BludgerTrack: 54.1-45.9 to Coalition

Three months on from the leadership change, the Coalition finishes the year with a crushing lead on the BludgerTrack poll aggregate.

The final update of BludgerTrack for the year comes off the back of strong results for the Coalition from both Essential Research and Roy Morgan, resulting in a slight movement of 0.3% on the two-party preferred aggregate, and a seat gain for the Coalition in New South Wales. Nothing new this week on leadership ratings.

Further:

• Labor’s Anna Burke has announced she will bow out at the next election, creating a vacancy in the eastern Melbourne seat of Chisholm, which she retained in 2013 with a margin of 1.6%. Rick Wallace of The Australian reports that the seat is reserved for Burke’s Right faction, but that this still leaves room for a turf war between the National Union of Workers and the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association, both of whom are credited with about 35% of the seat’s branch membership. Monash councillor Stefanie Perri is likely to be the candidate of the NUW, while the SDA is intriguingly linked with a possible candidacy for Dimity Paul, who has been central to Victorian Labor’s recent internal crises as the complainant in the bullying action against her then employer, Adem Somyurek. This led to the latter’s dismissal as Victorian Small Business Minister and a split within the SDA sub-faction. The NUW’s prospects may stand to be boosted by a rapprochement with the Shorten-Conroy forces of the Right, which would bring them back under the umbrella of its “stability pact” with the Socialist Left.

• The Liberal National Party’s state executive voted 14-12 on Monday to block Ian Macfarlane’s move from the Liberal to the Nationals, raising questions about his future in the Toowoomba-based seat of Groom. Macfarlane threatened to quit politics if the move was rejected, and there is some concern in the Coalition that he may do so in the new year. Given that the state executive vote followed a 102-35 vote in favour of the move from the party’s Groom divisional council, which would dominate any preselection ballot, there appears to be the potential for a turf war in the seat between the party’s Liberal and Nationals components. I had a piece in Crikey on the subject that was run shortly before the state executive vote on Monday.

• Labor’s preselection for the seat of Robertson on the New South Wales Central Coast has been won by Anne Charlton, the chief-of-staff to Deb O’Neill, who held the seat from 2010 until her defeat in 2013, and is now a Senator. Charlton, who has gained media attention for her admission that she was addicted to heroin at the age of 16, won a local preselection vote by 98 to 72 ahead of Belinda Neal, who had a rocky ride as the seat’s member from 2007 to 2010, when she lost preselection to O’Neill. The seat was won for the Liberals at the 2013 election by Lucy Wicks, who holds it on a margin of 3.0%, which the proposed redistribution would nudge up to 3.2%.

• Also preselected by Labor in New South Wales over the weekend were Emma Husar, a disability services advocate who ran in Penrith at the state election in March, to run against Fiona Scott in Lindsay; and Fiona Philips, a tutor at the University of Wollongong and TAFE who ran in South Coast, to run against Ann Sudmalis in Gilmore.

• Crikey has a Christmas offer of a discounted annual subscription for its daily email and subscriber content, at $180 rather than the usual $219, plus a bonus $125 in books, DVDs and a 30-day Inkl premium subscription providing access to the Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian, The Atlantic and more.

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.

2,879 comments on “BludgerTrack: 54.1-45.9 to Coalition”

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  1. The reality is that the loudest advocates of scrapping Sunday penalty rates don’t get them and more importantly, don’t need them. They would never advocate a reduction in their own pay – never.
    The argument that cutting penalty rates will increase employment and cut business closures is a “strawman” argument aimed at the “unwashed” uneducated who thrive on three word slogans because that is the limit of the their mental/intellectual capabilities.

    If cutting wages was the solution to the problem these self proclaimed economic gurus claimed then they should be advocating to cut everyone’s wage including their own and those of all the corporate CEO’s.

