BludgerTrack: 52.0-48.0 to Labor

The Track is back, as Essential Research moves a point in favour of the Coalition.

The only new poll this week was the usual fortnightly rolling average result from Essential Research, which moved a point in favour of the Coalition on two-party preferrred, leaving Labor’s lead at 51-49. On the primary vote, the Coalition was up one to 40%, Labor steady on 36%, the Greens down one to 8%, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation steady at 6% and the Nick Xenophon Team steady at 3%. However, the big news so far as this post is concerned is the post-election return of BludgerTrack, which opens its account with 17 data points to work from – three from Newspoll, and 14 from Essential Research.

bt2019-2016-10-05

Each pollster is bias-adjusted based on the difference between the election result and a trend measure of their voting intention numbers at that time, with the results halved to account for the likelihood that they will tweak their methodology rather than persist in their existing errors. On this basis, the adjustments for Newspoll are +0.0% for the Coalition, 0.2% for Labor and +0.0% for the Greens, while those for Essential Research are respectively -0.7%, +0.5% and -0.1%. For the time being, results are being weighted according to a formula that gives each pollster equal weight over the full course of the present term, so that the more prolific a pollster is, the less weight its polls will be given. On this basis, the weighting for a single Essential poll is currently 0.071, while a Newspoll gets one-third.

This means the dominant data point so far as the current reading is concerned is last week’s Newspoll, which was published as 52-48 to Labor, but came out at 52.7-47.3 after 2016 election preferences were applied to the bias-adjusted primary vote. This is why the current BludgerTrack reading is a little more favourable to Labor than you might expect, given the run of recent polling. Preferences are allocated according to the results of the July election, there presently being no other option, but I will eventually move to a method that splits the difference between previous election preferences and a trend measure of respondent-allocated preferences, if and when Ispos and ReachTEL provide enough such data to make it worthwhile. Such an approach would have been almost perfectly accurate at the recent election, although the previous election method has generally performed better in the past. The leadership results go back to the start of Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership in mid-September last year – note that no change is recorded in the “last week” column at this point, owing to the lack of new results this week.

Further poll stuff:

• After numerous polls finding the public favouring a referendum to solve the same-sex marriage question, a follow-up result from last week’s Newspoll found 48% favouring a “politicians decide&148; options versus 39% for a plebiscite in February. This week’s Essential Research gave respondents an option between “the government should agree to a vote in parliament” and “the Labor Party, Greens and Xenophon Team should agree to a plebiscite”, with respective results of 53% and 24%.

• Both pollsters also asked how they would vote in a referendum, with Newspoll finding 62% to 32% in favour of yes, and Essential coming in at 58% to 28%. Essential also found 49% believed such a vote should be binding on parliament, with 26% preferring the alternative option of leaving parliamentarians with a free vote.

• Essential posed a series of questions on the National Broadband Network, which found 42% favouring “the Labor plan” and 27% “the Liberal government’s plan”; only 22% saying the NBN would “adequately meet Australia’s future Internet requirements”, with 47% saying it wouldn’t; and 88% agreeing the internet was “becoming an essential service”, with only 7% disagreeing.

• Fifty per cent rated the level of immigration to Australia over the past 10 years as too high, 12% as too low and 28% as about right, while 44% opposed the recently announced increase in the annual refugee intake, with 39% supportive. Relatedly, Essential recently released widely publicised results on Muslim immigration and Pauline Hanson from its survey of July 27 to August 1. This found 49% supporting a ban on Muslim immigration versus 40% opposed, and strong majorities supporting the propositions that Hanson was “speaking for a lot of ordinary Australians” (62% to 30%) and “talks about issues other politicians too scared to tackle” (65% to 28%).

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.

1,021 comments on “BludgerTrack: 52.0-48.0 to Labor”

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  1. Confessions

    I was just about to post the same.
    There will I suspect be a need for thorough dry cleaning on THAT plane tonight.

  2. A sad event.

    4:34pm
    The death of the woman at Millgrove, a small town in east of Melbourne, around 2pm on Sunday is the first fatality from the violent winds.

    “We can confirm there has been a death as a result of a tree falling on a residence at Millgrove,” Mr Lapsley told reporters on Sunday.

    In another incident, an 81-year-old woman was trapped in a house in Tacoma before being rescued and taken to hospital.

    Mr Lapsley said they had been “two of the most traumatic” events of the day, with more than 2000 calls for help coming in throughout the day.

    http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/melbourne-weather-damaging-winds-cause-chaos-throughout-victoria-20161009-gry8q0.html

  3. The latest from Mr Denmore at ‘The Failed Estate’:
    http://failedestate.com/the-public-blackout/
    In an era of hyper-partisanship, every tangled, contentious issue – climate change, alternative energy, health, education funding, debt, infrastructure, superannuation, same-sex marriage, immigration – gets chucked into the thermomix to be rearranged into a left-right slab of news meat.

    Gives Chris Uhlmann a whacking.

  4. It’s only a light breeze –

    Victoria weather: State hammered by high winds with airport delays, power cut

    The State Emergency Service (SES) already had more than 1,000 calls for help with Healesville and Emerald, east of Melbourne, and Broadmeadows in the northern suburbs the hardest hit.

    The high winds created major issues at Melbourne Airport, which is now only operating on one runway.

    Some train and tram lines were also suspended due to fallen trees and almost 30,000 people lost power in the west of the state.

    At Millgrove, in the Dandenong Ranges east of Melbourne, a woman was trapped in a house due to a fallen tree and emergency officials had trouble getting to her.

