BludgerTrack: 52.5-47.5 to Coalition

The upward swing to the Coalition continues, with the BludgerTrack poll aggregate now recording the Coalition improving on their 2013 election performance in New South Wales.

This week’s reading of the BludgerTrack poll aggregate again records a fairly solid shift in favour of the Coalition, although it’s only yielded them one extra seat on the seat projection – that being in New South Wales, where the Coalition is now being credited with one more seat than it won in 2013. The aggregate is back to being determined through a trend calculation, using only the polling from the Turnbull era (note that this isn’t the case on the charts shown on the sidebar, which suggest a much higher result at present for the Coalition). However, the bias adjustments for Essential Research and Roy Morgan are still being determined in a very crude fashion. This is particularly an issue for the latter, given its idiosyncratic Turnbull era results. Both pollsters have been determined simply on the basis of the flurry of polling that emerged the week after the leadership change, the benchmark being provided by Newspoll, Galaxy and ReachTEL, which remain subject to the same bias adjustments used in the Abbott era. The adjustment to the Labor primary vote for Morgan is particularly pronounced (over +5%), which also means it’s getting a very low weighting in the trend determination. These bias adjustments will be recalculated as new results from the other pollsters become available to benchmark them against.

Also worth noting:

• Heath Aston of the Sydney Morning Herald reports it is “all but certain” that Joe Hockey will be succeeded as the Liberal candidate for North Sydney by Trent Zimmerman, factional moderate and the party’s New South Wales state president. Hockey’s support for Zimmerman is said to have sealed the deal, although it is also reported that he had earlier approached the state Treasurer, Gladys Berejiklian. Other mooted candidates are Tim James, chief executive of Medicines Australia, and John Hart, chief executive of Restaurant and Catering Australia. James is a member for the Right, and is also mentioned as a potential candidate to succeed Tony Abbott in Warringah, or Jillian Skinner in the state seat of North Shore.

• The issue of Senate electoral reform could be heading towards a compromise more conducive to minor parties than the proposal of straightforward optional preferential voting above and below the line, as was proposed last year by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. Key to the argument is whether group voting tickets should be abolished, a path favoured by Nick Xenophon but fiercely opposed by the micro-party Senators, the most active being David Leyonhjelm. Xenophon has approached the government with a proposal that would require above-the-line voters to number at least three boxes, and below-the-line voters to number at least 12, resulting in a greater flow of preferences to smaller players. Antony Green also argues that the resulting increase in the number of live votes in the final stages of the count would reduce the chances of the final seat being decided in a random fashion. Leyonhjelm has sought a middle path by proposing the retention of group voting tickets and one number above-the-line voting, while relieving the burden on below-the-line voters by requiring that they number a minimum of six boxes – very much the same as applies for the Victorian upper house, except that the minimum number of boxes there is five. At the November 2014 state election, 94% of voters went above-the-line in the upper house, helping to elect two members of Shooters & Fishers and one each from the Sex Party, the DLP and Vote 1 Local Jobs.

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.

1,636 comments on “BludgerTrack: 52.5-47.5 to Coalition”

Comments Page 31 of 33
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  1. P1

    Jeepers. A shift in the way infrastructure dollars are allocated IS big news, especially here in Qld. Anastasia is very, very happy. Economic stimulus is desperately needed here.

    For goodness sake like in the present not the past. Turnbull/Rudd is NOT the same as Turnbull/Shorten. The most OBVIOUS difference is that now Turnbull is PM and holds the purse strings, whereas as LOTO he had nothing to offer directly.

    Obviously also Turnbull’s main strength is seeming to be clever and articulate and urbane. Against Rudd these seemed minor advantages because Rudd shared these traits, so oddly enough Abbott the bully boy showed to advantage. Shorten while not hopeless will not show to advantage and will need to find some OTHER way to look good next to Turnbull.

  3. [By the by, since I have your attention…..you recently outed my gender again despite your private assurance it would never happen again.]

    I’m surprised that I gave this assurance. I make no such promise going forward.

  5. Meher is right. On some subjects he is madder than Mad Jack McMad, the winner of last year’s Mr Madman competition. But on this one he is as lucid as melting snow in the Himalayan peaks.

