BludgerTrack: 51.5-48.5 to Coalition

Not much happening in terms of national polling this week, but a privately conducted poll finds Sophie Mirabella has little hope of recovering her old seat of Indi from independent Cathy McGowan.

The Easter weekend has meant the only poll this week has been the usual weekly reading from Essential Research, which records a tie on two-party preferred for the fourth week in a row. Both major parties are steady on the primary vote – the Coalition on 43%, Labor on 38% – while the Greens are down a point to 9%. There is accordingly not much change on the surface of the BludgerTrack poll aggregate, which records a gentle move to the Coalition that yields nothing on the seat projection. However, there’s a lot going on under the BludgerTrack bonnet, as I’m now doing it in R rather than SAS/STAT, and relying a lot less on Excel to plug the gaps. Now that I’ve wrapped my head around R, I can probe a lot more deeply into the data with a lot less effort – commencing with the observation that the Coalition’s two-party vote would be around 0.5% higher if I was using a trend of respondent-allocated preference to determine the result, rather than 2013 election preferences. I’ve also done my regular quarterly BludgerTrack breakdowns, featuring state-level primary votes based on results from Morgan, Ipsos, Essential and ReachTEL, together with the breakdowns published this week by Newspoll.

Further polling:

• The Essential poll found 44% would approve of a double dissolution election if the Senate blocked the Australian Building and Construction Commission bill, with disapproval at only 23%. Respondents also showed good sense when asked the main reason why Prime Minister might wish to do such a thing: 25% opted for clearing independents from the Senate, 30% for getting an election in before he loses further support, and only 14% for actually getting the ABCC restored. Other questions recorded an unsurprising weight of support for income tax cuts (62% more important, 61% better for the economy) over company tax cuts (16% and 19% respectively). Results for a series of questions on which party was best to manage various aspects of economic policy were also much as expected, though slightly more favourable to the Coalition than when the questions were last posed a few weeks before the 2014 budget. A semi-regular inquiry into the attributes of the Labor and Liberal parties allows an opportunity for comparison with a poll conducted in November, shortly before the recent improvement in Labor’s fortunes. Labor’s movements are perhaps a little surprising, with extreme up and moderate down, and “looks after the interests of working people” down as well. The Liberals are down vision, leadership and clarity, and up on division.

• The Herald-Sun has a report on ReachTEL poll commissioned by the progressive Australia Institute think tank in the regional Victorian seat of Indi, which Sophie Mirabella hopes to recover for the Liberals after her defeat by independent Cathy McGowan in 2013. The news is not good for Mirabella, with McGowan recording a lead on the primary vote of 37.3% to 26.9%, while the Nationals are a distant third on 10.6%. The report says a 56-44 two-candidate preferred result from the poll allocated all Nationals preferences to Mirabella, a decision that was perhaps made in ignorance of the level of support McGowan received from Nationals voters in 2013. The primary votes as reported would more likely pan out to around 60-40.

Preselection latest:

• Andrew Burrell of The Australian reports the Liberal preselection for the new Western Australian seat of Burt is a tight tussle between Matt O’Sullivan, who runs mining magnate Andrew Forrest’s GenerationOne indigenous employment scheme, and Liz Storer, a Gosnells councillor. Storer is supported by the state branch’s increasingly assertive Christian Right, and in particular by its leading powerbroker in Perth’s southern suburbs, state upper house MP Nick Goiran.

• The Weekly Times reports that Damian Drum, state upper house member for Northern Victoria region and one-time coach of the Fremantle Dockers AFL club, will nominate for Nationals preselection in the seat of Murray, following the weekend’s retirement announcement from Liberal incumbent Sharman Stone. The front-runner for Liberal preselection looks to be Donald McGauchie, former policy adviser to the then Victorian premier, Ted Baillieu.

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.

3,289 comments on “BludgerTrack: 51.5-48.5 to Coalition”

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  1. View From The Street:

    [Today in Orwellian Newspeak

    Here’s a fun thought experiment: imagine for a moment that Immigration Minister Peter Dutton drove his car through the front room of your house and ran over your cat.

