The latest fortnightly YouGov poll for FiftyAcres is more conventional than its previous efforts in that the major parties’ share of the primary vote has increased, with Labor gaining three points to 35% without biting into the Coalition’s 34%. Of the others, the Greens are down a point to 11%, One Nation is steady on 9%, the Nick Xenophon Team is down one to 3%, “Christian parties” are steady on 3%, Katter’s Australian Party is steady on 1%, and others are down two to 3%. Despite Labor’s improvement on the primary vote, two-party preferred is unchanged at 50-50 due to weaker respondent-allocated preference flows to Labor, of 67% from Greens voters, 22% from One Nation voters and 50% from the rest. With preference flows more like last year’s election, at which Labor got 82% of Greens preferences and 49% of everybody else’s, Labor would lead 54-46.
Also in the poll:
• Malcolm Turnbull has a 37-29 lead over Bill Shorten as preferred prime minister, compared with 34-27 last time. A high “not sure” result has been a feature of the pollster’s form in this area.
• Head-to-head questions on leadership attributes found Bill Shorten leading Malcolm Turnbull 30-17 for being in touch with the concerns of ordinary Australians; Turnbull leading 28-20 on being a strong leader; and Shorten leading 24-22 on sticking to what he believes in. For a lot more of this sort of thing, I had a paywalled article on Crikey which placed the detailed leadership attributes polling of Essential Research into broader perspective.
• Support for same-sex marriage was at at 59%, with 33% opposed. Eighty per cent rated themselves likely participants in the postal survey compared with 13% for unlikely, but there are no breakdowns for the yes and no camps.
• Sixty-six per cent favoured the proposition that “Australia should move towards more alternative energy source (e.g. wind or solar)” over an alternative, that “Australia should continue to use coal-fired power stations”.
• Forty-three per cent of respondents thought it likely a country would be attacked with a nuclear weapon during their lifetime, compared with 44% for unlikely.
Elsewhere:
• Progressive think thank the Australia Institute has polled the Hunter region seats of Hunter and Shortland, to gauge the impact of AGL’s decision to close the locally situated Liddell coal-fired power station. On two-party preferred, Labor holds respective leads of 60-40 and 58-42, which compare with 62.5-37.5 and 59.9-40.1 at the last election. The other story is that the primary votes show the One Nation well into double digits in both seats. After including results of the follow-up prompt for the undecided, primary votes in Hunter are Labor 44.1% (51.8% at the election), Nationals 21.9% (26.3%), Greens 7.3% (7.1%) and One Nation 15.8%. In Shortland, the results are Labor 44.8% (51.2%), Liberal 26.5% (35.2%), Greens 7.8% (9.5%) and One Nation 14.3%. Despite everything, the poll finds more support than oppose AGL’s decision, and that renewables are heavily favoured over coal. The polls were conducted by ReachTEL on Friday and Saturday nights, from respective samples of 714 and 643. Full results from GhostWhoVotes.
• Sky News reports that polling conducted by the “no” campaign has support for yes down over the first ten days of the campaign from 67% to 60%, although there’s no insight into how this was conducted or by whom.
“this is a psephology blog not a Labor blog” are you kidding me momma the site is a psephology blog site, the contributers are nearly all left faction ALP, Green and many have gone the full loon. I often go over to read Gaurdian opinion pieces and read the comments and even they are not as left as the many of the regular contributers here, bugger all discussion about psephology just Tory bashing, or bashing each other. There used to be far more thoughtful contributers when I was here a while back and coming back here and reading the comments I can see why they stopped contributing far too many that have gone the full loon.
Dan Gulberry @ #1584 Friday, September 22nd, 2017 – 6:24 pm
I am a long way from convinced too.
I suspect the wash out will be that Abbott has further damaged what remains of his credibility, and not done the No vote any favours.
Mainstream media won’t come out of it looking too flash either.
Confessions
I said YOU (Confessions) are bigotted for saying that an unscientific voluntory postal survey was what us gays should accept as our only chance.
Whenever you misrepresent what i said, i will repeat it.
The Spring Equinox occurs in 8 hours (6:02 AM aest Sept 23). We don’t normally reckon the Equinox the beginning of Spring here, that having been back on September 1. In Sydney and nearby areas, we’ve been experiencing an odd mix of Summer and Winter, all with mostly clear skies, for the last few weeks. Richmond on Sydney’s NW outskirts got down to 0.9 on Monday and is forecast to reach 37 tomorrow.
If we followed the Northern Hemisphere then our big festivals would be Easter in the next few weeks (maybe footy Grand Finals can be substituted here); then as someone here yesterday put it the ‘sinful mayhem’ of Beltane around November 1. I suppose Melbourne Cup Day can fill in for that.
