Essential Research and BludgerTrack deluxe

Introducing a bigger and better BludgerTrack. Also featured: a status quo result from Essential Research, at least so far as the major parties are concerned.

First up, BludgerTrack has proudly moved into the twenty-first century with a new fully interactive feature, offering hitherto hidden detail on state-level primary votes and the seat result probability estimates that are used to calculate the final result. Also included are the leadership rating trends, and there’s a facility for viewing raw opinion data throughout the current term.

The results as shown are updated to include the ReachTEL and Essential Research results, and the former has had a particularly big impact on voting intention, the primary numbers being even worse for the Coalition than the headline two-party result suggested. However, despite the 1% lurch to Labor on two-party preferred, there is little change to the seat projection, as the Coalition has had some stronger numbers lately from all-important Queensland, and Labor was largely punching into thin air with its gains in New South Wales and Victoria this week.

Then there’s the regular fortnightly result for Essential Research, which is notable in having both major parties at the low ebb of 35% on the primary vote, with the Coalition down one on a fortnight ago and Labor down two. This helps One Nation recover two points to 8%, with the Greens steady on 10%. Also unchanged is Labor’s two-party lead of 53-47.

Further questions relate mostly to the Barnaby Joyce situation, with a question conceived before his resignation on Friday finding 34% wanting him to leave parliament, 26% thinking he should resign as leader but stay in parliament, and only 19% thinking he should remain leader of the Nationals. Forty-four per cent expressed approval of “media reporting on politicians’ private affairs”, with 41% disapproving.

The poll also finds more respondents than not in favour not only of the ban on sex between ministers and their staff, but also on politicians having extra-marital sex altogether, and between managers and staff in the workplace. Twenty-two per cent even favoured a “ban on sex between workmates in general”, with 55% opposed. A rather particular question on health insurance policy finds 48% supporting removing the subsidy on private health insurance premiums and using the funds to include dental care in Medicare, with 32% opposed.

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.

3,634 comments on “Essential Research and BludgerTrack deluxe”

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  1. Und 50 years ago today….

    ” Lionel Rose defeated Fighting Harada in Tokyo to become Australia’s first Aboriginal world champion. For a time in 1968 and 1969, he was the most famous Indigenous person in Australia, and perhaps the most famous Australian athlete in the world.

    It’s hard to overstate the impact Rose had in his home country. He was the first Indigenous person to be named Australian of the Year. He released a hit country record. He was made a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Elvis Presley wanted to spend time with him. When Rose returned from his win over Harada, 100,000 Melburnians lined the streets.”
    https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/feb/27/50-years-on-from-fighting-harada-remembering-aboriginal-boxing-champion-lionel-rose

  2. p
    I had largely forgotten all the Lionel Rose stuff. I think I may have listened to the fight on radio. I can certainly recall blow by blow descriptions.

  3. poroti @ #2 Tuesday, February 27th, 2018 – 9:01 pm

    Und 50 years ago today….

    ” Lionel Rose defeated Fighting Harada in Tokyo to become Australia’s first Aboriginal world champion. For a time in 1968 and 1969, he was the most famous Indigenous person in Australia, and perhaps the most famous Australian athlete in the world.

    It’s hard to overstate the impact Rose had in his home country. He was the first Indigenous person to be named Australian of the Year. He released a hit country record. He was made a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Elvis Presley wanted to spend time with him. When Rose returned from his win over Harada, 100,000 Melburnians lined the streets.”
    https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/feb/27/50-years-on-from-fighting-harada-remembering-aboriginal-boxing-champion-lionel-rose

    Bennelong, Noel Pearson, Yunapingu (sadly missed).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXDJneVbEC8

  4. The corrupt and often ruthless system Putin has maintained in Russia is clearly a killer, and not just by dint of empowering people like Kadyrov. Since Putin came to power, 25 journalists were killed for work-related reasons. Many of them had been investigating corruption by Putin-appointed officials or exposing injustice by Putin’s billionaire friends — like Mikhail Beketov, the editor of a small paper in the Moscow suburbs that opposed a highway project led by Putin crony Arkady Rotenberg. Only three journalists have been murdered in the U.S. in the same period, and two of them were victims of a terror attack.

    People also suffer injuries when they come into contact with Russia’s brutal and opaque law enforcement and justice systems. There are no official statistics on the number of people killed, beaten and tortured by police, but news reports of violent incidents are a daily reality. According to Rusebola.com, which attempts to collect independent statistics on inmate deaths in the Russian penal system, 99 people died in Russian jails and prisons in 2016. Had these statistics existed in 2009, Sergei Magnitsky, the tax lawyer, whose death is often blamed on Putin, would have been included in them: A Kremlin human rights council determined that Magnitsky, who had been denied medical help, was beaten by eight prison guards shortly before his death.

    http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-putin-kills-enemies-journalists-poison-20170207-story.html

  5. Very pretty, William.

    Forgive me if it’s already there, but I assume there’s a plan for a link from the homepage to the tres fancy interactive stuff?

  6. Cameron

    Thanks for that neat link. I may have to give you the benefit of the doubt…

    It seems to me that the problem we have in the West is basically twofold: very aggressive Russia and China and a US which simply does not know what to do about it PLUS the US having a system that has generated a narcissist at the helm.

  7. Boerwar @ #8 Tuesday, February 27th, 2018 – 9:07 pm

    GG
    I have a simple foolproof method.
    Greens = guilty.
    Everyone else gets at least a smidge of the benefit of reasonable doubt.

    mate,

    I remember the days when you lectured us long and hard about Labor/green reconciliation unmercifully.

