Another electorate polling round-up

A brace of union-commissioned marginal seat polls provide much better news for Labor, while insider accounts of the state of play feature reams of seats that could go either way.

The New South Wales Teachers Federation has produced the most intriguing set of marginal seat poll numbers of the campaign so far, showing Labor headed for victory in six crucial seats in New South Wales. The polls were conducted on Monday by ReachTEL, and target the same electorates as an earlier round of polling for the union on April 19. Five of the six results record movement to Labor since the earlier poll:

Dobell (Labor 0.2%): A poll of 616 respondents credits Labor’s Emma McBride with a lead of 53-47, up from 51-49 in April. The forced preference primary vote results are Labor 39.6%, Liberal 36.6%, Greens 7.8% and others 16.0%. On previous election preferences, Labor’s lead would be still greater, at 54.7-45.3. Karen McNamara won the Central Coast seat for the Liberals in 2013 by 0.7%, but the redistribution has left it with a notional Labor margin of 0.2%. Polls earlier in the campaign showed very little in it: a ReachTEL poll for the Fairfax papers on June 9 had it at 51-49 to Labor, and a Galaxy poll for the News Corp tabloids on May 11 had it at 50-50.

Lindsay (Liberal 3.0%): Four earlier polls, including two from ReachTEL and two from Newspoll/Galaxy, showed the Liberals leading in the outer western Sydney seat, but the NSWTF’s poll of 610 respondents has Labor’s Emma Husar with a 54-46 lead over Liberal member Fiona Scott. Primary votes are Labor 39.9%, Liberal 34.5%, Greens 3.9% and others 21.6%. On previous election preferences, Husar’s lead is 54.6-45.6. Scott led 53-47 in a Newspoll on June 14, 51-48 in a ReachTEL poll for the Australian Education Union on June 13, 54-46 in a ReachTEL for Fairfax on June 9, and 54-46 in a Galaxy poll for the News Corp tabloids on 54-46.

Macquarie (Liberal 3.3%): The poll of 636 respondents has Labor candidate Susan Templeman with a 54-46 lead over Liberal member Louise Markus in the western Sydney hinterland electorate, from primary votes of Labor 38.9%, Liberal 38.9% and Greens 12.1%. On previous election preferences, Templeman’s two-party lead is 55.0-45.0.

Eden-Monaro (Liberal 2.9%): In a poll of 636 respondents in the famous bellwether electorate in the state’s south-eastern corner, Labor’s Mike Kelly has a commanding lead of 55-45, or 54.0-46.0 on previous election preferences. Primary votes are Liberal 40.4%, Labor 37.5%, Greens 14.8% and others 7.3%. A similar poll for the Australian Education Union on June 18 produced much the same result.

Gilmore (Liberal 3.8%): A poll of 632 respondents in the southern New South Wales seat, which was last held by Labor in 1996, has Labor’s Fiona Phillips leading Liberal member Ann Sudmalis by 53-47. Primary votes are Liberal 39.3%, Labor 37.0% and Greens 12.5%. The result on previous election preferences is much the same (52.7-47.3). A poll by Galaxy for the News Corp tabloids on May 11 had the Liberals ahead 51-49.

Page (Nationals 3.1%): A poll of 647 respondents has Labor’s Janelle Saffin leading 54-46 in the seat she lost to Nationals member Kevin Hogan in 2013, from primary votes of Nationals 39.1%, Labor 36.6% and Greens 15.4%. On previous election preferences, the two-party difference is 53.3-46.7. A ReachTEL poll for the Australian Education Union on June 13 had Saffin leading 52-48.

Elsewhere:

• James Massola of Fairfax offers an account of the state of play based on discussion with “more than a dozen Labor strategists, officials, MPs and campaign workers across every state of Australia on Wednesday – as well as Liberal and National party strategists”. This suggests Labor has 66 seats pencilled in, with a good deal many more not being written off, and a hung parliament being well within the range of possibilities.

• The West Australian reports Labor polling “has picked up substantial swings against the coalition in Burt, Cowan, Swan and in the safe Liberal seat of Pearce, held by Cabinet minister Christian Porter”. Laurie Oakes related on the weekend that Labor had detected a 9% swing in Pearce, where Porter’s margin is 9.3%, and I gave the pot a further stir in a paywalled WA situation report in Crikey yesterday.

