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. Nicole
    Sunday, October 9, 2016 at 9:03 pm
    …”B McB, I can not make heads or tails of your post. I live in QLD and my kids state based education has been terrific and their teachers have been wonderful, some exceptionally so. Only one was exceptionally meh. Approximation is but one numeracy skill and an important one. Multiplication is another. One does not replace the other. I also cannot figure out how bringing up play-dough is relevant. Did you just add that in to make a point? I am yet to figure out what point you are trying to make…”

    I just spent $14 buying “Play Doh” because it is some sort of art based compulsory thing that 7-8 year olds play with in “skool” rather than the 3 RRR’s
    I own a 3 year old, he loves “Play Doh”
    I own a 1 year old, he really likes eating “Play Doh”.
    I own a 7 year old, broadly intelligent little person who simply should not be playing with “Doh” when he cant do basic arithmetic…
    Get it?

  2. BMcB
    Sadly some teachers cannot teach and some kids, despite all, find it hard to learn. However, the next time you see a Year 2 class put on an entertaining and informative item at an assembly, the truth is that most kids can in fact read, write, remember routines and speak pretty well – even as this tender age. However, I will concede if you ask many adults where Austria is on a map, I would guess a lot would struggle such is the demise of learning “facts” in geography. Or, answer what year King George V came to the throne in Britain. I wasted countless hours at school learning that kind or rubbish including how to divide 426 or some such number into like 117,431 by long division. I don’t think I have ever done, or need to do, “long division” since I left primary school. On top of this, sure most can do tables by rote by why stop at times 12? For instance, kids could spend lot of time learning their 27 times table so that they could rattle of that 16 X 27 = 432. Now that would be a useful skill (not) to be learned by rote.
    Schools, kids and teachers are easy targets for critics – as you seem to be. Everybody went to school and so everyone is an expert…except they are not…just pushing a particular barrow.

  3. ‘It certainly seems to me that we are seeing more unpredictable, extreme weather events as the impact of AGW takes hold.’

    Yes indeed, but don’t mention the war.

  4. ‘Former Liberal Leader John Hewson says banking culture is skewed in favour of the shareholder not the client’
    If only it were.
    Banking culture is skewed because favour of the managers, the CEO and top level executives, they do what they do, to benefit themselves, while keeping the shareholders onside.
    That is not difficult as the top shareholders are investment funds, run by other financial executives exactly like themselves

  5. BoMB is a troll. One of the most ugly kind. Probably some Hooray Henry back from the Malaysian Grand Prix with his Malaysian flag budgies getting his jollies more safely by stirring up lefty luvvies.

    DON’T FEED THE TROLL. It spreads more poison than a squashed cane toad.

  6. ‘Be fair – since BB’s epic take down of bemused, we have to encourage the trolls we have left … : )’

    Yes, but bemused is in a class all his own.

  7. ‘I find it more tax effective to lease my kids’

    And if your lawyers get the contract right, the terms allow you to dispense with them if the schooling doesn’t achieve the desired outcome.
    However, with the money invested, this is unlikely to be the case. But you never know for sure.

  8. Zoomster
    Sunday, October 9, 2016 at 10:03 pm
    …”You OWN your children?…”

    …”Sounds like you’re disappointed in your investments…”

    Of course I OWN my children.
    Do you not own yours?
    To say they don’t belong to you is to say you are not responsible for them.
    Every time I walk in the door of my house, 3 little boys run up and hug me.
    They say “yay, daddy is home”
    Or, “yes Daddy here?”
    Or “daddy I love you”
    Pretty fucking awesome world huh?

  9. Be fair – since BB’s epic take down of bemused

    Oh god I’ve only just seen that! Well said Bushfire!!

    A most brilliant excoriation of the creepy obsessive methods he deploys.

  10. Adrian – what kind of bizarre person are you? Never seen Rocky, scared of the ABC, you need me in your life, I will guide you grasshopper…

  11. ABC news reports of christian repression in China. You’d think, given their own brethren are reportedly being surveilled, followed, their worshiping documented that christian folk here would be marshaling troops to take arms against the Chinese govt. But no, their most pressing issue isn’t the persecution of their own folk in an anti democratic nation but the rights of those they don’t claim as their own to marry in Australia.