  4. “…the media can definitely weigh down — and even destroy — a candidate. The emphasis on a candidate’s flaws — real or perceived — comes at the cost of the candidate’s ability to focus his or her message and at the cost of negative attention to the other candidates. This is a problem for Clinton, and it seems unlikely to go away.”

    This is exactly what the media are doing to Bill Shorten! And some ostensibly Labor supporters are falling for it! Don’t think they wouldn’t do the same thing to Tanya, Albo, Mark Dreyfus, or whoever else leads the FPLP. It’s why Labor always have to go around the media to succeed in this country.

  5. Good lord, so now alias adds age-ism to racism and sexism. What a trifecta.

    It’s a very simple point. She may be guilty as sin, although we don’t even know yet whether a crime has occured. But we shouldn’t leap to decide her guilt or innocence on the basis of either her ethnicity or because of the family she comes from.

    I know a delightful family (staunch Labor people for over half a century). One member of it has been jailed for pedophilia. I would no more decide that other members of that family were guilty of anything because of this than I would because they have an Irish surname.

  6. Player One@2802

    So you wouldn’t support Hilary Clinton or Bernie Sanders against the younger Trump?


    You can get RWNJs at any age.

    But by your assessment, Hilary and Bernie’s critical faculties will have ossified.

  7. zoomster@2805

    Good lord, so now alias adds age-ism to racism and sexism. What a trifecta.

    It’s a very simple point. She may be guilty as sin, although we don’t even know yet whether a crime has occured. But we shouldn’t leap to decide her guilt or innocence on the basis of either her ethnicity or because of the family she comes from.

    I know a delightful family (staunch Labor people for over half a century). One member of it has been jailed for pedophilia. I would no more decide that other members of that family were guilty of anything because of this than I would because they have an Irish surname.

    How about previous behaviour?

  9. [ But by your assessment, Hilary and Bernie’s critical faculties will have ossified. ]

    Sadly, this is probably true. But better someone a little inflexible and with slightly outdated notions than an outright nutjob.

  10. zoomster@2808

    bemused

    I’m unaware of the sister being accused of anything at all previously.

    So you didn’t read my 2779.

    She was among the ‘several family members’ referred to in relation to electoral fraud.

  11. Player One@2809

    But by your assessment, Hilary and Bernie’s critical faculties will have ossified.


    Sadly, this is probably true. But better someone a little inflexible and with slightly outdated notions than an outright nutjob.

    Hilary or Bernie would run rings around you in terms of critical faculties or any other measure of intellect.

  14. bemused

    [ Hilary or Bernie would run rings around you in terms of critical faculties or any other measure of intellect. ]

    Without boasting too much, I think you might be quite surprised.

  15. Player One@2814

    bemused

    Hilary or Bernie would run rings around you in terms of critical faculties or any other measure of intellect.


    Without boasting too much, I think you might be quite surprised.

    Based on the evidence on PB, I doubt it, although you do seem to have some specific areas of expertise.

  22. zoomster@2818

    No, she wasn’t, bemused – that was another sister.

    These foreignors with their funny names, hard to tell them apart.

    From the wording, it seems a number of members of the family were involved.

  23. Yes – and the ones involved are named. It is not at all credible that if she had been one of those charged, the article would not make a point of that.

  24. ..indeed, it is quite possible (we don’t know either way) that she was not involved BECAUSE she thought it was illegal. All we know, however, is that she was not one of those charged.

  26. Ken Tsang
    ⛄ ‏@jxeeno 2m2 minutes ago

    Ken Tsang

    ⛄ Retweeted Whirlpool Trending

    When people have been scare mongered to think fibre is expensive gold… when it’s actually cheaper than copper.

  38. Whenever I hear or read of Michaelia Cash or another Lib, raving about penalty rates, I cannot but think of a character in Frank Hardy’s novel, ‘The Outcasts of Foolgarah’, The Minister for the Higher Productivity of Other People’s Labour.

