BludgerTrack: 50.4-49.6 to Labor

It’s now been four weeks since the last poll showing the Coalition in the lead, and Labor has now poked its nose in front on the BludgerTrack aggregate’s two-party preferred measure.

The only new poll this week was the weekly Essential Research, owing to the poll glut last week and the Anzac Day public holiday on Monday. The Essential result was an eye-opener, with the normally sedate series lurching two points in favour of Labor, who have opened up a 52-48 lead. The primary votes are Coalition 40% (down two), Labor 39% (up three) and Greens 10% (down one). Other questions found 40% approving of a double dissolution election, up one from two weeks ago, with opposition up four to 28%; 42% expecting the Coalition to win compared with 28% for Labor; 35% saying Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership has made them more likely to vote Coalition, compared with 23% for less likely; and 67% saying they would view their vote as one in favour of the party they supported, compared with 21% saying it would be against the party they opposed. On next week’s budget, respondents anticipated it would be good for business and the well off, bad for everyone else, and neutral for the economy overall. The poll also found that 45% would sooner see Helen Clark as secretary-general of the United Nations compared with 21% for Kevin Rudd.

Single Essential Research results tend not to knock the BludgerTrack poll aggregate off its axis, but this result was forceful enough to drive a half-point shift on two-party preferred, which tips the balance in favour of Labor. However, the gains from last week to this have tended to be concentrated in states where they are of little use to Labor on the seat projection, which only ticks one point in their favour through a gain in New South Wales, leaving the Coalition with the barest possible absolute majority. That would be a little less bare if I started crediting Clive Palmer’s seat of Fairfax as a Liberal National Party gain, which I really should have been doing since a Galaxy poll of the seat in January credited Palmer with 2% of the vote. I’ll implement that one next week. Nothing new this week on the leadership ratings.

bludgertrack-2016-04-28c

Other news:

• The WA Liberal Party’s state council has endorsed Matt O’Sullivan as the party’s candidate for the new seat of Burt in the southern suburbs of Perth, formalising its overturning of a local party ballot three weeks ago. O’Sullivan is closely identified with mining magnate Andrew Forrest, as the chief operating officer of his GenerationOne indigenous youth employment scheme. The earlier ballot was won by Liz Storer, a Gosnells councillor who had backing from the Christian Right. Storer defeated O’Sullivan with 13 votes out of an eligible 25, but the state council ruled three weeks ago that the number of preselectors was insufficient, and that it would take matters into its own hands.

• The Central Western Daily lists four candidates for Saturday’s Nationals preselection in the rural New South Wales seat of Calare, to be vacated at the election by John Cobb: Andrew Gee, the state member for Orange; Alison Conn, a Wellington councillor; Sam Farraway, owner of the Hertz franchise in Bathurst; and Scott Munro, a butcher and Orange councillor.

• The Blue Mountains Gazette last week reported that a ReachTEL poll conducted on April 19 for the NSW Teachers Federation had Liberal and Labor tied in the Blue Mountains seat of Macquarie, which Louise Markus holds for the Liberals on a margin of 4.5%. Markus has secured the Liberal preselection for the seat after the withdrawal of a challenge by Sarah Richards, a local party branch president.

• It escaped my notice four weeks ago that The Australian had ReachTEL results commissioned by the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union from the Liberal-held Adelaide seats of Hindmarsh and Sturt. Results in the report are incomplete, but they appear to credit Christopher Pyne with a 5% margin in Sturt, down from 10.1% at the 2013 election, and also have the Liberals leading in the difficult seat of Hindmarsh. Only modest support was recorded for the Nick Xenophon Team, at 14.5% and 11% before exclusion of the undecided. A good deal has happened in the month since the poll was conducted, with Coalition support continuing to plummet nationally, and the government this week seeking to staunch the flow in South Australia specifically by committing to have the $52 billion submarine construction project built in the state. I have also obtained ReachTEL polling conducted early last month for The Australia Institute, which has the Nick Xenophon Team’s support in South Australia at 16.1% in the House of Representatives and 24.8% in the Senate – keeping in mind that polls like this have form in overstating the distinctions between House and Senate results (or at least, they did before the Senate vote went haywire in 2013). There are also Queensland results inclusive of the parties of Clive Palmer, Glen Lazarus, Nick Xenophon and Jacqui Lambie, which have their Senate support ranging from 1.6% (Lambie) to 3.4% (Xenophon).

