BludgerTrack: 51.9-48.1 to Labor

Only slight movement on the BludgerTrack poll aggregate this week, but it’s enough to put Labor back into majority government territory on the seat projection.

Later than usual on this one because the only pollster to report this week, Essential Research, moved its schedule back a day because of the public holiday. Essential’s voting intention numbers, which you can see detailed below, are characteristically stable, and the movements in the leadership ratings are almost perfectly on trend. As such, the only movement to report is a 0.3% shift to Labor on two-party preferred. However, this has had more impact on the seat projection than you might have thought, since several states are currently on the precipice of one result or another. Labor is accordingly up a seat in Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania, returning it to majority government territory.

Also:

• The aforesaid Essential Research poll showed Labor leading 52-48 for the fifth successive week. Primary votes were 41% for the Coalition (steady), 40% for Labor (steady), 9% for the Greens (down one) and 1% for Palmer United (steady). Also featured were Essential’s monthly leadership ratings, providing yet another improvement for Tony Abbott with approval up three to 39% and disapproval down four to 50%, while Bill Shorten was respectively steady on 32% and up four to 45%. Abbott’s lead as preferred prime minister was 38-33, up from 35-32 a month ago.

• The poll also found remarkably strong support for revoking citizenship on grounds of terrorism, although this is clearly a case where question design has a lot to do with the response that is elicited. The headline findings of 81% approval and 9% disapproval in the case of dual nationals, and 73% approval and 13% disapproval in the case of sole nationals, presupposed that the suspect was guilty as charged. A follow-up question allowed respondents to choose between a court of law and a government minister in making the determination, with 54% favouring the former and 24% favouring the latter.

• The Mercury had a Tasmanian state ReachTEL poll on the weekend, which I didn’t write up because it was barely a week since the EMRS poll. It was a strong result for the Hodgman government, putting the Liberals on 48.5%, Labor on 29.9% and the Greens on 15.8%, compared with March 2014 election results of 51.2%, 27.3% and 13.8%. ReachTEL’s result helpfully features breakdowns by electorate. The poll was conducted last Thursday from a big sample of 2646.

• Heath Aston of the Sydney Morning Herald reports that former NSW Premier Morris Iemma has “told Labor Party players in south-west Sydney that he will contest preselection for Barton”, and that “his name is also in the mix for the neighbouring seat of Banks”. Both seats were lost by Labor at the 2013 federal election, and there were suggestions Iemma might run in Barton as early as 2011. Others named as contenders for Barton are Rockdale mayor Shane O’Brien, Electrical Trades Union organiser Mark Buttigieg and Hurstville councillor Brent Thomas. Thomas is also named as a possible starter in Banks, together with Jason Yat-Sen Li, a high-profile figure in the Chinese community who ran for Labor in Bennelong in 2013 and as the lead Senate candidate of the Unity party in 1998.

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.

2,419 comments on “BludgerTrack: 51.9-48.1 to Labor”

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  7. LOL

    [THE Canberra man who says he’ll divorce his wife if gay marriage is legalised has warned of a marriage exodus among Christian couples who share his views.]

  11. [Strangely silent on Preferred PM around here]

    Strangely a lot of voters ‘get it’ that they only get to vote for candidates in their electorate and not for PM.

  12. Compact Crank #6
    Probably because Preferred PM is skewed to the incumbent – so if Abbott is trailing, it means that public really, really hates him.

  13. gt / ff

    [THE Canberra man who says he’ll divorce his wife if gay marriage is legalised has warned of a marriage exodus among Christian couples who share his views.]

    Another who gives an FF story.

  15. Ctar

    For you maybe. However Its a major story today and is what those against SSM are doing so its political and thus fits for this blog.

    So maybe have a bit more tolerance for difference in interests from yours.

  18. [Indonesia is investigating claims that Australia paid people smugglers to turn their boat back to Indonesian waters in a development which, if proved, it would consider “very concerning”.

    The probe came after reports emerged that an Australian border protection official allegedly paid the captain and crew of a boat carrying about 65 asylum seekers about US$30,000 ($39,000) to turn back to Indonesia in late May.

    “We are currently investigating this. If this is true, it is very concerning,” an Indonesian foreign affairs ministry spokesman, Arrmanatha Nasir, told the Guardian on Thursday, adding that the information was based on initial interviews with migrants on the boat and one crew member.]

    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jun/11/indonesia-looks-into-claims-australia-paid-people-smugglers-to-turn-back?CMP=soc_568

  19. gt

    [Its a major story today and is what those against SSM are doing so its political and thus fits for this blog.]

    A major ‘story’ because some clown will get a divorce?

  20. Ctar

    As you will have seen from my reply to Diogs. I regard it as extreme stupidity. I would have thought marriage traditionalists were against sex outside marriage and encouraging divorce.

    A big shoot yourself in the foot exercise

  21. Ctar1,

    I’m with you. Gesture politics is so much drivel.

    Besides, they have nothing to worry about. SSM is unlikely to happen in the near future if you follow the rumblings on the LNP side of politics.

  22. Another day, another lie before the election.

    [Tony Abbott was almost certainly telling the truth when he told Alan Jones he would have preferred to cut the number of new windfarms even more than may occur under the revised renewable energy target – and that this was always his aim.

