I have much respect (as I do for KB’s marginally different poll aggregation methodology) – is showing a gradual consolidation of the Coalition vote towards what I would consider to be a clear winning position.

    The combination of the standard willingness of Australians to give a first term government a second chance, combined with the sophomore effect, would mean that a government doing any better than 48-52 is in a very strong position.

    There’s been a lot of criticism of Shorten on here and suggestions that replacing him with somebody really prepared to attack the government and/or set out a big target policy agenda: comments that I assume are typically code for “make Albo leader”. This is ludicrous.

    First of all, the only Opposition leader in living memory who has done well out of continually attacking the government is Abbott and his success with that began the day Rudd was replaced in mid-2010 and continued throughout three years of Rudd’s undermining of Gillard and its aftermath. That was a unique circumstance (unless Labor is crazy enough ever to let Rudd near a parliamentary seat again). If Turnbull was undermining Abbott, then it would be a viable strategy for Labor but, even then, Labor attack dogs have a strong record of alienating swinging voters: think Keating in 1996 and Latham in 2004.

    As for the idea of setting out a big target policy agenda: think Hewson 1993, think Latham’s Medicare Gold in 2004, etc. The electorate are intrinsically conservative (as they well should be: we are one of the wealthiest nations on earth). They are really only interested in voting Labor into office when they see the Coalition as having run out of steam or screwing up. This changed slightly during the 1980s and 1990s, when Labor briefly achieved the status of being perceived as better economic managers. Keating, through his aloofness and laziness as PM, and then Beazley through his public rejection of the Hawke-Keating economic legacy, trashed that perception. Rudd’s GFC spendathon, no matter how necessary it was, didn’t help the situation either.

    What we are seeing at the moment can pretty clearly be tied to the massive housing price boom in Sydney and, to a lesser extent, Queensland. Quite ordinary people in those places are feeling very wealthy all of a sudden. When people feel wealthy, they stop feeling like they want to vote for Labor, and choose the Liberals or (if they are left-oriented) the Greens. The tendency of some Labor figures – especially from the left faction – to talk in terms of addressing deprivation, boosting the role of unions, and taxing the rich tends to grate with people who suddenly find that their modest family homes are worth $1.5 million or more.

    In this context, it was a silly idea for Bowen to have been conned into raising the issue of winding back negative gearing: I think they need to get that off the table urgently. There are lots of mum and dad wage slaves who have now heard Shorten and Bowen say they are going to curtail negative gearing (which mainly helps wage earners) but that they want to give massive tax cuts to small businesses. It just doesn’t gel out in swinging voter land.

    At the same time as all of this is going on, the Coalition Government is doing a good job at turning itself into a small target. That will make many members and supporters wonder what the point of their working so hard to get the Coalition elected into government, but it has been highly effective in turning around the polls. The key question will be whether or not they can keep it up until the election.

    And that, of course, will depend on whether or not the housing bubble bursts. But I think it probably won’t for quite a while: it seems to me to be significantly fuelled by a lot of mainland Chinese money searching for a safe haven. We are even starting to see faint signs of this in Hobart, where the housing market has been in the doldrums for quite a few years.

    If things do start to go wrong economically, then the Abbott Government will have to abandon its small target strategy, which will be very difficult for it. Otherwise, I’m expecting them to sail through to an easy win in the election, which I reckon they might call in November/December.

    And I don’t think legislation around SSM is going to make the remotest difference to anything, as long as the Libs are sensible enough to allow their members to exercise a conscience vote. Then they can decide privately whether or not they want the bill to pass, and then work behind the scenes to get the result they want. Assuming that they want it to fail, they can just make sure enough vote against it or abstain to do this. As I recall it, in the 1970s, Snedden allowed his party a conscience vote re an abortion bill put up by Whitlam, but they all voted against it and it therefore failed on the basis of the split Labor vote. This can easily be done again.

    And I would hasten a guess that it would not be any sort of a vote-switching trigger for the overwhelming majority of swinging voters. In my time have met many gay Liberal members and rusted-on voters: all of whom have been able to tolerate the deep social conservatism of the majority of the party for a long time. I doubt that Abbott’s opposition to SSM is going to make them jump. They will rationalise it (as they have to me on other issues) on the basis that there are plenty of social conservatives in the ALP as well. Like the majority of voters, their voting patterns are driven by economic considerations: they are wealthy (or aspire to be) and think that the Libs are more likely than Labor to keep them that way.

  46. [so let’s try the other more obvious solution – OPV.]

    If ever the was a solution looking for a problem to solve this would be the example. Surely if OPV is so compelling you can make an argument for it without trying to hitch it to the (non)problem of too many candidates and not enough careful voters in the senate.

  47. [In London tunnels have been dug under the Barbican Tower Blocks (they’re 400 ft high)]

    Sydney Cross City Tunnel was an interesting one. They had to get surveyors to check the basement levels of all the buildings that it went under as no-one trusted the as-builts.

  49. “@shanebazzi: .@ScottMorrisonMP vilifying unemployed people, just like he vilified asylum seekers in his former role. He is vile.”

  50. [In this context, it was a silly idea for Bowen to have been conned into raising the issue of winding back negative gearing: I think they need to get that off the table urgently. There are lots of mum and dad wage slaves who have now heard Shorten and Bowen say they are going to curtail negative gearing (which mainly helps wage earners) but that they want to give massive tax cuts to small businesses. It just doesn’t gel out in swinging voter land.]

    A true labor strategist.

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