The Advertiser today carries a poll of state voting intention in South Australia, which finds more evidence of the Nick Xenophon Team polling at levels comparable to the major parties in South Australia. The Galaxy survey of 860 respondents, conducted from Wednesday to Friday last week, has the Liberals leading 51-49 on two-party preferred, from primary votes of 33% for the Liberals, 28% for Labor and 24% for the Nick Xenophon Team. The poll also finds disaffection for both major party leaders, with Premier Jay Weatherill’s performance rated as good by 14% of respondents, fair by 41%, and poor by 37%, while Opposition Leader Steven Marshall’s numbers are 8%, 41% and 37% respectively.
Probably the most meaningless 2PP figure ever published.
Isn’t this very close to what he got in the SA upper house when he elected himself and Anne Bressington and almost a third candidate?
Those primary numbers would put SA in serious minority government territory.
Edi_Mahin, it isn’t that far off. The figures on that occasion were ALP 36%, LIB 26% and X 20%. It will be interesting to see how the Xenophon vote is split across the state. Usually he has polled best in traditionally Liberal boothes in Sturt, Boothby and Mayo, where as his vote was weaker in safe Labor territory in Port Adelaide and the bottom half of Wakefield
It depends on whether Xenophon’s personal approval and support transfers to other people that run as his candidates or whether when people see they are not actually voting for Xenophon they stick with the major parties.
X will probably finish ahead of Labor or Libs in a good few seats and may well get those seats after prefs.
And those performance rating for Weatherill and Marshall are appropriately dismal. They’re in Abbott-Shorten territory.
Looks like the revolution is starting. Interesting.
More like 3PP
Is the ABC election calculator able to be fired up for SA so we can see how this would pan out?
The way this is going, it’ll turn out like a 1998 Queensland election and a TPP would be useless
Do we know anything about the demographic or geographic distribution of Xenephon’s supporters? As Dio said X will obviously take some seats on these numbers. The question is from who, and where? The second question will answer the first.
Agree with Goosh Goosh – the Lib seats of Mayo, Boothby and Sturt could be vulnerable. Also the Labor seats of Adelaide and maybe Makin.
Sturt particularly. Pyne is really on the nose there.
It’s worth pointing out this is a state poll, not a federal poll.
My guess is X would poll better in a state election than in the federal elction in SA as there is arguably more to protest about in SA state politics (just look at the dismal leaders ratings).
Antony has a great post in SA Federally. Just look at X’s vote in the state senate election by federal seat. X outpolled either Labor or Libs in all electorates except Grey.
He polled best in Boothby and Mayo.
As with ReachTEL’s those leader rating scales are a bit strange. Is “fair” really a neutral, a mild positive or a glorified dunno? Many who chose that option would normally be uncommitted, but not all.
Should be noted that, while The Xenophon-associated ticket in 2013 did get almost 25% of the vote in 2013, it got just over half that in the following year at the state election.
While admittedly Weatherill and Marshall were less offensive options than Rudd and Abbott and pulled back a few more of the UH votes, it does show that the group shouldn’t be assumed to be on an inevitable ascent. Especially if the central figure of the party is not actually a candidate for that election.
Nevertheless, the option of voting for them in the lower house (thus allowing casual voters to be able to vote the same on both ballots) and being a viable third option in the middle of the two parties will probably boost their electoral prospects.
If Boothby, Mayo and Sturt are Xenophon’s hot spots, that correlates quite well with where the Democrats did well back in their day. The joke was once made that the Democrat vote was proportional to the height above sea level of the polling booth.
Will be interesting to see how the major parties indicate preferences on HTV cards. It may be in their best interests to direct preferences to each other above NXT.
[Will be interesting to see how the major parties indicate preferences on HTV cards. It may be in their best interests to direct preferences to each other above NXT.]
On an individual seat level, there is no logic to that and on a bigger picture scheme of things, I don’t think collusion is a good look when a third force is arising from people’s dissatisfaction with the status quo. Might just reinforce the whole “they’re both the same” narrative.
I will guarantee that Labor will prefer to have an NXT candidate win Sturt than Pyne. I imagine the same is true with the Libs when it comes to Labor seats.