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.

925 comments on “BludgerTrack: 50.4-49.6 to Labor”

Comments Page 14 of 19
1 … 13 14 15 … 19

  1. briefly,
    You may believe yourself to be on the side of the angels but you are not on the side of the vast majority of the Australian public.

    They want to be assured that our national borders are secure and that not even thousands, let alone millions (and just consider the millions who have left Syria, by boat, before you confidently say that millions will not come in boats from Indonesia to Australia), will be able to make that journey here successfully, or otherwise if they were to drown on the way.

    That image of little Aslan is still fresh in my memory and I, for one, do not want to be the vehicle for others like him to wash up on our shores. That is the ‘deepest value’ that I adhere to. The value of every human life and our duty as fellow human beings not to do anything to imperil other lives.

    Stopping dangerous boat journeys to Australia but being generous in our intake of genuine refugees, via safe means for them, is my way of living this outcome.

  2. There are moment when a distraction is required, and this is one of them, I think.

    A couple have been told to restrain their cat or face having their mail deliveries suspended.

    Matthew Sampson said he was notified by the Royal Mail last week of a “potential hazard” at his home in Patchway, near Bristol, which was affecting deliveries. According to a letter sent to Sampson by the Royal Mail, four-year-old Bella was a “threat” to staff.

    In the letter, the Royal Mail said it had been experiencing difficulties in delivering mail to Sampson’s home “because of the actions of a cat”. The postman had reported that when he pushed mail through the letterbox, a black and white cat “snatches the mail and puts his fingers at risk of injury”.

    http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/apr/28/royal-mail-bella-cat-threatens-suspend-deliveries

  3. C@t….

    My perceptions of this are doubtless also coloured by my own interactions with refugees. I think, in particular, of one now-middle-aged woman, small in frame, sweet of manner and kind. She calls herself Lisa. She left Saigon in 1975 on an open boat as a widow aged 19, her baby in her arms. Her husband had been killed in the last-ditch fighting just days before. She got on board a boat never expecting to survive but, somehow, the crew navigated their way to Darwin. She was among the very few that made it from Viet Nam to Australia on the high seas.

    She is industry and thrift. She is generosity, dignity and gratitude. She is gentleness itself. There is no doubt at all that we are a better people for having her among us.

  4. DavidWH

    [NBN is up and running. Download 23.8 Upload 4.78
    Not spectuclar but acceptable]
    Well your download speed is a little better than my old ADSL2 speed….but not much!
    Shame you couldn’t get Labor broadband (aka FTTN) which is what I have now. Download 95 – 100, Upload 35-40 🙂

  8. If the Coalition have all the strategies in place to “stop the boats”, as they assure us, why are they arguing that smugglers are still a problem?

  9. C@tmomma @ Friday, April 29, 2016 at 2:46 pm

    briefly,
    … you are not on the side of the vast majority of the Australian public….

    I know.

    But this does not alter my point. The phase in which we could traffic humans into a gulag and forget them have come to an end. The “Pacific Solution” consisted of sending our unwanted into a foreign jurisdiction. That “Solution” is no longer open to Australia.

    So whether we like it or not, the next lot of maritime arrivals will have to be “processed” in this jurisdiction. We are effectively back to where we stated in 2001…back to pre-Tampa. We know what happens to people – to men, women and children – when they are held in arbitrary detention for unspecified terms without having committed any offence. We will have to ask ourselves once again whether we are willing to adopt policies of intentional and exemplary cruelty on our own shores? Will we? There is every chance we will. We should look to our own past. We might remember Port Arthur, for example, for its original penal purposes – recall it as a place of unspeakable yet deliberate infamy.

    We might remember the other crimes carried out by Australian Governments in the name of public order.

    I attended the election of Senator Dodson yesterday at the WA Parliament. Among the events in his life that were recalled during the election, it was pointed out that both his parents had been imprisoned for offences under the Native Welfare Act. Patrick’s father was Irish and his mother indigenous. Their offences were to have fallen in love with each other and to have been cohabiting together.

