BludgerTrack: 52.2-47.8 to Labor

Movement back to the Coalition on BludgerTrack this week, as Ipsos and Essential deliver the government relatively encouraging results.

The return of Ipsos this week threw a spanner in the BludgerTrack works, since its results were starkly divergent from the trend of the other two pollsters, to an extent that went well beyond the pollster’s observed peculiarities before the election. In particular, the primary vote for Labor was four points below anything recorded by Newspoll or Essential since the election; the Coalition were about two points below its recent form; and the Greens came in about six points on the high side. My general strategy for bias adjustment had been to use half measures of the difference between election result and trend measurements for the relevant pollster, but that wasn’t remotely adequate to cover the peculiarity of this Ipsos result. So, for the time being at least, I’m incorporating Ipsos in a way that is all-but-neutral to the overall calculation, but in which the trendlines will be affected by the movement in Ipsos results (or will be, when there is more than one Ipsos result to go off).

Despite the Ipsos numbers having little impact on this week’s result, there has been a fairly solid move back to the Coalition on the voting intention reading, which partly reflects the recent trend of Essential Research, which has had Labor’s lead over the past fortnight narrowing from 53-47 to 51-49. On the BludgerTrack seat projection, this translates into gains for the Coalition of two seats in Western Australia, and one apiece in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. Here the Ipsos numbers did play a role, since its state breakdowns were particularly strong for the Coalition in Western Australia and South Australia. Ipsos also makes as much difference as it would always have done to the leadership ratings, the model for which begins with the Malcolm Turnbull prime ministership. Reflecting to the overall strength of the Ipsos result for the Coalition, Malcolm Turnbull records a solid recovery on net approval, to the extent of almost closing the gap on Bill Shorten, and widened his lead as preferred prime minister.

bt2019-2016-11-30

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.

1,118 comments on “BludgerTrack: 52.2-47.8 to Labor”

Comments Page 20 of 23
1 … 19 20 21 … 23

  1. Good afternoon all,

    James Massola can try to cover for Turnbull with his electricity tax, carbon pricing etc etc etc propaganda all he likes. Turnbull will not be allowed to go within a mile of any type of pricing by his own party back bench and by the Nationals. It just will not happen.

    If Turnbull tries, then expect WW 111 to break out.

    Cheers.

  3. antonbruckner11 @ #891 Monday, December 5, 2016 at 12:25 pm

    I would absolutely abolish private schools, if I had a chance. But can Labor win the next election if it proposes to cut funding? Wouldn’t it be better to hope that they get into power and turn off the nozzle?

    The question at hand is not the funding of private schools but the over funding of some of these according to the Gonski model.

    Under the model this over funding would take a huge time to claw back.

    I think the problem comes from the commitment that “no school would be worse off”.

    Personally I’d just reduce the funding to the level the model indicated it should be at but compromise could be to do this over a short period of time, say 3 -5 years.

  4. P1

    Doing nothing and trusting ‘technology’ will save us is just the latest form of denial.

    I am not suggesting that we do nothing. What we should do is go on a war footing for emissions reduction. We have the technology to get to zero energy emissions in 10 years.
    But it will never happen. People are talking about 2050 as a ‘target’ for zero emissions.
    This is grossly inadequate – the planet will be fucked. People are too ignorant and unreliable. In Australia the politicians turned down a pissant little carbon tax of about 50c per week because infrastructure, economic and environmental vandal Tony Abbott told them it would wreck the economy. And the sheeple believed him.
    On the other hand renewable technology and cost reductions are exponential and will get us to zero energy emissions very quickly. The best thing we can do is try and accelerate the roll out with as much political pressure as we can.

  6. Hanson ‘rolled over’ on ABCC: Culleton

    One Nation senator Rod Culleton says Pauline Hanson “rolled over like a ginger kitten” on government laws to reinstate the building industry watchdog.

    Senator Culleton, who will this week defend a High Court challenge to his eligibility to have run for parliament, said there was a “rift” in the four-member One Nation party room.

    He told Farm Online the party should have done a deal on a banking royal commission when negotiating support for the Australian Building and Construction Commission, but Senator Hanson had “missed a golden opportunity”.

    http://www.news.com.au/national/breaking-news/hanson-rolled-over-on-abcc-culleton/news-story/cc57f59e3699b1eb9c5df79616d4e60e

  7. Erasmus – I didn’t see your comment – I was just talking in general (y’know – attacking the ball not the man idea)

  8. barney in saigon @ #953 Monday, December 5, 2016 at 3:09 pm

    antonbruckner11 @ #891 Monday, December 5, 2016 at 12:25 pm

    I would absolutely abolish private schools, if I had a chance. But can Labor win the next election if it proposes to cut funding? Wouldn’t it be better to hope that they get into power and turn off the nozzle?

