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.

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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”

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  3. BW
    I can tell you why I hold Israel to account . I am NOT a green, just left labor
    1. Because of the holocaust I hold Israelis to a higher order. Perhaps this is unfair, but I expect them to be particularly sensitive to the human rights of others.

    2. Whatever people might say about rights that are 2,000 years old, Israel was a colonialist action and it caused displacement to the original inhabitants. It is very like the Australian aboriginal situation in that they were dispossed of their land. Indeed when Israel was established there was serious talk of using land in WA, I assume the Kimberlies. Might have been better for the world if they had, but I guess the Indigenous people migh have had a bit of a gripe. Now I accept that it has happened and would no more wish to see Israel abolished than I would to have all use whitelys incuding myself pushed out of Austalia. I can however recognise that we WERE an invading colonials force. As far as practical we should seek to compensate indigenous people. I see no real effort by Israel to activley compensate the original inhabitants.

    3. To the extent to which some indigenous people remained within Israel, there is a policy of separation and to an extent injustice. Bishop Tutu of South Africa is the person who first liked this to apartheit. This apartheit is far more severe for those original inhabitants who are contained within their “homeland” under conditions of containment more severe than those of South Africans in their “homelands.” If this is not apartheit, please give me logical coherent reasons why it is not. No I am not aware of ANY countries that have such stringent segregation rules between people of different ethnicities or religions. There may be some such but I am not aware of such segregation in Russia, China, Iran etc. please correct me if I am wrong. Possibly the enclaves inhabited by “guest” workers in some middle eastern countries come pretty close. Now the last time any nation with whom we inAustralia had significant, sporting, cultural and trade ties behaved to explicitly segregate people according to race or religion we DID initiate widespread boycotts.

    4. The expansion of Israel into neighbouring lands is nothing short of invasion. Now many on here was lyrical about the evils of Russia “invading” Crimea, although apprently welcomed by many. It is fine to criticise but if you do so you must ALSO condemn the Israeli seizure of land on the west bank when they most decideldly are NOT welcome. The land taken in 1967 is a more complex legal issue that is above my pay grade to consider, so I confine myself to more recently aquired land. Put it this way if Victoria upped and said hey you useless mob in SA. You cannot look after yourselves. We are taking control of Mt Gambier and then the Olympic mine. Would that be AOK. Or if NZ decided that they liked the stretch from Jarvis Bay to Canberra and mass migrated their population there. You all AOK? We will take you land with minimal compensation – go live in a tin shed in Goulburn.

    5. Finally of course the mistreatment of Gaza, which is about the closest thing I can think of to the Polish ghettos.

    Now that should be worth a hissy fit ot 50. Gotta go.

  4. Some polls at 52-48 can be ignored, but apparently ReachTel being a “major poll” kind of has more clout and bragging rights it would seem.

  7. Coalition ahead of Labor 51-49 says 7 News, confirming Tricot’s report. More coming…

  10. A reasonable article from Coorey –


    Why a Labor loss is bad for the Liberals

    If Labor loses – which it is not yet a given – the interest will lie in whether anyone sticks their hand up to challenge Bill Shorten.

    Shorten, who has been underestimated from the get-go, has made an impressive bid to seize back power in one term, with regard to both policy preparedness and unity. Regardless of one’s political slant, Labor’s past three years has been the most comprehensive effort by an Opposition in decades.

    …if Malcolm Turnbull wins, he will face internal calls to reach out to the conservatives – aka the Abbott supporters. Turnbull will not offer Abbott a ministry

    …What matters for Turnbull is that not only would such a loss of seats leave him with a reduced margin, but two-thirds of the seats under threat, according to a devious Labor insider, belong to Turnbull backers.The government’s margin would be diminished and so, too, would Turnbull’s internal numbers, further eroding his ability to exert himself within the party.

    …{This following bit is why the tories just don’t deserve to win IMO} —–

    ……Compounding the challenge is the Coalition’s painfully thin policy agenda.