• According to Sharri Markson of The Australian, polling for the Nationals confirms the findings of a ReachTEL poll for GetUp! on June 13 in showing independent Rob Oakeshott on over 20% of the primary vote, leaving him “neck and neck” with Nationals member Luke Hartsuyker after preferences.

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.

2,229 comments on “Another electorate polling round-up”

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  1. During my pre-polling shifts there have been up to six Liberals at a time forming a pack around individual voters making it very difficult for anyone else to approach.

    Bullies at work?

  2. TPOF at 0853

    Agree completely.
    The senate is going to be bizzare. I am a political junkie and went through the 8 lower house candidates then tackled the senate paper.
    I was so tempted to put 1 next to Ricky Muir, followed by Labor and leave. The number of people voting fewer than 6 is going to be huge. I suspect that the quota to get a seat will be closer to 5 0r6% of eligible voters once the exhausted votes are taken into account

  3. tpof @ #100 Thursday, June 23, 2016 at 9:22 am

    I think Sussan Ley is one of the more human and humane members of the Coalition front bench.

    ……………………………………………………………….

    She lost me irrevocably when the tories were elected in 2013 and in one of her first actions demanded low paid child care workers ‘surrender and refund’ a very modest wage supplement provided by Labor.

    A powerful message as to where her ‘values’ lay .

  4. From the way the campaign has been going, you could be excused for thinking that it was the Opposition which had determined its timing and length, and the government which had been caught by surprise.

  5. During my pre-polling shifts there have been up to six Liberals at a time forming a pack around individual voters making it very difficult for anyone else to approach.

    …………………………………………………

    Wander down there with your mobile phone, catch multiple instances of it on video and make it available to the AEC and media outlets.

  6. TPOF:

    That plus her calling out Abbott’s Bolt appearance for what it was: positioning in order to chart a way back to the ministry and perhaps even the leadership.

  7. TPOF

    If Ms Ley is human and humane as you say, then she is like The Waffler, a person to be despised, because they subjugate their high order values to the causes of a party that at this point in time is anything but human and humane.

    Hypocrits.

  8. It’s worth noting that if the government only scrapes back into office, or if there’s a hung parliament, Mr Abbott will be in almost as strong a position to demand his preferred ministerial position as Mr Rudd was after the 2010 election.

  9. Cathy McGowan is a huge favorite at $1.12 in Indi from william hill.
    This is surprising to me.
    puffadder at ten bucks, nat on 7 bucks.

  10. On the CFA issue – I received a flyer in my letterbox yesterday telling me to “send Labor a message” (or WTTE) at the election. No party advertising on it. All I had to do was look at who it was authorised by: M Fifield.

    Don’t know why the Libs expect it to gain traction around here, as it’s the only form of anti-Labor advertising I’ve received. And I haven’t heard a pip from their candidate, Sarah Wade.

  11. https://theconversation.com/the-sound-of-silence-why-has-the-environment-vanished-from-election-politics-59658

    There’s a deafening silence in the ongoing Australian election campaign over the environment. Polling shows increasing public support for greater action on climate change but debate has been mostly missing.
    :::::
    No doubt both parties will fall over themselves to spruik their support for renewable energy, which is akin to motherhood and apple pie.

    What is striking about the history of climate change and federal politics is just how quiet politicians become once they get into campaign mode and face scrutiny for the specifics of their policy proposals.

    Perhaps they simply have no answers to awkward questions of what we do to replace our fossil fuel infrastructure and the power of the fossil fuel lobby.

  12. I left out bob katter back at 8:26 ! now i get 71-71 for the majors.
    That would make for some interesting negotiations.

  13. Labors resurgence coincides with the LNP breaking their silence, finally, on boat turnbacks.
    Its not an “on-water matter” anymore due to the coming storm.

  14. I emailed Catherine King as I said I would, about 10 minutes ago.

    I have just now received a phone call from a staffer travelling with her, to say that my email has been read by CK and she will certainly be calling out and commenting on the Witness Protection status of Susan Ley.

  15. Malcolm Farr is a fat and lazy RupertRooter

    Before the Facebook/news.com.au debate he said wtte “Facebook has 12m users in Australia, you would be stupid not to use this medium”. The maximum logged on via Facebook was 14k – about 0.001% of the potential reach as spruiked by Farr.