    The question at hand is not the funding of private schools but the over funding of some of these according to the Gonski model.
    Under the model this over funding would take a huge time to claw back.
    I think the problem comes from the commitment that “no school would be worse off”.
    Personally I’d just reduce the funding to the level the model indicated it should be at but compromise could be to do this over a short period of time, say 3 -5 years.

    Tanya Plibersek’s point is that this issue is a tail wagging dog distraction from the real issue of underfunding of the Gonski reforms generally. Birmingham has raised this issue specifically to take attention from the underfunding of needy schools. I would love to see money being pulled back from wealthy schools who have no need for it, but that would redirect at best a couple of hundred million over the forward estimates. Meanwhile, the government is not questioned about the billions it is not paying the far more numerous needy schools.

  9. The Supreme Court has ruled that there cannot be a Nativity Scene in the nation’s Capital this Christmas season.
    This isn’t for any religious reason.
    They simply have not been able to find Three Wise Men in Canberra .

    The search for a Virgin continues

    However, there was no problem finding enough donkeys to fill the stable.

    Sent to me by my sister

  11. My key points being:
    1) Renewable technology is already leading a reduction in emissions that is following a logarithmic curve.
    2) Anything we can do to stimulate or subsidise this rollout should be done, and will limit the damage to the planet.
    3) Technology and economics are doing the lion’s share of the work.

  13. My understanding on the ‘School Funding’ article is that Birmingham was talking about the existing School Resourcing System (‘SRS’).

    Plibersek was then asked by a journo about Birminghams comments on how some schools had been very over-resourced under the scheme (I’d like to know how this happened, as well).

    Plibersik, I think, was trying to point out that it would be better to just go ahead with ‘Gonski’.

  15. Turnbull might be happy Keyes has gone.

    The NZ PM shat on the possibility of ASs going from Nauru/Manus to NZ because he would not agree to different categories of NZ citizens …. what Waffler and Dutton wanted, so that ASs to NZ would be categorised as non-participants in NZ-Australia people movement fluidity.

  16. 1) Renewable technology is already leading a reduction in emissions that is following a logarithmic curve.

    I hope you mean logistic 🙂

    2) Anything we can do to stimulate or subsidise this rollout should be done, and will limit the damage to the planet.

    Yes, but this must include international efforts, especially targetting SE and south asia. There are so many opportunities for Australian business there.

    3) Technology and economics are doing the lion’s share of the work.

    Indeed they are.

  17. Trog

    On the other hand renewable technology and cost reductions are exponential and will get us to zero energy emissions very quickly. The best thing we can do is try and accelerate the roll out with as much political pressure as we can.

    Relying on economic forces is like relying on technology. It is just another form of denial, plain and simple. It doesn’t matter how much the cost of renewables goes down, coal will always be cheaper. The current forecasts for coal consumption worldwide are expected to continue to climb well beyond 2040, even factoring in increased use of renewables:

    http://www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/pdf/coal.pdf

    At best, your forecasts can be described as wishful thinking. They simply don’t coincide with reality.

  18. tpof @ #958 Monday, December 5, 2016 at 3:22 pm

    barney in saigon @ #953 Monday, December 5, 2016 at 3:09 pm

    antonbruckner11 @ #891 Monday, December 5, 2016 at 12:25 pm

    I would absolutely abolish private schools, if I had a chance. But can Labor win the next election if it proposes to cut funding? Wouldn’t it be better to hope that they get into power and turn off the nozzle?

    The question at hand is not the funding of private schools but the over funding of some of these according to the Gonski model.
    Under the model this over funding would take a huge time to claw back.
    I think the problem comes from the commitment that “no school would be worse off”.
    Personally I’d just reduce the funding to the level the model indicated it should be at but compromise could be to do this over a short period of time, say 3 -5 years.

    Tanya Plibersek’s point is that this issue is a tail wagging dog distraction from the real issue of underfunding of the Gonski reforms generally. Birmingham has raised this issue specifically to take attention from the underfunding of needy schools. I would love to see money being pulled back from wealthy schools who have no need for it, but that would redirect at best a couple of hundred million over the forward estimates. Meanwhile, the government is not questioned about the billions it is not paying the far more numerous needy schools.

    I agree with your wagging point now but surely it was a weakness in the original implementation.

