BludgerTrack: 52.7-47.3 to Labor

The gap between Labor and the Coalition widens in this week’s poll aggregate reading, on the strength of similar results from Newspoll and Essential Research.

Bit late with this one due to the distractions of last week, but the latest reading of the BludgerTrack poll aggregate records discernible movement to Labor after a period of stasis, with both Newspoll and Essential Research recording 53-47 leads to Labor. Labor is up three on the seat projection, with gains in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland. Both pollsters produced leadership ratings this week, but they haven’t made much difference to the relevant aggregates.

bt2019-2016-11-09

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.

560 comments on “BludgerTrack: 52.7-47.3 to Labor”

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  1. BIS

    To achieve what you are arguing for electorates in the city would have less voters than those in the bush.

    That seems to me to be a clear Gerrymander.

    What you are describing is not a gerrymander, but electorate malapportionment. I’m not being pedantic here. A gerrymander has a very specific meaning and there is no other word that conveys that meaning.

    A gerrymander is where the numbers of electors in each electorate are equal, but the electoral boundaries have been carefully designed in such as way as to corral as many voters of one party in as few electorates as possible and maximising the number of electorates available to the other party. The name itself is a portmanteau word combining the person who turned this into an artform – Governor Eldridge Gerry of Massachusetts- and the fact that the resulting electoral districts looked like a salamander, with a long body and legs sticking out at various places.

    To use the word more broadly to describe any rorting of the system design to favour one party over another loses the value of having that specific word describe that specific rort.

  3. Grrr

    I am taking a break. Making too many mistakes as that post to bemused proves plus I want to stay away from the personal insults thing.

    Cheers.

  8. In a Queensland redistribution, electorates over 100,000 sq km in size are considered to notionally include an extra enrollment of 2% of their size – eg an electorate of 150,000 sq km would be considered for redistribution purposes to have an enrollment of 3,000 more electors than it actually does have.
    In addition there is a +-10% variation allowed in electorate sizes, which is similar to other Australian jusridictions.
    Much less extreme than the zonal system that applied in the Bjelke-Petersen era, but still some allowance for the difficulty of servicing a ery large electorate.

  9. Re previous post, only 5 electorates are currently in this category (out of 89) and one of those was won by Labor at the last election (Billy Gordon in Cook) but is now independent,

  13. This was my comment to Bernard Keane’s piece in Crikey today about the rise of Protectionism:

    ‘ Bernard,
    I’d like to put it to you this way. Protectionism can be good, or it can be bad. The way you have described it it seems all bad. However, that is to deny the very real pain that citizens of countries such as ours, Britain and the US, are feeling as a result of Free Trade. There is a very large cohort of people for whom a Services job just cannot replace their former sort of employment. So onto the scrap heap they go. Even if they try to acquire new skills, they are exactly the same ones all the other redundant workers are training for and the same ones that the young are learning.

    So who you going to employ when given the large numbers of applicants for each new job? The young fit and healthy person, of course.

    Or import a 457 Visa worker who you can finagle to work for less via various asterisk* type charges you levy on their wages by way of clawing back some profit for yourself.

    So really what I think you need to have said and you almost did when you praised Bill Shorten, kind of, for his stand against 457 Visa abuses, is that we need a blended regime of Protectionism for the right reasons, and Free Trade for the right reasons. Politicians need to be responsive and responsible to the people in the electorate and their very real needs. As well as Business and theirs. Don’t you think? ‘

  14. Hmm.

    Inquiry all about 18C.
    The government has announced the terms of reference for its “Parliamentary Inquiry into Freedom of Speech”, which was called in response to the growing consternation about section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. According to a press release, the inquiry is to report on two questions:

    “Whether the operation of Part IIA of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth) (including ss 18C and 18D) impose unreasonable restrictions on freedom of speech”; and
    “Whether the complaints-handling procedures of the Australian Human Rights Commission should be reformed.”
    While the terms of reference do pay lip service to other areas in which Australians’ free speech is impinged, the email address, “18Cinquiry@aph.gov.au”, gives the game away.