  40. [The Minister for the Higher Productivity of Other People’s Labour.]
    No bemused, it’s the lower unit cost of other people’s labour.
    They have no idea.

  41. BK@2840

    The Minister for the Higher Productivity of Other People’s Labour.


    No bemused, it’s the lower unit cost of other people’s labour.
    They have no idea.

    Indeed. But that is the title Frank Hardy used. I guess he wrote in keeping with Tory ignorance.

    Funny book if you haven’t read it.

  42. MrMacroMan ‏@MrMacroMarkets 5m5 minutes ago

    MrMacroMan Retweeted PerthNow

    Meanwhile WA debt going out of control and a downgrade looms

    Kiera ‏@KieraGorden 5m5 minutes ago

    Some hard facts about the “debt and deficit disaster” that the LIBERAL PARTY are leaving us with. #AusPol

  43. Bemused..

    I love that title. And I must dig around to find a copy of that book.

    I have a tragic Frank Hardy tale. I knew an old friend of his who ran a bookshop in Nathon on Koh Samui. Somehow, the friend finished up with a draft copy of Hardy’s The Four-legged Lottery. I borrowed it once. It was type written, double spaced and with lots of handwritten amendments by Frank Hardy.

    I should have hung onto it because Jim, the friend was getting elderly. Indeed, after his death, I asked his Thai widow about his various possessions including the manuscript and was told they had all been burnt.

  44. So next year we have the federal, ACT and NT elections. NT is almost certain, I think, heading towards a change of government. What a basket case the CLP have been.

    ACT might change, but federal will probably be pretty cozy for Turnbull.

  46. alias@2843

    Bemused..

    I love that title. And I must dig around to find a copy of that book.

    I have a tragic Frank Hardy tale. I knew an old friend of his who ran a bookshop in Nathon on Koh Samui. Somehow, the friend finished up with a draft copy of Hardy’s The Four-legged Lottery. I borrowed it once. It was type written, double spaced and with lots of handwritten amendments by Frank Hardy.

    I should have hung onto it because Jim, the friend was getting elderly. Indeed, after his death, I asked his Thai widow about his various possessions including the manuscript and was told they had all been burnt.

    Damn shame!

    I knew Frank and his Secretary / Assistant quite well toward the end of his life.

    He used to have a lot of interesting things to say when the Soviet Union was collapsing.

  47. C@t 2084

    You’re absolutely right! The media in Australia is utterly rancid. The great majority of newsprint is just rubbish, from the simpering giggling nonsense of Murphy and Crabbe to the outright partisan rubbish coming from the likes of Coorey and Kenny. And forget about the outright blatant bias of Mudrock’s fanboi scribblers.
    I wasted $79 on a sub to the Saturday Paper – far and away the best article I have read was written by Tony Windsor in the last week or so. Apart from the odd quite good stuff from Mike Seccombe, an electronic sub doesn’t even provide anything to wrap the spud peelings!
    Unfortunately the average punter who still reads newspapers believes that crap. Thankfully the under 30s tend not to read the regurgitations, relying on social media instead. Andrew Elder puts it very well.
    TV is worse. I tried to watch Christmas Carols with Herself, couldn’t stand the banality and headed downstairs to my music. The whole programme was about the adverts and the presenters – Carols were an afterthought and TV’s political programmes are rubbish.
    No wonder the likes of Netflix with no advertisements has taken off. If Rupert did not have Sport he would have what he deserves – nothing, which equals the amount of tax News Ltd pays in Australia!
    Rant over. Phew!

  49. zoidlord

    Since Colon Barnett took the reigns state debt has increased by the total state debt he inherited .Magnificent management.

  50. CTar1@2845

    KTO

    ACT might change


    Our local government persists with the tramway plans.

    It’s a single thing but may bring them down.

    Why isn’t the Federal Govt. involved?

    Canberra has a special status as our National Capital and I would expect it to showcase things such as a good public transport system beyond what the residents might otherwise afford.

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