BludgerTrack: 50.1-49.9 to Labor

Newspoll’s 50-50 was matched yesterday by Essential Research, and the BludgerTrack poll aggregate continues to say much the same.

BludgerTrack is now updated with all of the federal polling published over the past few days, results of which are displayed at the bottom of this post. As has been the case since at least the start of the campaign period, the tracker is resolute in recording an effective dead heat on two-party preferred, with the seat projection continuing to point towards a slender absolute majority for the Coalition. The latest addition to the aggregate is the weekly reading of Essential Research’s fortnightly rolling aggregate, which echoes BludgerTrack in coming in at 50-50 on two-party preferred. This follows a two-point movement the previous week that turned a 51-49 Coalition deficit into a 51-49 Coalition lead. On the primary vote, the Coalition is steady at 41%, Labor is up one to 36%, the Greens are up one to 9%, and the Nick Xenophon Team is steady on 4%.

Further questions offer some encouragement for Bill Shorten with respect to perceptions of the two leaders during the campaign, although I wonder how good respondents are at isolating that period specifically. The results find 20% saying they have become more favourable towards Shorten versus 21% for less favourable, but these are much better than Malcolm Turnbull’s respective figures of 7% and 33%. Another dose of Essential’s “party trust to handle issues” records a big drop in the Coalition’s lead on managing the economy since a month ago, down from 20% to 12%, with most other measures remaining fairly stable. An occasional question on climate change records a four point drop since March in those attributing it to human activity to 59%, and a one point increase in those favouring the alternative option of it being “a normal fluctuation in the earth’s climate” to 28%. Most of the survey period was before large parts of Sydney’s northern beaches crumbled into the sea. Further questions confirm the impression that the electorate has been less than fully switched on during the first half of the campaign marathon, with only 14% claiming to have shown a lot of interest in the campaign, compared with 39% for some interest, 27% for very little interest and 18% for no interest.

Federal election bits and pieces:

• Labor’s candidate in Malcolm Turnbull’s seat of Wentworth, Evan Hughes, has provided Fairfax with results of a ReachTEL poll he commissioned showing a 10% swing against Turnbull, reducing his margin from 18% to 8%. The poll was conducted last Tuesday from a sample of 626.

• Steven Scott of the Courier-Mail reports Labor optimism about the regional Queensland seats of Capricornia and Herbert is not matched for the state’s capital. The northern suburbs seat of Petrie, held by the LNP on a margin of 0.5%, is identified as a seat where Labor is falling short. A similar prognosis was offered in my own paywalled article in Crikey on Thursday.

• More of my words of wisdom on the campaign can be found on a podcast for The Conversation, and in a review of northern Tasmania’s flood-stricken marginal seats in a paywalled Crikey article yesterday.

• Mark the Ballot tracks Sportsbet’s win probabilities for all 150 electorates to the start of the campaign. Sportsbet has substantially revised its odds over the course of the campaign in favour of the Liberals in Banks, Hindmarsh and Lyons, the Liberal National Party in Leichhardt, the Greens in Batman, Labor in Cowan, and Bob Katter in Kennedy.

• Fairfax reports the Victorian Liberal Party’s administration committee discussed, but ultimately decided against, disendorsing McEwen candidate Chris Jermyn following his struggles before the news cameras as he gatecrashed a Bill Shorten event in Sunbury last weekend.

• An alleged promise by South Australian property developer Roostam Sadri to donate $500,000 to the Liberal Democratic Party in exchange for the top position on its South Australian Senate ticket has been referred to police by the Australian Electoral Commission, as reported yesterday by Josh Taylor of Crikey. This followed last week’s publication by Fairfax of an apparent written agreement to that effect. Sadri denies having paid such an amount, or that there was ever a “formal agreement”. The section of the Electoral Act pertaining to bribery offences provides, with helpful exactitude, that “a person shall not ask for, receive or obtain, or offer or agree to ask for, or receive or obtain, any property or benefit of any kind, whether for the same or any other person, on an understanding that the order in which the names of candidates nominated for election to the Senate whose names are included in a group in accordance with section 168 appear on a ballot paper will, in any manner, be influenced or affected”. Graeme Orr of the University of Queensland’s TC Beirne School of Law notes that Section 362 of the Act states that candidates forfeit their seats if involved in bribery, and that this requires only the civil rather than the criminal standard of proof. This could equally apply to David Leyonhjelm’s bid for re-election in New South Wales as to Roostam Sadri’s run in South Australia, if the Fairfax report’s assertion that Leyonhjelm “considered entering” an agreement was substantiated.

Further afield:

• The Northern Territory News offers a reminder that a territory election looms on August 27, and the Northern Territory News offers a helpful reminder with a Mediareach poll of 400 respondents in the Alice Springs electorates of Araluen and Braitling. The pollster appears to have failed to ask a follow-up question to prompt the 23% undecided, rendering it of little value, but it’s presumably instructive that less than 40% of decided respondents said they would vote for the Country Liberal Party, compared with 68% at the 2012 election.

