Private polling round-up: Bass, Sturt, Mayo, Cowan

Privately conducted ReachTEL polls point to cliffhanger results in a number of key seats, as Liberal members struggle to fend off Labor in Western Australia and Tasmania and the Nick Xenophon Team in South Australia.

There should a lot of entertainment in store for poll watchers in the form of national polling over the coming days, and we’ve had a few appetisers over the night with scattered reports of privately commissioned electorate-level polling conducted by ReachTEL. Due caution must be allowed for the fact that some of the polls were conducted several weeks ago, and all were commissioned by left-of-centre concerns who might feel more inclined to publicise their poll results when they like what they show. With that in mind:

• The freshest of the batch is a poll crediting Labor with a 51-49 lead in the northern Tasmanian seat of Bass. This suggests a 5% swing against Liberal member Andrew Nikolic, who gained it with a 10.8% swing in 2013. The poll was conducted on Tuesday for GetUp! from a sample of 824.

• The Advertiser reports troubling numbers for the Liberals from South Australia in further polling conducted for GetUp! Christopher Pyne is credited with 41% of the primary vote in his seat of Sturt, compared with 21% for Nick Xenophon Team candidate Matthew Wright and 20% for Labor’s Matt Loader and 8% for the Greens. In Mayo, Liberal member Jamie Briggs is at 40%, against 23.5% for Rebekha Sharkie of the Nick Xenophon Team, 18% for Labor and 10% for the Greens. Either seat would be under threat from NXT on those numbers, provided their candidates were able to get ahead of Labor. The scale of the threat would also depend on whether the remainders include an undecided component, as is usually the case in ReachTEL’s electorate polling. If so, distributing the undecided would push the Liberal primary vote up high enough that they would most likely make it over the line, although only just. The Sturt poll was conducted on May 22 from a sample of 762, and the Mayo poll was on May 16 from a sample of 681.

• The West Australian reports a poll of the Perth seat of Cowan credited Labor’s Anne Aly with a 51-49 lead over Liberal member Luke Simkins, whose 7.5% margin has been pared back to 4.0% in the redistribution. The implied swing of 5% is actually at the low end of the Labor’s recent form in polling from Western Australia. However, this poll is showing its age a little, having been conducted on May 10 for the United Voice union from a sample of 731. The West’s report also relates that the Liberals’ internal pollsters, Crosby-Textor, have recorded a 6% swing to Labor in the new seat of Burt, which has a notional Liberal margin of 4.9%.

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.

465 comments on “Private polling round-up: Bass, Sturt, Mayo, Cowan”

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  1. “It doesn’t matter much what the Greens say on their HTV tickets because Green voters have a habit of deciding for themselves.”

    Pfft, the main point of Greens HTVs is so that Laboristas can feel moral outrage. Surely that’s self-evident.

  3. Scott Bales
    #348 Friday, June 3, 2016 at 4:36 pm
    It must be confusing to be Labor. Sometimes the claim is they are just like the Greens. At others the claim is that Greens and the Libs are the same.

    The truth is there is the Greens. And there are those who hope to defeat the Greens

    Typical of the Greens, take something from Labor and claim it as Greens…

    Tom

  4. This tweet demonstrates what’s wrong with Vote Compass AND the Greens:

    Adam Bandt @AdamBandt
    “ALP pulling out of ABC’s Vote Compass as it accurately suggests many supporters shd vote Greens over penalty rates..”

  5. Scott, how typically unoriginal. The G’s mimic Labor all the time and then deride Labor for being too close to the LNP.

    There is Labor. There are those who offer forgeries of Labor and those who just try to erase Labor.

    Which are you?

  6. Scott Bales Friday, June 3, 2016 at 4:18 pm
    @ MrMoney – yes, people would use the term swing to describe 52 -> 53 and for 48 -> 49.
    I too expect LNP have clawed some back, but only because it would be more consistent with the 49-51 polling that has been consistently occurring for weeks. 53-47 is wipeout territory and I don’t think the past week has been enough to cause that.