  15. falconwa @ #259 Monday, November 14, 2016 at 12:24 pm

    Maranoa 102,780 Sydney 110.302. The Electoral Act allows for Diuvions to vary by up to 10%. When divisions in a state start to get too far out of kilter there is a redistribution within in the sate and across the country.

    And of course to determine that you need an accurate and trustworthy census … oh, wait …

  16. guytaur @ #256 Monday, November 14, 2016 at 12:14 pm

    Mimhoff
    Maranoa 102,861 
    Sydey 110,322
    See more voters in Sydney than Maranoa. Balance is wrong can be adjusted so figure is exactly the same. The fact there is a difference is the problem.

    The other problem with your Sydney – Maranoa example is they are in different states.

    When allocating the 150 electorates the AEC looks at the populations of each State and Territory and allocates the seats in proportion to the State or Territory’s population with the one provision that no one can have less than 2.

    As a result of this a State that nearly qualifies for an extra seat will have, in general, larger electors per seat than a State that just qualifies for an extra seat.

    One solution to this problem would be to remove the requirement that electorates are bound by State and Territory boarders.

  17. The AEC has to keep its own records and can’t use the census, firstly it is only interested in citizens of voting age, and secondly it needs to have an up-to-date roll whenever an election is called.

  18. Perhaps multi-member electorates, like Tasmania and NZ, are the answer to Australia’s lower house electoral distortions? Evening-out the population of each single-member electorate only does part of the job. With MME, you would still get approximately the same proportion of big party candidates successful, but in areas with a significant minority of voters supporting a minor party (whether Green, NXT, Katter, PHON, etc), at least one of the minor party MME candidates would get elected and thus be able to truly represent those voters. More complicated, but fairer?
    Do voting experts like William, Kevin Bonham, etc have an opinion on this, or can give us more knowledge?

  19. tpof @ #301 Monday, November 14, 2016 at 12:52 pm

    BIS

    To achieve what you are arguing for electorates in the city would have less voters than those in the bush.
    That seems to me to be a clear Gerrymander.

    What you are describing is not a gerrymander, but electorate malapportionment. I’m not being pedantic here. A gerrymander has a very specific meaning and there is no other word that conveys that meaning.
    A gerrymander is where the numbers of electors in each electorate are equal, but the electoral boundaries have been carefully designed in such as way as to corral as many voters of one party in as few electorates as possible and maximising the number of electorates available to the other party. The name itself is a portmanteau word combining the person who turned this into an artform – Governor Eldridge Gerry of Massachusetts- and the fact that the resulting electoral districts looked like a salamander, with a long body and legs sticking out at various places.
    To use the word more broadly to describe any rorting of the system design to favour one party over another loses the value of having that specific word describe that specific rort.

    To be a pedant back, while you are correct in the origins and meaning of the word in the USA, the term, Gerrymander, in an Australian context, has always been used to be refer to situations like in Joh’s Queensland where voter numbers were manipulated in electorates for political advantage.

  20. BIS
    “One solution to this problem would be to remove the requirement that electorates are bound by State and Territory boarders.”

    Another solution is to remove the nexus between the House and the Senate, via referendum. That way the House could be expanded, instead of the AEC being forced to allocate a limited 150 (or thereabouts) seats every time. But no way do I want to see an expanded Senate; there’s far too many senators as it is.

  21. Expanding the House will expand the Senate. The Constitution says that as near as is practical the House will be twice the size of the Senate.

  23. I just spoke to an American colleague of mine who’s just returned from a trip to the US. He visited his home state (Tennessee), and says there were “Make America WHITE Again” signs popping up everywhere. He wasn’t surprised. This is what “Make America Great Again” was really all about. Now it’s out in the open.

  25. To be a pedant back, while you are correct in the origins and meaning of the word in the USA, the term, Gerrymander, in an Australian context, has always been used to be refer to situations like in Joh’s Queensland where voter numbers were manipulated in electorates for political advantage.

    That was a Bjelkemander.

  26. FalconWA
    “Expanding the House will expand the Senate. The Constitution says that as near as is practical the House will be twice the size of the Senate.”