    The only weapon Abbott brought to political contest was aggression. But this proved not to be an asset. He was always deeply unpopular with the public. If Turnbull had hung on to the leadership, the premiership would have fallen into his lap in 2013. The Rudd and Gillard governments were afflicted with unusual division and dysfunction and multiple grave failures of judgment and communication. They defeated themselves. Blaming it on the meeja and an inept boxer is ridiculous and weak.

  6. WB,
    [I’m surprised that I gave this assurance.]
    It was a terse one liner in response to a private email I sent when it happened the first time.

    I am not surprised you don’t remember 😉

    I could expand but then I would be inviting one of your trademark nasty cutting comments 😉

  8. [The Cabinet Leak regarding dual citizens having their citizenship revoked, was the turning point. Once it was known the Cabinet was divided, the whole Abbott anti-Muslim strategy came unstuck.]

    Abbott was expecting Shorten and Labor to draw the line there and pre-emptively attacked Labor for being soft on terrorists when Shorten made a few anodyne comments about not being comfortable but wanting to see the proposal. It was clear that Labor was not prepared to lose skin on this if the Liberal libertarians were prepared to back it, so the line had to be drawn somewhere within Cabinet. In other words, Shorten and Labor were forcing Liberals like Turnbull, Brandis, Pyne and others who were historically less right wing into either accepting Abbott’s draconian proposals or standing their own ground – especially given that they were the only ones with real power to put a brake on the proposal.

    Any strategy is good or bad depending on the circumstances and timing. For all the bleating of the Rex’s and the Greens, Labor did the right thing by saying to Liberals who loved the power Abbott brought them, even though they loathed many of his policies, that they could not play small targets themselves and leave it to everybody else to call out the unacceptable.

  10. Nicholas @ 1505

    Another alternative historian who thinks all you have to do is change one or two variables and everything else remains exactly as it happened. Sorry Nicholas. While your hypothesis might be right, I could easily come up with a couple of hundred alternative ones with at least as much chance of occurring as what did. For instance, if Turnbull had held his position there could have been an ETS, a brutally oppositional opportunist like Abbott could not have mucked with Rudd’s head at the wrong time, etc.

    Who knows. But history turns on small hinges again and again and again in a small space of time. Simply looking at one turn and then loading in everything else that happens as though it was always going to happen is totally unrealistic.

  11. @Socrates/1472

    Your arguement is very week, considering the duply Labor/Coalition goverments on spending priorities.

    While massive cuts at both local and federal are happening.

    TAFE, Health, Education, Electricity, etc.

    Oh btw, to extend your weak point further.

    Turncoat goverment supported advertising for COAL on TV, as a replacement for Wind/Solar.

  12. I’m still also waiting to see the biggest F up to be fixed by Turnbull and Labor.

    The NBN.

    A number of multi-billion dollar blowouts, FTTB and FTTB Competition, 121 POI decision to support bigger companies, and regulation to protect the Big business (i.e. Telstra and Co).

  15. TPOF

    Hmm!!

    There are many variables, but I think the ALP factional heavies were out to get Rudd quite early in the piece, probably well before Abbott took over. They never liked him, but he was a compromise candidate put forward to knock off Beazley. I think it was always expected that Rudd would either do as he was told by the right or be removed. What shocked the faction bosses was that Rudd stayed so very, very popular for such a long, long time. Had his star not shone so brightly, probably Rudd would have been more compliant with the factions, but he got a bit overconfident.

    Once the factional heavies decided to move, the undermining was done internally and NOT by Abbott. Rudd was I think at this point very, very naive.

    Now the left never expected to take the leadership. The deputy position was always their assigned role and realistically all that could EVER have been hoped. The most stunning thing about the Gillard ascendency is that she was was from the left. Essentially she switched factions in order to be PM, probably why many of the left became solid Ruddites.

  17. Pegasus@1507

    GG

    My secret is out!

    Tell someone who cares. I still don’t know, and it is a matter of supreme indifference to me whether a poster is male, female or neuter. Or xxy or some other gender.

    Get a life, and don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.

