BludgerTrack: 50.6-49.4 to Labor

The BludgerTrack poll aggregate continued to inch its way in favour of Labor in the lead-up to Tuesday night’s budget.

There was a pre-budget lull in the federal polling storm this week, but the BludgerTrack aggregate has nonetheless had the regularly scheduled Roy Morgan and Essential Research results to play with. Both recorded next to no change on last time, and the changes on all indicators of voting intention have been barely measurable. Despite that, the seat projection has Labor up one in New South Wales, Tasmania and Western Australia (the results in the latter being particularly remarkable at present), but down two on the back of a very small voting intention shift in highly sensitive Queensland. Last week I reported that I was going to start counting Fairfax as a Liberal National Party seat, so today’s announcement by Clive Palmer that he would not be recontesting the seat was very timely. The result is that the Coalition is down one seat on last week rather than two, and “others” is now recorded as four seats rather than five. Nothing new this week in the way of leadership ratings.

bludgertrack-2016-05-05

Preselection news:

• Liberal MP Ann Sudmalis has had her preselection confirmed for her south coast New South Wales seat of Gilmore, after suggestions she faced a moderate-backed challenge arising from her perceived public criticism of the Baird government over council amalgamations. The Prime Minister had made it known that he did not wish for any move against Sudmalis to proceed, out of concern at factional tensions being stoked ahead of the election. Two state Liberals, Kiama MP Gareth Ward and Bega MP Andrew Constance, are reportedly eyeing the succession to Sudmalis in 2019. You can read a lot more about this electorate in yesterday’s Seat du jour.

• The Liberal Party’s trial preselection plebiscite of party members in Parramatta has been won by Michael Beckwith, development operations manager for Lend Lease. The other candidates were Jean Pierre Abood, a Parramatta councillor; Charles Camenzuli, a structural engineer and building consultant who ran in 2010; Maroun Draybi, a local solicitor and hardline conservative; and Felicity Finlay, a school teacher. You can view the recent Seat du jour entry on Parramatta here.

• The Liberals have preselected Yvonne Keane, deputy mayor of The Hills Shire and former television presenter, for the western Sydney seat of Greenway. Keane was also a preselection aspirant in 2013, but the numbers were sewn up by the power bloc of Blacktown councillor Jess Diaz on behalf of his son, Jaymes Diaz. Following a disastrous campaign, Diaz suffered a 2.1% swing in favour of Labor incumbent Michelle Rowland in this highly marginal seat. Step this way for today’s Seat du jour entry on the seat.

• The Nationals preselection to replacing the retiring John Cobb in Calare has been won by Andrew Gee, the state member for Orange, ahead of Orange councillor Scott Munro, Wellington councillor Alison Conn and Bathurst businessman Sam Farraway.

• John Hassell, Pingelly grain farmer and CBH Board director, is the Nationals candidate for the regional Western Australian seat of O’Connor, which was won for the party by Tony Crook from Liberal veteran Wilson Tuckey in 2010, then lost to Rick Wilson of the Liberals when Crook bowed out after a single term in 2013. Hassell has pledged to serve as an “independent WA National” if elected.

• The Canberra Times reports that the Liberals have endorsed candidates for the two seats in the Australian Capital Territory: Livestock and Bulk Carriers Association director Robert Gunning in Fenner, and lawyer Jessica Adelan-Langford in Canberra.

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.

1,178 comments on “BludgerTrack: 50.6-49.4 to Labor”

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  1. Look, I know that there are all these good economists out there, but how come the only one we ever seem to hear from is Chris friggin’ Richardson?

  2. Greg Hunt only supports ideas that will not disturb Coalition donors.

    Pressure is mounting on the Tasmanian Government to stop logging native forests inhabited by swift parrots after the Federal Government reclassified the species as “critically endangered”.

    Scientists at the Australian National University put the case for the upgraded listing to Environment Minister Greg Hunt, who confirmed it yesterday.

    It came after Forestry Tasmania failed to gain Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) certification, in part due to concerns over a lack of protection for swift parrots in old-growth clear-felling areas.

    The parrots only breed in Tasmania and it is estimated there are less than 2,000 left.

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-06/logging-agenda-under-pressure-over-swift-parrot/7391494

  3. C@Tmomma

    Thank you. I like to keep up as much as I can, and in this ‘exciting time’, events may move fast (chortle).

    As far as Mal’s visit to the GG – are we there yet?

