BludgerTrack: 52.8-47.2 to Coalition

Another week, another surge in Malcolm Turnbull’s personal poll ratings, together with solid if less spectacular movement on voting intention.

There’s been a fair bit of polling in the past week, from Newspoll, ReachTEL and Essential Research on voting intention, plus a leadership ratings phone poll from Morgan. Pretty much all of it has been good news for the Coalition, and especially for Malcolm Turnbull. The BludgerTrack poll aggregate accordingly finds the Coalition lead picking up yet further, by 0.9% on two-party preferred and four on the national seat projection, which includes two from Queensland and one each from Victoria and Western Australia. However, this is small beer compared with the movement on leadership ratings, with Turnbull recording roughly double-digit improvements in his already commanding position on both net approval and preferred prime minister – a result of very strong numbers from Newspoll, and positively spectacular ones from Roy Morgan.

Other news:

• Two state by-elections will be held on Saturday in Victoria, which you can read about here, and December 5 has been set for the federal by-election to replace Joe Hockey in North Sydney, which you can read about here. All are Liberal seats that stand to be uncontested by Labor.

Calla Wahlquist of The Guardian reports three candidates have come forward for Labor preselection in the newly created seat of Burt in Perth’s south-eastern suburbs, which as conceived in the recent draft redistribution has a notional Liberal margin of 4.8%. The presumed front-runner is Matt Keogh, the Right-backed lawyer who ran unsuccessfully at the Canning by-election on September 18. However, he will face opposition from Gosnells councillor Pierre Yang – who will have the backing of the Left, according to a report from Joe Spagnolo of the Sunday Times – and Lisa Griffiths, a medical scientist at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital who ran in the nearby seat of Darling Range at the 2008 state election.

• A Nationals preselection to choose a successor to Bruce Scott in the safe pastoral Queensland seat of Maranoa has been won by David Littleproud, manager of a Suncorp bank branch in Warwick and the son of Brian Littleproud, a Nationals member of state parliament from 1983 to 2001. Other candidates were Cameron O’Neil, a Maranoa councillor who works for the Queensland Disaster Management Committee, and had been spoken of as Littleproud’s strongest rival; Lachlan Douglas, southern Queensland regional manager for Rabobank; Alison Krieg, a grazier from Blackall; and Rick Gurnett, a grazier from Charleville.

• The ABC reports candidates for Liberal Senate preselection in Tasmania include Jonathan Duniam, chief-of-staff to Premier Will Hodgman, and Sally Chandler, an employee of the Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. They will compete for positions with the number one and number two candidates from 2010, Eric Abetz and Stephen Parry.

Adam Carr at Psephos now has complete historical state election results for Victoria on his site, going back to the very first elections for positions on the Legislative Council in 1843. As a resource for electorate-level results extending deep into the mists of history, it joins David Barry’s highly sophisticated federal election results site; the complete historical New South Wales state election results archive developed by Antony Green and maintained by the state parliament website; Tasmanian historical results back to 1909 on the state parliament website; and electorate-level results for Queensland going back to 1932 on Wikipedia. However, things are very barren in the case of Western Australia and South Australia, for which the best thing is Psephos’s electorate results going back to the mid-1990s. UPDATE: Kirsdarke in comments notes the Wikipedia oompa-loompas have also worked their way back to 1956 in Western Australia and 1950 in South Australia, without me having noticed.

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.

2,186 comments on “BludgerTrack: 52.8-47.2 to Coalition”

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  1. It’s going to be interesting to see how the Libs’ impersonation of headless chooks over GST will affect their polling over the next week or two. It is not a good look.
    It’s very telling that when Rudd came back he had a few ideas of what to do. Malcolm though has spent two years as Communications Minister doing nothing except damage and he doesn’t seem to have a clue. It’s all downhill from here

  2. alias,

    The LNP haven’t even presented a GST policy. Turnbull and Morrison hardly went into bat for it today, and if anything, hosed it down.

  3. @Alias: And the only reason Keating beat Houston wasn’t because of Keating’s brilliance, but because Houston couldn’t explain his own tax… as well as being a little inept all round.

    And yet, the Labor supporters have gained from this that somehow a GST was unpopular. It wasn’t, and isn’t. Howard won his election when he took the tax to an election, despite being a fairly unpopular PM, Keating came up with the idea, to show that the tax isn’t partisan, and Shorten + Labor have no clue on the issue.

  4. K17 @2152 It’s good to have some robust policy debate going on – the ALP are the sticks in the mud on this.

    What will you say in a fortnight if there is no negative impact on the LNP Polling.

    Let’s set some measurable parameters – what impacts are you looking for in FP, 2PP and PPM??

  5. Re: ‘Turnbull not even presenting a GST yet’ was obviously a leak from within their own party to get the community used to the idea and a debate started. Comprehensive tax package coming, looks to be far more detailed than Labor’s 2 short-term thought bubbles. If this is any indication, Turbull is going to slaughter Shorten on the policy front.

  6. robust policy debate on GST? nahhh it’s not a debate, it’s completely one sided debate where the poor people are the losers.