    It’s just that his newfound frankness contradicts claims he and his ministers made before and after the election about how committed they were to renewable energy.
    …

    It seems unlikely any industry can ever achieve certainty unless it can operate for more than five minutes without changes to laws and regulations and unless it can be confident that politicians mean what they say.]

    http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/11/tony-abbotts-boast-of-wind-farm-cuts-contradicts-earlier-stand-on-renewables

  23. As per article posted above

    [The minister simply answered “no” when asked at a media conference on Tuesday whether officials had “recently” paid the crew and captain of a boat carrying asylum seekers. When asked the broader follow-up question – “Has Australia ever done that?” – Dutton said: “It’s been a longstanding policy of the government not to comment on on-water matters]

  24. GG

    Those noises were made before 3 National Party came out in support of SSM which is more support than I thought it would get.

    So its by no means over despite what you and the ACL may wish.

  25. What is going on with the ABS?

    [4h4 hours ago
    Shane Wright ‏@swrightwestoz
    ABS says 55K jobs (original) created in May of which, cough cough, almost 35K in WA. Yep, even the ABS doesn’t believe that malarky.]

  31. ABC The Drum
    3h3 hours ago
    ABC The Drum ‏@ABCthedrum
    What should the Australian Government do to increase housing affordability? Watch #thedrum 5.30pm ABC1 & 6.30pm on @ABCNews24

  33. Guytaur,

    It was over when less than a sprinkling of LNP members attended when Shorten put his Private Members motion the other day.

    If there was genuine interest in reform on the LNP side then more would have engaged in the process.

    Less than half the House attending the motion was bad news for the alleged popular push for this fundamental change to our society.

    You can put your hopes and dreams in Abbott fulfilling his word. But, I sense you are going to be disappointed once again.

  34. GG

    Wishful thinking on your part.

    In the end the result may be what you think. However be in no doubt. Equality will be blocked by bigots like Abbott.

    Voters will know this thanks to Labor

  35. I see that the religionists are now saying that if they can’t have state marriage laws just the way they want them they will not partake of state marriage laws.

    After all, what matters is that:

    (1) they are married in the eyes of the Lord
    (2) they do not partake of sinful state marriage laws that are offensive in the eyes of the Lord.

    I quite understand the internal religionist logic of this, as far as it goes.

    Which, in the eyes of the Lord, is not far enough.

    Because, according to state marriage laws they will STILL be de facto couples and therefore they will STILL be partaking of state marriage laws.

    The only righteous solution is for them to live apart.

  36. Unemployment down 0.1% and Hockey/ABC go bonkers!.

    Joe Hockey : ““If you’ve got a good job and it pays good money and you have security in relation to that job, then you can go to the bank and you can borrow money,” Hockey said, according to The Daily Telegraph.”

    Get a good job apparently is the new slogan.

    It perhaps everyone should be a member of parliament then.

    Repost.

  39. I see that Pope Francis STILL does not get it. The Vatican has bodgied up an institution and a set of rules to try Bishops alleged to have covered up pedophilia.

    Eff that for a joke.

    If the Vatican has evidence or even suspicions about Bishops protecting pedophile priests (and it has a shitload of documentation for same) then it should hand the evidence over to the temporal authorities.

  40. [Because, according to state marriage laws they will STILL be de facto couples and therefore they will STILL be partaking of state marriage laws.

    The only righteous solution is for them to live apart.]

    Perhaps this will become the new black :/

  41. Real Reality strikes home at 2GB…

    Chris Smith had a half-hour phone in today on how to… reduce your electricity bill.

    Suddenly the bunch of whingers who said they should never need to reduce their bills because Julia Bloody Gillard bunged a Carbon Tax on top, are now whingeing because their bills are now even higher than before! Suddenly reducing electricity consumption is OK, where before it was the end of Civilization as we know it.

    As P.T. Barnum once said: “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

    Measures to ameliorate electricity bills ranged from the bleedin’ obvious to the bleedin’ obvious.

    * Turn off lights,

    * Turn off the heater when you go to bed,

    * Turn off the PC when you’re not actually sitting at it (bad luck if it takes 10 minutes to boot up again),

    * Get a solarPV system (!)

    All suggested measures were available during the CT period as well, but the media convinced them that they shouldn’t have to lift even their little fingers to take matters into their own hands in reducing consumption. No, no, no… it was ALL Julia Gillard’s fault.

    It got so ridiculous during the CT period (if you can remember back that far) that one woman said she’d have to close down her pizza joint because her cardboard pizza boxes were costing 5c more wholesale. That was a Steve Lewis “special” story.

    Oh, and local councils put their dumping charges up from $18 a tonne to $83, of which $2 was due to the Carbon Tax and the rest was… well… they just put them up because they could blame the Carbon Tax.

    And I wonder how that particularly ridiculous couple who parked themselves outside Rooty Hill RSL until the news cameras noticed them (the ABC shamefully present, with all the rest), and then whinged about having to eat beans out of a can, cold, because they couldn’t afford to buy a $100 leg of lamb, and then couldn’t afford to put the stove on to cook it anyway.

    I wonder how that couple of idiots are coping now?

    Never mind, we now know the idea behind the reduction in the RET was to kill alternative energy, so we can look forward to fabulous vistas, landscapes filled with beauty, Nature’s Amphitheater, replete with dirty, polluting coal-fired power stations, run by the same cynical, exploitative energy barons, charging the same over-inflated prices for useless poles and wires as our electricity network goes private.

    Sorry, I forgot… privatization always bring prices down doesn’t it.

    Silly me.

  43. Charlie Edwards @ 38

    Agreed. People vote for the team, not the man these days. It’s the only reason the LNP are anywhere close to Labor IMHO because people choose their side a long time ago.

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