  16. Psyclaw @ 9.33

    I said ‘more’ – that is on a spectrum that has Abbott, Bernardi, Scummo and Potato Head at one end.

    And the point I was making was not complimentary. Rather, that she is a weak link because she does not fully pin down the vileness and therefore is vulnerable to being caught out by facts and the truth.

  17. Decided to lay off my bets with a hung parliament.

    With a stake of $800, the firm would only take $150 each time
    was 6.0 last night
    when i started betting it dropped from 4.50 to 4.0 to 3.5
    then they removed the option

  18. Diog

    ‘resigned due to her disgust at Andrews..’

    Wow, how do you know that was her reason? She has made no public statement along those lines.

    She made promises to people which she couldn’t keep, and so she resigned.

    That doesn’t mean she was ‘disgusted with Andrews’.

    If she was, there would be absolutely no reason for her not to make a public comment along those lines.

    My reading of it was that she had made a concrete promise to the CFA along the lines of ‘no matter what happens, I won’t let this deal go through”. Andrews has said that all the concerns she raised with the deal were dealt with (as in, she was left with no arguments to put forward). Again, if he was lying about this, there would be no reason for her not to correct the record.

    I did sit on the fence for a while on this one, but am increasingly convinced that this has been mainly driven by the CFA bureaucracy protecting their jobs. I think it is significant that the fire stations going on the record as saying they have no problems are receiving their information from both the union and the CFA; the fire stations which are dead against it are CFA-only operations, who are getting their information purely through the CFA.

  19. Katharine murphy raises the possibility of Turnbull having to negotiate with NXT in a minority government.

    In that scenario is won’t be Turnbull negotiating, certainly not for long.

    Even the status quo, 90 seats, won’t be enough for the crazies. They will be coming for Turnbull win lose or draw

  20. Maybe Ley should ask the Financial sector to ‘do the right thing’ like obey the law, or ask other businesses to hand back business welfare –
    …………………………………………………………………………

    …Ms Ley admitted she had no legal ability to force the childcare centres to repay the money, but said she “hoped” they would do the right thing.

    Labor had set aside $300 million in the budget to boost the wages of 30,000 childcare workers, an increase frozen when the Coalition came into government.

    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/childcare-workers-asked-to-hand-back-wage-rise-20131210-2z2pw.html

  21. There’s a deafening silence in the ongoing Australian election campaign over the environment. Polling shows increasing public support for greater action on climate change but debate has been mostly missing.

    I’d include the Greens in that too, relatively speaking. Like Ricky Muir talking about motoring issues in passing.

  23. Just heard Ricky Muir promoting rapid fire shotguns and making gun silencers legal on Jon Faine. Just dropped him from my consideration list.

  24. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-23/business-leaders-join-open-letter-calling-for-climate-policy/7534620

    Industry leaders, scientists, and doctors have called on the major political parties to spell out their climate change policies in detail before election day.

    A group of 24 prominent Australians, including former Australian of the Year and epidemiologist Professor Fiona Stanley, have signed an open letter calling on political leaders to take “emergency-scale action”.

    The statement also calls for an immediate ban on new coal and gas developments, and an urgent transition to zero emissions.

    Another signatory, former Business Council of Australia CEO Paul Barratt, said climate change was a fundamental issue but has only featured symbolically during the election campaign.

  25. These ReachTel polls should be especially concerning for the Coalition. The voting intention question was asked first, before the question on Gonski. Therefore, the voting intention answers were not “skewed” Labor’s way by the respondents having just been primed to think more positively about Labor’s education policy. (Full Gonski funding is a clear positive for Labor.) That is, these high PV’s for Labor in these polls is an indication of the support the respondent voters are intending to give Labor BEFORE being directly reminded of Labor’s highly-favourable education policy. This should be very alarming for the Coalition.

  26. zoomster
    Spot on re the CFA dispute.
    I also sent an email to media watch re the totally unbalanced 7.30 story re the CFA dispute. To be fair media watch should comment on this before the election period ends, but I doubt that will happen.

  27. Another thing about the DFA thing.

    Voters respect the volunteers make no mistake. However when it comes to a paid job j an unpaid volunteer one they go with the paid job. This is because being paid is better than volunteering for
    individual and the profession in terms of concentration on issues within that profession from each individual just on the basis they are full time.

