BludgerTrack: 50.5-49.5 to Coalition

Essential Research’s latest result records the gentlest of nudges in favour of Labor, but the BludgerTrack poll aggregate has gone the other way.

It’s been an oddly quiet week on the national polling front, though no doubt the coming fortnight will more than make up for it. Besides the regular weekly campaign ReachTEL poll for Seven, the only new result is the latest fortnightly rolling average from Essential Research, out a day later than usual due to the Monday public holiday. This records Labor with a 51-49 lead, returning it to its position before a sudden two-point shift to the Coalition a fortnight ago. The primary votes are Coalition 41% (steady), Labor 37% (up one), Greens 10% (steady) and Nick Xenophon Team 4% (steady). Also featured are personal ratings, which Essential usually does on a monthly basis, but it seems to have picked up the pace to fortnightly for the campaign period. Malcolm Turnbull is down three on approval to 38% and up one on disapproval to 40%, while Bill Shorten is steady on approval at 34%, but down four on disapproval to 40%. Turnbull’s lead as preferred prime minister narrows slightly, from 40-27 to 40-29.

An occasional question on the parties’ attributes records positive movement since March for Labor, whose ratings are up from three to nine points on favourable indicators (the biggest gain being from 30% to 39% on “has a good team of leaders”), and lower ratings on all the negative ones, with the exception of “will promise to do anything to win votes”. The movements for the Liberals are more of a mixed bag, with both positive and negative indicators going up. The one exception is “divided”, something the Liberal Party is now deemed to be by 52% of respondents compared with 61% last time. Other results from the Essential survey include a finding of 47% approval for the superannuation changes in the budget, with disapproval at 22%.

The only other bit of poll news from the last few days has been a Greens-commissioned Lonergan Research poll from the traditionally blue-ribbon Melbourne seat of Higgins, where the Greens appear to be giving Kelly O’Dwyer something to think about. The Greens were on 24.2% of the forced preference primary vote, which would put them in second place for the first time, with O’Dwyer on 44.6%, Labor on 18.5% and the Nick Xenophon Team on 7.9%. O’Dwyer leads 53-47 on respondent-allocated preference. The poll had a large sample of 1118, and unlike ReachTEL’s polls was conducted over two nights, on Friday and Saturday of the weekend before last.

The BludgerTrack aggregate records a reasonably solid tick to the Coalition this week, which is mostly down to a ReachTEL result that would have come out at 52-48 in favour of the Coalition if previous election preference flows had been used, as opposed to the headline result of 50-50. BludgerTrack now shows a more plausible result in Western Australia, although it’s still on the sunny side for Labor compared with what’s coming through anecdotally and in individual seat polls. Since last week’s reading, the Coalition is up two seats in Western Australia and one in Victoria, but they’re down two in Queensland. They are also recording a favourable swing in South Australia, which possibly just shows the two-party model isn’t working there any more. It’s worth noting that the Greens have been losing steam nationally over the past few months, presumably because some of the loose anti-major party vote is being gathered up by the Nick Xenophon Team.

bludgertrack-2016-06-15

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.

1,941 comments on “BludgerTrack: 50.5-49.5 to Coalition”

Comments Page 1 of 39
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  2. russellmahoney: Fairfax Ipsos polled tonight. Voting intention. Commitment to that. Preferred PM. Satisfaction. And likely election winner.

  3. According to PM, Turnbull is sounding ‘increasingly confident’.

    Smug or arrogant might be better words, but who am I to question the wonderful ABC journos.

  7. That Lib attack ad is a good sign they’re worried about Cowan. Labor must be doing well up there. I suppose it’ll get a lot of airtime in WA.

  8. I’m growing more skeptical of BludgerTrack. There have been periods when not a single poll has credited the Coalition with a lead, yet BludgerTrack has had the 2PP favour the Coalition.
    I believe BludgerTrack is too aggressive in its correcting for house biases and house effects. We had a great post years ago detailing how BludgerTrack measures the house bias for each pollster and how it corrects for them, but that was from before the 2013 election. I think we’re long overdue for another one, and until we get one, I’m taking BludgerTrack with a grain of salt.

  10. Since last week’s reading, the Coalition is up two seats in Victoria, two in Western Australia and one in Tasmania, but they’re up three in Queensland

    That seems quite optimistic for them. Some kinks in the modeling maybe?

  12. Once again LNP does what it allowed to do….

    The Mandarin‏ @TheMandarinAU
    PM&C powerless on NBN Co boss Ziggy Switkowski’s breach of caretaker convention

  13. i told you all Poll bludger would go wiht the pollsters

    you know it makes sense

    those in the media , have no choice but to stick by each other

  14. [Since last week’s reading, the Coalition is up two seats in Victoria, two in Western Australia and one in Tasmania, but they’re up three in Queensland]

    It seems to suggest that there are a few seats on a knife edge and a small change will tip things either way.

  16. If there are lots of seats judged to be very close then a very small error in the polling could mean the results are quite different to what the polling suggests.