I have found a USA report which may have more weight fo ryou:
“One French journalist recently noted that the Spanish government is acting more like Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuelan dictatorship than a healthy European democracy. And consider the fact that Catalonia, Spain, and other European countries are currently on maximum alert against jihadi terrorism. Instead of working to prevent possible attacks, Spain’s police forces are working to prevent the exercise of democracy. This is profoundly irresponsible.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2017/09/22/sorry-spain-catalonia-is-voting-on-independence-whether-you-like-it-or-not/?utm_term=.9bf5c6049c34
Headbuttgate was all over the news today, with the message that a ‘Yes’ campaigner most foully and feloniously headbutted an innocent ex-PM. Take-home message for those not paying much attention “Yes bad”. Tomorrow the story will sink with barely a trace.
“only chance”? Are you learning impaired? I said the postal survey was an opportunity for everyone who supported SSM to vote Yes and send a message to the govt.
You’ve chosen for whatever f*cked up reason to interpret my comment as some kind of slur against you. That’s your problem, not mine. And with your bullshit reasoning and excuse-making comments since, all you’ve told me is that you don’t want marriage equality you just want the opportunity to rail against straight people, the ALP and whatever warped excuse you’ve cooked up in your head that tells you that voting No in the postal survey, or worse sitting it out is the morally responsible thing to do. That also is not on me, that’s on you.
Gary @ #1697 Friday, September 22nd, 2017 – 10:12 pm
Regrettably. 🙁
swamprat @ #1703 Friday, September 22nd, 2017 – 10:16 pm
😆
swamprat
briefly
i wasn’t attacking you.
I was criticising the ALP.
You make your own decisions. I will make mine.
Your criticism of Labor is misplaced. There is unanimous support (at least, in WA Labor) for reform of the Marriage Act. There are widespread misgivings about the current sham, which is a stunt imposed by the LNP against the united Parliamentary and extra-Parliamentary opposition of Labor, including all our LGBTIQ members.
The Campaign for equality has been deliberately divided by the LNP and by their fellow plotters on the Right. But this is no more than their usual trickery and we should be awake to it by now. We cannot serve equality and dignity by succumbing to their interference and their deceits.
Instead, we have to win. We have to win a fight we should not have to have and that we have done nothing to stage. It is also true that we have to win not merely for the sake of the LGBTIQ community. We have to win for all our sakes and for the redress of injustice. It is true that freedom, safety, equality and dignity are indivisible….and that every one among us will be lifted up when the cruelties of the past are brought to an end. If we cannot subscribe to this, we have to accept that which the Right will mete out, just as they see fit.
Steve777
Along with any minor reflection by the press that they may have jumped the gun on what motivated ‘Astrolobe’.
And swamprat:
If you really are determined to sit out the postal survey yet want to see legal SSM then your only option is to vote 1 ALP because the Labor party is the only party with a realistic shot at forming govt next election with a marriage equality policy part of its platform.
Confessions,
I am gay… i am “warped”.. and i hate the LNP, the right wing of the ALP and all other right wing corrupt bastards.
And i do not give a flying fuck about your Lib/ALP survey wank.
It is fucking meaningless. You can vote YES or NO 5 million times (i gather that is ok to do)
You, and your ilk, will give rights to anyone you decide to give rights to.
Swamprat: “You, and your ilk, will give rights to anyone you decide to give rights to.”
Please read rules for radicals. This positions ALL power in others’ hands, and gives away all agency.
swamprat:
How illuminating that you’ve chosen to view the postal survey, my voting Yes in it, and Labor’s support for a Yes vote for marriage equality in a highly dystopian way. I could care less about your sexual orientation, seriously. I’ve so far ignored your personal abuse, but I have to say right now that it says so much about you seeing as you’ve demanded we give you some kind of respect because of your sexual orientation.
Goodnight to you, and I hope you can find it in you for the remainder of the campaign to be positive and treat others with the same respect you’ve demanded of others here.
Steelydan,
Maybe if you contributed more then you could balance us ‘loons’ out?
Still, I fail to see how your premise about us ‘loons’ has legs considering the undisputed fact of Labor’s continuing election success and lead in the polls.
Maybe we aren’t loony at all, just on the right side of history at this point in time.
I don’t see how Labor can be blamed for a survey that they have consistently opposed, and did so despite public opinion being consistently for one.
confessions @ #1712 Friday, September 22nd, 2017 – 10:31 pm
In fact we have preferential voting in this country, so even for any voter for whom same-sex marriage is the absolute be-all-and-end-all, there are many other parties they could vote 1 for. In most electorates those other parties will be eliminated and the only thing that matters will be which major party they put above the other one, even if the majors are put last and second last. In some electorates it’s a bit more complicated, but it’s still highly unlikely that voting 1 for someone who is pro-SSM but not from the ALP will pose any risk to the chance of a Labor government implementing SSM.
