Essential Research: 53-47 to Labor

Some consolation for One Nation courtesy of Essential Research, which records the party’s national vote at a new high.

The Guardian Australia reports the latest result of the Essential Research fortnight rolling average has two-party steady at 53-47, with the Coalition down two on the primary vote to 35%, Labor down one to 36%, One Nation up two to 11% and the Greens steady on 9%. There is as always a bunch of other stuff in the poll, which you can read about in the report, or here when I get around to writing it up tomorrow.

There was no BludgerTrack update last week for reasons that should be apparent if you scroll through the last few posts, but here it is now. To be clear, this is what I should have run last week, and does not include this latest result, which I’ll include in my next run later in the week.

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.

2,433 comments on “Essential Research: 53-47 to Labor”

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  1. Offering the presidency of the Upper House to a Liberal is too smart by half.

    I think Labor will regret it if it goes ahead.

  2. tpof @ #2285 Friday, March 17, 2017 at 6:16 pm

    Deputy president Reg Hamilton

    I worked with Reggie thirty years ago in the Industrial Relations Department. He was working his bum off to be presentable to the Employer’s Association to get a job there. Back luck for the employee to cop Reggie as the FWC judge.

    Having read the article, making the assumption that it is reasonably accurate, I think this guy getting the sack is quite reasonable.

  6. Speaking of vandals, did you ever see any of these around your

    the Link <a> was lacking a “href=” followed by the url.
    Now let me see if the code for symbols works

  9. Offering the presidency of the Upper House to a Liberal is too smart by half

    We have precedents. Peter Slipper, who was actually quite a good Speaker. He became a victim of the Dirt Units as a result of what he did as a member of the LNP (and its antecedents). On the other hand, Mal Colston didn’t seriously damage the Howard Government. And as I recall, South Australia managed to pull it off successfully.

    But as I said above, he would need to be squeaky clean.

  10. Forgot to address my comment to ItzaDream!
    Suggestion – copy the address line in the browser and just paste the code, starting with “http” into the comment box

  11. C@t:

    Thanks for posting Seth Meyers. I think the only way sane people will survive the Trump era is through late night comedy.

  12. Offering the presidency of the Upper House to a Liberal is too smart by half.

    I think Labor will regret it if it goes ahead.

    I have my concerns on that front too, principally because past experience tells us when Labor extends the olive branch to the Liberals in the name of bipartisanship, it’s the ALP that gets f*cked over.

  13. confessions @ #2326 Friday, March 17, 2017 at 8:42 pm

    One of many reasons given for why the Trump presidency is a rolling disaster:

    Abysmal management. Trump was only the latest in a long line of political figures who argued that if someone from outside politics took over the government, he’d whip it into shape with his business savvy and management expertise. The result has been the most chaotic and incompetent White House anyone can remember. As Politico reported Wednesday, “A culture of paranoia is consuming the Trump administration, with staffers increasingly preoccupied with perceived enemies — inside their own government,” creating “an environment of fear that has hamstrung the routine functioning of the executive branch.”
    Almost no one at the top levels of the Trump administration has experience in government, which not surprisingly has made everything more difficult as they bumble around trying to figure out how things work. Whether because of their own indifference to governing or the inability to find anyone willing to work for Trump, the administration hasn’t even nominated people to fill more than 500 of the 553 key positions requiring Senate confirmation, leaving agencies across the government barely able to function. If this is what Trump considers a “fine-tuned machine,” imagine what it would look like if it weren’t running so smoothly.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/03/16/why-is-the-trump-presidency-such-a-rolling-disaster/?tid=sm_fb&utm_term=.7b81ec126447
    One of many primary reasons I thought President Trump would be a disaster. He is arrogant enough to think he doesn’t need to surround himself with people who know what they’re doing or who have any kind of subject matter expertise for their portfolio.

    I don’t think the not filling positions is a mistake on his part. A big part of the Republican platform is “small government” and “getting government out of peoples lives”. By not appointing senior people to many government positions this policy objective is, in practice, achieved.

    That aside, some idiot turning up and asking “how hard could it be” is something that has always annoyed me. Does this ignoramus really think that nobody has ever turned up to Washington and decided to (WTTE) “DRAIN THE SWAMP!!!!”, or that the people who have come before him and/or are there now are not doing everything they can to achieve their policy objectives.

    It saddens me that the people who will suffer the most from President Trump are the people who can least afford to suffer.

    Just this morning I had some dealings with a very well off American aquaintance who is afflicted very badly with an extreme individualism world view.

  16. Steve777,

    It was the Slipper precedent I had in mind. I had forgotten about Mal Colston. Slipper was a good Speaker, but destroyed by the Liberals, and Colston was a pariah. Hardly a great track record.

    Labor will suffer a lot of negative blow-back if they go ahead with it, especially from The West. I can understand the temptation, but I just think it will be a mistake in the long term. The Greens will perceive themselves to be power-brokers and will be contrarians, just because they are, the Nats will be less inclined to deal with Labor, and the RWNJs
    will be feral.

