Election minus three weeks

A flurry of individual electorate polls suggest a patchy swing, with Labor struggling in a number of key areas.

My seat-by-seat election guide is finally up, but I’m afraid at this stage that it’s a vanilla version without the embeddled tables and booth results mapping, which I will hopefully be able to add later. Meanwhile, the Fairfax papers have kept the polling mill turning with seven ReachTEL marginal seat polls. These are related in the following situation report, along with a further result for GetUp! which I don’t believe has been published anywhere else, and The Weekend Australian’s accounting of how party insiders are reading the breeze. While indications are patchy overall, by no reading is it easy to see where the Coalition might lose the 15 seats (or 13 going off post-redistribution accounting) – unless the Nick Xenophon Team achieves something extraordinary in South Australia, which certainly can’t be ruled out.

New South Wales

Fairfax’s ReachTEL polls record next to no swing in Lindsay, which the Liberals hold with a margin of 3.0%, or Dobell, a Liberal-held seat with a notional Labor margin of 0.2% after the redistribution. The respective results are 54-46 in favour of the Liberals and 51-49 in favour of Labor. The Weekend Australian reported yesterday that Labor was hopeful about Dobell, but doubtful about neighbouring Robertson. The report also related diminishing expectations for Labor in Sydney, to the extent that resources were being put into three seats it already holds: Parramatta (margin 1.7%), Greenway (2.8%) and even Werriwa (5.9%). Sources from both parties were cited saying the Liberals were expected to retain Reid, Lindsay and Banks, and Labor was even said to be “far from certain about taking the seat of Barton”, which has a notional 5.2% margin in Labor’s favour after the redistribution. Despite all that, Labor was said to remain hopeful about Macarthur on the city’s south-western fringe, where the post-redistribution Liberal margin is 3.3%, and Eden-Monaro, where it is 2.6%.

Victoria

Fairfax’s ReachTEL polls find the Liberals leading 52-48 in Deakin, which they hold with a margin of 3.2%, and 51-49 in Corangamite, which compares unfavourably with a 54-46 result in ReachTEL’s poll for the Seven Network a fortnight ago. The Weekend Australian suggests Labor is more confident about Dunkley than other Victorian marginals, with Corangamite recognised as being extremely difficult. The Country Fire Authority issue is cited as problematic in McEwen, which Rob Mitchell narrowly retained for Labor in 2013, despite the travails of Liberal candidate Chris Jermyn. The Greens are “increasingly confident” about Batman.

Brisbane

ReachTEL finds the Liberals leading 56-44 in Bonner, which they hold with a margin of 3.7%, adding to the impression that voters in inner Brisbane are responding well to Malcolm Turnbull. The Australian went so far as to report yesterday that Griffith, where Terri Butler succeeded Griffith at a February 2014 by-election, was “said to be in play”. It appears to be a different story on the city’s northern fringe, with Labor said to be genuinely hopeful in Dickson, which they last held before Peter Dutton unseated Cheryl Kernot in 2001, and Longman, which they gained in 2007 then lost to Wyatt Roy in 2010.

Regional Queensland

A ReachTEL poll conducted for GetUp! on Tuesday showed Nationals member George Christensen under pressure in the northern Queensland seat of Dawson, which he holds on a margin of 7.6%. The survey of 631 respondents found Christensen tied with Labor candidate Frank Gilbert on two-party preferred, from primary votes of 43.7% for Christensen (46.2% in 2013), 34.7% for Gilbert (29.7% for the Labor candidate in 2013) and 9.1% for the Greens (5.0%). However, Christensen would hold a 53-47 lead if preference flows from 2013 were applied. Labor is also said by The Australian to be “increasingly confident” about the Townsville seat of Herbert. Conversely, Labor is said to be struggling in Capricornia, which it usually holds, contrary to the impression that Labor is performing better in the regions than the city. The report suggests that the regional economic downturn has not been of advantage to Labor in the mining-intensive seats of Dawson, Capricornia and Flynn, because many blue-collar workers have left the electorate with the end of the boom.

