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”

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  1. Did the ABC Political Compass the other day. Got Labor 78%, Green 77%.

    Imagine my surprise to come onto PB today and learn from some random guy on the internet that the two parties are nothing alike. Man, the ABC must have really stuffed up their compass.

  2. Chloe Shorten interviews Bill Shorten, I see she asks all the hard questions. What a self indulgent bit a crap and she is his SECOND wife.

  3. “Chris Kenny @chriskkenny @PatsKarvelas no I didn’t – I said pretty much neck and neck” It must be Labor 51, then, or maybe 50-50. Libs on 51 would be a ‘surge’ or a ‘front-runner’ for the L/NP in media-speak.

  5. Zoomster:

    I have a vague recollection of reading something here or elsewhere in which McGowan had indicated she would support a coalition govt in the event of a hung parliament.

  6. I spent several hours door-knocking today. The rejectionist vote is emphatic. They are sore. Very, very sore. They refuse Labor. They are furious with the Liberals. They thoroughly despise the G’s. They will vote informally, with tears in their eyes.

  8. Greg Jericho‏ @GrogsGamut
    This advert seems to be suggesting the Liberal Party is useless but we might as well stick with them.

    I think it explicitly said it rather than just suggesting it.

  10. lee wool @ #928 Sunday, June 19, 2016 at 9:36 pm

    Most public schools can barely afford text books or computers and have inexperienced teenager teachers. Even though there are private schools with so much money, they have developed their crown donated land into multires housing to further fill their private coffers.

    I don’t know what kind of school you went to, but I went to both public schools and private schools, and the public schools I went to could very well afford their textbooks, computers and didn’t have ‘teenager teachers’ (and how exactly can one be considering you have to earn your teacher’s degree first?); and the private schools didn’t even have housing to begin with, let alone developed on ‘crown developed land’.

  14. Zoom – I can’t give the details but my recollection there was an interview a couple of weeks ago with McGowan where she gave every indication of saying that she would see Malware continuing as PM in a minority situation.

  16. Vote compass is a joke. Just like the decimated abc. Labor more compassionate about refugees. Lol. Yeah right. Maybe in their heart, but not in real stated policy.

  17. So, normally I don’t buy into the hysteria about a Coalition ad. I have found, often, people online underestimate their effects on voters.

    But, having seen the tradie ad, I can safely say it is not really good. For exactly the reason being pointed out. It is resigned. “Please give us one more chance!”

    They’re obviously trying to emulate a real conversation you’re having with a friend or a colleague or a partner, where they might reach the conclusion of “let’s stick with this mob for now” but viewers aren’t that gullible. They know this is a political ad and that line sounds like desperate pleading.

    If they wanted to go for “Better the devil you know”, they should have gone for something along the lines of “Don’t risk a Shorten Government” or something like that. Always choose conviction over resignation when you’re crafting a message.

  18. I spent several hours door-knocking today. The rejectionist vote is emphatic. They are sore. Very, very sore. They refuse Labor. They are furious with the Liberals. They thoroughly despise the G’s. They will vote informally, with tears in their eyes.

    Tragique. Have you considered composing a libretto about it?

  20. ctar1 @ #941 Sunday, June 19, 2016 at 9:41 pm

    C@
    Hibernate?
    Not in the front courtyard – its got tall brick walls and faces due North so plenty of Sun.
    Any sunny day they are backwards and forwards along the walls intercepting the small black ant who also use it as as a roadway.

    Living on the top of a cold,wind and rainswept hill, at least in winter, on an acreage with no walls around the property, only trees, my skinks disappear at this time of year! Even the sunny days have a bitter quality to them.

  22. Well i just pulled my son out of a public school for those exact reasons and much worse. The school is a sad disgrace. The private school up the road is doing what I described. Only choice was Catholic to be indoctrinated by freaks. Choice…nope. What a great country….

  23. j
    Well, I am honoured to know you, albeit vicariously once removed.
    A book for which I did the image post processing has just been published and I have to say it was quite a thrill to see the finished products out in the real world.

  24. z
    Well, that sounds innovative and exciting and possibly agile as well. I wonder where Indi gets tipped into the mill when people like Uhlmann take their purblind stabs

  25. Cat, yes I do. The way sexuality is dealt with our society is a disgrace, immorality is the norm, sex, sex, sex, sex. Sex is immoral except between a married couple, the rest should not happen.
    However I am not sure how your post follows from what I posted, I said nothing about sexuality in my post.

  26. I think Lee must be one of those refugees from Socialist Alliance after one of their sporadic Marxist vs Trotskyite wars. 😉

  27. I wager “they” will vote informally with roughly scrawled dongs on the ballot paper over shedding a tear, somehow.

  28. Nicholas

    Ah, you’re accusing the aim of a policy with the policy itself.

    If you look at any issue which played out over a long period of time not only the aim changed but so did the approaches (the policies adopted) to it did as well.

    So to achieve universal suffrage, for example, the original aim was to widen adult male suffrage to various groups, and various policies were adopted to do this; then, when – after a series of incremental steps, each time allowing more males to vote – when all men had the vote, the aim shifted to female suffrage and so on.

    If you’d gone back in time to the original group who were proposing to extend male suffrage and told them that the path they were heading down would lead to universal suffrage (if, indeed, we do have that yet!) they would have been aghast. That wasn’t their aim, or the purpose of their policy.