    So we are capable of official depravity. This has been our habit, on and off, since 1788. We are going to have to ask ourselves if depravity will continue to be our policy. Will we choose oppression or reason? I am not an optimist on this. But it is a choice that we will have to make.

  10. MTBW @ #655 Friday, April 29, 2016 at 2:58 pm

    C@tmomma
    How did your family get to Australia was it convicts or the Irish fleeing the Irish famine?

    All of the above, plus one part of the family of a Minister in the Anglican Church who came to Australia to tend to the convict flock in Port Arthur.

    Still, to try and use that romantic argument from that time and to apply it to today’s situation is misleading and disingenuous.

    In fact, if you want to use that situation to support your argument, I can use it to support mine. That is, all those, whether they be convicts or otherwise, who came to Australia on boats, were chosen by the government of the day and sent here safely.

  11. davidwh @ Friday, April 29, 2016 at 2:18 pm

    NBN is up and running. Download 23.8 Upload 4.78
    Not spectuclar but acceptable

    Same as mine, I have what they call ‘Fixed Wireless’ which involves a little square antenna on the roof which communicates with a tower at the local university.

    That is the best speed, sometimes it drops way below that, sometimes for no good reason, then bounces back up again.

  12. [That image of little Aslan is still fresh in my memory and I, for one, do not want to be the vehicle for others like him to wash up on our shores. That is the ‘deepest value’ that I adhere to. The value of every human life and our duty as fellow human beings not to do anything to imperil other lives.]

    this may be true in your case, but the main driver of the ‘stop the boats’ is racism and xenophobia. if labor or the libs were genuine about stopping the boats on humanitarian grounds, they’d spend the billions they’ve wasted on south pacific concentration camps on refugee/resettlement camps in indonesia, turkey and india and tell people ‘get yourself to these’, and up the humanitarian intake of refugees.

    In 99% of cases, the ‘I just want to stop drownings at sea’ reads more honestly if prefaced by ‘I’m not a racist, but….’. Any discussion I’ve had with anyone arguing this case has soon discovered that they don’t want any more refugees/muslims and fear being over-run by ‘others’. The moment you suggest australia should set up safety zones near war zones and resettle many more refugees in australia you get the truth behind the ‘compassion’. ‘I don’t want drownings at sea/bodies on our beaches’ = ‘I’d prefer them to die somewhere else rather than come to Australia’.

    white austalia lives on in this bogan nation

  14. briefly @ #653 Friday, April 29, 2016 at 2:47 pm

    C@t….
    My perceptions of this are doubtless also coloured by my own interactions with refugees. I think, in particular, of one now-middle-aged woman, small in frame, sweet of manner and kind. She calls herself Lisa. She left Saigon in 1975 on an open boat as a widow aged 19, her baby in her arms. Her husband had been killed in the last-ditch fighting just days before. She got on board a boat never expecting to survive but, somehow, the crew navigated their way to Darwin. She was among the very few that made it from Viet Nam to Australia on the high seas.
    She is industry and thrift. She is generosity, dignity and gratitude. She is gentleness itself. There is no doubt at all that we are a better people for having her among us.

    And how many, just like her, are languishing in refugee camps and unable to make their mark in Australia because others on boats took their place?

    What we need is a compassionate and structured system that advantages no one and discourages People Trafficking and dangerous boat journeys.

    No degree of romanticism on anyone’s part will change the fact that we need to deal with those realities.

  15. briefly Friday, April 29, 2016 at 3:04 pm
    I attended the election of Senator Dodson yesterday at the WA Parliament

    **************************************************
    Briefly – what happens to Pat in the event of a DD ?????? ……. he might have a very short term ???

  17. Sustainable future @ #662 Friday, April 29, 2016 at 3:12 pm

    That image of little Aslan is still fresh in my memory and I, for one, do not want to be the vehicle for others like him to wash up on our shores. That is the ‘deepest value’ that I adhere to. The value of every human life and our duty as fellow human beings not to do anything to imperil other lives.

