Highlights of week six

A weekly summary of pork barrelling, campaign mishaps and intelligence on the state of the horse race.

Some news items from the past week of local tactical significance, plus, for your convenience, a revised version of yesterday’s electorate seats table incorporating corrections and a few things I’d missed, and the latest reading of BludgerTrack inclusive of Friday’s Ipsos and ReachTEL polls (see below).

• In a corrective to recent published marginal seat polling and the resulting impression that Labor is not getting the swings where it needs them, Laurie Oakes reports Labor polling shows them picking up 6% swings in the Hunter region seat of Paterson, giving them a lead of 57-43; the Central Coast seat of Robertson, for a lead of 53-47; and the Perth seat of Hasluck, putting them at 50-50 (compared with a 53-47 to the Liberals in the ReachTEL poll). In the Perth fringe seat of Pearce, which Christian Porter holds for the Liberals on a margin of 9.5%, the swing is said to be 9%.

• Bill Shorten yesterday promised the federal government would contribute $400 million to a north-south rail link in western Sydney accommodating the proposed site of the Badgerys Creek airport, which would be particularly advantageous in the seats of Macarthur, Werriwa and Lindsay.

• Malcolm Turnbull travelled to Townsville on Monday to promise $1 billion of Clean Energy Finance Corporation funding would be devoted to supporting the Great Barrier Reef, through concessional loans to agricultural projects and sewage treatment plant upgrades. Target seats include Leichhardt, Herbert, Dawson, Capricornia and Flynn.

• The Nationals are taking Cowper seriously enough to have had Barnaby Joyce visit the electorate on Tuesday to promise $1.25 million on an upgrade of the Port Macquarie airport.

• The Liberal candidate for the winnable Melbourne fringe seat of McEwen, Chris Jermyn, was in the news for the third time during the campaign on Thursday, when The Age reported the Christmas Hills address at which he was enrolled was an “empty block of land”. The Australian reported yesterday he was actually enrolled at a house in Wallan, but it appears he was enrolled at the Christmas Hills address when he voted at the 2013 election.

bludgertrack-2016-06-18

2016-06-19-marginal-seat-polls

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.

1,126 comments on “Highlights of week six”

Comments Page 17 of 23
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  2. Am wondering why Libs ‘appeared’ at Anti Safe Rates truckies rally when they already got rid of it. Do they expect ALP to win and reinstate it?

  4. Confessions @ 8.10pm: Reasons to change government will vary from person to person. It’s a funny question to be asked, however, when so much of campaigning these days is like an ebay auction. Presumably when the ALP, for example, promises to spend money to upgrade the road from Canberra to Murrumbateman, it’s in the expectation that for some people, that will be the issue which is enough to make them want to throw the government out.

    In this election, quite a few of the policies on offer have significant implications for specific voters. I wonder how many people will be consulting their financial advisers before voting?

  8. N
    Oh well, why not.
    They could include pro rata a quarter of Joyce, a tenth of Clive, a fifth of Pauline, a tenth of Jacquie, slivers of all the House x benchers, two tenths of Derryn Hinch, and appropriate shavings of all the other minors and micros and the like.
    It will be like the tower of Babel gone to merde.

  9. Pedant:

    True, but competence must rank up there pretty highly you’d think. This lot are far from the definition of competent govt.

  11. This might be way off the farm but:

    It is always assumed ALP needs 51+% to win because of the seat swings needs. But isn’t it the case that the same can apply in the opposite way?

    Everyone says ALP must win certain marginals in a neat progression from .1% – 4% or thereabouts. But what if ALP wins several at 5-6% even though they don’t win a couple with margins of only 2%?

    The volatility of so-called ‘safe seats’ surely cannot be discounted. I mean, if I was in Dutton’s seat, and he was ALP I would vote against him because he is such an idiot/turd. Same in Longman.

  12. PHodgson

    I suspect Guy Rundle is correct and that people like most of the above are having psychological difficulties accepting that the Greens have policies that reflect their own wishes better than the ALP.

    My theory is that it’s like the self-loathing bisexual guy who committed the Orlando gay club massacre. No-one hates another group as much as those who are conflicted by the same drives in themselves.

  13. J
    I think what you are saying is true in principle but not so likely in practice because of the way votes are distributed under the current electoral boundaries.

  14. There’s an ad for one of the brands of tea at the moment, plays during Bargain Hunt on 7TWO when oldies are watching. The actor sounds false, like a city slicker trying to put on a rustic accent. The Liberal tradie ad similarly sounded and looked false.

    But remember Whingeing Wendy from the last double dissolution in 1987? (Just watched it again, on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX5qnUR1UVgm, for the first time in decades, and it’s AMAZING how little the issues have changed.) Sometimes these things are designed so that they stick in your mind, even if you would like to get them out.