  4. Raaraa

    I think these are all regional list seats and will go overwhelmingly to the minor parties. SNP has one list seat so far in the Highlands and Islands. It may get some more.

    hmm BBC just recorded 3 more SNP seats to 63 (need 2 more for majority) ,,, and Cons to 27 !!!

  7. To anyone reading poll bludger using Firefox, do you notice an icon of a speaker with a line striked through it on the tab? Is there media playing in the background that I don’t know about?

  10. Whatever the policy differences between Cruz and Trump and all the others, it’s a party that still trades in a political religion: the idea that, if the country could only get back to its founding principles, prosperity and dominance would burst forth once again. Its opposing party is a ramshackle centre-right social market party, currently besieged from within by a social democrat movement that the US calls socialism. Though it is shot through with deals and clientelism, it is still a party that believes that governing is a practical matter of policy and real-world conditions.

    The two parties don’t merely have different policies; they are different sorts of things, different activities in the world, a cult versus an administrative subcontracting outfit.

    http://www.crikey.com.au/2016/05/06/scott-morrisonsbudget-is-boring/

  12. Raaraa Friday, May 6, 2016 at 5:39 pm

    To anyone reading poll bludger using Firefox, do you notice an icon of a speaker with a line striked through it on the tab? Is there media playing in the background that I don’t know about?

    I use Firefox and no I don’t see that icon.

  13. Kevin-one-seven

    Is Saul Eslake the only honest professional economist running around out there?

    John Quiggin
    Bill Mitchell

  14. The budget and Australian politics are currently a kind of militant, organised boredom, because both parties agree to leave so much out of the mix. Overwhelmingly, neither party will address the major paradox of Australian social life: that though people are told they’ve never had it so good, everyone under about $200k a year feels squeezed by a system that has no give. The working poor and low-income earners have no savings and no security, little access to the real tools of social mobility; the working middle class that the parties compete for are squeezed by mortgages, student debt, exploding childcare costs, horrendous commuting times — a lot of “prosperous” Australians live ant-like lives, which are the direct consequence of a failure to share the common wealth of the resources boom and general growth, through social capital and universal provision.

    Nothing offered by either party goes much in the way to solve that. Labor, especially, is ducking the reckoning it needs to have with its 30-year role as the loyal opposition of neoliberalism. One wouldn’t expect the Coalition as it currently stands to offer real answers to this wider problem — it, too, will start to retreat into fantasy politics, if its leaders cannot or will not redirect it. Our politics is petty, but the problems we face are not, and that creates this bizarre situation in which tax brackets acquire the status of Mao’s 1949 entry into Beijing.

    http://www.crikey.com.au/2016/05/06/scott-morrisonsbudget-is-boring/

  20. Some of the Government appointments to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal announced today look a little partisan.
    http://www.crikey.com.au/2016/05/06/pre-election-clearance-sale-roles-must-filled/

    In a single press release, Brandis announced 76 appointments or re-appointments to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

    This includes:

    Denis Dragovic — appointed to the AAT full time for seven years after losing a battle for Liberal Party preselection to Tim Wilson in the seat of Goldstein;
    Judith Troeth — former Liberal senator, appointed to the AAT for five years, part time;
    Theodore Tavoularis — a former in-house counsel to the Freemasons, appointed to the AAT for five years, full time;
    John Sosso — former director-general of the Justice and Attorney-General’s Department in Queensland, appointed by Campbell Newman and sacked by Labor, part time on the AAT board for seven years;
    Saxon Rice — former Queensland LNP MP ousted in the last Queensland election by Labor’s Stephen Miles. Appointed to the AAT part time for seven years;
    Ann Brandon-Baker — former chief of staff to Treasurer Scott Morrison when he was immigration minister. Appointed to the AAT part time for five years;
    Louise Bygrave — former staffer for Tim Wilson when he was Human Rights Commissioner. Appointed to the AAT part time for five years;
    Michael Manetta — unsuccessfully ran for South Australian Parliament as a Liberal last year. Appointed to the AAT part time for five years; and
    Adrienne Millbank — has called for Australia to ditch the UN convention on refugees. AAT appointment for five years, part time.

  22. [Look, I know that there are all these good economists out there, but how come the only one we ever seem to hear from is Chris friggin’ Richardson?]

    Terry Mccaan from the tele, the Reserve Bank always check his column on the first Tuesday each month before they make their decision.

  28. It will take at least a week or two for the impact of the budget to flow through tho the polling. In the meantime, the Libs will be saying its a jobs and growth budget without explaining why.

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