BludgerTrack: 53.2-46.8 to Labor

Sketchy though it is, the polling evidence so far this year suggests a turn for the worse for the Turnbull government.

BludgerTrack is being heavily determined at present by the two new year data points from Essential Research, but for what those data points are worth, they suggest the government may have entered a new phase in its polling fortunes. The latest result has wrenched two-party preferred almost a full point in favour of Labor, although this has only yielded a gain of one on the seat projection. The change is a straightforward result of Labor taking primary vote share off the Coalition, with One Nation failing to gain further ground for the first time in a while.

In other news, two by-elections loom in New South Wales:

• Mike Baird’s departure from the premiership and the parliament will result in a by-election for his seat of Manly. Labor is not competitive in the seat, which corresponds with Tony Abbott’s federal seat of Warringah, but it was held by independents for 16 years until Baird unseated David Barr in 2007. Potential Liberal preselection nominees identified in media reports include James Griffin, KMPG director and former Manly deputy mayor; Alex Dore, NSW Young Liberals president and management consultant; Natalie Ward, a private legal practitioner who relinquished a job as a political staffer in 2013 amid controversy over her marriage to David Begg, a co-principal of the lobbying firm associated with moderate powerbroker Michael Photios; Ron Delezio, founder of a hospital charity and father of Sophie Delezio, who suffered horrific injuries when a car crashed into a childcare centre in 2003; and Walter Villatora, a local party identity and advocate for preselection reform.

• The second New South Wales by-election will follow today’s resignation by Health Minister Jillian Skinner as the member for North Shore, ahead of her anticipated demotion to the back bench. North Shore neighbours Manly to the west, and is similarly solid in its conservatism. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Liberal preselection contestants may include Felicity Wilson, a former Property Council executive, and Tim James, former chief of staff to Energy Minister Anthony Roberts.

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.

2,217 comments on “BludgerTrack: 53.2-46.8 to Labor”

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  2. DTT

    I said many if not most here on PB have a group think tendency.

    Has it not struck you that those who do not comment on any given subject may be the ones who do not think like the rest of that particular ‘group’, and just remain silent.

  3. Zoomster

    I think if you READ what I wrote, you will see that I gave no indication that it was a widely held or total view, but simply countered the absurd proposition that there was NO hostility at all to Shorten or that the comments about trust came out of the blue with no background or substance.

    I was simply trying to provide some background and context to Waterford’s comments but as usual you all blow it up into some sort of “cause celebre” whereby I am expected to justify that 2 plus 2 equals 4.

    For crying out loud learn to read in context or go take training in advance comprehension.

  5. The “big, beautiful wall” that President Trump vowed again this week to build along the Mexican border won’t block just humans. Dozens of animal species that migrate freely across the international line in search of water, food and mates would be walled off.

    A list of animals that dwell near the 1,300-mile expanse that the proposed wall would cover seems endless. In May, in a report called Trump Wall, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service pointed out more than 100 species between California and Texas that are listed as threatened and endangered under the Endangered Species Act, or are candidates for a spot on the list.

    At a time when the Trump administration has restricted communications from the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies, federal agencies may be reluctant to weigh in on any topic in a way that appears critical of the president’s ambition.

    But outside the government, scientists who’ve studied how 670 miles of walls and fences erected as part of the Secure Fence Act under former president George W. Bush in 2006 tell stories of animals stopping in their tracks, staring at barriers they couldn’t cross.

    “At the border wall, people have found large mammals confounded and not knowing what to do,” said Jesse Lasky, an assistant professor of biology at Penn State University. Deer, mountain lions, jaguar and ocelots are among the animals whose daily movement was disrupted, he said.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/01/27/endangered-animals-are-already-cut-off-by-a-border-wall-trump-wants-it-much-bigger/

    “There are concerns about small populations mating with each other and inbreeding, and getting genetic disorders from inbreeding,” Lasky said. Their problems wouldn’t end there. “We didn’t talk about it much in the paper, but with climate change, if an animal or any organism is going to stay in the temperatures it prefers, it has to move to track those conditions. That’s going to be important for the persistence of a lot of species.”