Not that I would know anything about my preferences actually mattering; after all, I live in Denison.
I’m sick of hearing how gay you are swamprat. It’s a huge village.It must be really hard. What if people agree with you but don’t shout it from the rooftops. Is that OK?
Confessions, don’t worry about the misfits. I find it especially sad that gays like swamprat can’t even express solidarity with their brethren in the Gay community who are working their guts out to get the Yes vote up.
Swamprat.
This postal farce is such a monster each person will have to make up their own mind how to deal with it and there will be reasons why people ‘vote’ or not ‘vote’. I would not criticise someone who does not ‘vote’, because it is a farce. I can imagine your disgust and anger.
Although I feel bad about expressing an opinion on something that is none of my business, there have been reasons put forward to convince me to lodge my opinion. I am sickened that I am in the position of ‘having a say’ in others’ marriages. Who the f&ck am I to say yes or no?
You have rights. The government is preventing you from exercising your rights. You have as much right as anyone else to marry and if there is even the slightest chance my Yes opinion reply can help get the government out of your way then I am sending it in.
I do not support anyone having a go at you for your position in this matter.
Puffy,
However you can’t possibly agree with swamprat’s abuse of others because they don’t agree with him , can you?
briefly – Trezza’s on in Florence in the next few minutes. BBC1 looks like they are going to broadcast it.
I hope they keep the camera on the audience.
🙂
boomy1 @ #1719 Friday, September 22nd, 2017 – 11:04 pm
I agree but would go further.
I am not really interested in anyone telling me about their sexuality. Particularly if done repeatedly.
Keane J gave a lot of time to determining whether Roberts knew or he had reason to suspect he was a British citizen at nomination. The answer was affirmative.
This could only be because it is an important anterior matter to the taking of reasonable steps.
swamprat
Confessions,
You, and your ilk, will give rights to anyone you decide to give rights to.
I know how you feel. It is one thing to have one’s rights denied. And it is another to have to negotiate for that which one already had or should have had…for one’s inherent rights. We should not have to struggle to assert that which we really ought to have. It doubles the weight. And yet we do have to struggle. I say it is better to struggle than to cave.
I’m not gay. But when I was young I was very baby-faced and of a wiry build. I didn’t really finish growing until I reached my early 20s and had been a target for physical bullying more than once. On one particular occasion I was alone, waiting to meet some of my family at the train station. It was about 9.00 at night, the area was ill-lit and had just a couple of exits.
There were few other people around, but there was a gang of 6 or 7 youths, all about my age, clamouring and bragging, swaggering for each other, stirring themselves up. One of them happened to notice me left and the group. He sauntered over to me. He walked right up. Never staying still, he started goading me about my appearance, shoving me in the upper torso, sneering, talking out me being like a girl and declaring I must be “a homo”. He grabbed my hair. He flung my head back. Then he punched me in the face. I could see it coming but I hardly knew what to do…how to duck or fend him off. He hit me hard. He was a tad shorter than I but very quick and full of intention. He hit me several times – maybe four five times – around the head and I fell backwards on to my side. I was then completely defenceless and prone. He was above me, dancing over me, and his friends were approaching too.
They could have beaten or kicked me to a pulp and I knew it. I felt indignant, confused and shocked more than scared, but I knew I was in trouble. I was in trouble only because I had been picked as a possible homosexual by a violent idiot who wanted to show off. I got a blood nose, a bruised cheekbone and a split lip. I suspect I was lucky. For no apparent reason, he stopped. He stepped back, laughing and walked away with his mates. Maybe one of them had called him off. I don’t know.
….Some time later I went to the local Police Station to report the assault. That was kind of pointless because I had no idea who the assailant was. But I went anyway because I thought the Police should know that public violence was “out there” and I had a reasonable description in my mind. They listened for about a minute. Then they laughed and as good as said that as I was such a baby-face perhaps it was only what I could expect and that I should be more careful in future. I got the impression that such violence was excusable as far as they were concerned.
There are other stories….the gay school friend who suicided. The depression and the traumas experienced by my nieces. The hostility between my in-laws and the shame that has been invoked.
In any case, 40 years later, I can claim to know irrational violence. I have felt the sinister blows of homophobia.
I think it’s worth fighting to relieve it…to reject violence and to stand up for peace, justice and order. I’m not gay. But I am certainly pleased to say Yes in the survey. Enough is enough. Ask me anytime you like if I support law reform and I will say Yes every time.
shellbell @ #1725 Friday, September 22nd, 2017 – 11:21 pm
So that’s his plan for letting the others off the hook?
CTar1
briefly – Trezza’s on in Florence in the next few minutes. BBC1 looks like they are going to broadcast it.