    **********************************************************
    Isn’t the whole theory of what this election is about thus ??????? :

    Bill Shorten needs to convince just 30,000 voters to switch from the Coalition to Labor to win the election and become Australia’s sixth prime minister in six years.

    But, as with the perfect recipe, he needs precise quantities in ­exactly the right 21 marginal seats.

    Winning votes in safe Labor seats or gaining minor ground in the Liberal heartland gets him no closer to The Lodge.

    And the whole issue/problem is to convince THEM to vote ALP ?????? is THAT happening and if not – why not ?????? !!!

  7. “Pfft, the main point of Greens HTVs is so that Laboristas can feel moral outrage. Surely that’s self-evident.” It wasn’t to me, but it is now. Thanks, Martin!

  9. Once Stalin gave his generals strategic freedom to fight the battles things turned for them. That plus life was cheep.

  10. rebecca @ #234 Friday, June 3, 2016 at 2:02 pm

    Raaraa: Xenophon ceded any claim to solidly deserving left preferences in 2013 by running Stirling Griff because of his views on penalty rates and ties to the business lobby. This was hardly a Steve Fielding/David Risstrom situation: while Bob Day is obviously worse than Griff on social issues, there’s not that much daylight between them that I’d judge any party for going with deals that might get actual lefties elected.

    I completely understand the points you’ve raised, and being in Victoria, NXT doesn’t have much relevance to me. However, the discussion is around the seats in SA where Labor or the Greens have no chance of winning, but IMO having NXT unseat these Lib members would be the most beneficial in disrupting the Coalition’s path to majority government.

  13. Actually, scratch that #360.

    I did raise the point of the moral ground of Labor/Greens over NXT by not preferencing for Griff or any other X Senate candidates through the 2013 senate tickets.

    However, if I recall correctly, some right-wing parties got preferenced ahead of Griff & co, to my confusion. So it wasn’t strictly left over right.

  14. I once lived next door to a lovely German family – Dad was Walter who was a member of the Hitler Youth who got posted out to the Easter Front in the latter days when the Germans were in retreat. He told me many vivid stories of his times but he said he was assigned to a machine gun company and said when the Russians attacked it was a human wave as wide as the eyes could see …….. they were burning out gun barrels what seemed like every 15 seconds – killing hundreds but they just kept coming – he still had nightmares – and tears in his eyes – recalling it. He managed to get back to Berlin and was eventually captured ( so luckily he said ) by the Americans – who stole his chronometer and family ring ……

    I heard pretty much the same story from a German man who used to work for me. Martin was in the Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler Division (Waffen SS). He said he joined for the uniform. He was 17 when he joined.

    He was a machine gunner and told me the same story of mounds of Russian dead, calling for their mothers. If it affected him badly, it didn’t show readily. He was the most affable, mild-mannered man I have ever met. He used to open doors for me, clicking his heels, until I asked him to stop it. I never saw him upset except once when he told me that if he could find the pusher supplying his son with heroin he’d kill him “instantly”.

    He should have been killed in the first week, but survived Yugoslavia, the Battle of the Bulge and was finally captured in Budapest – only because the wounded Luftwaffe guy next to him was shot as the medics picked him up. Martin inherited the Luftwaffe greatcoat from the dead flyer, to keep warm. When Martin was in prison hospital the Russians came around taking the SS soldiers out in the courtyard to shoot. When they got to him he said he was a cook in the Luftwaffe (making a potato-peeling motion to them).

    He went to Siberia for 5 years instead, was released, made his way to Australia and got a job with the PMG as a linesman out along country roads. He told me he couldn’t believe they got steak, sausages and eggs for breakfast every morning, laid on by the PMG. He said that in Siberia they were lucky to receive 2 bowls of thin soup a week.

    He lived until 90, and died in his sleep.

  16. Xenophon ceded any claim to solidly deserving left preferences in 2013 by running Stirling Griff because of his views on penalty rates and ties to the business lobby.

    SenX has since said he is in favour retaining penalty rates. Admittedly he conceded this on Qanda in front of a live, nationally televised audience. But still, it’s his public admission.

