BludgerTrack: 53.0-47.0 to Labor

A bit of a fillip for Labor in the latest reading of the BludgerTrack poll aggregate, and also for Bill Shorten whose net approval rating has edged ahead of Malcolm Turnbull’s.

There’s a fair bit going on under the hood in BludgerTrack this week, which is why it’s taken so long. The bias adjustments and weightings have been recalibrated, and I’ve brought the two results so far from YouGov into the model. I’m not sure which of these is responsible, or whether it’s just because of two strong results for Labor from Newspoll and Essential, but there’s been a fairly noticeable bump to Labor on two-party preferred along with a net gain of two on the seat projection, with one gain in apiece in New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia balanced by a loss in Western Australia. A drought on leadership ratings has also ended with two sets of results from Newspoll and Essential, the effect of which is that Bill Shorten has now poked ahead of Malcolm Turnbull on net approval, though not preferred prime minister.

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.

444 comments on “BludgerTrack: 53.0-47.0 to Labor”

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  2. As regards The Doctor, i will paraphrase something I heard somewhere.
    When faced with threats to the Earth, various other planets, civilisations and the Universe itself, The Doctor was not given a gun. The Doctor was equipped with science, reason, a Sonic Screwdriver, a flying police box, and two hearts.
    What more is needed?

  4. For anyone watching The Handmaid’s Tale on SBS (or reading the book) all this talk of consolidating internal security powers, bringing in the military etc etc has rather creepy echoes. I’m not intending to make too much of it, but having just endured the episode where the US military is used to enforce ultra-draconian measures that follow a period under a state of emergency – justified by a terrorist attack in Washington DC – the parallels seem troubling. Considering Margaret Attwood wrote this in 1985, it all seems rather prescient.

  6. I just hope it all cocks up royally in their faces, though I shudder to think what that would mean for our country.

  7. Alias:

    My first thought having watched the first series was that I could absolutely see a situation where our democracy (or the US democracy at least) went there.

  10. The militarisation of the domestic domain, commenced in immigration, is to be extended, and with that we will see the rights of citizens further abridged for political purposes. The LNP are dreaming if they think this will save them.

  11. Re Handmaid’s Tale: I read that Ms Atwood herself had said that the TV version was so grim she couldn’t watch it. Call us sensitive souls, but my wife and I have taken the hint from that.

  12. I have read of the book, but not the actual book. The wiki description was enough for me. Too close to a possible future for my comfort.

  13. Dio
    Administrative arrangements do not normally require parliamentary approval.

    The reason is that in passing the budget the Parliament already approved the expenditures. Administrative changes inevitably have costs and there may be the Mother of All Shitfights between the gaining and losing departments.
    There may be issues with respect to the AG having some forms of oversight of ASIO and the ADF that might be a bit trickier than a simply administrative re-arrangement. These might depend on the legislation establishing the ADF and the ASIO. I don’t know. Maybe.

  18. Diog, there’s an ASIO Act that says “there shall be an ASIO” and “there shall be a Dierector-General”, with various references to someone called “the Minister”. So only Parliament can “reconfigure” that. But what “the Minister” means in any Act from time to time is defined by an Administrative Arrangements Order, issued nominally by the G-G but really by the PM (or whoever’s pulling his strings?). These are frequently amended as ministerial responsibilities are shuffled about. You can read them (current one at the top at https://www.legislation.gov.au/Browse/byregdate/administrativearrangementsorders/ if you need something to help you sleep. Seems there may be a new one soon.

  19. The short version of my take on these “security” proposals……. utter bullshit.
    We should aspire to be a less fearful people, not the hide in our shell xenophobes that the LNP want us to be.

  27. Destroy an Aussie flag? I’d cut the Union Flag out of the corner, trample on it, chuck it in the bin, and then treat the rest with reverence.