  15. My theory is that Greens are self-indulgent moralists who, for want of a reality check, start channelling Freud for want of something practical to do.

  17. BW
    Freud was an unethical fraud who has repeatedly been shown to have been wrong about almost everything apart from things other people had already said.

  19. Boer – what I have learned with each election I have witnessed close up is that accepted norms are never borne out. With each, we’ve had to adjust our thinking. There are always surprises.

    For instance – it is looking like Eden-Monaro will go ALP … yet if the pundits ARE correct, it will lose bell-weather status.

  21. Darn – it was 50/50 last time, but might NOT be 50/50 this time. Patricia read too much into Chris Kenny’s comment.

  22. PHEW, I was expecting to come back and find out that I was totally wrong about the MOE stuff. Thank you William for giving an definitive answer.

  24. Yep – Turnbull will snake his way out of Q&A I reckon. Fronting up would do much more damage than avoiding it. A win for the LNP if he’s a no show..

  26. Confessions @ 8.28pm: I’m not disagreeing with you, and the tradie ad reminded me of the lame rejoinder which the Liberals made to “It’s Time” in 1972: “Not yet”.

    My point is more that I would discount a lot of the discussion going on at the moment that says that there doesn’t seem to be a “vibe” (whatever that means) for change. Certainly there are elections where an incumbent government is hated, and the baseball bat metaphor is accurate (eg NSW 2011, QLD 2015). But people don’t necessarily have to be in a state of fury to change their votes: there are an awful lot of people who aren’t rusted on to the major parties any more, and a fair proportion of them wouldn’t even remember for whom they voted at the last election (let alone which major party they preferenced). So they don’t go through any particular angst – “to swing or not to swing, that is the question” – but simply make their minds up not long before they vote.

  27. Dio
    I agree 100%*. Which is why I suggest that he would be the preferred choice of the Greens who do amateur psyops warfare on their political opponents instead of facing the hard reality that the only practical difference they are making right now is supporting Turnbull.
    The Greens’ core proposition seems to be that it does not matter what happens in the interim (noting that they can change things at the margins with the occasional BOP) provided they eventually form government.

  29. Its a big ask for Eden Monaro to lose its bellweather status. Every election since “72. Thats quite a few in a row.

  30. SK

    Why do you have a mafia boss as your icon?

    Falcone was not a mafia boss. He was the most famous anti-mafia magistrate until his assassination.

  33. Pedant:

    Thanks for the whingeing wendy ad. Before my time, but clearly the more things change the more they stay the same.

  34. BW
    As Whitlam said, “Only the impotent are pure.”
    Almost all of the Greens vs Labor war boils down to pragmatism vs idealism.

  35. Citizen

    They Libs could do nothing and Zed would get up and their HoR people both fail.

    You’re right they should have save the money for later but I can imagine Zed would be demanding about what he thinks he’s due without consideration of the rest of them.

  36. J
    Bellwethers were wethers who led flocks which had been conditioned to follow the sound of the bells. This was easier than trying to muster the sheep.

    Many, if not most, pundits decried the use of ‘bellwether’ in relation to Eden Monaro.

    Following the redistribution it has had the addition of substantial geographic territory and the loss of some as well. The result, according to the numbers from the booths of the last election, notionally increased the margin for the Liberals by around 2.5%.
    EM has been blessed with quite a few good MPs over time, from both sides. Possibly more than some city electorates, a significant proportion of the locals can end up either knowing or having met or knowing someone who has had something to do with the MP.
    Hendy is, IMO, a square peg in a round hole.
    Mike Kelly is a much better personal fit and people on both sides of the divide, personally and geographically, tend to respect him.

  38. Pedant:

    Yes I’d agree with all that too. As to the ‘vibe for change’, I remember back in 2007 thinking that it definitely felt like the govt could change. It seemed Howard’s lot were constantly scrambling to play catch up to Labor. Perhaps there’s a bit of that going on with Turnbull’s govt.

  39. Tool? And others echoing this sentiment. So who moderates this place? What sort of insults are ok here. Just wanna know cause it seems personal insults are allowed here. As tempted as I am to fire back the colourful profanities, I’ll await the moderators response….

  41. I would’ve thought it was common knowledge that when Mark Kenny says pretty much neck and neck it most definitely means 51-49 ALP. Surprised Karvelas couldn’t work that out. 50/50 would be described as the LNP have their noses in front.

  43. Dio.
    Oh, got it….
    “He who is silent and bows his head dies every time he does so. He who speaks aloud and walks with his head held high dies only once”

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