  19. And Australia gets sold out at the time….

    Sky News Australia
    28m
    Sky News Australia‏ @SkyNewsAust
    .@StevenCiobo says he’s optimistic the Trans-Pacific Partnership will pass the US congress #thelatest #ausvotes (link: http://snpy.tv/1OowDUI) snpy.tv/1OowDUI

  22. ‘ The BludgerTrack aggregate records a reasonably solid tick to the Coalition this week, which is mostly down to a ReachTEL result that would have come out at 52-48 in favour of the Coalition if previous election preference flows had been used, as opposed to the headline result of 50-50 ‘
    —————–
    Double huh ?

  23. I believe BludgerTrack is too aggressive in its correcting for house biases and house effects.

    The house bias adjustments are generally a little in favour of the Coalition, but what’s happened here is that we have an essentially 52-48 result from the only big new poll this week (ReachTEL gets weighted a fair bit higher than Essential).

  24. It would appear that as is typical there is a slight swing back to the conservatives toward the end of a campaign. Crosby/Textor are keeping Turnbull away from any big errors: their motto has always been to keep elections as boring as possible so people have no real reason to change. I suspect it will take another few years of Liberal pain for the average voter to wake up.

  25. Joe2
    2h2 hours ago
    Joe2 ‏@eatatjoe2
    So 4.00 @abcnews reports, as news, Chris Uhlmann thinks #Election2016 is in the bag for his Coalition team. Aunty you are stuffed. #ausvotes

  28. I live in Batman and was polled by Galaxy an hour ago. My wife hung up as she considered it to be telemarketing and a wast of time!

  30. My wife just got rung up to be polled, again, in Eden-Monaro. 4th time this election on the mobile.

    Im like, ‘ask them if they want a male’ in x demographic.
    Sure..

    It’s becoming a weekly occurrence.

  31. Well that’s a big downer, with multiple seats going back to the coalition. The one saving grace is that at present it is mostly stemming from just one poll and a ReachTel poll at that.

    So the next round of other polls – Morgan, Ipsos, Newspoll and maybe Galaxy – now becomes critical. If they show the same movement towards the coalition that the ReachTel showed it’s probably all over red rover – at least as far as a change of government goes. Hopefully Labor can at least claw a few seats back and make it a closer finish.

  36. What’s the bet the Lib’s try to kill off Medicare immediately. If the new senate allow that there will be blood in the streets. Whats x and Greens policy on Medicare?

  37. My wife just got rung up to be polled, again

    I can’t believe I’ve never been polled. Ever! Yet there are people out there who constantly get polled on a semi-regular basis. Not fair.

  38. And look what happens:

    The Age
    6s
    The Age‏ @theage
    Australia’s elite universities are calling for a cap on student places

  40. silentmajority @ #34 Wednesday, June 15, 2016 at 7:25 pm

    Brett Mcleod
    Brett Mcleod‏ @Brett_McLeod
    More than 80 people have been killed by guns in the US in the past 72 hours. That’s after Orlando. (link: http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/last-72-hours) gunviolencearchive.org/last-72-hours
    There are claims popping up in the gun lobby meeja in the US that Orlando was a false flag event. I sh!t you not

    I don’t follow.

    Here is a definition, from wikipedia:

    The contemporary term false flag describes covert operations that are designed to deceive in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by entities, groups, or nations other than those who actually planned and executed them.
    Historically, the term “false flag” has its origins in naval warfare where the use of a flag other than the belligerent’s true battle flag as a ruse de guerre, before engaging the enemy, has long been accepted.
    Operations carried out during peace-time by civilian organizations, as well as covert government agencies, can (by extension) also be called false flag operations if they seek to hide the real organization behind an operation.

    I can’t see what the ‘false flag event’ people are getting at.

  41. Keyman
    Wednesday, June 15, 2016 at 7:26 pm
    What’s the bet the Lib’s try to kill off Medicare immediately. If the new senate allow that there will be blood in the streets. Whats x and Greens policy on Medicare?

    If the Libs kill off Medicare they will be killed off themselves at the following election and Labor will reinstate it. Remember what happened when Howard decided ramming workchoices through was a good idea?

  43. Keyman

    The Libs will not kill off medicare. It is a non-negotiable for a vast number of Libs and is an instant vote changer to Labor.

  44. fess
    I’ve been polled repeatedly (someone published the likelihood in years of being polled, and I worked out I was about 1000 years old) — you’re not missing anything.

  46. Fess
    You need to live in a marginal. When Baldwin first ran for Paterson against the Labor sitting member we were polled every week for a few months and every time we said we hadn’t made up our minds
    William would hate that because, of course, we were Labor voters. About we weeks before the election we put them out of their misery and said we were going with Labor. No more phone calls. I checked with a local Lib heavy later and he confirmed it was for them.
    Baldwin won because the Labor bloke, Horne, had been a very lazy pollie in our area. .

  49. @rummel they will sell it off, just like Telstra.

    If you go back on history of selling big stuff.

    They sell land, they offices, they will sell auspost, centerlink andeveything is given the chance.

  50. FergusonLMP: Uhlmann’s election ‘analysis’ on the Channel 2 News was the worst performance of such type I have ever witnessed.Intellectually bankrupt.

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