  19. Don

    Speaking like a bloody male.

    Of course you do not care about gender. You are a male so it is essentially irrelevant to you.

    Many females on the other hand KNOW that they are taken less seriously and prefer to remain gender neutral if at all possible. I know I did for a very, very long time.

  20. P@1499

    My apologies for butting in where it may be none of my business, and certainly it is of no account to me, but I seem to remember back in the mists of time – maybe 4- 5 years ago, you may have alluded to your gender yourself.

    I seem to remember there was a period of time you went away from here due to some offensive stuff you had been on the end of and the it was at that point that maybe, and I stress maybe, you indicated – or perhaps someone else did – your gender.

    Doesn’t really matter does it?

  21. don

    [ Tell someone who cares. I still don’t know, and it is a matter of supreme indifference to me whether a poster is male, female or neuter. Or xxy or some other gender.

    Get a life, and don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does. ]

    Hate to say this, but you are wrong. There is at least one famously misogynistic poster here on PB to which gender appears to be supremely important. They routinely bully and harass people they can identify as female. God knows why, but I can perfectly well understand why some here don’t want their gender revealed.

  22. Don

    Also I know it may have been my imagining things, but there was a period when Pegasus’s gender and a particular poster (now gone) creeped me out a bit. Seemed to be borderline inappropriate.

  25. DTT @ 1515

    Your post proves my point. How on earth can we determine alternative histories when there is so much disagreement about actual history. While I disagree with much of what you posted I will not respond because I have absolutely no interest in unleashing another pointless RGR war.

  27. daretotread@1519

    Don

    Of course you do not care about gender. You are a male so it is essentially irrelevant to you.
    .

    And my not being concerned whether a poster is male or female or something else is wrong…. how?

  29. William

    I was a bit shocked by your article – in particular the scale of the impact on the Greens’ polling.

    It looks a bit like the (environmental amenity?) Greens skipped straight past Labor to go back to the Liberals.

    The question seems to be: does this mean that the originally skipped straight past Labor to leave the Liberals and head for the Greens?

  31. How did TA’s over-the-top aggression help doom Labor’s electoral prospects? His aggression contributed to his consistently poor net approval ratings both in Opposition and Government. The media and TA piled on during the RGR troubles and serial errors of judgement and woeful communication during Labor’s period in gov. So what? By late 2011 the voting public’s view of Labor was settled. This was due to Labor’s own performance, not because of anything TA and the media did. I think Labor supporters underestimate just how much of a historically unprecedented clusterf*** those Labor governments were despite their achievements.

  32. Re BB @1514: I’d love to see the Jonathan Pie treatment of our politics. Chppergate, leadership, Border Farce, Asylum Seekers, trade union witchhunt…

  33. The great Australian spin bowler Clarrie Grimmett (alright I know he was born in NZ) wrote a seminal book on bowling called “Tricking the Batsman”.

    I think the oft-repeated saying “oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them” is far too simplistic. While the Government essentially holds the bat and can if skilful enough dispatch the policy and politics ball to any part of the field (or if foolish hit a rank full toss back to the bowler), the bowler has a huge repertoire of tricks which can be employed to cause the batsman to make mistakes.

    Although in Abbott we essentially had an aggressive fast bowler who kept aiming at the heads of his opponents (and hitting them again and again), there is plenty of scope for oppositions to play more subtle political tricks. Whether intentional or not, Shorten’s low profile on security issues worked a treat in deceiving Abbott into ever more rash shots until he holed out. I suspect that Turnbull may well be susceptible to over confidence and assume he can predict the opposition’s next trick. Shorten did not get where he is in the union movement or the ALP without developing an acute understanding of how to get people he is dealing with into a position where they make elementary mistakes which cost them political ground.

    The idea that the opposition is powerless and just has to wait for the government to stuff up is not correct. The task of the opposition in political terms is to force the government into political error. Part of this is actually the introduction of policy ideas which appeal to the voting public – the government can concede the ground, but this comes at a political cost to their image of controlling the situation. However, if they oppose the idea they may lose votes that way as well. It’s a real dilemma and mistakes can cost.