    If elected, it will most likely have to compromise on its 10-year company tax cut plan because no-one who is set to have a balance of power in the Senate will allow any more than a tax cut for small and medium business.

    Once that negotiation is out of the way, and the industrial relations bills which triggered the double dissolution are dealt with, that’s pretty much it.

    Just sit back and watch the economy grow.

    {…as if…}

    Read more: http://www.afr.com/#ixzz4Bp0aymV2

  12. No William, there was one person in particular who got it right for the right reasons, on the morning of the election. I recall it clearly.

    I don’t recall any other idiot predicting it.

  15. Fair Work “is meant to be independent of government” says Turnbull. How about the truckies tribunal, Mal?

  17. William, have you written your comment piece for 3 July yet that starts – “How the pollsters and bookies got it so wrong! NXT preferences were impossible to predict.”
    Mind you, when I use the word ‘wrong’, I’m not predicting if it’s because of a Labor win or because LNP keep a healthy majority.

  18. 7 News ReachTEL

    2PP: 51-49 to Coalition (+1)
    Primaries: 41.2 Coalition (+2), 31.0 Labor (-0.6), 8.5 Greens (-0.2)
    Better PM: 58-42 to Turnbull (+3)
    Seat of the week: 53-47 to Coalition in Hasluck (-1.87 since 2013)
    How likely is Medicare to be privatised under the Coalition? 56 more likely, 13 less likely, 31 the same

  20. Is Ipsos confirmed? So we have 2 polls splitting 51-49 either way. Still too close for the Libs to be calling it.

  29. 1m
    GhostWhoVotes‏ @GhostWhoVotes
    #ReachTEL Poll Federal Primary Votes: LNP 43.5 (+0.8) ALP 33.6 (+0.4) GRN 9.1 (-0.8) NXT 4.2 (-0.3) #ausvotes

  30. 3rd answer
    Shorten fails by talking about negative gearing.
    Turnbull at least didn’t mention negative gearing so answered the question asked but it seemed quite a substance lacking answer.

  31. William – will you be plugging Ipsos and Reachtel into BludgerTrack tonight, or will will you wait till next week?

  32. I think Newspoll is the best of all polls.These other companies have highly questionable figures like Lab 31 PV. Lib are 41 as in most polls.

  34. That’s because it’s not 31%, it’s 33%.
    Consistency across Ipsos and ReachTel for Labor primary at 33%, but a four per cent discrepancy for the LNP of 39% and 43% respectively.

  36. Mind you, it was often said in the 2013 election that the LNP needed 44% of the PV to ensure office, and while the Labor PV is nothing startling, the drop in the LNP PV is not that encouraging to them either. It means that either party could claw back some of the other vote and so the outcome is still uncertain despite the LNP media cheer squad saying something else.

  37. Ghost who walk’s reachtel figures look different
    GhostWhoVotes ‏@GhostWhoVotes 4m4 minutes ago
    #ReachTEL Poll Federal Primary Votes: LNP 43.5 (+0.8) ALP 33.6 (+0.4) GRN 9.1 (-0.8) NXT 4.2 (-0.3) #ausvotes

    William, you should just take Reachtel out and shoot it. Don’t sully Bludgertracker with its presence.

  46. “Where can I watch this facebook debate?”

    On news.com.au’s Facebook page.

    It is in the form of a live video link … and I keep getting the message that it can’t load the video right now.

    This may end up being a spectacular own goal for Turnbull. Fancy giving Labor such an enormous free kick by illustratiing their exact point about the shit Internet they’re providing!

  49. 7 News – Hasluck poll – 16 June 2016
    https://www.reachtel.com.au/blog/7-news-hasluck-poll-16june2016

    The Ipsos poll is not supposed to be out yet, but one AFR article went up early then got taken down, but you can see the cached version if you do a google search…
    http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:se4qK0xNIFkJ:www.afr.com/news/politics/election/election-2016-ipsos-poll–you-should-hold-this-thought-20160617-gplw91+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au
    Scroll down after you open it. Does not have all the primaries as its only meant to be a side article.

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