    I don’t know what his candidates feel about penalty rates however. I believe Sharkie was once a staffer to Briggs so anything’s possible as to her views.

  18. So sounds like there’s a good chance that Reachtel will join Morgan and Essential in swinging back towards the government. Not so bad if it’s only to 51-49 I guess, but three polls moving in the same direction isn’t a great sign.

  19. Regarding ReachTEL, I think there was a general perception last time that the primaries did not support the 52-48 headline figure. So a correction would seem most likely. I’m tipping 50-50. If it’s any worse than that, coming on top of the Essential dip, I think Labor could be in strife.

  20. SK:

    My wish for the Secular Party is more about them being able to stand candidates in lower house seats like mine which give me a genuine preferencing alternative to the Greens. Unless there is a solid independent candidate, there’s no option for me other than to hold my nose and preference the Greens.

    The Senate is a different story. I can happily preference the Secular Party in the Senate, but not in my HoR electorate.

  21. Simon Katich
    #365 Friday, June 3, 2016 at 4:59 pm
    fess
    the Sex Party have some third way options for you.

    Has to be the post of the day so far 🙂

    Tom.

  22. Swings to Labor in safe seats but not in the marginals are wasted votes
    Still, if you believe what you read, the Coalition are effectively sandbagging a lot of their knife edge electorates

  23. but three polls moving in the same direction isn’t a great sign.

    I’d like to think it’s the ‘narrowing’ now that peeps are starting to focus on the election, but I still reckon people are largely disengaged. In this corner of the country you’d never guess there was an election campaign going on apart from the local member’s zealous Facebooking of himself all over the electorate.

    In yesterday’s local paper the political story was the preselection of the Nationals’ candidate. For next year’s state election!

  24. Evan P:

    It’s been reported that Textor is running a marginal seat campaign for the LNP. For whatever that’s worth.

  26. tricot @ #239 Friday, June 3, 2016 at 2:11 pm

    And for those that think that the ABC is a nest of leftie radicals…caught the latter part of a program on RN with Savva, Van O and Kelly (Paul) all sometime contributors to the Oz newspaper, discussing a topic along the lines of “Leadership and the Oz Electoral System”. Apparently, this was recorded just recently at the Sydney Writers’ Festival or some such. Most of the time was spent ruing the lost years of the Abbott leadership and what coulda, shoulda, woulda have happened if Abbott had been able to transition to becoming a “leader”. They all kind of admitted that Abbott did not have what it took (now there is a surprise) but I almost choked when they all agreed that Abbott really, really was a “humble man”. Anyway, three Liberal Fan Club Members with their own, uninterrupted gig on good old Auntie. I suppose this is the ABC being even-handed. I think they should give Bolt a gig once a day, at say round 5 pm, to provide his considered opinion? I think that would about take care of the “bias” shrieks from the the LNP as far as the ABC is concerned.

    This, and many like it on PB are as stupid as the rant I heard on ABC774.
    A loon from the ALA (I think) or some other RWNJ / Fascist organisation was having a big moan about an ALP advertisement on SBS TV having subtitles in Arabic and this being symptomatic of us being over-run by Islam …yadda, yadda, yadda.

    Then the true picture was given, fortunately, by another listener.

    The advertisement was shown in the middle of the SBS Arabic news!

    And so, dare I suggest, that the Sydney Writers Festival discussion that causes you so much angst was also similarly in context?

    Naaah, better some crazed conspiracy theory to explain it.

  27. Dont pay any attention to me at the moment ‘fess. Its the Kahlua talking. As soon as Reachtel comes out I will go back to my Kahlua and leave you all in peace.

  29. Given the poor performance of the PM during this campaign I don’t quite understand any swing back to the coalition, except the fact that the media is till in love with the ‘idea’ of Turnbull and have up-to-now been fairly lenient on his poor performance.

    The general populace sees barely a 20th f what we tragics see – so they are basically ignorant of the difference between the two campaigns even though we see it clearly.