    Yep, that’s why I said remove the nexus. This requires a referendum. I reckon the Nats would back it. Expanding the House is the only way the Nats can maintain their seats against demographic trends.

  27. falconwa @ #321 Monday, November 14, 2016 at 3:28 pm

    Expanding the House will expand the Senate. The Constitution says that as near as is practical the House will be twice the size of the Senate.

    This was the constitutional amendment that was not passed in 1967. A small number of opponents convinced the electorate that to break the nexus would result in more politicians. A powerful argument.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_referendum,_1967_(Parliament)

  28. mimhoff @ #317 Monday, November 14, 2016 at 3:23 pm

    The AEC has to keep its own records and can’t use the census, firstly it is only interested in citizens of voting age, and secondly it needs to have an up-to-date roll whenever an election is called.

    You are thinking of the electoral roll, where data is indeed collected from multiple sources. But the AEC relies on census data to determine electorate boundaries. See http://www.aec.gov.au/elections/australian_electoral_system/aec-submissions/files/sub-abs.pdf …

    The AEC is also responsible under the Electoral Act for administering electoral redistributions, or the redrawing of electoral boundaries. Census counts of adult citizens by SA1 are used to evaluate enrolment projections that are the basis of redistributions. This is of particular concern to the AEC, as we are required by legislation to calculate the projected quota or average divisional enrolment at the projection time, which is usually three and half years after the expected completion of the redistribution. The Census output is the only definitive source of appropriate
    citizenship data for this purpose.

    That’s what the census was originally intended for, and why the loss of data quality in the 2016 census is such a big deal.

  29. kakuru @ #323 Monday, November 14, 2016 at 3:30 pm

    I just spoke to an American colleague of mine who’s just returned from a trip to the US. He visited his home state (Tennessee), and says there were “Make America WHITE Again” signs popping up everywhere. He wasn’t surprised. This is what “Make America Great Again” was really all about. Now it’s out in the open.

    That’s terrible!

  30. TPOF
    “A small number of opponents convinced the electorate that to break the nexus would result in more politicians. ”

    It’s a facile argument, but I can see it getting up again. The voters hate pollies, right? But breaking the nexus also allows the Senate to be downsized, irrespective of any modest expansion of the House.

  31. kakuru @ #323 Monday, November 14, 2016 at 3:30 pm

    I just spoke to an American colleague of mine who’s just returned from a trip to the US. He visited his home state (Tennessee), and says there were “Make America WHITE Again” signs popping up everywhere. He wasn’t surprised. This is what “Make America Great Again” was really all about. Now it’s out in the open.

    I predict that Walmart will run out of single white sheets very soon.

  32. BK
    “That’s terrible!”

    Welcome to Trump’s America. Or Not Welcome, as the case may be.

    Militant ignorance is on the march. Reminds me of that joke from a Native American comedian: “A white guy told me to go back to where I came from. So I put a tee-pee in his backyard.”

  33. Anton
    The Libs are opposed to the nuclear dump, as are large segments of the Labor Party. I don’t think it has a hope in hell.

  34. The crash in the Iron Ore price when Donald Trump announces “actually, because we cut company tax from 35% to 15% we can’t afford any of the infrastructure promises I made” will be terrifying to see. The price has jumped based on hypothetical future demand that will not materialise. Companies are doubtless ramping up production in anticipation of these higher prices, so prices will inevitably plummet below what they were pre-Trump.

  35. Perhaps multi-member electorates, like Tasmania and NZ

    NZ uses MMP, which is not really “multi-member electorates”. It’s a hybrid system retaining single member electorates for geographic representation combined with overall party representation being based on proportional representation.

    MMP applied federally here is very appealing to my mind, but I can’t see any appetite for such substantial electoral reform here – particularly as it probably requires constitutional change. We only just squeaked through the recent necessary Senate voting reform bandaid to get rid of GTV, and that was acrimonious enough.

  36. kakuru Monday, November 14, 2016 at 3:30 pm
    I just spoke to an American colleague of mine who’s just returned from a trip to the US. He visited his home state (Tennessee), and says there were “Make America WHITE Again” signs popping up everywhere. He wasn’t surprised. This is what “Make America Great Again” was really all about. Now it’s out in the open.