    Volunteers by definition make their income from another source. By definition this means that they have less time to spend doing the job. Voters know this full well.

    So if it comes down to having a paid professional to do a job v a volunteer in most cases they will side with the paid professional. Thats no disregard for the volunteer just a recognition of the reality.

    This is part of the reason the LNP is on a loser here.

  28. Yes Ley can still vaguely remember what it was like to be human. That makes her a weak link in the Liberals chain. Ever since she let the cat out of the bag that she’d tried to kybosh the Medicare freeze but ScoMo and the Cormanator ixnayed it she’s been in protective custody preparing for a change of identify after the election.

  32. EM

    Labor and the Greens. In fact Labor put out negative gearing and capital gains changes to help with real term house price reduction over time and increase of supply.

  34. pegasus @ #111 Thursday, June 23, 2016 at 9:36 am

    A daily lesson from a G on how Labor=Liberal

    Instead of campaigning against Labor, yet again, The Gs should express support for and promise to support Labor’s environment policies in the Parliament. Of course, they will not do this because they intend to oppose Labor’s policies…again.

  37. Di Natale was running interference on Labor’s “Save Medicare” campaign again on RN this morning ..said Labor had no need to “lie” (yes, he used Turnbull’s word) about Medicare & repeated “old parties” several times in his ongoing attempt to convince voters they are as bad as each other..

    Greens clearly want Turnbull & his spivs to prevail..

  38. Kicking

    Shows how little money might be in these pools and how vulnerable they are for firming when someone puts an ordinary stake down.

    I read somewhere there’s been 3 or 4 times as many ‘small’ bets on ALP and a much smaller number of much bigger bets on Libs – those bigger bets having a greater effect on the odds. Maybe???

  40. Always amazed at the ability of James Massola to pick up the phone and talk candidly with Labor Contacts, particularly after her tried to destroy their leader. What a journo. The man is amazing.

  42. markjs

    RDN is just being honest. Yes Medicare is in danger from the LNP there is no doubt of that as Peter Martin outlines in his piece in the SMH today. You just need to look at the freeze on bulk billing.

    However in the fog of war to make the political point Labor has to go out on a lime to point out the reality.

    The Greens do not have to do this and as their brand is honesty in politics they are not doing Labor’s scare campaign. Justified as I think it is.

    Don’t mistake not going with the Labor narrative as not supporting Medicare or wanting an LNP government.

  43. markjs @ #137 Thursday, June 23, 2016 at 9:58 am

    Di Natale was running interference on Labor’s “Save Medicare” campaign again on RN this morning ..said Labor had no need to “lie” (yes, he used Turnbull’s word) about Medicare & repeated “old parties” several times in his ongoing attempt to convince voters they are as bad as each other..
    Greens clearly want Turnbull & his spivs to prevail..

    He’s running against Labor. He’s also hoping to attract some passing trade from the “rejectors”. He has no hope. The “rejectors” very deeply mistrust the Gs…and for very good reasons. The Gs play the politics of guilt/shame/blame harder than anyone. This spectacle is one of the things “rejectors” most dislike about our politics. It’s one of the reasons they have taken up rejection as a deliberate form of political expression.

  44. Guytaur, you call providing housing for the homeless a bandaid solution, what a joke. People need help now, not in 5 years when the changes to house prices might have some effect. We have seen massive money promised for netball courts, new sporting stadiums and many other things that are trivial compared to looking after those who society has left behind. Why should not a federal government provide extra funding to the states to use for helping the homeless?
    The simple fact is the federal parties of both sides have abandoned the weakest.
    Killing babies through abortion is legal
    Refugees shipped to other countries and not helped properly
    Nothing for the homeless
    Disabled services are simply not good enough
    Child protection services are simply inadequate.
    These are the kinds of issues that the federal government should be fixing, not spending money on sports stadiums or netball courts in an attempt to buy votes.

  45. peg

    With the election just over a week away, the Greens will today issue their demands in the event of a hung parliament.

    They can demand what they want but if they even get a free coffee and a biscuit I’ll be surprised. They’ve priced themselves out of the market.

  48. I noticed that some posters are having their comments prefixed by “Your comment is awaiting moderation”. That appeared for people who appeared to be new to PB and I understand this. However some comments by established posters have also received this treatment, particularly Psyclaw this morning.

    Is this perhaps a glitch whereby comments are selected randomly for moderation?

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