    Initially you are surprised and horrified, but then the man voted worst health minister of the past 35 years reassures you that he absolutely didn’t destroy your home and kill your pet, but instead performed an innovative parking solution including a complementary domestic animal mortality assessment.

    Would you a) be comforted by his assessment and get on with your life, or b) feel that his redefinition of terms doesn’t fundamentally change anything about the situation and seems only to be semantic tricks designed to deny responsibility for his own stupidity and carelessness?

    On an unrelated note, the Department of Immigration made the happy announcement over the weekend that no children are being kept in detention – although this appears to relate less to any great granting of freedom as redefining bits of detention centres are being “community detention”.]

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/view-from-the-street/view-from-the-street-government-to-release-return-kids-to-offshore-detention-20160404-gnxvi2.html?
    Follow us: @smh on Twitter | sydneymorningherald on Facebook

  2. ratsac

    Next will be “We’ll all be dead by Xmas” and “WWIII has started”.

    But don’t worry, after all you’ll get a consoling “You’re a racist” to follow.

    There’s a certain charm to it.

  3. The difference between Boerwar and some Greens is that the former is inside the tent pissing out while the latter are outside the tent pissing in.

  5. Here are some Big Things the Greens have fixed over the past decade:

    1. Stopped the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
    2. Stopped Global Warming.
    3. Stopped coal mining in Australia.
    4. Underpinned the market in koala suits.
    5. Kept Australia’s foreign aid budget at 2% of GDP.
    6. Balanced the budget.
    7. Protected Gonski from the Liberals.
    8. Protected the NDIS from the Liberals.
    9. Protected hospitals from the Liberals.

    When the going gets tough the Greens are absent.

    And so it goes.

  6. JD

    Thats influence. The Greens have far stronger ties to the environment movement than any other party. Its why they call themselves the Greens.

    The environment movement will work just as readily with the Liberals if it will save a tree. In that sense they are politically agnostic.

    However if Labor had been the saviour of the environment you are claiming there would have been no Greens party in the first place.

  7. president of the solipsist society @2806:

    [

    I assume you will also direct your anger at any greens branch that does the same as Danby ?

    I can’t speak for guytaur but I sure would.]

    As would I.

  9. [The difference between Boerwar and some Greens is that the former is inside the tent pissing out while the latter are outside the tent pissing in.]

    😆 Succinct and accurate!

  10. [g

    JD

    Thats influence. The Greens have far stronger ties to the environment movement than any other party. Its why they call themselves the Greens.]

    The environmentalists have been white-anted by the reds. When was the last time a single Greens expressed concern about the forthcoming extinction of the Little Eagle as a breeding species in the ACT?

    The watermelons would not give a rat’s.

  11. [Next will be “We’ll all be dead by Xmas” and “WWIII has started”.

    But don’t worry, after all you’ll get a consoling “You’re a racist” to follow.

    There’s a certain charm to it.]

    Ebola got me and my family about 12 weeks after the outbreak started (I think that was how the maths worked out wasn’t it?), I just haven’t stopped typing yet.

  16. Interesting that even Coorey has rejected the Turnbull spin that COAG was all part of a diabolical plot, after talking to Turnbull’s backbenchers/colleagues who think it was a total debacle.

  21. GG, 3013

    Apparently swings toward a party mean that it is losing support? Who knew? I didn’t get taught this sort of maths at school :/

  22. The Greens get votes because they reflect the principles and values of about 10% of the voters. Fair enough. Sometimes they can get more votes on board, but they tend to do better in polls than actual elections, for whatever reason.

    Labor aspires to Government. They need to go after the centre. My hope is that Labor can win Government and get enough clear air to gain the trust of enough of the centre to win a second and subsequent terms. Meanwhile, as far as possible without scaring the horses, drag the Overton Windiw leftwards. To start with, that will mean dragging it to the Centre.

    I care about the environment, climate change, jobs and social equity / justice (i.e. a fair go). So does Labor. So do/did Hawke, Keating and the Labor leaders who followed. The Liberals, whatever their protestations, do not. Labor has the best chance of actually implementing policies that enhance these causes. Liberals will always move us further away.