  31. DTT: “Player
    Has it just not possibly occurred to you that maybe your views ARE closer to the Greens than those of Labor. ”

    It’s interesting, isn’t it? In many ways the existence of the Greens on their left allows the ALP to cater for more of the centre right than it would otherwise be able to do without huge internal factional battles. Despite the bitching, and the occasional inner city seat kerfuffle, I’m sure many in the upper echelon are more than happy for the Greens to pick up the left votes from them , as long as they give 75 to 80% back as preferences. Leaves ’em more room to play around for votes in the centre / centre right, and makes it harder for the Libs to pretend they are “reds in disguise”.

    The “Green bogeyman” campaign through eulogising the silly “Malaysian solution” and the original feeble Rudd CPRS as if they were real answers that the Greens stopped even still helps to keep some who otherwise would have jumped off the port side of the ship on board.

    To be fair to the ALP such strategies make a lot of electoral sense, and the Greens still aren’t particularly good at countering them, though perhaps the growing kerfuffle over the inner city (which is really more about changing demography than anything else) will make it harder for the ALP to pursue in future.

    .

  33. Evan,

    The test of whether the Libs are effective with their sandbagging is the outcome on July 2.

    Until then, it’s all a cunning plan.

  34. SK/’fess

    Kahlua? I seriously don’t know how anyone can drink that stuff.

    Long ago I had a girlfriend who used to drink it with milk and no ice!

  36. YOU KNOW something’s got to be up with a particular policy when the Prime Minister has to continuously lie in public about it.

    So it has been with the Turnbull Government’s abolition of the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal. The entire campaign against the Tribunal and its Road Safety Remuneration Order setting safe minimum rates for owner drivers, as orchestrated by employer groups and the Federal Government, was one of misinformation and scaremongering.

    Now that it is gone, Malcolm Turnbull has taken to openly lying about the Tribunal’s legacy stating on live television on Sunday during the leaders debate, that it “put 50,000 owner drivers out of business”.

    He also lied to Parliament the day after the Tribunal was abolished when he said:

    “Thousands and thousands of trucks were idle. Thousands and thousands of businesses were out of business.”

    …for Turnbull, the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal delivered a double-edged sword. It’s something he can say he has actually done but what in fact he has achieved, is the axing of minimum rates for poorly paid drivers, the quashing of accountability for wealthy companies and the termination of a system aimed at making our roads safer.

    Drivers, transport operators and road safety campaigners have fought for 20 years for clients to be held accountable for their low rates which cost lives and make the job unsustainable. One decision by an ideologically-driven Government will not stop the fight to make trucking safer.

    https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/axing-the-road-safety-remuneration-tribunal-turnbulls-lie,9068#.V1EwJC9yKpY.twitter

  38. daretotread @ #311 Friday, June 3, 2016 at 3:47 pm

    Privi
    Yes Option 4 might be a decent Greens strategy, but I guess that would be just as true of Labor. Maybe the greens and labor could do a deal like that in SA.
    Trouble is that BOTH parties want Liberal preferences in the inner city of Sydney and Melbourne.

    It’s only natural that either parties want Liberal preferences if they’re the TPPs since they’re not going to receive preferences from each other.

  39. scott bales @ #348 Friday, June 3, 2016 at 4:36 pm

    It must be confusing to be Labor. Sometimes the claim is they are just like the Greens. At others the claim is that Greens and the Libs are the same.
    The truth is there is the Greens. And there are those who hope to defeat the Greens

    And I just saw the train wreck press conference by Richard Di Natale in Perth today where he displayed the economic nous of a Gnat, dismissing airily the need to ever get the Budget back into balance or Surplus, because, ‘Nation Building Infrastructure!’

    Money and confetti appear to be interchangeable commodities in Green World.

    The truth is, there are The Greens, and then there are serious political parties.

  41. martin b @ #349 Friday, June 3, 2016 at 4:38 pm

    “A solid core of 5-10% who are Greens voters and are pretty committed PLUS a “plague on both houses” set of voters who will swing to the flavour of the month party. In 2010 it was Green, in 2013 it was PUP, this year it will be NXT or Lambie.”
    Or, increasingly Sex. There’s also an even smaller group of ‘Libs for Forests’ voters who will never vote ALP but occasionally see the Greens as a decent place to park a protest vote against the LNP.