Cheers CT !!
bemused @ #1724 Friday, September 22nd, 2017 – 11:20 pm
I’m inclined to give it a pass, in this instance. He’s one of the only (if not the only) actual stakeholders in this debate around here. Nobody else is going to be personally affected by the outcome, regardless of which side they support and regardless of which side wins.
You’ve got an exercise where a bunch of non-stakeholders are in the midst of imposing their will on the stakeholders. Whatever the outcome, their agency has been sorely insulted. If a stakeholder wants to have a rant about that (or anything else), that seems fair enough.
I do not agree with Swamprat’s ideas about the ALP, now I have read the back posts. That is misplaced anger. I believe.
C@tmomma @ #1722 Friday, September 22nd, 2017 – 10:42 pm
C@tmomma @ #1722 Friday, September 22nd, 2017 – 10:42 pm
Right side of history Momma really with two years to go and with your man Shorten at he helm I am far from saying the Libs are going to win but I am certainly not shaking in my boots either. The Bradbury technique has worked a treat so far but the Australian people just don’t like your leader at all and the Libs just need 6 months of plain sailing before the next election to have a red hot go at winning.
A R
“He’s one of the only (if not the only) actual stakeholders in this debate around here. Nobody else is going to be personally affected by the outcome”
Have you not been paying attention? There are other gay posters here, myself included. Don’t be so presumptuous assuming that everyone else is hetero.
Steelydan.
This is a blog where lefties congregate? And you do not like it?
Tough titties.
A R
!!!!!!!
You need to read more comments.
A R @ #1729 Friday, September 22nd, 2017 – 11:34 pm
He is clearly not the only one on PB directly affected and a much greater number are indirectly affected via relatives and friends, workmates etc. I am in this latter category and don’t need prompting to vote yes (already done) as I see it as just an equal rights issue.
Mr Newbie @ #1732 Friday, September 22nd, 2017 – 11:43 pm
Clearly I have not. Particularly to anything prior to about #1600. No offense intended, apologies for any caused.
briefly
Well said, and I am sorry you should have suffered that treatment. Why the hell do some people have to make other people’s lives miserable just so they can feel good about themselves?
Steelydan:
“the Libs just need 6 months of plain sailing”
Oh, and that’s looking just so likely with the current rabble. They’ve barely managed one month in 4 years, let alone 6.
Did not say I did not like it just stating a fact but congregate is the right word to use, swarm is another, words like hive and group think could also be used.
A R:
“No offense intended, apologies for any caused.”
I’m not offended, just slightly perplexed that you didn’t think there were likely other gay posters (or lurkers) here.
Steelydan
So Labor is leading in the polls with a leader who is not the most popular. The Libs are losing in the polls despite their leader being the more popular.
People are going with the menu, not the beauty contest.
Agreed newbie hence the bradbury reference.
Steelydan @ #1739 Friday, September 22nd, 2017 – 11:23 pm
If you want to descend into the absurd.
Trezza clearly believes that the UK is much more important to the other EC member states than they are.
The attention the UK is getting is simply because they have decided to withdraw.
Once done the remaining member states will largely go on as before while everything in the UK to do with trade, immigration, security cooperation and many other things will be open to debate and change.
The relevance of the UK government wishes will become a minor consideration or given no consideration at all.
Steelydan
You obviously find it strange but active members of the girl guides, sports clubs, etc do exactly this.
Usually I do not consider leaderdhip polls that important but the Australian people just don’t like the bloke, the ALP is where it’s at in the polls because the Libs ousted a leader and continued in fighting, and not much more. The ALP can take bugger all credit for the polls.
Steelydan is perplexed by lefties, there are not enough synapses to accommodate the new information and way of thinking. Lefties understand righties, as there is not a lot to deal with, and it is quite straightforward.
Steely
There are lots of people around that think the Coalition are not very smart and would support this view.
They often decide to vote for some one else.
Same as last time straight into personal attacks. I have read 50 odd comments on here about the head butting incident ranging from Abbott lying, a staged stunt, he deserved it, to actually glee in someone getting hurt, so yes the left is hard to understand. I don’t agree with much th ALP stands for but I think they are good people, many of you just seethe with hatred and I don’t get that.
Mr Newbie @ #1740 Friday, September 22nd, 2017 – 11:55 pm
I’d put that most likely down to:
1. I’m not actively seeking out or terribly interested in information on anyone’s sexuality; I don’t think it’s relevant to anything likely to occur in a public place, over the Internet. Nor should/would it be, if not for the postal survey farce being started and not yet finished.
2. Absent of clear and recollectable evidence to the contrary, I tend to assume that every person (here, or anywhere) is basically the same as me. Perhaps it’s an Asperger’s thing, I don’t know. To me, the whole world seems lousy with straight white males. 🙂