  19. c@tmomma @ #2359 Friday, March 17, 2017 at 9:29 pm

    When I was little I used to think that the solution to our Electricity needs would be solved by tapping into the Earth’s core. The heat would power turbines up on the crust and so we would have a cheap, virtually endless supply of Energy!
    Of course, I also believed we could invent materials which would not melt when we put them down under the Earth’s crust.
    I was disabused of my idea when someone told me how far down the drilling would have to go just to get through the Crust, let alone any further, but that that would probably be hot enough anyway.
    Anyway, I suppose that taught me not to watch, ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’ and then muse about such things afterwards. 🙂

    This Russian effort may interest you http://www.iflscience.com/environment/deepest-hole-world/

  20. steve777 @ #2362 Friday, March 17, 2017 at 9:33 pm

    Matt Ellis, 34, a Melbourne software engineer, is pleading with his fellow Australians to oppose the government’s idea of allowing home buyers to tap into their superannuation.
    Good on him. It’s bad enough that the system is allowing those who can afford to ‘invest’ (speculate on asset inflation) in that crazy pyramid scheme, otherwise known as the real estate market, to suck up all the savings, so much of the lives of young people (mortgages take up an entire second income in a two income family), now they want to suck up their retirement savings as well.
    It will all end in tears, not least for honest ‘investors’. It will send eventually send lots of spivs broke, but unfirtunately in the process it will bring down the economy and lots of good people with it.

    Unfortunately I fear that the inevitable crash will not impact on many spivs. From my experience this personality type has a remarkable sense for self preservation and will have long since moved into the next scam by the time the tears start.

  21. grimace:

    I don’t think the not filling positions is a mistake on his part. A big part of the Republican platform is “small government” and “getting government out of peoples lives”.

    It may well not be a mistake or even an oversight, but when conservatives mused about small govt, I seriously doubt they aspired to incompetent govt.

    The rest of the article I linked to gives a whole host of other reasons for the chaos of Trump. It’s worth a read.

  22. briefly @ #2363 Friday, March 17, 2017 at 9:33 pm

    Bemused
    Friday, March 17, 2017 at 9:23 pm
    We will reform the Federation…undo the mischief of Howard and Costello…revive State investment…revive household income growth…revive full employment…defeat the LNP and change the country.
    You can mutter and grumble all you like about a side issue in WA Tory political competition….no-one cares either way.

    I campaigned in Swan Hills and would happily do so again and am fully prepared to defend a broken promise on taxing the miners.

    You are right, week 1 is not the time to do it. Week 2 is. Let them have it with both barrels, $10 per tonne, not $5. That way $5 seems like a good compromise.

  23. confessions @ #2421 Friday, March 17, 2017 at 10:58 pm

    grimace:

    I don’t think the not filling positions is a mistake on his part. A big part of the Republican platform is “small government” and “getting government out of peoples lives”.

    It may well not be a mistake or even an oversight, but when conservatives mused about small govt, I seriously doubt they aspired to incompetent govt.
    The rest of the article I linked to gives a whole host of other reasons for the chaos of Trump. It’s worth a read.

    To a lot of right wing Americans government is synonymous with incompetence, so the outcome of the incompetence of the Trump administration, which is one of the root causes of the problem of government incompetence, reinforces their world view that government actions and incompetence are synonymous regardless of the facts of the situation.

  24. (The six interviews were not all on the lawns, some of them were by phone).

    You clearly skipped the lesson on the Oxford comma earlier.

  25. Peter Piper @10:49PM: different rules apply to Labor and the LNP. Most of the mainstream media run interference for the latter while jumping on the tiniest alleged misdeed of the former.

  26. Simon O’Brien would be a good choice. There are no known scandals associated with him. He is not the smartest Liberal knife in their very depleted draw. He was their Transport Minister from 2008 to 2013 and was not happy at missing out on a Ministry after 2013. In terms of occupying the Presidential chair he might feel he owes his colleagues no favours. The position of President is very ceremonial in that you don’t get to vote unless there is a tied vote. So providing the Labor and presumably the Greens whips are doing their jobs he will have no influence on legislation apart from depriving the Libs of a vote.

  29. Federal #ReachTEL poll (WA only)
    TPP: ALP 53 (+7.6 since 2016 election) L/NP 47 (-7.6)

    headline on West Australian – FED LIBS POLL BLOW
    https://twitter.com/westaustralian/status/842707420795174913

    Also, see this. Not a joke. My best guess. It could mean, in the event of Rupert’s death, the ABC could suggest to the govt that it might put in an offer if it looks like or only real national newspaper might otherwise close. It is probably only a contingency plan, may not be likely.

    https://twitter.com/KnottMatthew/status/842663932649132033
    Matthew Knott‏ @KnottMatthew
    *Rachel Maddow voice*
    In tomorrow’s SMH & The Age: the secret plan for the ABC to buy The Australian newspaper.
    Really
    8:08 PM – 17 Mar 2017

  30. Bernie Sanders is the most popular politician in the United States, but the Democratic party continue to reject him, his ideology and his policy platforms. Truly the democratic party is one of the most pathetic and phoney left-wing political parties in modern times. They appear to have sold their soul to Wall Street, the big banks and corporate interests a long time ago and have no intention of getting it back.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/17/everyone-loves-bernie-sanders-except-democratic-party?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

  31. C@tmomma @ 2291 and 2292,
    Thank you – but no apology needed. Dave was kind enough earlier this evening to explain the use of the term ‘bludger’ – I just didn’t make the link between my lurking nickname and the name of the site. Sometimes I can be just too literal, it must be the lack of a ‘right sided brain’ capacity – too much left sided digital thinking perhaps.
    All is good and thank you again.

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