  7. It was a couple of degrees too warm and humid today for comfort, but not quite enough to justify putting on the air con.

    I blame Shorten.

  8. @zoidlord: So? Country’s are in competition with each other, that is the way of the world. It doesn’t present a wonderful environment to take care of the poor, because in most situations if you continue doing so you’ll lose the ability to take care of anybody at all.

  9. [Hey let’s all make things up and then blame Bill Shorten for them.]

    And while Bill is stumbling about from our well crafted blows, let’s announce something that no-one will support, like the dumping of Knights and Dames… just to prove how confident we are… That’s what you do isn’t it? Announce distractions when you are on a winner?

  10. Question.. Yeah, yeah.. they are doing the usual: let the idea percolate a bit, float about for a bit, see how the reaction is then come with a policy later on. Usual thing.

    Cer White is right: Taxes are never wildly popular obviously, but the GST, and a possible increase are not hugely unpopular especially when appropriate compensation for the worst off is on offer.

    Most voters would tend to think what I think: “Don’t love it, but I can try to curb my spending a bit, which means paying less GST. And if I do spend more on extras, then it’s probably only fair I pay a bit more tax. I’m far happier to be getting some income tax breaks, which amount to cash in the back for me. GST? Far from wonderful but I can live with it.”

    That’s the sentiment. Annoying yes, a personal financial disaster? Not at all.

  11. CW @2158 Putting s policy proposal into the public domain is not a leak – unless it was something they didn’t want discussed publicly or didn’t want anyone’s name on it.

  12. CC

    [IF the ALP are waiting for another Birthday Cake – it ain’t going to happen.]

    Talc would ignore a birthday cake.

    Something more upmarket required to engage him.

  13. @Cer White/2164

    “Countries” in competition within each other?

    I think you find that we Australia, not in competition with anyone because all you hacks care about is who ever is in power.

  14. CW

    [obviously a leak from within their own party]

    Since when is the policy vacuum being filled by helpful suggestions from Sinodinos and other MP’s a leak?

  15. [the climate is changing, naturally.]

    No it’s not.
    Remove natural variations eg sunspots, volcanoes etc and there is a steady increase in temperature globally.

    [How much of the changes that that you refer to are as a result of burning fossil fuels versus other natural and manmade impacts really is not at all clear.]

    All of it – pretty much.
    It can be measured and is measured.

    Here is a site that describes the process – but sadly I know it will be unappreciated.

    Scientists can tell what % of CO2 in the atmosphere is human caused because human caused CO2 has a different molecular structure [Carbon 12] to natural CO2 [carbon 14] and they can be detected and the relative ratios determined over time by spectroscopic analysis in the atmosphere, coral, tree rings and ice samples and the like.

    So there is absolutely no doubt that the majority, or close to all, warming of the earth, apart from sporadic variations which can be allowed for, is directly caused by human activity.
    Hence the term AGW.

    https://www.science.org.au/publications/scienceofclimatechange-q-and-a-2015/human-activities

    Sadly, again, I will presume typing all that was a waste of time.

  16. Houston – Hewson.

    It’s a joke. I remember at the time, he made so little impact on the voting public that many pronounced his name this way.

  17. [Most voters would tend to think what I think: “Don’t love it, but I can try to curb my spending a bit, which means paying less GST. And if I do spend more on extras, then it’s probably only fair I pay a bit more tax. I’m far happier to be getting some income tax breaks, which amount to cash in the back for me. GST? Far from wonderful but I can live with it.”]

    What a very specific thing for “most voters” to think. Are there polls that measure this?

  18. [Question.. Yeah, yeah.. they are doing the usual: let the idea percolate a bit, float about for a bit, see how the reaction is then come with a policy later on. Usual thing.]

    Sure… but then why not stick with the “Everything is on the table” slogan?

    Looks like a lot of off-message stumbling about so far.

  19. @Question: You’re not seriously complaining about a policy vacuum in the area of massive taxation overhaul a couple of months into Turnbull’s Prime Ministership, are you?

  20. shea mcduff

    [ Sadly, again, I will presume typing all that was a waste of time. ]

    No, it’s never a waste of time pointing out the truth. CC is just a denier and there is no hope of convincing him – but there are others who really don’t yet realize just how much we do know about what is going to happen in the next 30 years or so, and why.

  21. [ alias
    Posted Monday, November 2, 2015 at 4:17 pm | Permalink

    Most voters would tend to think what I think ]

    You do realise how delusional that statement is?

    Take your hand off it – you’ll go blind.

  22. [silmaj
    Posted Monday, November 2, 2015 at 4:16 pm | PERMALINK
    Morgan 56.5/43.5
    ]

    Yeah, sure. Believe that and you’ll believe anything.

    Stand by for a panic attack from Lorax.

  23. Player One, It doesn’t hurt to point out the truth, but if deniers such as CC understand it is another matter.

    For instance, the Goddard report on Antartic ice that CC referred actually explained why it was happening, but CC couldn’t understand it and thought he had a gotcha.

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