    It’s fine the Greens having the same aims they had a decade ago. It’s not (necessarily) fine that they have exactly the same policies in place to achieve that aim, the world not being a stagnant place. In most cases, policies should be updated regularly, to make sure that they fit the current situation.

    Labor does try different policy approaches to exactly the same issue – as evinced by various versions of their climate change policy, for example. That’s what you’d expect of a party which is trying to find real world solutions, which must change as the world changes, rather than one which doesn’t have to ensure its policies will actually work.

  29. JimmyDoyle – I think Edi is pointing out that Bill has had at least two more r00ts in his lifetime than Edi has.

  30. Just another lightweight, inner city, yuppy Green with delusions of the grandeur of his thought processes, and the rapier wit of a dull bread knife.

    Always a bit sad to see C@Tmomma grasping towards a level of repartee so thoroughly beyond her reach.

  34. Dio, I hope it will be played at night then, a much more bearable 32 degrees C forecast for the night.
    That said, loved Arizona when I visited. Spent a couple of days there not so long ago whilst in LA. Great nightlife, great people.

  35. Edi_Mahin
    Sex is immoral except between a married couple

    So is sex between a same-sex couple “immoral”, seeing as they aren’t allowed to get married?

  36. Labor does try different policy approaches to exactly the same issue – as evinced by various versions of their climate change policy, for example. That’s what you’d expect of a party which is trying to find real world solutions, which must change as the world changes, rather than one which doesn’t have to ensure its policies will actually work.

    The only reason Labor has had to try different policy approaches to climate change is because they so comprehensively failed to counteract the Coalition rubbishing their previous ones.

  38. CM @ 9.55

    They’re obviously trying to emulate a real conversation you’re having with a friend or a colleague or a partner

    My guess is that the line came straight from a focus group.

    The problem is that while it may well reflect what people are thinking, even the thickest people know a party political ad when they see one. While the message in the ad may resonate, they know what it is.

    And voters expect that when a party is talking about itself it will do more than simply describe itself as the alternative to the other mob. There have been plenty of elections where governing parties have exhorted the voters not to change horses in mid-stream or the like. But with the horse half-dead and refusing to enter the water that sort of rhetorical metaphor doesn’t wash with voters. It simply draws attention to how little has been achieved and how little achievement is in prospect with the current government.

  40. Edi-Mahin,

    However I am not sure how your post follows from what I posted, I said nothing about sexuality in my post.

    You made a point of pointing out that Chloe Shorten was Bill’s ‘SECOND’ wife.

    And, yes, maybe I was wrong to put it down to your uptight views about sexuality, when it is actually your antediluvian perspective on what should be Australia’s social mores.

    Lady, those battles have been won and done. We have an enlightened perspective regarding relationships in this country now. Thank god.

  44. Boer – congrats – and yes it is a thrill – I cried when I saw my first little book on the shelf in Dymocks!

  45. Diogenes

    This whole time I thought your icon was Groucho “either this man is dead or my watch has stopped” Marx…

  46. What’s labor up to on health? An extra 2bil? Woohoo. Problem solved. And some trivial tinkering? After all that fuss? Liberal this liberal that? Liblab. Same same.

  47. My diagnosis is that you still haven’t been able to forgive yourself for being unable to figure out why the Greens single out Israel and leave dozens of evil states alone. But I suggest you get a second opinion.

    I’d suggest getting a second opinion too were my own offerings as poor as yours.

  49. a r @ #921 Sunday, June 19, 2016 at 9:34 pm

    Some good commentary here:
    http://www.canberratimes.com.au/comment/view-from-the-street/view-from-the-street-election-2016-whos-about-to-stuff-it-all-up-20160619-gpmomc.html
    They confirm my opinion regarding the accuracy of any polls which apply preference flows from the 2013 election. Which is to say, they don’t have much (accuracy, that is).

    See, if you’re a polling company that assumes the flow of preferences on what happened at the last election – which is central to the way in which (at the very least) Newspoll does its analysis – then the predicted Labor two party preferred vote will probably skew low because the support for Labor in 2013 was genuinely abysmal.

    The problem with that argument is that it is historically rubbish, but people are now writing about it without bothering to check if it has actually worked at federal elections in the past. It actually hasn’t. More often when a party’s vote changes, its preference share either goes the other way or does more or less nothing. The last time a party both improved its 2PP vote and its preference share (compared to what would be expected based on party breakdowns) was the Coalition doing so in 1996 and 2010. The last time Labor significantly improved both at the same time was 1980.

    Anyone should be able to think through the obvious here: these people are arguing that Labor’s vote is up so its preference share should be up. By the same token, Labor’s vote was down in 2013 so it should have done worse on preferences then than last-election preferences predicted. It actually didn’t; it did substantially better (one of the two times in the last 12 elections there has been a substantial preference shift; 1990 was the other).

    So if you want a reason to believe preference flows will change in Labor’s favour, this aint it. They might, but if they do, that won’t be why.

  50. Briefly
    I will give you a sad little statment of reality. Those rejectionists are actually going to vote Liberal or for a minor then will go Liberal. They tell you they will be informal because it is less confrontational and seems more polite. They mean everything they say, but when they go into that ballot box they will go Liberal.

    I am gathering from you recent posts that you are feeling discouraged. You were on a real high a few weeks ago but now not so much.

    Have you perhaps changed door knocking locations? Is it the campaign? William still seems optimistic abouut a swing in WA.

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