    I think the time between now and the election will be fascinating and we may see shifts both ways in voting intentions over time (noting however that Peter vanOnselen has already done a “wow” on the Newspoll).

  34. [I think the oft-repeated saying “oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them” is far too simplistic. ]

    ajm, I agree with your comments at 1533 generally, but I would make this point on the above quote. A government that the public is happy with cannot be defeated, but if it makes serious mistakes it is open to being defeated by a good and adroit Opposition that fashions its strategies carefully and with an eye to the realities of what is going on. Abbott’s incompetence (flowing down through his Cabinet to his government and party) provided good opportunity for Shorten to take the right approach and allow Abbott to self-destruct.

    Turnbull promises much more than Abbott ever did when he became PM. Turnbull has a positive public persona and is seen as a constructive, not destructive, leader. If Turnbull is above to deliver substantially on that promise then no Opposition led by anyone who is currently in Parliament can defeat him and the Coalition. However, if things go awry, it is up to Labor and the Opposition to position themselves to take advantage and convince the public it is better to change again. So early into Turnbull’s PMship, it is impossible to tell how it will pan out. I have seen both positive and negative signs. We have some time before a clear modus operandi emerges. When it does we will know whether the Government is capable of defeat. Then it is up to the Opposition to deliver. The Opposition has to still WIN government, but there is a precondition that the Government LOSES it first.

  35. I am not going to get into a huge protracted discussion….

    Nobody cares about a poster’s gender? Scroll back a few pages and you will find speculation about Happiness’ gender which has been occurring off and on here for years.

    For the first few years I posted here the overriding consensus was I was a male because just like H there was speculation about my gender.

    Then Gusface proclaimed I was a female as if it was a fact. Speculation continued.

    I was scrupulous about speaking in gender neutral terms in my posts and never alluded as to my gender because it shouldn’t matter what gender a person is. (Unknowingly, it would seem I let my ‘guard down’ once though I have no recollection to that effect.)

    The fact I do not want to declare my gender should be enough to have that desire respected.

    In the same way I do not declare which trade union I belong to, which workplaces I have worked in and work in, and what my occupation is, so I do not want to declare my gender. I have my reasons.

    Really, is that too hard to respect?

    Why the speculation if it does not matter? The gender of a poster is unimportant to me yet speculation about those who are not part of the Laborite clique persists.

  36. I should add to my 1534 that at this point, the biggest weakness for Turnbull is to be seen as presenting Abbott’s old policies but with less sloganeering. A few things have already played into this theme. Morrison’s performance as Treasurer. Abbott’s insistence that all of his policies have been kept and the power of the far right faction and the Nationals to stop Turnbull from publicly declaring otherwise. And Turnbull’s enthusiastic endorsement of Abbott’s leadership at yesterday’s Liberal conference.

    That is why Labor is pressing this point despite the fact that it is early days and there has been insufficient time to substantiate it. If Turnbull is trapped by the right, Labor has a powerful claim to say “I told you so”. And if Turnbull breaks free, then nobody will recall the rhetoric that painted him as Abbott-lite. Certainly, it would not be in the interests of the Liberal Party to emphasise how different Turnbull’s policies were.

    It may come to nothing, but this approach is the best available at the moment. Plus the release of a number of substantial progressive policy ideas, which is also happening at the moment. They don’t get great traction, but at least they are out there and Labor can claim they have far more policy on the table than the Government does.

  37. DTT,

    The Finnigans had a hard on for me when he came to the view I was not male but female, or perhaps my memory is faulty there and he also had a hard on when he believed I was a male 😉

  38. Peg @ 1535

    I know you were not referring to me (because I have never shown interest in the gender of posters) but there is one benefit in declaring one’s gender: it is less linguistically awkward in referring to the poster. Beyond that, I can see that some posters would be concerned about stereotyping, but not me (I don’t think).

  39. Pegasus@1535

    Why the speculation if it does not matter? The gender of a poster is unimportant to me yet speculation about those who are not part of the Laborite clique persists.

    All I can say is that the speculation did not come from me. I simply don’t care.

    What matters is what you post. If you can, ignore the jibes from the bully on this board, and don’t give it oxygen.