Western Australia

Wildly mixed signals continue to come through, as ReachTEL’s polling for the Fairfax papers finds a 50-50 result in the northern suburbs seat of Cowan, where the Liberal margin is 4.5%. While this is at odds with the state polling aggregation produced by BludgerTrack, it accords with an account in The Australian yesterday of the Coalition being “more confident of holding all its seats in Western Australia and taking the new seat of Burt”. A report from Fleur Anderson of the Financial Review on Thursday gave credence to both views, with Labor said to be expecting four gains in the House (presumably Cowan, Hasluck, Swan and Burt) on top of two in the Senate, while Liberal sources indicated they were by no means giving anything away.

South Australia

ReachTEL provides a further indication that Rebekha Sharkie of the Nick Xenophon Team is likely to unseat Liberal member Jamie Briggs in Mayo. The poll has Briggs on 37.6% with Sharkie on 24.4%, a gap she would surely close with preferences from Labor (19.5%) and the Greens (10.4%). On Friday, the Financial Review cites unidentified Liberals, variously designated “worried” and “senior”, saying Jamie Briggs has abandoned hope of defending Mayo from Rebekha Sharkie of the Nick Xenophon Team. Briggs himself says this is “scurrilous gossip” and “completely untrue”.

Elsewhere, The Australian reports that Labor remains confident in the Darwin seat of Solomon, while Lyons “remains the Coalition’s most difficult seat” in Tasmania.

The other big campaign news of the past few days has been the closure of candidate nominations, revealing that 994 candidates have nominated for the 150 House of Representatives electorates, the second lowest number since 1998 (the first being 2010, when the somewhat early election announcement appeared to catch some unprepared). Despite Senate electoral reform, a record number of candidates have nominated, although ballot papers will tend to be slightly smaller as there will be many more ungrouped candidates this time, who do not have their own column on the ballot paper. This has been encouraged by the fact that below-the-line voting has now much easier than it was before, although ungrouped candidates will no doubt remain as marginal a factor as before. South Australia has substantially fewer groups on the ballot paper than last time (24 compared with 34), but Queensland is actually up slightly, from 36 to 40. The biggest winner out of the Senate ballot paper draw would appear to be Derryn Hinch, who has been given a tremendous boost in his bid for a Senate by drawing first out of 39 columns on the Victorian ballot paper.

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.

949 comments on “Election minus three weeks”

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  2. c@tmomma @ #850 Sunday, June 12, 2016 at 11:53 pm

    Phoenix Green,
    Just avoid addressing the perfectly valid point I made. Stirling Griff, co-founder of NXT, is rabidly anti Penalty Rates. It would actually be the principled thing for Labor to not preference someone whose party may hold the Balance of Power in the Senate and who holds those antithetical views. Which YOU and The Greens seem to be supporting.

    In fairness, NXT has changed its position on penalty rates. X himself has acknowledged he was wrong…on Q&A, no less. He also opposed the ABCC bills and helped precipitate this election.

  4. If the ALP encourages its supporters to preference Jamie Briggs or Christopher Pyne over the NXT candidates – and I know that’s only been suggested by tendentious sources – it would represent the most craven performance since the ALP delegates backed Bronwyn Bishop to head the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

  5. pedant @ #854 Sunday, June 12, 2016 at 11:58 pm

    If the ALP encourages its supporters to preference Jamie Briggs or Christopher Pyne over the NXT candidates – and I know that’s only been suggested by tendentious sources – it would represent the most craven performance since the ALP delegates backed Bronwyn Bishop to head the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

    That simply does not meet the test of common sense let alone any other considerations.

  6. pedant @ #848 Sunday, June 12, 2016 at 11:52 pm

    All who are worried about the prospect of a Pauline Hanson comeback in the Senate in Queensland should take a little prospective comfort from the fact that there are eleven right wing (or right wing sounding) groups on the ballot paper, all likely to be fighting over the same slice of the electorate: the Liberal Democrats; the Australian Liberty Alliance; the Citizens Electoral Council; the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers; the Democratic Labour Party; Family First; Pauline Hanson’s One Nation; the Rise Up Australia Party; the Christian Democratic Party (Fred Nile Group); the Australian Christians; and CountryMinded (not sure how right wing they are, or even whether they just represent an attempt to get a variant of an old joke past the AEC and onto the ballot paper). I’ve not included Katter’s Australian Party, Katter being a fan of the original E G Theodore.
    Pretty unlikely that most of them will be able to mount much of a how-to-vote card operation, so a lot of those votes will likely exhaust.