  7. zoomster @ #81 Saturday, January 28, 2017 at 11:44 am

    dtt
    ‘Certainly their opinion is worth having, but it is still all a voice from the right wing of the ALP.’
    No, it is not. Because I am independent, I have friends from all factions. Thus I deliberately referred to my LEFT friends opinion of Shorten.
    ‘My comments relate to the 2012 period, when there is no doubt whatsoever that Shorten was widely distrusted by the left.’
    Left MPs – that is, those who actually knew him and worked with him – broke ranks to vote for Shorten, even though it meant a backlash from their own faction.
    That doesn’t justify Waterford’s assertion, which you were arguing for. No leader of any party probably ever gets 100% support from every party member. The assertion by Waterford was that there was wide distrust of Shorten across factions. If there is SOME distrust of Shorten in one faction, Waterford is obviously wrong.

    Ahhh so you are a member of the “Independents Faction” the faction you’re in when you are not in a faction. 😛

  9. daretotread @ #93 Saturday, January 28, 2017 at 11:59 am

    Zoomster
    That is my point
    The comments were NOT about you – or only very indirectly. I said many if not most here on PB have a group think tendency. I did not name you, nor indeed was I thinking of you in that context. Both you and Bemused are a bit too maverick in your thinking to be in that category.

    Hmmm so I am a maverick? Not sure if that is good or bad.

  10. Mystery death of ex-KGB chief linked to MI6 spy’s dossier on Donald Trump

    So wait, is the narrative now that people are dying over the contents of a dossier that Trump says is completely fake and Russia says it doesn’t have?

    I don’t think the state-sponsored assassins have thought this one through. Seems they’ve basically confirmed that the information against Trump is entirely real.

  11. BK:

    Did you see the NY Times op-ed I linked to earlier? Many of Trump’s Cabinet picks do not agree with the concept of church-state separation, Trump has already stated that his SCOTUS nominee will be someone who disagrees with Roe v Wade, and he has began an anti-science agenda which would make Greg Hunt blush!

    And all this comes with a President who has a genuine capacity to bring WW3.

  12. bemused

    No. I used the word dtt used, rather than getting into the complex explanations you have to go into in Victoria in order to explain that you do not belong to any faction whatsoever (oh, how it used to trip me up in my early days…)

  13. The Sydney Morning Herald
    3 mins ·
    President Donald Trump has signed an executive order indefinitely banning admission of people fleeing Syria, temporarily freezing the entry of other refugees and prohibiting entry by people from at least four majority-Muslim nations for 90 days.

    Where does this leave Turnbull’s deal?

  14. AR

    Now I am NOT saying I believe this, but there is just as good an argument to say that the CIA took out the agent so he would not reveal it was a hoax. If the ex KGB agent
    is still pro Russian, then unless captured and tortured he would not have any incentive to reveal any issues with the dossier on Trump. Therefore Russia would have no reason to off him. If he is a double agent of some kind or has flipped in loyalty towards the USA/GB then there might be incentive for Russia to off him, but then because he was a double agent much of what he says is suspect.

    When it comes to CIA, MI6, KGB etc we honestly do not know who are double agents, triple agents etc.

  16. Being strongly anti-abortion is undoubtedly a negative for a mainstream politician in Australia, but the US is MUCH more conservative. This link shows American attitudes to abortion have barely changed over the last 40 years:
    http://www.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx

    Only about 30% of Americans believe abortion should be legal under any circumstances. If you go down to the second graph, you can see they are basically split 50:50 as to whether they consider themselves ‘pro-choice’ or ‘pro-life’. Appearing at an anti-abortion rally isn’t going to harm Pence among Republicans

  17. Now AR

    Please do not assume that by posting this comment I give it any credence whatsoever, but I did stumble on a website form a super conspiracy nutter who claimed that Obama was a secret, sleeper KGB agent. People will believe what they want to believe, whether rational or not.