• The Sydney Morning Herald reports the NSW Electoral Commission is investigating allegations of vote-rigging during Labor’s American primary-style “community preselection” process for the seat of Ballina ahead of last year’s state election. It is alleged that a party official used details on enrolled voters from the party’s database to fraudulently vote on their behalf during the online ballot, although the unnamed official is quoted saying he had merely “played along” when asked to do so by persons unidentified. The proposed beneficiary was the favoured candidate of head office and the ultimate victor in the preselection, Paul Spooner, with no suggestion that Spooner himself was involved. The formerly Nationals-held seat went on to be won by the Greens.

bludgertrack-2016-06-08

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.

1,653 comments on “BludgerTrack: 50.1-49.9 to Labor”

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  1. “The government has given the Country Fire Authority board until 5pm to accept the controversial deal with the firefighters’ union — or face dismissal.”
    You’d like to think that kind of intimidation would be illegal. Is Stalin the Premier of Victoria?

  4. guytaur @ #1589 Friday, June 10, 2016 at 5:57 pm

    WarrenPeace
    John Adams was advisor to Arthur Sinodinos and says thats the mail he is getting from the majority inside the party. A gold comment for Labor.

    Mr John Adams seemed to me to be a disgruntled former liberal adviser. He appeared to be truthful in his utterances. What’s going on?

  7. I think the donkey vote will be less due to party logos being on the ballot.

    So it will matter less in more seats. Its only knife edge marginals that it will have any affect of course.

  8. JimmyDoyle
    I said last night that people are sick to death with the two parties and are looking for something different and NXT is one of them.

  9. WOW!!

    GhostWhoVotes @GhostWhoVotes
    “#ReachTEL Poll Seat of Grey 2 Party Preferred: LIB 46 (-17.5 from 2013) NXT 54 (+54) #ausvotes”

  10. diogenes @ #1590 Friday, June 10, 2016 at 5:57 pm

    BB
    Often for a very bad outcome, lots of systems have to fail and it looks like the shooting of the psychiatric patient is one of them. I still can’t work out why he wasn’t tasered. He didn’t have a gun so it’s not like they had to immediately immobilise him. It’s a very sad case.

    Which is what I thought also.

  11. GhostWhoVotes ‏@GhostWhoVotes 1m1 minute ago
    #ReachTEL Poll Seat of Grey 2 Party Preferred: LIB 46 (-17.5 from 2013) NXT 54 (+54) #ausvotes

  12. Ken McNeil

    His current occupation is Daily Telegraph columnist. Maybe he wants to retain credibility after the election with his comments.

  15. Had to look it up.

    Since 1993 it has been a comfortable Liberal seat. Grey is currently held by MP Rowan Ramsey, a farmer from Buckleboo on the Eyre Peninsula.

  18. Why would anyone bother to start up an “anti-paedophile” party?

    It’s not like any other political party is likely to be pro-paedophile.

    A vote for them would most certainly be a wasted vote.

  19. xavierdylan: Labor makes more savings than Scott Morrison did in the budget
    https://t.co/RTaaZtqKv6
    #ausvotes

    Thats the ball game.
    If voters follow that they will vote to keep Medicare Gonski and the rest and have a lower deficit than under the LNP

  22. sprocket
    It will be interesting to see what logos some parties come up with.

    I don’t know the deadline for that but I would assume it would be today too.

  26. How come when the polls are all 50/50, ABC manages to find a seat in Sydney where all the voters they speak to are all anti- Labor?

  27. Remember Textor talking about tactical voting and Turnbull asking voters to choose stability. Well if voters start thinking that the Coalition are looking at a minority government, or that Turnbull will be ousted as PM after the election then they might decide stability is best found with Labor.

  29. And I should add, completely moronic. One voter claimed to be concerned about Medicare, but would vote for Mal because she trusts him.

  35. “You’d like to think that kind of intimidation would be illegal.”

    Perhaps it is. I once had an employer tell me that if I didn’t immediately shut up, resume working, and forget all about how I’d discovered them illegally underpaying several employees (to the tune of $10k+ each) then they’d immediately liquidate the entire business and nobody would see any of their entitlements.

    Almost certainly not legal. But it took months of waiting and enduring repeated attempts at intimidation from them before I could get them before the FWC and actually get any traction on the issue.

    “Is Stalin the Premier of Victoria?”

    After reading up on the dispute, I can only agree with that sentiment. If there’s anything that proves that unions have too much influence over the ALP, this is it. I can’t think of any other reason why a sitting government would make such a demand, particularly after seeing some of the clauses that the UFU is pushing for.

    Requiring a minimum of 7 career firefighters to attend each fire? That’s just absurd. It’s like when you drive by some roadwork, and there’s one person actually doing work, and 3 or 4 just standing around “supervising”. Completely unnecessary and a waste of taxpayer money.