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-09/victoria-weather-state-to-be-slammed-with-high-winds-up-120kph/7916196

  5. I went through that once on Santorini, at night twice, before we landed on the third attempt. It was a twin prop Dash-8. Horrible experience. My finger nail marks should still be embedded in the arm rests. Her Indoors laughed her way through it. Hostie did her nails. Other passengers not so sanguine: one kissed the tarmac when he got off.

    Next plane to try landed first time, good as gold. I was disappointed.

    When it comes to getting rid of huntsmen, I’m the brave one. I have one-up on HI there. But generally speaking, I have to admit women are far braver than men when it comes to the life-and-death stuff.

  6. Confessions and DTT
    Talk about scary, I was on a plane landing at Heathrow that came in sideways from the wind, terrifying, but not as bad as that one. We landed and there wa s dead silence on the plane, I wonder why 😀

  7. Bemused
    You are right re the pilots earning their money, which is why I try to travel on the well known airlines, they have been trained. Eg Gibraltar airport BA have 2 senior captains to fly in and out and you can see why ie one mistake and you are in the sea both ends, also the only road from Gibraltar to Spain is closed ,when planes are landing, incredible to watch the planes landing about 50 metres from where you standing and watching and about 20 metres above you head

  8. Mari:

    I had a scary landing in Vietnam once, nothing like that Qantas flight today, but it still swerved and bucked trying to land. People were screaming but nobody was hurt.

  9. mari @ #866 Sunday, October 9, 2016 at 5:09 pm

    Bemused
    You are right re the pilots earning their money, which is why I try to travel on the well known airlines, they have been trained. Eg Gibraltar airport BA have 2 senior captains to fly in and out and you can see why ie one mistake and you are in the sea both ends, also the only road from Gibraltar to Spain is closed ,when planes are landing, incredible to watch the planes landing about 50 metres from where you standing and watching and about 20 metres above you head

    The stories on ‘Air Crash Investigator’ and similar are very sobering.
    In some cases pilots do remarkable feats to save their aircraft and passengers.
    In others, a succession of mishaps and errors doom a flight no mater how skilled the crew. e.g. in one case the wrong fuel gauge was fitted and misled the pilots into believing they had adequate fuel. They ran out and couldn’t figure what was going on.

  10. For any aircraft buffs, SBS has a program on at 5:30pm about the Me 262, the worlds first operational jet powered aircraft.

  11. When it comes to getting rid of huntsmen, I’m the brave one. I have one-up on HI there. But generally speaking, I have to admit women are far braver than men when it comes to the life-and-death stuff.

    Oh I don’t know. Men didn’t do too badly when the titanic went down. Most of them went with it. And the blokes who manned the front lines during two world wars were pretty ballsy.

    I’d say both genders can show extraordinary bravery when the chips are down.

  12. The Neoliberals’ product is electoral poison

    The big structural problem in our country’s political system is that Labor and the Greens don’t offer an alternative to the neoliberal economic framework. They merely offer to implement it more softly. Massive wastage of resources, potential, and quality of life gushes from this breakage in our politics. It is time for an economic framework that puts full employment and a broader concept of paid work front and center.

  13. Re William @5:18PM: thank you. I posted a link on another blog so I will have to retract over there.

    I have found the original, dated 5/5/2015:

    “…However, although the footage was posted to Facebook on Sunday as the state of Victoria was being battered by extreme winds, it was actually filmed last year. myGC found the original video, which was uploaded to Youtube back on May 5, 2015.”

    http://www.mygc.com.au/watch-terrifying-moment-qantas-plane-aborts-landing-melbourne-airport/

  14. steve777 @ #881 Sunday, October 9, 2016 at 5:44 pm

    Re William @5:18PM: thank you. I posted a link on another blog so I will have to retract over there.
    I have found the original, dated 5/5/2015:
    “…However, although the footage was posted to Facebook on Sunday as the state of Victoria was being battered by extreme winds, it was actually filmed last year. myGC found the original video, which was uploaded to Youtube back on May 5, 2015.”
    http://www.mygc.com.au/watch-terrifying-moment-qantas-plane-aborts-landing-melbourne-airport/

    The Age also posted that video.

  15. William 5,18 pm
    You are correct plane landing 5/5/15.. my mistake the tweet I looked at was dated today snd all answering tweets were dated today ,when I posted Sorry

  16. The ACT Territory election is next Saturday, and I was expecting to see some polling. None has been published as far as I can tell, has anyone seen any?

    A colleague tells me that Morgan was polling there last week, though you have to pay for this now.

    For William, do you have something planned for the ACT election?

  17. The NEw York Times weighs in:

    Surrounded by sycophants on a luxury bus, Mr. Trump brags about how he aggressively tried to seduce a married woman, later ridiculing her figure as ruined by fake breasts.

    He then spies an attractive actress waiting for him outside the bus and regales his companions with his ability to force himself on women sexually because of his celebrity.

    “When you’re a star, they let you do it,” he said.

    After salivating over the sight of the actress, Mr. Trump descends from the bus and acts like a gentleman. It is a moment of fraudulence that resonates deeply for any women or men who fear what people might say when their backs are turned.

    “It’s Trump behind closed doors, in a candid moment in a nonpolitical setting, and this is the true inner Donald Trump you are hearing,” said Tad Devine, a veteran adviser and ad maker for Democratic presidential candidates.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/09/us/politics/donald-trump-presidential-race.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=a-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

    Not good for The Donald.

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