    It’s well worth reflecting on the possibility that these Crazy-Nasty clones will likely attract an aggregate share of the vote that matches that of the G’s. The G ‘s argue their voice pushes political discourse to the left. This most certainly has not happened in QLD.

  7. Bemused @ 12.01 am: Apart from anything else, the narrative of this election, regardless of who wins, will be much influenced by the scale of coalition losses. Mr Turnbull’s performance will look that much worse, and his position will be that much more weakened, if he loses a senior Minister and a former Minister in what should have been relatively safe Liberal seats.

  8. I’d be ecstatic to see the arrogant, entitled, dangerous Labor & Liberal double act completely replaced by outsiders. Our votes are worth nothing if we let them get away with cartel behaviour. Do I personally support NXT taking Liberal seats? Yes I do. Labor seats? Depends on the MP and candidate.

    But the Greens are much more generous with Labor than I am. They’ll preference Labor much more highly than I do. Will be interesting to see if Labor reciprocates in Melbourne Ports and Higgins. And in the Senate, will be interesting to see if the Liberals and Labor trade preferences there as well.

  12. Briefly,
    Didn’t Nick Xenophon say he would be inclined to let his elected MPs determine their own votes? So I wouldn’t discount Stirling Griff going his own way on Penalty Rates.

  15. PhoenixGreen
    Will be interesting to see if Labor reciprocates in Melbourne Ports and Higgins.

    Err are you incapable of acknowledging facts that contradict your nonsense? It’s only been pointed out like a hundred times tonight – Labor is preferencing the Greens above the Coalition in every electorate and in the Senate.

  17. PhoenixGreen, I seem to recall you asserted earlier that the ALP must have conceded more to the Liberals in exchange for preferences over the Greens than just preferencing the Liberals over the Nationals in three seats.

    So do you have any further and better particulars, or evidence?

  18. c@tmomma @ #862 Monday, June 13, 2016 at 12:08 am

    Briefly,
    Didn’t Nick Xenophon say he would be inclined to let his elected MPs determine their own votes? So I wouldn’t discount Stirling Griff going his own way on Penalty Rates.

    I’m not sure. I thought they have said they would be bound to their platform but unbound on matters not in the platform….I better check the platform…

  19. C@Tmomma
    Didn’t Nick Xenophon say he would be inclined to let his elected MPs determine their own votes? So I wouldn’t discount Stirling Griff going his own way on Penalty Rates.

    This is what the NXT website says:

    All candidates believe in taking a common-sense approach to politics and strongly support our policy principles – including Predatory Gambling, Australian Made and Government & Corporate Accountability. The strength of having like-minded people working together is that it will lead to more good ideas and policies for the benefit of Australians. So yes, candidates and Nick will work as one team and their vote will be guided by the spelt out policy principles. On issues not covered in our policy statements, we’ll work together to achieve a fair, like minded consensus.

    It’s worth noting that NXT has a pre-agreed upon position on penalty rates, which is they are important and should be determined by the FWC.

    https://nxt.org.au/whats-nxt/frequently-asked-questions/

  21. C@T…I would laff for weeks if the Libs lost all their SA seats…5 to NXT, 1 to Labor. They may also be reduced to just 3-4 Senators. What a joy. Turnbot would not survive that and nor would their majority. They richly deserve such a result. IT would have the added piquancy of totally disrupting the G’s for years to come -:)

  22. @JimmyDoyle & @Briefly
    Love to hear it repeated and I’m happy to acknowledge. Greens announced ages ago that they will never preference the Liberals, we’ll see how high Labor are on the tickets on Tuesday.

    Will watch all party’s preferences around NXT with fascination. I hope he makes a big dent. Bring on the rainbow parliament.

  23. I can’t say I’ve absorbed every detail of the back and forth here today between ALP and Greens supporters, but if, as JimmyDoyle has just asserted “Labor is preferencing the Greens above the Coalition in every electorate and in the Senate, I really can’t see what the Greens are complaining about. The Greens have clearly positioned themselves ideologically to the left of the ALP, so it makes perfect sense for the coalition to prefer the ALP.