    Jeez, forest, trees anyone?

  12. Nina, you may be right, and I may well accept your kind offer inn due course.
    However, if you live in Sydney, might I suggest that you check out The Drovers Wife at The Belvoir.
    One of the best, most powerful theatrical experiences I have ever had. Written and starring the wonderful Leigh Purcell.
    Goodnight!

  13. Bemused – I’m not one to put my nose where it doesn’t belong, well that’s not entirely true, but that’s not important right now. My point is, you need to apologise to Everyone in PB, one by one, starting with me…

  14. Adrian, I live Melbourne, but the force is strong in me, I will help you. I read The Drovers Wife in High School, I’d be interested to see that, anything so I wouldn’t have to read it again…

  15. bob mcbob @ #946 Sunday, October 9, 2016 at 9:40 pm

    Ain’t Bullshit mate.
    PLAYDOH, 7 year old kids in the country you and I grew up in simply are not given rote instruction of multiplication tables.
    They are given zero instruction in foundation mathematics.

    Yeah, it is bullshit that they are given zero instruction in foundation mathematics. Rote learning of timetables is not foundation. They need to learn the basics first, how to count, add, subtract, multiply and divide first. There are other number facts they need to learn first. Whats the point of rote learning something if you don’t understand what it actually means in real life.

    There is no point putting the horse before the cart. Leave the teaching to the teachers. From your position back seat driving without a teaching degree, you seem to forget that most kids when starting school have not even learned letter and number identification yet. Half of 7 year olds are only in grade one and are learning plenty. They will learn their timetables soon enough.

  16. Player One
    Sunday, October 9, 2016 at 10:17 pm
    vogon poet @ #971 Sunday, October 9, 2016 at 10:11 pm

    …”I find it more tax effective to lease my kids…”

    …”I believe you can negatively gear them now…”

    I believe you can disenfranchise them, through subpoena to the high court, so as to attain a freedom of information document, which may/or may not implicate the Australian Bureau of Statistics in the alleged illegal collation of data, against the citizens of a country, who have explicitly agreed to the collection of such.
    Also Kevin Rudd and Paul Keating and Bemused Rock my balls…
    Instead of a violently intelligent man running the country, we have been inflicted with a series if imbeciles and idiots…

  17. bob mcbob @ #957 Sunday, October 9, 2016 at 10:01 pm

    Nicole
    Sunday, October 9, 2016 at 9:03 pm
    …”B McB, I can not make heads or tails of your post. I live in QLD and my kids state based education has been terrific and their teachers have been wonderful, some exceptionally so. Only one was exceptionally meh. Approximation is but one numeracy skill and an important one. Multiplication is another. One does not replace the other. I also cannot figure out how bringing up play-dough is relevant. Did you just add that in to make a point? I am yet to figure out what point you are trying to make…”
    I just spent $14 buying “Play Doh” because it is some sort of art based compulsory thing that 7-8 year olds play with in “skool” rather than the 3 RRR’s
    I own a 3 year old, he loves “Play Doh”
    I own a 1 year old, he really likes eating “Play Doh”.
    I own a 7 year old, broadly intelligent little person who simply should not be playing with “Doh” when he cant do basic arithmetic…
    Get it?

    Oh. I see. Yes, it is annoying the way parents have to pay for art supplies now. Did you also have to buy boxes of tissues, printer paper, boxes of pencils, and coloured paper that they put in the store room? When I was a kid, the govt paid for these. I blame budget cuts and it’s only getting worse now the Libs are cutting funding to schools and the states. I think my kids were using clay for Art in Grades one and two rather than play-doh. Maybe your kids country school gets less funding. Gonski might help there.

  18. Nina, it turns the whole mythology of the story around, and reimagines it from an Aboriginal perspective. Brilliant theatre.

  19. tpof @ #966 Sunday, October 9, 2016 at 10:08 pm

    BoMB is a troll. One of the most ugly kind. Probably some Hooray Henry back from the Malaysian Grand Prix with his Malaysian flag budgies getting his jollies more safely by stirring up lefty luvvies.
    DON’T FEED THE TROLL. It spreads more poison than a squashed cane toad.

    He reminds me of Bob Katter. Hahaha

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