    For some of us, the Greens might represent what we want, Labor what we can practically aspire to. Others, of course, have other opinions.

  24. Guytaur@2997,

    [Confesssions

    Where you reference no influence. Thus my:

    Confessions

    Your 2972 is not true. Without the likes of Bob Brown and David Bellamy blockading the Franklin Dam project just as they are coal now the dam would have gone ahead.]

    I usually agree with most of your posts, but stopping the Franklin Dam was also very much a Federal Labor achievement. Bob Brown and David Bellamy ran a great activist campaign, but it also needed Federal Labor to stop the project.

    From the time (early 1983), I remember the shock, horror at the Hawke government using an airforce jet to overfly the area to make sure that the “cease and desist” order was being complied with.

    I was very pleased to see that this 1983 excursion (by Gareth Evans?) is now viewed as a positive thing, unlike the commentary on the ABC’s Nationwide at the time, from Geraldine Doogue?

    A quote from the Wikipedia article:

    “Postscript

    In April 1983 the Federal Government tasked a Mirage jet and later an RF-111,[24] from the Royal Australian Air Force, to perform a reconnaissance mission over the dam as part of its case that the Tasmanian Government was not complying with Federal legislation to stop work.[25][26] A photograph of the Franklin River taken on one of these missions (and showing the construction road) was signed after the case by all the judges involved and a copy is displayed in the Australian National University College of Law staff library. On 1 July 2008, twenty five years after the High Court decision that saved the Franklin River an anniversary dinner was held at Hobart’s Grand Chancellor Hotel where former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke stated that the campaign to protect the Franklin River had important lessons for the struggle against global warming: “And as you look at the arguments and the positions of political parties today you see a complete replication of what we experienced back there in 1983. The conservatives: they never change, they never learn. What was their argument back then? You can’t do this, it will cost jobs. It will cost economic growth. You can’t do it, you mustn’t do it.”[27]”

    The full article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Dam_controversy

  25. Still about four or five pages behind here, so I apologize if I’m retreading ground everyone else got over several hours ago, but I actually agree with Ratsak that the Danby thing is a bit of a storm in a tea-cup, at least while he is almost certain to remain one of the top two candidates in the count. But nonetheless it does strike me as more than a little rich for a Labor candidate to do this after all the hysterics from Albo and co about the Greens (allegedly) preferencing the Coalition above Labor… a claim that, I might add, so far has zero evidence to back it up.

    And I do wonder what those who constantly bemoan the “Grubby Greens” would say if, in an incredibly close election, Danby did wind up third in the count (which, to be fair, seems extremely unlikely) and a Liberal candidate got elected instead a Green, giving the Coalition a slim majority.

  26. Ratsak, those are fine policies…. shame you don’t cast your primary vote for a party that fights vigorously and consistently for them.

  28. D & M

    I was not disputing the Labor intervention at all. I was just pointing out that without the activism the issue would not have got attention and thus the dam would have gone ahead because most would have had no idea of what was happening.

    I was in no way trying to overstate. I was just saying no influence is BS. Same is true in government. Supporting the Gillard government was influential.

    This whole no influence BS has to be called out for what it is. BS.

    Its to Labor’s credit it saved the Franklin Dam. Same with a lot of policies. Its why Greens preference Labor so heavily. Greens voters see the reality of party positions.

  29. Last 5 Newspolls pre 2010 election July-> August

    ALP:
    40, 37, 38, 38, 36.2 Election 38.0%

    Greens:
    12, 12, 13, 14, 13.9 Election 11.8%

    Last 5 Newspolls pre 2013 election Aug -> Sept

    ALP:
    35, 34, 37, 33, 33 Election 33.3%

    Greens:
    11, 9, 9, 10, 9 Election 8.7%

  31. When conducting an opinion poll, are pollsters required to disclose the name of the polling company to the person being polled ? ie Morgan,Galaxy, Essential, Reachtel

  32. [Airlines

    Posted Monday, April 4, 2016 at 7:19 pm | Permalink

    Boerwar, 3010

    Why doesn’t the Environment Minister, ALP MLA Simon Corbell, do something about it?]