    Is the ALP supposed to say “No, we won’t accept your preferences”, rather in the way that Mr Tony Abbott tried to run out of the House of Representatives rather than “accept” the vote with Mr Craig Thomson? Of course not: that would be absurd on the face of it.

  24. phoenixgreen @ #872 Monday, June 13, 2016 at 12:20 am

    Under OPV, it is not enough for the G’s merely to not pref the Liberals. Will the G’s overtly pref Labor ahead of all other comers, as Labor has done for the G’s? Will the G’s also pref NXT in SA?

    The Liberals have decided to pref Labor in the Senate, apparently. Presumably this is intended to diminish the chances of micro and minor candidates.

    Labor may turn out to be the party of refuge for everyone.

  25. I’ve been avoiding this tedious Labor vs Greens flame war.

    But I just want to see if I have the facts straight.

    Labor accused the Greens of negotiating a deal with the Liberals. Kroger was certainly talking about a possible deal. The Greens denied that they had done a deal to preference the Liberals over Labor. Note the language they chose did leave the option of running open tickets in some seats.

    Today Turnbull announced that the Liberals will preference Labor before the Greens in every seat. In return Labor will preference the Liberals before the Nationals in three seats. Note, the Greens have virtually zero chance in these seats.

    The Herald Sun is reporting that Labor will preference the Greens ahead of the Liberals and National Party in all seats and the Senate.

    So, I can see the Greens might be upset that they couldn’t manage a deal to get Liberal preferences in some seats they thought they might win from the ALP. However, I can’t see how they can really criticise Labor for this deal. Labor are still preferencing the Greens ahead of the Liberals everywhere. There’s certainly been no betrayal of the Greens by Labor that I can see.

  27. @Pedant
    Greens anger is backlash against Labor campaign linked earlier. Labor was trying to say Greens were cosying up with the Liberals all the while Shorten and Turnbull were fixing the very deal they were criticising behind the scenes. Now Greens are calling for Shorten to apologise and take down the (frankly hilarious) posters they still have up around inner Melbourne.

    It’s a complete inversion of Labor’s position on preferences that happened so fast their ads are now attacking themselves. When a nasty, dishonest campaign does a 180 and runs in the other direction like this it is hard to just let it go.

    Of course it makes sense for the cartel parties to work together to fight off outsiders like Greens and Xenophon, they’ll do anything to protect their double act even if it means openly saving each other’s jobs. That was to be expected.

  28. Oh, does the Liberal Party putting Labor above the Greens mean the Liberals will preference Labor on the HTV cards (perhaps at number 6)? Or are both Labor and the Greens likely to be missing from the list (in which case how can they be putting Labor over the Greens)?

  29. Looks like people in certain marginals swallowing the economic management crap of the Fibs/MSM. The wannabees are voting with their pockets above anything else as usual.Fooled once with Abbott.Now fooled again with Turnbull.

  31. b.c. @ #878 Monday, June 13, 2016 at 12:34 am

    Oh, does the Liberal Party putting Labor above the Greens mean the Liberals will preference Labor on the HTV cards (perhaps at number 6)? Or are both Labor and the Greens likely to be missing from the list (in which case how can they be putting Labor over the Greens)?

    I think it’s likely to mean Labor will @6 and the G’s will not appear.

  32. Greens were always going to run open tickets in some seats on principle as they always have. If you think open tickets were an indication of a preference deal, good luck explaining them now. Greens are now considering whether to run open tickets in all seats permanently to eliminate lies about future deals.

  33. cupidstunt @ #879 Monday, June 13, 2016 at 12:36 am

    Looks like people in certain marginals swallowing the economic management crap of the Fibs/MSM. The wannabees are voting with their pockets above anything else as usual.Fooled once with Abbott.Now fooled again with Turnbull.

    We need more large scale random sample polls…seat by seat polls are of dubious value.