    this may be true in your case, but the main driver of the ‘stop the boats’ is racism and xenophobia. if labor or the libs were genuine about stopping the boats on humanitarian grounds, they’d spend the billions they’ve wasted on south pacific concentration camps on refugee/resettlement camps in indonesia, turkey and india and tell people ‘get yourself to these’, and up the humanitarian intake of refugees.
    In 99% of cases, the ‘I just want to stop drownings at sea’ reads more honestly if prefaced by ‘I’m not a racist, but….’. Any discussion I’ve had with anyone arguing this case has soon discovered that they don’t want any more refugees/muslims and fear being over-run by ‘others’. The moment you suggest australia should set up safety zones near war zones and resettle many more refugees in australia you get the truth behind the ‘compassion’. ‘I don’t want drownings at sea/bodies on our beaches’ = ‘I’d prefer them to die somewhere else rather than come to Australia’.
    white austalia lives on in this bogan nation

    Bollocks, if that is a reference to me. And, if so, then you haven’t read closely enough what I have written. Btw, if it is about me then you should be honest enough to say so openly because then I can point you to places where I have argued the opposite of what you supposedly contend about me.

  18. [Shame you couldn’t get Labor broadband (aka FTTN) which is what I have now. Download 95 – 100, Upload 35-40 ]
    Oops…I meant FTTP!

  22. this may be true in your case

    I think it’s true in my case as well. Which anecdotal evidence wins here?

    on refugee/resettlement camps in indonesia, turkey and india and tell people ‘get yourself to these’, and up the humanitarian intake of refugees.

    I don’t know about those specific locations, but I totally agree that we need to be putting a lot more money/resources into making the refugee camps – wherever they may occur due to whatever pressures arise – real places for people to make their homes for however long they need to, with hope for the future etc etc.

    This has been the terrible tragedy of the Syrian situation – those hundreds of thousands of people on the move didn’t all decide to go to Europe straight away – many of them waited in camps for years with deteriorating circumstances and a complete lack of any sense of a future. The world needed to do more. We needed to do more. No question at all there.

    And I also support a very substantial lift in our official humanitarian intake.

    But I also think we can not – must not – allow the boats to start up again.

    In 99% of cases

    Yeah. No.

  24. BB
    [Jolyon FTTN is the LNP variety FTTP is the ALP’s.]
    Thanks! But as you can see I had already realised my mistake 🙂

  25. Briefly – what happens to Pat in the event of a DD ?????? ……. he might have a very short term ???

    Not Briefly. But, i think Dodson is high enough up the ALP ticket that he is pretty much a certainty if the election is a DD? Dont know exactly how they work it out, but the consideration after that is whether he would be a 3 year or 6 year term Senator??

  28. http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/apr/29/refugee-who-set-himself-alight-on-nauru-dies-of-injuries-in-hospital?CMP=share_btn_tw

    Peter Dutton washes his hands of it all.

    His wife said doctors in Brisbane told her he was brain dead when he arrived, she said.

    She was brought to Brisbane also, and waited in the hospital with him, under guard.

    Some friends had spoken to her, she said, attempting to offer comfort before she was stopped from speaking.

    “Currently I am in isolation in way that I am not allowed to talk to anyone or do interviews,” she said. “They have taken away my mobile phone so no one can contact me and I am being observed constantly by the officers that are accompanying me.”

  29. Briefly @Friday, April 29, 2016 at 3:04 pm
    I wholeheartedly agree – and my preferred option is onshore community processing with the resources currently wasted on deterrence repurposed to protecting AS. This is, however, anathema to the majority of electors at present. The LNP has made it abundantly clear that they are incapable of altering their current pathetic stance. The only way to ameliorate the current crimes against humanity committed in our name is to vote out the LNP at the coming election. Labor is demonstrably the lesser of two evils, and, unlike the LNP, is capable of progressing.

  30. lizzie – there is a certain section of the political spectrum that likes to make those kinds of comparisons, but they are bogus. If you have, as we did, 20000+ people making the journey by boat in a year and say (conservatively) a 4% mortality rate, then you’re talking roughly 800 people a year drowning at sea.

    We don’t have 20000 people making the journey every year at the moment. We don’t have 800 people drowning every year.

    It is not an easy situation. There are no simple answers. Simplistic moral calculus is not helping.

  31. I missed this. No wonder we need a bloody Royal Commission, to make this twerp appear.

    CBA boss defends Senate inquiry no show

    AAP
    April 28, 2016 5:26PM
    Save
    Print

    Commonwealth Bank says its chief executive is willing to front a Senate inquiry into its insurance operations, despite his failure to attend a hearing on Thursday.