    I specifically remember commenting and then going on a look weekend far away from the internet and PB.

    When I returned, you were still rabbitting on.

    You’re the most religious person I’ve ever come across. t just depends on which religion you are smoking at the time as to whether I agree.

    Cheers.

  8. Just watching Brockie’s Insight which is largely about how rape victims experience the court systems.

    I was toying with the idea of watching that, but had a feeling it would just make me angry, frustrated and depressed.

  9. Van Badham tweets..

    Hello. It staggers me that I even need to say this, but here we are.

    I am not seeking preselection for the seat of Brunswick for Labor.

    There are two easily verifiable reasons for this:

    1) I live nowhere near Brunswick.
    2) I am not a member of the Labor Party.

    #auspol

  10. Bludgertrack is now bigger and better. Great stuff.

    I can’t see a link to it other than in the article at the start of this thread.

  11. Cameron says:
    Tuesday, February 27, 2018 at 8:00 pm
    Donald Trump Wants to Make It Easier to Start a Nuclear War. This Should Petrify Us.

    This was last proposed in the fading days of the Cold War, when Reagan was President. The problem is there really is no such thing as a little nuclear weapon, so attempts to make nuclear weapons more “deployable” are self-defeating. The concept was abandoned. It will be abandoned again because the use of nuclear weapons in “tactical”engagements would undermine their utility in a general “strategic” sense. It’s important to realise that to use nuclear weapons is to negate the very reason for having them. They have immeasurable defensive value but are practically useless as offensive devices.

    I think Trump is just posing, in the same way that the North Koreans also pose. Trump has been accused of treason, of being Putin’s patsy. He will be interested in defending himself against such charges. Talking up military innovation is a way to do that.

    He’s also purporting to be interested in confronting China over their territorial assertions in the South China Sea. But he’s not really that interested. He has asked for other naval powers to participate, including the UK and (though we have very limited naval capabilities) Australia as well. The US does not want to challenge China alone. While China is asserting itself more and more, it’s not obvious that this is contrary to fundamental US interests even though it is very significant to China’s many small neighbours and to regional powers such as India, Japan and – most likely – Russia too.

    Trump is providing political cover for Putin and trying to fend off his political critics at the same time. Just like his threats against North Korea, his nuclear talk will prove to be empty.

  12. I watched most of the 7:30 Cousins i/v and have been thinking on it ever since.

    I got the feeling that Cousins was actually trying to swing Batman ALP’s way (and yeah, I know Cousins gave the Greens a lot of donations in the past).

    I got the impression he wanted people to know Shorten plans to really scrutinise Adani when in govt … (and don’t forget the recent visit to Qld to give Qlders the idea that they had options other than Adani (like the port expansion etc.))

    It will be interesting to see what Shorten says tomorrow

  13. In relation to Adani, I’m sure I saw somewhere the other day that the fix is in with the CFMEU, based on not shafting existing coal mines.

    I’m pretty sure any loss of seats in North Queensland will be more than compensated by gains elsewhere, including SE Queensland where sentiment on Adam is pretty much the same as in southern capitals.

  14. Boerwar

    The following headline and article from The Intercept is the point I was trying to make.

    “Donald Trump Wants to Make It Easier to Start a Nuclear War. This Should Petrify Us.”

    https://theintercept.com/2018/02/08/donald-trump-nuclear-war/

    In another link I posted from Time Magazine, I pasted a paragraph re comments about Russia and China, which may have distracted from my point, which was not my intention.
    However, this sentence from that article is more on point.

    “Rather than dissuading such efforts, arms-control experts from both political parties say, Trump’s moves will accelerate them.”

    http://time.com/5128394/donald-trump-nuclear-poker/

  15. From last thread …

    Boerwar @ #1753 Tuesday, February 27th, 2018 – 7:31 pm

    IMO you appear to be confusing the probability of the loss of the majority of H. sapiens with the probability of the loss of all of H. sapiens.

    IMO you are overestimating the survival potential of Homo Saps on a planet that will be experiencing “the closest the planet has come to ending up a dead and desolate rock in space”.

    http://globalwarming.berrens.nl/globalwarming.htm

  16. C
    Yep. As noted above the issue for the US is whether to allow NK to develop an nuclear tipped missile that can reach the US mainland.
    What is going on, IMO, is a huge bluffing exercise in which the US is trying to look as if it will do something very serious and nasty to stop the Kim Dynasty from obtaining such a missile.
    As a result, nuclear miscalculations are more rather than less likely.

  17. p1

    In terms of extinction, the essential question seems to be whether humans would be able to set up growing systems for plant and animal food that are isolated from climate.

    They do so now. For example, some 15% of Australia’s truss tomatoes are grown in a single closed growing system in South Australia.

    Most current closed systems are designed to increase heat although they may include mechanisms to reduce heat, depending.

    There is no engineering reason that closed systems designed to reduce heat cannot be developed.

    Any energy required for cooling would be limitless renewables.

  18. Cameron
    The current US strategy in relation to NK, including the nuclear brinkmanship, was essentially forecast by Mad Dog Mattis BEFORE he joined the White House Administration.

  19. Lovely work William!

    Thank you! 🙂

    One suggestion, would it be possible to colour code the seat listings under the charts in relation to the Party that holds the seat?

    Just a thought, cheers!

  20. William great new BT.

    Are the figures for Queensland reversed? It has last week Labor up 4.2%
    Also is the seats change only +2?

    The other states look ok.

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