  37. phoenixgreen @ #882 Monday, June 13, 2016 at 12:39 am

    Greens were always going to run open tickets in some seats on principle as they always have. If you think open tickets were an indication of a preference deal, good luck explaining them now. Greens are now considering whether to run open tickets in all seats permanently to eliminate lies about future deals.

    There is a very good reason the G’s don’t run “open tickets”. That is, they will tend to favour the election of Liberals in some cases – a result that G-voters would oppose. So to keep faith their own voters, the G’s have favoured Labor. If the G’s forget this they will likely lose half their support in no time flat, and that would put them out of business. The G’s should pay more attention to the voters.

  39. PhoenixGreen
    Greens were always going to run open tickets in some seats on principle as they always have.

    That’s never been the issue. It was the (alleged) quid pro quo that was the issue, whereby the Liberals would preference the Greens in the inner city in return for the Greens running opening HTVs in marginal Victorian electorates. This would’ve allowed the Greens to conveniently deny they were “preferencing” the Liberals, even though running an open ticket would indisputably have helped the Liberals in very close contests.

  43. Briefly
    The finesse failed. As any bridge player knows, it’s great when the play comes off…a thumping when it doesn’t.

    Yep. I don’t begrudge the Greens advancing their own interests – they just need to be honest about it and ditch the “holier-than-thou” rhetoric.

  44. The ALP have not done a deal that in any way helps the Liberals over the Greens. The deal being suggested between the Liberals and the Greens would have helped the Greens and the Liberals over the ALP.
    At the end of the day, the proposed Liberal Greens deal might have seen the conservative side of politics win more seats than otherwise, at the expense of the progressive side. The Liberal ALP deal will not result in the conservative side winning any more seats than they otherwise would have.

  45. @JimmyDoyle

    Labor can make baseless claims that the Greens and Liberals are doing preference deals, or Labor can join with the Liberals to save each other’s jobs, but you can’t expect to have it both ways and be taken seriously.

    That small sliver of open-ticket mystery is where hyperventilating Labor hides all their evidence for a Greens-Liberal preference deal bogeyman. Internally Bob Brown is advocating the idea that Greens avoid the two-faced Labor attacks in future by setting all HTVs as open tickets permanently, removing that small sliver of mystery and making any deals a public impossibility. I tend to agree with that approach. More broadly I’d like HTV cards to be banned as they are in TAS, ACT and NZ. Preference deal nonsense is a massive cynicism factory and we should be rid of it. Hopefully Labor begins to feel the same way in the coming days, now that we all know they’re trying to save Liberal jobs.

  46. PhoenixGreen – Fairfax, News Ltd, and the Guardian all reported on the negotiations between the Greens and the Liberals, and Kroger openly said it was being discussed. Turnbull himself said that the deal was being overruled. Di Natale and the Victorian Greens were always careful to say that no deal to preference the Liberals was being made, which left the prospect of open HTVs wide open. By comparison the NSW Greens were much less equivocal about the prospect of advantaging the Liberals in any way.

    As for HTV cards, they are a matter of convenience. As many (including Greens aligned posters here) have been at pains to point out, they are simply advisory. Many low-information voters (and like it or not, that’s most voters) like them as they don’t have to spend time working out who to peference, or do a donkey vote after picking their first preferences. Greens open HTV cards will likely benefit Liberal incumbents in close contests at this contest.

  48. jimmydoyle @ #896 Monday, June 13, 2016 at 1:14 am

    The G’s will invariably try to game the system if they can. If a strong and effective Labor government is elected, their influence will recede along with the clamour from the other micro voices. They all know this, which is one of the reasons they will try to prevent it.

  49. Briefly – you and I both agree that a strong and effective Labor Government is what Australia sorely needs. Everything else is irrelevant in light of that fact.

  50. @JimmyDoyle
    Can’t say I’m blown away by reporting of anonymous second-hand rumours of a possibility. Anyway the point is the vitriol it summoned, which suspiciously disappeared when Labor did the same deal it was squealing about, almost as if Labor has double standards.

    That’s one thing but they even put up posters criticising the action they were about to themselves take. I think that deserves some kind of medal.

    @Briefly
    Is it gaming the HTV system to remove the system completely?

    @JimmyDoyle
    And a handful of Liberal MPs who owe Labor their jobs, apparently.

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