    **************************************************

    ‘How the f*ck did we get here?’: John Oliver blasts the media for enabling Trump

    On Sunday night, HBO’s John Oliver blistered the nation’s media for enabling the rise and election as president of Republican former reality TV star Donald Trump.

    He went on to marvel at exactly what’s happened to the U.S., saying, “A Klan-backed, misogynist internet troll is going to be giving the next State of the Union address.”

    http://www.rawstory.com/2016/11/how-the-fck-did-we-get-here-john-oliver-blasts-the-media-for-enabling-trump/

  38. player one @ #356 Monday, November 14, 2016 at 3:40 pm

    kakuru @ #323 Monday, November 14, 2016 at 3:30 pm

    I just spoke to an American colleague of mine who’s just returned from a trip to the US. He visited his home state (Tennessee), and says there were “Make America WHITE Again” signs popping up everywhere. He wasn’t surprised. This is what “Make America Great Again” was really all about. Now it’s out in the open.

    I predict that Walmart will run out of single white sheets very soon.

    Not to mention shotgun shells!

  39. Diogenes –

    If anyone can decipher this, I’d appreciate it

    Jay has nowhere left to go, so is going nowhere? Until the election, then I’m sure he’s going somewhere.

    He’s announced a referendum, but only if there’s bipartisan support and only at the end of the process. The Libs are not going to play ball on that (and why should they?). Everything they’ve done so far has indicated there is no public support for it. So … announce a referendum that is never going to happen on an issue that is already dead and buried …

  42. Breaking the nexus could garner cross-party support. The Nats need it to hold onto their representation in the demographic dead zone of inland rural Australia. The Greens could use it to pick up more inner-city electorates. The Libs and the ALP could use it to shrink the size of the Senate, and squeeze out pestilent micro-parties. Having said all that, it’ll never happen. 150 is here to say; and Tasmania will increasingly benefit from malapportionment in the House and Senate.

  43. China is wasting no time in courting Latin America given Trump’s apparent antipathy towards the region (People’s Daily):

    LIMA, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) — The upcoming visit by President Xi Jinping to Peru in November will have a major impact across the region as it certifies Latin America is a priority for China, said a Peruvian expert.

    “It reflects the relevance China gives its ties to Latin America. Our region is a priority for China and Latin America sees this as a prime opportunity,” said Miguel Rodriguez, an international analyst, in an interview with Xinhua.

    “The Chinese act with blistering speed, knowing that time counts in international relations. China knows how to win over the world.”

    “China knows a region is a gold mine, and always has been. Latin America is growing as never before, which is why China is seeking to accentuate commercial ties. Linked to this is the Chinese goal to diversify its exports. Therefore, China sees it as equally important to invest in developed countries like the U.S. as in growing economies in Latin America.”

    http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/1114/c90000-9141053.html

  45. Train wreck interview on Sky with Nick McKim.

    Seriously, DiNatale, McKim and the Greens must get real on Asylum Seeker policy.

  46. Rex Douglas

    Train wreck interview on Sky with Nick McKim.

    Seriously, DiNatale, McKim and the Greens must get real on Asylum Seeker policy.

    Perhaps you could give them Bill Shorten’s phone number…

  47. @ Rex – you would consider any interview with the Greens a train wreck unless the Greens member was literally hit by a train.

    Every time you make up a criticism of the Greens, you are doing Turnbull’s work. Fight the real enemy,

  49. McKim just did the Mother of all shockers.
    He seemed to be genuinely surprised that anyone would actually question Greens’ assumptions.
    If Di Natale and McKim are the best the Greens can do, we have reached peak Greens.
    Bring back SH-Y!
    At least, amid the tears, the emoting, the guilt tripping, and the hand-wringing, she had some sort of coherent story to tell.

  50. “Australia now 1/77 in the second innings in Hobart, so they’ll probably make 100 this time.”
    Australia now 2/79, so touch and go if 100 achievable.

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