  28. I’ve never studied the collapse of the Roman Empire, but can recall being told the very persistent assaults by armed migrant populations from the East lead to the sacking – in a literal as well as in a social, cultural, military and political sense – of the Roman domains. Having walked around the ruins of Rome and what remains of the Appian Way, I know what is meant by sacking. As well, while external overlapping invasive pressure was recurring and in the end irresistible, Rome itself had divided and “command and control” had become impossible to secure. But this doesn’t really describe what happened.

    I think we should perhaps construe events less from the Roman/West Euro perspective and more from the perspective of the invaders. They were incredibly successful conquerors. Who could blame them for trying? Many forces have tried to occupy and subjugate the European peninsula. The most successful were the Goths. I suppose the questions are who were the Goths, where did they come from and from where did they derive their military capabilities? For sure, they did not arise from nowhere. The Goths seem to have run their own Empire stretching from the Arctic in Scandinavia down to the Black Sea and to the West at least as far as what is now SW Poland. So they certainly had the resources to sustain prolonged attacks on the Romans…and anyone else too. They waged war with the predecessors to the Russians too.

    Personally, if I had the choice between settling in Italy or the Pripet marshes of Byelorussia, I know where I would be hoping to go.

  29. ItzaDream
    <blockquote.
    Paul Krugman on the evolution of the fascist right and the perilous divisions in society and asks – is there a way back:
    There is a way back and it involves burning at the stake the “economic rationalists” or whatever name they go by now.

    Why ? A very long time ago Philip Adams interviewed J.K.Galbraith . During the interview Galbraith explained why the European welfare state was set up post WWII. He would know as he “was there” as part of the process.

    He explained that the motivation was not to protect the common people but to protect the “elites”. During the war the “elites” had seen more “destruction of wealth” than anyone else, total behind the Iron Curtain.The blame was placed on the peasants being subjected to abject poverty by the Great Depression and this in turn making the masses amenable to extreme ideology, be it left or right. So of course the answer was to make sure the people did not suffer so during hard times.

    Unfortunately the effing 1%ers (actually the 0.01%ers) have forgotten that lesson and over the last few decades dismantled the safety net. Elections of Trump or worse become inevitable.

  30. Wow amazing. Mediawatch covers the gay harms your health graphic of the Daily Telegraph. Totally ignores anything to do with race.

    I am pleased gays got covered. Appalled racism did not.

  36. Why is it only time the Coalition seems to give a shit about Aboriginal people is when they can claim they can get jobs in mines?

  38. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/world/asia/isis-afghanistan-leader-abu-sayed.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FThe%20Trump%20White%20House&action=click&contentCollection=Politics&module=Collection&region=Marginalia&src=me&version=newsevent&pgtype=article

    The war is ceaseless, inconclusive in Afghanistan. It makes me think. I travelled through Afghanistan not long before the Russian invasion, one leg of a long trip through the Balkans, Turkey and Iran to India. Even to my then-innocent eyes, the whole of central Asia seemed to be in ferment…as if upheaval were in gestation, as, indeed, it was. Not long after I returned to Perth, the Iranian Revolution occurred and soon after that the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Everything that has happened in the ME since then can be traced in part to these events and the pressures that gave rise to them. Their consequences are still being felt in global politics and economics half a lifetime later.

    History is being made every day. We just tend not to notice until it’s too late to change it. And with this in mind, we should not be blind to the gestation of history in our own society.

  43. Ides Of March
    Re job numbers claim. An amazing feature of LNP claims back in the Rodent day about the employment gains of a proposed IR/economic “reform” was that it always supposed to deliver 50,000 jobs.

  44. Whoever this Al Jazeera guy his needs to stay here and fight Canavan. Thank you for stating the bleeding obvious.

  48. For commerce to work on the internet; you need secure communication. Turnbull wants to destroy that. Turnbull wants to destroy the division between domestic and external security; Police and army’; a very dangerous game that is a path to disaster. And he thinks it is a vote winner? Ill thought out poll driven nonsense leading to a long term disaster.

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