  38. Re: Rich people buying their way out of jail.
    I’m glad to see that the IPA has finally come to the realization that fines are meant to discourage criminal behaviour without sticking the perpetrator in jail. With that in mind, I would like to propose that they advocate Finnish-style justice – all fines are assessed based on income.
    Perhaps that way, you’ll see fewer Peppy Grove inhabitants treating parking infringements as something to be laughed off and paid from pocket change.
    (Note: I did not advocate for their approach – if a crime’s serious enough to send someone to jail, they shouldn’t buy their way out.)

  40. Requiring a minimum of 7 career firefighters to attend each fire? That’s just absurd. It’s like when you drive by some roadwork, and there’s one person actually doing work, and 3 or 4 just standing around “supervising”. Completely unnecessary and a waste of taxpayer money.

    Unfortunately I can’t recall the detail but I heard the union leader interviewed the other day and he was emphatic that is not the case at all in practice. He said this is just part of a campaign of misinformation that is being peddled about this matter.

  41. The Anti Paedophile Party logo has been created by a non creative but likely the obsessive person who created the party. Interesting to think that it has enough members out there to register as a party and field candidates in HOR seats!

  42. The source I read was here:

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-08/victoria-cfa-union-eba-dispute-explained/7492684

    The UFU’s Peter Marshall said a requirement to have seven paid firefighters sent to every scene was a safety issue, and it would deliver certainty that a second truck would be dispatched.

    He said sometimes a second truck had not shown up as expected because of the unavailability of a volunteer crew.

    The union said the rule of seven would only apply to 31 stations out of 1,200 and whoever arrived first at a fire, either paid firefighters or volunteers, could begin fighting it.

    Even 1 station is too many for that rule in my opinion.

  44. a r @ #1635 Friday, June 10, 2016 at 6:33 pm

    “You’d like to think that kind of intimidation would be illegal.”
    Perhaps it is. I once had an employer tell me that if I didn’t immediately shut up, resume working, and forget all about how I’d discovered them illegally underpaying several employees (to the tune of $10k+ each) then they’d immediately liquidate the entire business and nobody would see any of their entitlements.
    Almost certainly not legal. But it took months of waiting and enduring repeated attempts at intimidation from them before I could get them before the FWC and actually get any traction on the issue.
    “Is Stalin the Premier of Victoria?”
    After reading up on the dispute, I can only agree with that sentiment. If there’s anything that proves that unions have too much influence over the ALP, this is it. I can’t think of any other reason why a sitting government would make such a demand, particularly after seeing some of the clauses that the UFU is pushing for.
    Requiring a minimum of 7 career firefighters to attend each fire? That’s just absurd. It’s like when you drive by some roadwork, and there’s one person actually doing work, and 3 or 4 just standing around “supervising”. Completely unnecessary and a waste of taxpayer money.

    Not sure of the number but I once sat through a very interesting talk by an experienced firie where he explained the need for numbers at a fire. If there are insufficient numbers, they can’t make an attempt to rescue anyone who may be trapped without endangering themselves to an unreasonable extent. They need to have x number of people operating the firefighting equipment so that water, foam etc don’t fail, they need to have reserves to rescue the rescuer(s) if that becomes necessary and I think there was something else I can’t bring to mind at the moment – perhaps Rummel can fill us in if he’s around. I would imagine the rescuing stuff is restricted to professional firefighters because it would need more specialised training and possibly fitness requirements.

    In any case the issue is a bit of a complex one – which I had not appreciated previously. He was talking in the context of the Newman government cutting back staffing levels at suburban stations to a dangerous extent.

    If I was caught in a fire I would certainly not be pleased if the firies could not attempt to rescue me because it would put them at unacceptable risk because of lack of numbers.

  45. 54-46 to NXT in Grey!

    That is a definite wow! I had assumed, by previous numbers, Ramsay would be safe enough in that seat for there to be little serious challenge from NXT. I was wrong.

    Even if that’s a generous over-estimation, of the 2CP (or underestimation of Labor primary), the fact it’s a real possibility is a big deal.

  47. I don’t see how ReachTel could possibly have come up with 50-50 on those primaries. The Labor pv is insipid.

    Probably because the Coalition PV isn’t crash hot either. It’s a pox on both houses by the looks of things.

  49. Yeah, it looks like Labor is getting massive preference flows from minor parties for 2PP to remain in 50-50.

    Then again we have seat polls that show huge swings against LNP. Really don’t know what to make of it all.

  50. [ I would imagine the rescuing stuff is restricted to professional firefighters because it would need more specialised training and possibly fitness requirements.]

    Entering the building is not only the domain of paid staff. A great many volunteers in Victoria are trained to enter house and building to fight fires. Though im in NSW, I used to have the ticket to do this as well as a Volo. I actually let my qualification laps in as I did not get enough training and experience to feel safe doing it and happily watch the paid guys doing it whilst I support from the out side.

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