    CBA and Ian Narev were advised a week ago of the Sydney hearing into CommInsure and allegations it mishandled life insurance payouts, but told the committee they couldn’t appear until “early next week”.

    That would coincide with the federal budget.

    Committee chairman, Labor senator Chris Ketter, labelled the bank’s response “audacious and shameless”.

    CBA said it was not possible to rearrange Mr Narev’s diary at such short notice, and he had other commitments.

    “Our CEO Ian Narev has always said that he is willing to appear before the committee to discuss our submission, and answer any further questions the committee members may have,” a CBA spokesperson said.

  32. C@tmomma
    [Still, to try and use that romantic argument from that time and to apply it to today’s situation is misleading and disingenuous.]

    According to whom?

  35. phoenixRED @ Friday, April 29, 2016 at 3:14 pm

    briefly Friday, April 29, 2016 at 3:04 pm
    I attended the election of Senator Dodson yesterday at the WA Parliament
    **************************************************
    Briefly – what happens to Pat in the event of a DD ?????? ……. he might have a very short term ???

    Yes, his term would end with the dissolution of the Senate. He has the No 3 spot (I believe) on the WA Labor ticket and is sure to be elected. Louise Pratt offered to make way for Dodson so her election is less certain. For mine, I’m very confident she will also be elected. Labor need about 30.8% of the vote to secure 4 seats.

  36. @K17

    I highly doubt that david will go for FOD upgrade, because according to NBN own estimates only a couple of have one so, this is because that NBN Co doesn’t want people to use Fibre at all.

  37. Guardian Australia ‏@GuardianAus 20m20 minutes ago

    Chasing Asylum: documentary reveals impact of Australia’s detention regime – video trailer

    Guardian Australia ‏@GuardianAus 18m18 minutes ago

    North Korea jails American citizen for 10 years on spying charge

    Herald Sun ‏@theheraldsun 24m24 minutes ago

    How geoblocking is screwing Australian internet users over

    Robert Huggan ‏@Rob_Eureka 48m48 minutes ago

    Productivity Commission calls for drug patent overhaul http://ow.ly/4ndX5o Making patent expiry dates clear would save court costs too
    Elle Hunt ‏@mlle_elle 58m58 minutes ago

    The Productivity Commission says the government should oppose geoblocking when piracy is driven by “frustration”

  38. Mr Turnbull also emphasised the record of the former Labor government, citing “50,000 unauthorised arrivals” and “thousands of deaths at sea”.

    Does anyone have the actual figures?

  40. Louise Pratt offered to make way for Dodson so her election is less certain. For mine, I’m very confident she will also be elected.

    I hope she does. I was pissed enough at the Bullock thing to fill out the whole Senate paper at the last election just to put him well down the list.

  41. rhwombat

    The only way to ameliorate the current crimes against humanity committed in our name is to vote out the LNP at the coming election. Labor is demonstrably the lesser of two evils, and, unlike the LNP, is capable of progressing.

    I agree with this, but I would also point out that trying to point score LNP vs ALP is a bit futile here. Both the LNP and the ALP are simply reflecting the broad wishes of their constituents on this issue.

    You can argue degrees of humanity between the two major parties policies, but to pretend that they are not broadly reflecting the views of the electorate is simply not true. The polls show this repeatedly. This means that there will be no substantial change in policy by either major party unless and until the electorate changes its collective minds. And given the scale of the population migrations we will be facing in our own region in a few short decades, I don’t think this is very likely.

  43. lizzie

    As I recall, asylum seekers were turned into potential terrorists by the Abbott government.

    I expect Maldemort will take up that cudgel as well should his polling get any worse.

  47. lizzie @ Friday, April 29, 2016 at 3:39 pm

    Mr Turnbull also emphasised the record of the former Labor government, citing “50,000 unauthorised arrivals” and “thousands of deaths at sea”.

    Does anyone have the actual figures?

    It’s all very well of Turnbot to talk about the past. The question that will face us all, once more, is what do we do now? The extra-territorial gulag has been closed down. Will we build one within our own jurisdiction? How will this go with the High Court? How will institutionalised and exemplary cruelty be accepted? How will it be prosecuted? It was difficult to get away with this in offshore facilities. How can it be done in domestic domains?

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