  18. zoomster @ #112 Saturday, January 28, 2017 at 12:35 pm

    bemused
    No. I used the word dtt used, rather than getting into the complex explanations you have to go into in Victoria in order to explain that you do not belong to any faction whatsoever (oh, how it used to trip me up in my early days…)

    I got defined by having supported Federal Intervention and being opposed to the neo-Stalinist mindset of some in the then ‘left’.
    These days I am self described as being ‘post factional’ as all the factions seem to have moderated their behaviour and I have friends in all.

  19. Peter Piper

    My sense (not proven just a sense) is that Pence is running the conservative social agenda in the USA and will be successful. The foreign and economic policies are less clear cut and Trump may play a bigger role.

  20. Apart from being a party unifier, which is what Labor needed after the RGR bullshit years, Shorten’s great strength is that he allows his Shadow Ministers to run their own race. He rarely seeks to draw the limelight to himself but allows his team to articulate the issues and promote Labor solutions.

    No doubt, he’s there in the background. But, from my (biased) perspective he’s captain of a team of good performers. He’s quite happy for everybody to collectively share the glory.

    This is quite a contrast to Turnbull.

  21. jenauthor @ #74 Saturday, January 28, 2017 at 11:29 am

    Oh FFS DTT, when are you going to stop with the generalisations?
    Seriously, can you not think beyond labels? Can you stop trying to pigeonhole everyone here according to your perspective? Can you not understand that ‘thinking outside the box in your assessments’ does not make your arguments more valid.

    Thanks Jenauthor, you said it way better than I could. Onya!

    Sometimes keeping an open mind means that your brains fall out. Seems that has happened with dtt.

  23. bemused

    I used to amuse myself by asking people which faction they thought I belonged to. I rarely got the same answer and the decisions were made on very arbitrary grounds – who I’d had lunch with, who I’d chatted to, etc, rather than the way I’d voted or the policies I was advocating.

    And then, of course, people totally freaked out when I had lunch with a Liberal MP in Parliament House….

  24. AR

    What is clear is that Pence, Ryan, and the rest of the GOP cronies are power hungry nutjobs. Trump is simply a mentally unwell person who cannot manage this nest of vipers Whilst feeding his own ego for power and money.
    It is a bona fide clusterf@@k

  27. Victoria:

    I used to think that a President Pence would be worse, but having seen what a week of President Trump has delivered I no longer think that.

  29. Shorten has united the parliamentary team and got the two party vote to 54% to Labor. If shorten is a Union Hack the union leadership must be impressive.

  31. Damn the crikey gremlins to hell.

    Once more with feeling:

    Bemused:

    you are perilously close to saying that atheists belong to the atheists religion.

    And dtt pigeonholing you as a maverick is a good thing in her lexicon, as far as she has a lexicon.

    I do not know, however, whether you should feel honoured or slighted in this pigeonholing.

  33. confessions @ #111 Saturday, January 28, 2017 at 12:32 pm

    BK:
    Did you see the NY Times op-ed I linked to earlier? Many of Trump’s Cabinet picks do not agree with the concept of church-state separation, Trump has already stated that his SCOTUS nominee will be someone who disagrees with Roe v Wade, and he has began an anti-science agenda which would make Greg Hunt blush!
    And all this comes with a President who has a genuine capacity to bring WW3.

    I have been watching with interest.

  34. Don

    That pre-supposes that you have brains to begin with, which in your case may be wishful thinking.

    Too closed a mind may cause the brain to go bad and become toxic with clostridium.

  35. Trump doesnt give a monkeys about Australia as it would probably never come up on any of his agendas.We are way down the list of any priorities.He probably doesnt even know where it is.

  36. Don
    Can I pigeon hole you as a narrow minded, male chauvinist, who has not had an original thought since 1970, and that was probably one stolen from your best mate.