    Probably because he and Rattenbury are too busy pissing away our money on the ‘troubled’ container monstrosity currently disfiguring the shores of Lake Burley Griffin.

    Not content with killing off the Little Eagle, the ratbags have engaged someone (again using hard earned ratepayers’ funds) to try and fix the container disaster.

    Have you ever heard of ‘reactivation experts’?

    http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/canberra-life/reactivation-specialists-contracted-to-liven-up-westside-container-village-20160331-gnvpwg.html

    Meanwhile our rates are growing at 10% a year and the Light Rail White Elephant is going to kill off 800 trees.

    This is a Government which is showing the classic signs of end-of-government lunacies.

  35. [ratsak,

    You’ve been dead for over a year.

    It’s just DTT won’t let you rest.]

    Alright, alright, I’m dead, not deaf.

  39. Douglas and Milko

    From unreliable memory , it was Kimbo and it was how he got his moniker “Bomber Beazley” . I will not be surprised if that is wRONg 🙂

  41. Steve777, 3033

    Nicole Johnston is an independent, yeah. The issue isn’t that the Greens or Labor did particularly dismally (both recorded swings to them), but many of the swings were in the wrong places – all sorts of safe Lib seats recorded humongous swings, but they unfortunately petered out around the marginal electorates. I’m not exactly sure why, though.

  42. Airlines – you base your prediction on opinion polls which Shea has shown the Greens drop on election day. You have a right to your opinion.

    I base my opinion on dozens of conversations with Green supporters (and now not), LNP supporters who are really pissed off with Turnbull’s failure and ALP supporters who are quickly stating a greater preference for Shorten.

    We’ll only know on election night. Suffice to say I was one of the few who accurately predicted the 2015 Qld State result so I have a few runs on the board.

  43. [Ratsak, those are fine policies…. shame you don’t cast your primary vote for a party that fights vigorously and consistently for them.]

    Pffffttt.

    I vote for the only party with any hope of implementing them. And they’ve done a pretty damn good job of it on the whole. Anyone who tries to equate Labor with the Libs is too stupid to talk to. Labor has been the architect of every significant reform in my lifetime, and I’ve no doubt that will still be so when I finally fall off the twig. Enjoy tilting at windmills, I’ll work to make gains in the real world where majorities have to be built with people might not be as enthused about things you care about as you’d like.

  44. ausdavo, 3042

    Let’s assume that Bludgertrack is a perfect representation of the current views of the voters, and an election is tomorrow.

    Now, let’s add the worst swing that shea showed (2.1% from Newspoll).

    This results in a Greens vote of 8.9%.

    You predicted a 2.0% swing against the Greens (presumably from 8.7%) – so 6.7%.

    How do you make up the 2.2% difference?

  45. ABCNews24: #BREAKING French President @fhollande says “investigations will be carried out & trials held” following #panamapapers; Reuters reports.

  46. To further my above point, I went back into the archives to try and see how far off Bludgertrack was at the 2013 election – it overestimated the Greens by 1%. Assuming this, that means the Greens vote is currently 10% – making a swing down to 6.7% even more unfeasible.

  49. lefty e@2746

    Well, well, after all that bullshit from the ALP about an “LNP-GRN pref deal” guess what?

    Danby will be preferencing the LNP in Melbourne Ports.

    An empty gesture.
    His preferences won’t be counted.

  50. Steve, we have preferential voting. So why not cast your primary vote for the party that best embodies your ideals, and use preferences to express a pragmatic judgement about who would be preferable in the event that your first choice is not elected? That’s what preferential viting is designed for. You are wasting the benefits of preferential voting if you negotiate and compromise with yourself on the question of who gets your primary vote. The whole point of the system is to liberate voters to cast a vote for their normative ideal, no matter how quixotic it may seem, while still having a say in the final outcome.

    I think the Greens vote would be drastically higher if there were widespread understanding of what preferential voting actually is. I can understand why it is in Labor’s interests to propagate ignorance and misconceptions of the electoral system. Their primary vote would probably be 10 points lower if the nature of preferential voting were fully and widely understood.

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