  19. Don
    You hoped right Don. It is exponential. My maths is a bit rusty – I think if you plot an exponential function to a log base you get a straight line – or something.
    The point is that most analysis treats solar efficiency and costs as though they were a straight line linear function when in fact to get a straight line you need to plot it to a log base.
    Maybe we could just say that it is exponential with a positive index!

  20. P,TMD
    People who blaze away with guns to shoot whatever living thing they think is a pest while claiming it is a ‘sport’ do so for sexual orgasmic feelings, in my opinion. We would all be safer if they just bought a dildo, or jerked off in a sock.

    This should be on billboards and T-shirts…

  21. P1

    It doesn’t matter how much the cost of renewables goes down, coal will always be cheaper.

    This is illogical. A solar panel is a power station with an initial cost, a small maintenance cost, and zero fuel costs. A coal fired power station has an initial cost, a significant maintenance cost, and an ongoing cost of fuel that has to be extracted and transported.

  22. Solar panels – when installed locally- like on the roof – also generate electricity with zero transmission cost.

  23. Trog

    Solar panels – when installed locally- like on the roof – also generate electricity with zero transmission cost.

    You mean they’re wireless as well ? 😀

  24. It doesn’t matter how much the cost of renewables goes down, coal will always be cheaper.

    Ah, no.

    LCOE for a new utility-scale PV is about 6c/kWh. A new coal-fired plant cannot compete with this. Concentrated solar thermal has only just begun cruising down the cost curve, and may overtake them both.

    One difficulty is in coupling renewables with control and storage options.

    If you have a large hydro resource available, as a country like Vietnam, India or Laos does, then this should not be a great technical difficulty — except that someone in the Party has signed the cheap hydro electricity away to a connected mate’s factories, and the system and society misses out on access to hydro’s most-valuable purpose. But this is not a new problem.

  25. Trog

    Please read this:

    http://www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/electricity.cfm

    This is reality:

    Coal continues to be the largest single fuel used for electricity generation worldwide in the IEO2016 Reference case until the end of the projection period, with renewable generation beginning to surpass coal-fired generation in 2040.

    This report is current. It was released just a few months ago. Even with an increasing uptake of renewables, by 2040 we will already have emitted enough carbon to be looking at (at least) 3 to 4 degrees warming.

    Economic forces definitely won’t save us. Technological innovation probably won’t save us. Punitive measures are going to be required. How punitive remains to be seen, but the later we leave it, the more drastic they will have to be.

    The world is currently playing a massive game of ‘chicken’ to see who blinks first.

  28. A private consultant believes an undersea cable to export solar power from the North West to Indonesia is financially viable even with its likely $6 billion to $10 billion construction cost.

    Geoff James, a consultant hired by Pilbara Development Commission, toldWestBusiness the ambitious subsea cable project would establish an underwater link to transport solar power from the Pilbara and Kimberley to Java in Indonesia.

    He will deliver a pre-feasibility study to the commission in January as to whether it would be possible to build a 2000km underwater cable to supply the Indonesian market with renewable energy from Australia’s North West.

    Mr James said he believed the project was financially viable and would be possible within the decade.

    https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/wa/a/33412097/pilbara-to-indonesia-solar-power-cable-possible/#page1

  29. mari @ #959 Monday, December 5, 2016 at 3:24 pm

    The Supreme Court has ruled that there cannot be a Nativity Scene in the nation’s Capital this Christmas season.
    This isn’t for any religious reason.
    They simply have not been able to find Three Wise Men in Canberra .
    The search for a Virgin continues
    However, there was no problem finding enough donkeys to fill the stable.
    Sent to me by my sister

    The problem also remains for the horse in the Christmas pageant. Many, many rear ends available. The front end, not so many. 🙂

  30. Well it didn’t even last from Breakfast time to Lateline. I was just out in the car and heard The Real Prime Minister of Australia (now wouldn’t that be a great name for a satirical parody show on the ABC about Turnbull?), Barnaby Joyce, kill the idea of an Energy Intensity Emissions Tax stone dead.

    Thus spaketh Barnaby:

    ” The Coalition has no policy for an Emissions Tax.” With the underlying message being, ‘nor will there ever be, unless over my dead body’.

  32. The problem also remains for the horse in the Christmas pageant. Many, many rear ends available. The front end, not so many.