    Do the Libs for Forests group still exists? I can understand people of those views still existing, but is the movement as a whole still out there?

  42. “Swings to Labor in safe seats but not in the marginals are wasted votes
    Still, if you believe what you read, the Coalition are effectively sandbagging a lot of their knife edge electorates”

    Not completely wasted as all those votes help elect Labor senators, but I understand what you are saying.

  44. Gotta laugh?

    Richard Chirgwin ‏@R_Chirgwin · 6m6 minutes ago

    As befits Malcolm’s party, the Libs’ NBN policy is no ordinary bullshit: it’s artisanal-grade bullshit collected from hand-reared Wagyu.

  46. bemused @ #376 Friday, June 3, 2016 at 5:15 pm

    tricot @ #239 Friday, June 3, 2016 at 2:11 pm

    And for those that think that the ABC is a nest of leftie radicals…caught the latter part of a program on RN with Savva, Van O and Kelly (Paul) all sometime contributors to the Oz newspaper, discussing a topic along the lines of “Leadership and the Oz Electoral System”. Apparently, this was recorded just recently at the Sydney Writers’ Festival or some such. Most of the time was spent ruing the lost years of the Abbott leadership and what coulda, shoulda, woulda have happened if Abbott had been able to transition to becoming a “leader”. They all kind of admitted that Abbott did not have what it took (now there is a surprise) but I almost choked when they all agreed that Abbott really, really was a “humble man”. Anyway, three Liberal Fan Club Members with their own, uninterrupted gig on good old Auntie. I suppose this is the ABC being even-handed. I think they should give Bolt a gig once a day, at say round 5 pm, to provide his considered opinion? I think that would about take care of the “bias” shrieks from the the LNP as far as the ABC is concerned.

    This, and many like it on PB are as stupid as the rant I heard on ABC774.
    A loon from the ALA (I think) or some other RWNJ / Fascist organisation was having a big moan about an ALP advertisement on SBS TV having subtitles in Arabic and this being symptomatic of us being over-run by Islam …yadda, yadda, yadda.
    Then the true picture was given, fortunately, by another listener.
    The advertisement was shown in the middle of the SBS Arabic news!
    And so, dare I suggest, that the Sydney Writers Festival discussion that causes you so much angst was also similarly in context?
    Naaah, better some crazed conspiracy theory to explain it.

    There is no way you can properly put back into the fray from the people who thinks that Arabic = muslim.

    Australia has a significantly-sized Arabic speaking population who happen to be non-muslim.

  47. daretotread @ #294 Friday, June 3, 2016 at 3:33 pm

    Player
    Has it just not possibly occurred to you that maybe your views ARE closer to the Greens than those of Labor. I think that you would find that 60% of current ALP members had views much closer to the Greens than to the published platforms of the ALP. What keeps us still plugging away for Labor is that we know that in part labor has had to take these positions to stay electable, especially when they were fighting a crazy like Abbott.
    The problem for labor is that with the arrrival of the Greens, it is much harder to play the electoral “sweep under carpet” game.
    Possibly of course there should have been more questions in the compass that allow for better discrimination between green and labor. However I guess they shoud ONLY be issues that are relevant in this 2016 election.

    DTT, I know you are an ALP member, but the way you continue to espouse views that would be anathema to most ALP members are just amazing.

  48. “Do the Libs for Forests group still exists? I can understand people of those views still existing, but is the movement as a whole still out there?”

    I don’t believe the group exists, no, I was using the term as a description of a type rather than an organisation.

  49. ‘fess, you have told me your dislike for Kahlua before. But I am not budging.

    Besides, I found 3 bottles of it from a long ago overseas duty free splurge so it simply must be drunk – and no-one else likes the stuff.

    I might try it on the cat tho’.

  50. I’d like to know the ratings of RN since it took a sharp turn to the political right a few years ago. I can’t imagine that the type of people who’d listen to it would put up with the content these days. Who would their audience be?

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