  37. daretotread @ #134 Saturday, January 28, 2017 at 1:03 pm

    Don
    That pre-supposes that you have brains to begin with, which in your case may be wishful thinking.
    Too closed a mind may cause the brain to go bad and become toxic with clostridium.

    The mind is meant to be isolated, that’s why there is a brain-blood barrier.

    But I don’t expect you to know that.

  38. there is just as good an argument to say that the CIA took out the agent so he would not reveal it was a hoax

    Only if you believe it’s plausible that he would furnish information that he knew all along was fake, with the intent of later circling back and discrediting his own information, and just never managed to get around to doing that before he was killed. All with no reasonable motivation for creating a hoax in the first place, no clear reason for wanting to discredit the hoax later, and no reason for putting himself directly in the crosshairs of both sides.

    I think that theory goes firmly in the crazy basket. It’s certainly below the plausibility level of ‘guy leaks actual Russian state secrets, gets outed in the process, and is then hunted down and killed by a government that has demonstrated that it will do exactly that‘.

  39. Peter
    Whatever might be good or bad about Trump what I thik we can say with certainty is that president Pence would be terrible for the social agenda and progressive policies.

    Since it seems that Pence is already getting 100% of his way now it may not make much difference, but it may be hoped that perhaps Ivanka Trump may persuade daddy to put a very slight check on Pence’s worst excesses.

  40. don @ #131 Saturday, January 28, 2017 at 12:59 pm

    Damn the crikey gremlins to hell.
    Once more with feeling:
    Bemused:
    you are perilously close to saying that atheists belong to the atheists religion.
    And dtt pigeonholing you as a maverick is a good thing in her lexicon, as far as she has a lexicon.
    I do not know, however, whether you should feel honoured or slighted in this pigeonholing.

    There has long been a faction in Victoria labelling itself “Independents”. The do so without any apparent perception of the irony. It does all of the things other factions do but with a certain sanctimony that is both hilarious and annoying.

  41. confessions @ #127 Saturday, January 28, 2017 at 12:54 pm

    Victoria:
    I used to think that a President Pence would be worse, but having seen what a week of President Trump has delivered I no longer think that.

    Vice President Pence is getting his full agenda implemented, with an overlay of Trump bizzaro lunacy. The difference between what we now have and what we would have if Trump was replaced by Pence is the absence of the Trump bizzaro lunacy.

  45. bemused
    There has long been a faction in Victoria labelling itself “Independents”. The do so without any apparent perception of the irony. It does all of the things other factions do but with a certain sanctimony that is both hilarious and annoying.

    Thanks, I didn’t know that.

  47. Sam Maiden’s article has a reshuffle for Brandis in the second half of the year after the budget.
    Truffles has had 4 reshuffles so far and as Hartcher helpfully points out they have purposely excluded Abbott.
    Apart from wearing out the carpet at Government House, so many reshuffles are not a good look and as Abbott is spurned fraught with peril.

    I expect Turnbull’s speech next week will be all jobs and growth, company tax cuts and bashing Labor on trade.
    They are convinced that given U.K. and US tax cuts by Trump that company tax cuts are essential.

  48. John,

    Yeah but they said that before trump and before the UK acted.
    It’s simply adapting the times to meet an ideological stance.

  49. don @ #145 Saturday, January 28, 2017 at 1:13 pm

    bemused
    There has long been a faction in Victoria labelling itself “Independents”. The do so without any apparent perception of the irony. It does all of the things other factions do but with a certain sanctimony that is both hilarious and annoying.

    Thanks, I didn’t know that.

    They grew out of a group known as “The Participants” who were opposed to the pre-intervention leadership of the Vic Branch and were mainly lawyers, including John Jain, John Button, Barney Cooney and others.
    After intervention they became the “Independents” and were very adept at playing off the major factions to get their members pre-selected via deals with one or another of the major factions. Rather unprincipled, but effective.

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