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.

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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”

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  1. william bowe @ #1050 Monday, December 5, 2016 at 7:01 pm

    One reads an awful lot of idiotic bullshit on this blog, but castigating someone for starting their career at the bottom rather than the top is … well, nothing out of the ordinary really, now I think of it.

    So have gone from herding cats and drug-addled dropouts to moderating PB?

    And you call that career progression?

  2. I know nothing about Alberici’s career before she was with the ABC, hence I have no comment about it. But she’s one of the better journalists in my view. I wish she’d taken on the host of 730 when O’Brien was moved on.

  3. The son of some nice former neighbours is playing his first match for the NSW cricket team today in Adelaide.
    Should I congratulate him on wearing the baggy blue and the baggy green since they follow together most of the time?

  5. Sky News Australia
    21 mins ·
    TONIGHT: Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi, back from the US and ready to shake up Australian politics. Plus, Peta Credlin and the panel. At 7pm on The Bolt Report

    Is this the 3rd or 4th time Bernardi has promised to ‘shake up’ Aus politics after returning from a travel junket? It’s getting old.

  6. Sky News Australia retweeted
    The Bolt Report
    4m4 minutes ago
    The Bolt Report ‏@theboltreport
    LIVE NOW: @corybernardi says Government’s climate change review will cause division in the party. On @SkyNewsAust http://snpy.tv/2g1wFRR

  7. The assistant immigration minister, Alex Hawke, said the commonwealth would not allow the council to hold citizenship ceremonies as part of its planned events on 28 January because it would give an anti-Australia Day message.

    But citizenship ceremonies are held routinely throughout the year . The last one I attended was back in May when a friend’s husband became a citizen.

  8. Steve Weinstein
    15h15 hours ago
    Steve Weinstein ‏@steveweinstein
    Clinton now up 2.6 million votes and 2%

    2016 USA total votes to date:
    Clinton: 65,316,724 48.2%
    Trump: 62,719,568 46.2%

  9. Yes local governments hold many a year, the Aust Day ones are usually a bit bigger and have ‘citizen of the year’ type awards. I always found the dept (under Howard) to be pathetic. If the Dept is going to hire the band, pay for the catering and provide the people doing the swearing in the Dept can do it whenever and however they like.

  10. Fess: Emma Alberici is good but she has nothing on Sarah Ferguson. She is a much better interviewer than Sales and her talent is wasted on 4 Corners.

  11. The assistant immigration minister, Alex Hawke, said the commonwealth would not allow the council to hold citizenship ceremonies as part of its planned events on 28 January because it would give an anti-Australia Day message.

    Coalition Governments love this sort of thing. They can cultivate outrage in their base and the wider community while not having to talk about why young people can’t get a job, let alone a secure one with predictable work hours and decent pay, why they can’t become a toilet cleaner without a degree that will crush them with debt and why they are locked out of the housing market.

  12. Ides:

    Yes I have respect for Ferguson too. From memory she’s stood in for Sales when she was on leave and did very well.

  13. She instantly won me over when she took no prisoners on Hockey after the 2014 budget. One of the first journalists to actual nail down how crap Hockey/Abbott/that budget was.

  14. No wonder the Donald is complaining about fraud if he’s 2.6 million votes behind. Wow. Talking about legitimacy issues.

  17. The Landcare funding/not funding is exactly what they have done to the CSIRO, Turnbull as part of his ‘innovation’ package increased funding by 10s of millions after Abbott/Hockey cut several hundred of million of dollars.
    And if asked, Turnbull or Morrison would say ‘that was the previous government ‘

  18. That’s the ABC Journalist, not the “Duchess of York”. I don’t suppose the Yorkers can vote her out (or send her off the island).

  20. She instantly won me over when she took no prisoners on Hockey after the 2014 budget. One of the first journalists to actual nail down how crap Hockey/Abbott/that budget was.

    Yes I remember that too.

  23. The Coalition will take no action on climate change that adversely affects, by way of extra costs, reduced profits or increased taxes any Liberal business mate.

  24. Mine was missing cats and interviews with nineties alt-rock musicians.

    Mine was owning cats and living with musicians. We are all guilty of being young and silly I guess. : )

  26. Confessions

    It is The NE , The National Embarrassment. A title awarded for his tireless efforts to embarrass Australia in the eyes of the world.

  28. Only the Libs could be torn apart by a review they agreed to three years ago. On reflection that is probably normal for most groups.

  32. I think the “Climate Change Review” will say that Direct Inaction was brilliant in achieving its objectives and come up with some bullshit replacement scheme that will similarly have no costs to any Coalition constituency, especially donors. The few remaining “Liberals” who actually believe that climate change is a problem requiring action have long since, through fear of damaging their careers, long since been silenced.

  34. Don’t you just love the way the gormless journos at Turnbull press conferences let every lie he makes, such as today’s “We have exceeded our Kyoto targets” (true because they were actually increases on previous levels of CO2 emitted), “we are on track to surpass our 2020 targets” (I thought that has been demonstrably proven to be false), “and we will likely meet and exceed our 2030 Emissions Target” (also a load of hooey), go through to the keeper? I did not even hear one murmur of disagreement from the press pack. They seem entranced by the sound of his voice as he speaks.

  35. Davidwh:

    The Libs are a victim of their own refusal to commit to anything, all in the name of keeping party unity. The review was supposed to stave off decision-making, only problem with that is that you can’t keep pushing it back and pushing it back.

    The govt committed to albeit measly GHGE reduction targets by signing up to the Paris Convention, and Direct Action was never going to deliver even on those targets.

    I expect more pain for Turnbull going forward.

  37. C@t:

    Honestly I get the sense there is still this belief within the media that ‘Any Day Now!’ we’ll see the Real Malcolm emerge.

    You’d think they’d have learned by now, but apparently not.

  38. Bill Shorten was onto it today. He sensibly laid out his benchmarks for what a common sense plan to follow on from the Direct Inaction era should look like and he said he would measure up the Coalition’s recommendations after the review has been finalised against those.

  42. C@t:

    Hilarious but salient. The Real Malcolm isn’t even the actual Malcolm! I wonder how John Key feels about such an unflattering comparison.

  44. Hola Bludgers from Melbourne

    Doing some consulting down here (what were they thinking?). Word amongst those close to the action is that Daniel Andrews is kicking goals, best on ground.

    Perhaps first eleven?

  47. C@Tmomma

    The difference may be that unlike Tuffles’ 😆 story he likes to tell of single parent povo upbringing Key did have a truly humble background and attended normal schools. His Father died young and his (refugee) mum had to raise the family in State Housing. His dad had serious lefty cred for fighting against Franco

    Key was born in Auckland, New Zealand, to George Key (1914–1969) and Ruth Key (née Lazar; 1922–2000), on 9 August 1961. His father was an English immigrant and a veteran of the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Key and his two sisters were raised in a state house in the Christchurch suburb of Bryndwr, by his mother, an Austrian Jewish immigrant

  49. william bowe @ #1050 Monday, December 5, 2016 at 7:01 pm

    One reads an awful lot of idiotic bullshit on this blog, but castigating someone for starting their career at the bottom rather than the top is … well, nothing out of the ordinary really, now I think of it.

    Joseph Conrad
    “Droll thing life is — that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself — that comes too late — a crop of inextinguishable regrets.”

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