  41. TPOF @ 1357
    Point taken about those not used to being listened to being fooled by Abbott, for sure there were plenty of them. I suppose I was heading in the direction of the Big Lie, where people of high repute & qualification just didn’t have it in them to think Abbott would utter falsehoods to them so blatantly.

  42. BSA @ 1541

    Towards the end I was constantly being reminded of the fairytale of the Emperor’s New Clothes. There was an unspoken conspiracy among all in the mainstream media that Abbott was still good value and was going to grow into the job and therefore his shortcomings were so temporary that they did not exist.

    It took people who came from a different perspective, neither great friends of Abbott nor part of the press gallery groupthink, to at least call out the obvious failings. I’m thinking in particular of Nicki Savva and PVO, who could see with clear eyes where Abbott was taking their beloved Liberals while everyone else was pretending it was just fine.

    Laura Tingle and, to a lesser extent, Lenore Taylor also refused to play the game, but they did not have the same impact because they were seen as lefties (whether fair or not).

  43. [I am sure several contributors here commented that Shorten by not reacting was causing Abbott to go more extreme (silly) in an effort to get Shorten to start a fight.]

    I noted on many occasions that rule one with Abbott was “Abbott ALWAYS over-reaches”.

    I don’t know how much the me-tooism on security was just fear and defensiveness, but I doubt that’s the complete story. It was plainly obvious after the 14 budget that Abbott had little other than security to turn to. Whether by accident or design (or most likely a combination with design becoming more and more a part of it the further and sillier Abbott went) Labor stayed out of his way and indeed by not giving Abbott a target to hit opened a clear path for him to go until he completely and obviously over-reached.

  44. Surely someone is taking the piss:

    [Labor’s most faithful diarist joined five men and a musician to speak the words of great. The sounds and ideas of Cicero, Jesus, Ben Franklin, John Adams, Abe Lincoln, Chief Seattle, Benjamin Disraeli, Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, FDR, JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King, Teddy Kennedy, Gough Whitlam, Noel Pearson, Barack Obama, Paul Keating and Jeb Bartlett filled the Glebe Books upstairs reading room.]

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/bob-ellis-back-in-full-churchillian-roar-20151011-gk6f58.html#ixzz3oFh7w2xj
    Follow us: @smh on Twitter | sydneymorningherald on Facebook

  45. Went with my son to watch ‘The Martian’ this afternoon. Had heard rave reviews of it on ABC radio – it didn’t disappoint.

  46. Pegasus@1535

    I am not going to get into a huge protracted discussion….

    Nobody cares about a poster’s gender? Scroll back a few pages and you will find speculation about Happiness’ gender which has been occurring off and on here for years.

    For the first few years I posted here the overriding consensus was I was a male because just like H there was speculation about my gender.

    Then Gusface proclaimed I was a female as if it was a fact. Speculation continued.

    I was scrupulous about speaking in gender neutral terms in my posts and never alluded as to my gender because it shouldn’t matter what gender a person is. (Unknowingly, it would seem I let my ‘guard down’ once though I have no recollection to that effect.)

    The fact I do not want to declare my gender should be enough to have that desire respected.

    In the same way I do not declare which trade union I belong to, which workplaces I have worked in and work in, and what my occupation is, so I do not want to declare my gender. I have my reasons.

    Really, is that too hard to respect?

    Why the speculation if it does not matter? The gender of a poster is unimportant to me yet speculation about those who are not part of the Laborite clique persists.

    I will respect your wishes and henceforth refer to you by the entirely neutral, gender and otherwise, term ‘it‘. 😐

  47. Peg

    Yes the Finn was peculiar about you. I do not usually assume sexual innuendo when it is not intended, but his was just odd and did seem a “hard on.” I wondered at first if he knew you and there was some “history.” he was very personal.

  49. daretotread@1547

    Peg

    Yes the Finn was peculiar about you. I do not usually assume sexual innuendo when it is not intended, but his was just odd and did seem a “hard on.” I wondered at first if he knew you and there was some “history.” he was very personal.

    Finnigans was just being his normal idiotic self.

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