    May I nominate Kelly O’Dwyer for the front end? Or is that too naughty? : )

  34. c@tmomma @ #982 Monday, December 5, 2016 at 4:48 pm

    The problem also remains for the horse in the Christmas pageant. Many, many rear ends available. The front end, not so many.
    May I nominate Kelly O’Dwyer for the front end? Or is that too naughty? : )

    We could bring back Sophie.
    Or is that too disturbing. 🙂

  39. I suspect the talk of a carbon tax was just to ignite the issue again so they have something to rail against. After all – the ABCC (or better known as “ABC don’t see”) has been passed.

    And they need to distract from the further dismantalisation (I made that word up!) of Medicare *Copyright.

  41. I suspect the talk of a carbon tax was just to ignite the issue again so they have something to rail against. After all – the ABCC (or better known as “ABC don’t see”) has been passed.

    Definitely. It might also be worth considering that Malcolm was upset that everyone was accusing the government of ‘not having an agenda for 2017’. Anything even vaguely approaching a sensible carbon reduction policy might look kind of like ‘an agenda’ if you squint hard enough, ignoring the fact that it’s just more sound and fury that will come to nothing …

  42. Abbott slams PM: ‘Hardly a smart move’

    On Monday, Mr Turnbull announced the government would scrap the Green Army, a program for people aged 17 to 24 who are looking for employment.

    The decision is a bit of a snub to Mr Abbott, who created the Green Army in 2014, with the hope it would put 15,000 people in jobs and see 1500 environmental projects completed by 2017.

    http://www.news.com.au/national/politics/tony-abbott-is-dismayed-by-prime-minister-malcolm-turnbulls-decision-to-axe-the-green-army/news-story/9bf9f7f0a01d06a0e04d01e7099aad5e

  44. Not surprising at all.

    We’ve all worked with people like Aberici. Misrepresent your opponents views as being all about resistance to change, when in fact the whole dispute is about the nature of the change.

    ‘Lateline presenter Emma Alberici told Fairfax Media: “If we stand still we are only appealing to older demographics who haven’t embraced digital media. Younger people will move on. When things change it’s unsettling but to not change would be dangerous for an organisation like ours.’

    “To think you can keep running any show like you did five or 10 years ago is a bit naive.”

  45. No wonder the ABC is stuffed when you have management like this:

    ‘A senior ABC executive said: “There is a senior cabal at Radio National that act as standover merchants … RN hasn’t grown its audience in 10 years, yet they would prefer it to remain a cul de sac. They think digital strategy is when you upgrade an alarm clock.”

    I wonder how 7.30 is at ‘growing’ its audience?
    I was always under the misapprehension that the ABC had more important imperatives than ‘growing its audience’ anyway.

  46. Adrian:

    Alberici has a point, it’s just that the change the ABC seems hell bent on introducing is to become a carbon copy of the dumbed-down commercial media outlets.

  47. PhoenixRED

    with the hope it would put 15,000 people in jobs and see 1500 environmental projects completed by 2017.

    I wonder what it actually did?

  48. Bernard Keane in today’s Crikey:

    Between them and today’s announcement of a review next year, there’s been nothing: Hunt was promoted to senior Industry Minister, while his replacement, Energy Minister and coal spruiker Frydenberg talked vaguely about “extending the National Energy Productivity Plan, which is designed to boost productivity and efficiency by 40% by 2030, as well as vehicle emissions and a number of other changes”.

    The problem is that any genuine policy change that might achieve even the government’s underwhelming targets will be killed off by the right within the Liberal Party and the Nationals. For example, if the review (which will be controlled by Frydenberg and Energy Department bureaucrats) magically recommended that the emissions baseline safeguard mechanism be de-Huntified and actually made into a serious regulatory mechanism, that would be fought tooth and claw by industry and the right; if it went further and urged that some form of trading scheme be allowed for companies exceeding their baselines to purchase credits from companies undershooting theirs, it would be seen entirely through the prism of the split between Turnbull and the arch-reactionaries among his colleagues.

    And given Turnbull’s history of giving in to every single demand from the right so far, does anyone seriously think he’s up to the task of implementing something that even faintly smacks of Abbott’s “great big new tax on everything”?

    Um, that would be a resounding no.

  49. A thousand and eleven apologies.
    Our politicians should be treated with the respect they deserve.
    Which, I guess, is why the suggestions for the front of the horse.
    Very naughty. Stop it! 🙂

  50. Fess

    Alberici: If we stand still we are only appealing to older demographics who haven’t embraced digital media. Younger people will move on.

    Translation: So who gives a stuff if the older listeners who rely on the radio for company find it hard to access our programs. If they can’t keep up with all the changes, too bad.

Comments Page 20 of 23
1 … 19 20 21 … 23

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *