BludgerTrack: 53.8-46.2 to Labor

No real change in the BludgerTrack poll aggregate this week, except that there is now a Morrison-versus-Shorten preferred prime minister trend in business.

BludgerTrack has been updated with the latest fortnightly Essential Research poll, together with the state breakdowns published earlier this week by Ipsos. This yields only the tiniest change on voting intention, and no change whatsoever on the seat projection.

I’ve also made my first effort to reactivate the leadership ratings, which have been dormant since Malcolm Turnbull’s because there has been insufficient data to generate a trend measure for Scott Morrison. This is still the case with his net approval ratings, for which there are only five data points, but there have been two extra points for the preferred prime minister question, which makes all the difference.

As such, the leadership ratings trends available through the full BludgerTrack display (click below) show separate trend measures on the preferred prime minister chart for the Turnbull-versus-Shorten and Morrison-versus-Shorten eras. This demonstrates that Morrison’s lead over Shorten is more or less the same as Turnbull’s was. I have also finally updated Bill Shorten’s net approval trend, which suggests a very slight improvement since the Liberal leadership change.

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.

1,373 comments on “BludgerTrack: 53.8-46.2 to Labor”

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  1. Ah yes, Dollar Sweetie’s greatest hits..

    Peter Costello’s five most ‘profligate’ decisions as treasurer cost the budget $56bn a year
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/15/peter-costellos-five-most-profligate-decisions-as-treasurer-cost-the-budget-56bn-a-year

    Peter the Genius gold trader

    We really must talk about the Howard and Costello economic disaster
    ” selling 167 tonnes of Australia’s gold reserves at near rock bottom prices just before the price rose spectacularly. According to one assessment, the fire sale returned just $2.4 billion. Had the gold been sold in 2011, when the nation needed cash during the global financial crisis, it would have fetched about $7.4 billion.”
    https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/we-really-must-talk-about-the-howard-and-costello-economic-disaster,5686

  2. rhwombat (Block)
    Sunday, October 14th, 2018 – 9:13 am
    Comment #1025

    Stuntman Scum is just a pathetic reboot of Toady Rabbott, the Cycling Smeagol – albeit sans scapular. Pastor ScumMo will crash and burn after Sharma’s Saturday shunting, but will keep on frantically going through the motions until next May, when the foetid pottage of the Lying Nasty Party will be ditched by the ~72% of us who are not beholden to the GReedy Arseholes & Spivs Parties of Thatcher’s children.

    I think I am starting to like your lyric poetry. The scansion delights and thrills me.

    I read it that subsequent to the crash and burn those beholden will be busy taking over the remnants of the pottage while directing the Air Sea Rescue to the far horizon.

    I look forward to the Memorial Service for the Graspers on election night.

    I now depart for some mowing and will then consult my new 🔮crystal ball🔮 concerning the Newspoll.

  3. Good comment in the Greg Jericho article:
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/13/australias-climate-idiocracy-must-end-and-theres-no-time-to-waste

    “There’s something profoundly unsettling about this excellent analysis from Mr Jericho.

    And it’s not to do with climate science. Rather it’s about anthropology and evolution. Or in this case the reversal of the ascent of mankind.

    I was taught many years ago that Homo Sapiens was unique in species because we acknowledge that there is such a thing as a future. Sure, other species nurtured their young, some even played a part in intergenerational youth rearing and so on but it was Homo Sapiens that could see beyond the next couple of generations.

    That’s how history developed – a kind of repository of collective experience so that those future generations could be informed

    It’s why farmers grew trees that they would never see the fruit of. A certainty that the species survived and advanced even if individuals died.

    It’s why scientists knew that their part in research, however small, would be part of a larger picture somewhere in a better future world they’d never see

    Philosophically it was a definition of hope and a share belief that our rationality could influence and shape progress

    And yet here is here and now is now where the future is subjugated to an immediacy that is growing shorter and shorter

    2020? Too far away. Let’s look at today only and probably focus on midday because evening is too far away. That’s the message from so many on the ‘let’s do nothing’ side in the climate science debate.

    It’s not that they’re deniers. Far from it. Think of Frydenberg, Sharma, Turnbull, Taylor, Morrison et al. In spite of their statements we know they’re intelligent enough to recognise that the science is in – the issue is that they just don’t care. And that rejection of their own collective intellect is truly frightening.

    It’s as through we as a species have regressed to the point that we’re not believing in anything but today. And yesterday. And in doing so we’re denying that which has most fundamentally defined us, made us so special. Led to our collective advancement to the point where we’re now capable of extinguishing ourselves.

    The Liberal Party isn’t the cause but it’s currently the most visible symptom of this dumbing down of mankind. Have to add that the National Party, in its shift from being the voice of farmers to the voice of the rip it out of the ground and flog it off miner mentality represents an even more extreme version as it slides to irrelevance

    I’d like to be optimistic but looking at the man with the square head in the round cap, listening to him ape the antics of the truly amoral and completely delusional Mr Trump gives me no confidence

    Perhaps Wentworth next weekend will help but I’m mindful of the old saw that pessimism is merely reality seen more clearly.

    Hope so but I’m clutching at straws here ….”

  4. Congratulations Mari.

    The stories of deprivation with low income people remind me of the election Fraser lost to Hawke.

    I think Mr Murdoch is dreaming if he thinks Labor is going to be a one term government.

  5. For those guys into energy, does the recent climate report mean it is really too late for measures like carbon prices and schemes, do the States & Commonwealth really now just need big fast investment in renewable generation capacity and storage, and in the States that have enjoyed the vast efficiencies of privatisation are there any long term hanging costs / guarantees if such investments effectively strand private coal and other dirty generation assets?

    It isn’t going to be cheap but wouldn’t it theoretically be possible to be 100% renewable in 5 – 6 years?

  6. That was a good point by Savva that the Ruddock Report has essentially backfired, and has given Australians a glimpse into discriminatory practices in religious institutions we thought had been laid to rest yonks ago.

  7. “I think Mr Murdoch is dreaming if he thinks Labor is going to be a one term government.”

    It is a little more than dreaming when you got money to spend and an active team of evil propagandists working for your companies in Australia (and around the world). As we saw with the pinks batts and school halls, NBN, saving Australia from the GFC, if you have enough of the evil scum that work for him (and against us) do enough misinformation and misdirection you can build a fictional shared belief that good is bad and the ABC management isn’t going to be a challenge to that, in fact those weak cowardly f*ckers get on board and help spread the lies.

  8. Fess

    Yes. Plus Savva has indicated bipartisan support for the British position of no taxpayers money to fund bigotry. Thats a huge change from the conservative side of politics

  9. ItzaDream @ 11.06pm Saturday

    Wow! How to make a grown man cry. That was etherial, such a beautiful, flowing line. Many thanks. Vale Montserrat Caballé.

  10. @Ms_Franklin_MP tweets

    David Marr: By trying to strengthen religious advantage, it generally results in exposure and loss of advantage. Political heads in religious organisations know this. Very interesting. #Insiders

  11. WWP

    I agree thats the plan. 🙂

    Didn’t work to unseat Hawke either. It does not look to me like Labor is going to be held hostage to Murdoch this time. It does help that Murdoch has nailed himself to the crazy mast of Fox and Trump. 🙂

    My comment was based on the fact I remember laughing at a country so backward it required food banks as an ignorant teen.

  12. Niel Perry’s investors ripped off staff to the tune of $4500/ day & that’s only for the 2017/18 financial year.
    Absolutly nothing’s changed with the pony tail brigade.

  13. Morrison is holding a Green football in Adelaide.

    About sums up climate policy. Adelaide suffers a lot due to climate policy.

    Of course its about Headspace and funding mental health.

  14. WeWantPaul @ #1065 Sunday, October 14th, 2018 – 10:05 am

    “I think Mr Murdoch is dreaming if he thinks Labor is going to be a one term government.”

    It is a little more than dreaming when you got money to spend and an active team of evil propagandists working for your companies in Australia (and around the world). As we saw with the pinks batts and school halls, NBN, saving Australia from the GFC, if you have enough of the evil scum that work for him (and against us) do enough misinformation and misdirection you can build a fictional shared belief that good is bad and the ABC management isn’t going to be a challenge to that, in fact those weak cowardly f*ckers get on board and help spread the lies.

    Exactly.

    And the whole religious schools/discrimination issue is little more than a smokescreen in the way it is framed.
    These so called private schools’ whole reason for being is based on exclusion and discrimination.

    Few seem very concerned that they discriminate on the basis of the income of the child’s parents, while happy to take the tax money generated by the very parents that they are effectively discriminating against.

  15. @joncoopertweets tweets

    BREAKING: Georgia GOP Secretary of State Brian Kemp is now under investigation by @TheDemCoalition. We found something really shady in his campaign finance reports. We will send out an update shortly.

    #FireKemp #VoteDem #VoteBlue #BlueWave #GOPCorruption #RedToBlue

  16. I thought that was the best Insiders for a long time….guests were forthright an respectful, all with something to add, and they seem to be looking at the bigger picture a bit more.
    Marr got his deserved moment in the sun for campaigning against disgusting religion discrimination for 15 years. Savva was strangely progressive on a few things.
    I muted Corman…but the excessive smiling and Botox did nothing for me.

  17. I don’t give Pyne credit for much. I will however say he has done good work in the Mental Health Space despite all his political flaws.

  18. How big tobacco hopes to get you hooked on e-cigarettes.

    https://thenewdaily.com.au/money/finance-news/2018/10/12/big-tobacco-hopes-get-hooked-e-cigarettes/

    Predictably, I disagree with the whole approach of the article the BK linked.

    It’s basically: “Big tobacco BAD, therefore vaping BAD.”

    While I’m not saying that nicotine is good you, ingesting nicotine in the form of vaping has had immediate positive effects on my lifestyle, amenity, personal well-being and physical fitness. The ex-smokers quoted in the article could have been me. Their experiences are identical to mine.

    Vaping is 1/20th the cost of cigarette smoking, and clearly has an almost immediate effect on personal physical amenity. In my own case, my blood pressure is back to 120/80. My heart rate at rest is a regular 65. These are because e-cigarettes deliver lower nicotine concentrations than the combustion process. I am exercising a lot more and gaining fitness and outright enthusiasm for life. The only problem is weight gain (which would have occurred anyway, and is proof of the beneficial effects, in a perverse way). My aim is to get off nicotine by using e-cigarettes as a transition mechanism.

    And the wowsers want to stop me and millions of others from doing this because they don’t like Big Tobacco, who they claim (without producing evidence) are up to no good, because… well… they must be. Right?

    I don’t like Big Tobacco much either, in fact I hate them. But I don’t deal with Big Tobacco, or buy any product identifiable as coming from them (so much for “Brand Recognition”). The nicotine I buy works out at 1/200th the cost of nicotine in the form of combustible cigarettes.

    Unbranded, cheap nicotine in the e-cigarette context is basically a commodity. So why would one company, in competition with equally evil, rapacious companies, waste millions lobbying for it to be more readily available? If Big Tobacco is making a fortune out of e-fags, it’s an extremely subtle fortune.

    To my mind it’s more likely that Big Tobacco has read the wowsers’ minds like a book. If they scare governments enough into banning vaping, then we’ll all have to go back on the fags. That’ll be nice. Big Tobacco back in business, and the wowsers with a family favourite to wag their fingers at, once again.

    Just like old times.

  19. Sohar @ #1061 Sunday, October 14th, 2018 – 9:57 am

    It’s not that they’re deniers. Far from it. Think of Frydenberg, Sharma, Turnbull, Taylor, Morrison et al. In spite of their statements we know they’re intelligent enough to recognise that the science is in – the issue is that they just don’t care. And that rejection of their own collective intellect is truly frightening.

    I have two theories, and I switch between them depending on how depressed I am …

    1. They are deniers, but not of global warming. As you say, they are not stupid enough to not understand the science, but they just can’t face it. They are instead denying that their preferred style of unbridled capitalism could have led to such a catastrophic outcome. Their entire world view and beliefs are threatened by this, so they simply ignore it.

    2. They know what the outcome will be, but they also know – and count on – that they will be amongst the survivors on whatever fraction of the degraded planet is left after hundreds of millions – possibly billions – have died as a result of their inaction.

    Sometimes, when I’m really depressed, I think both theories are probably true 🙁

  20. BB

    People who like Nicola Rozon introducing plain packaging cigarettes are not wowsers. They are looking at the very real tactics of Big Tobacco to entice NEW numbers onto nicotine addiction.

    There is a difference between those concerns and wowsers.

  21. I suspect Labor does not want Phelps’s prefs to get Sharma over the line – better to use Labor prefs to get an independent over the line

  22. BB

    I get what you mean about the wowsers. Here is an example of what we are fighting against with the wowser mentality. Or sometimes known as the neo liberal philosophy.

    @lesstonehouse tweets

    We must some how stop calling people struggling with employment and mental health issues Dole bludgers.. It’s not correct…Yes a small amount are on welfare to long but the vast majority are not..cut it out ffs. Stop it #msm #skynews @australian @couriermail #auspol

    This also applies to Richard Branson’s campaign on drug reform. The wowsers have had 40 years of punish the addicts. Big big failure.

  23. Morrison now using Macca as the Gold Standard of ABC reporting.

    Edit: Sorry that was in response to a question about a Senate Inquiry into the ABC and bias.

  24. Player One

    I pick No.2 . Pricks like the Koch Bros. and their descendents would feel very comfortable as to how it will turn out for them.

  25. WeWantPaul @ #1063 Sunday, October 14th, 2018 – 10:03 am

    For those guys into energy, does the recent climate report mean it is really too late for measures like carbon prices and schemes, do the States & Commonwealth really now just need big fast investment in renewable generation capacity and storage, and in the States that have enjoyed the vast efficiencies of privatisation are there any long term hanging costs / guarantees if such investments effectively strand private coal and other dirty generation assets?

    Basically, yes, it’s too late. Such “fiddling at the edges” is not going to be nearly sufficient, because there is just not enough time left for mechanisms like carbon prices to act.

    The IPCC summary report might seem to indicate it is still possible to limit warming to 1.5 degrees, but the detailed report shows it is completely impractical to expect to be able to do so. Nothing short of a complete moratorium on all fossil fuel usage could do that, and that is not going to happen.

    Even 2 degrees is probably beyond us now, but is still worth striving for. The reality is that warming of 3 – 4 degrees is now very likely (some are already saying inevitable).

    It isn’t going to be cheap but wouldn’t it theoretically be possible to be 100% renewable in 5 – 6 years?

    No. Even a small country like Australia would struggle to do that. Worldwide, it is not going to happen. This is why the IPCC report also has to assume dramatic new technologies such as carbon capture that do not yet exist, and also dramatic lifestyle changes. The scale of change required is described as ‘unprecedented’, and that’s putting it mildly.

    The other thing this report does – which is often overlooked – is dramatically increase the expected damage caused by even 2 degree warming. This is now considered ‘catastrophic’. So 3 – 4 degrees is beyond catastrophic, because the damage caused rises exponentially.

  26. guytaur @ #1076 Sunday, October 14th, 2018 – 10:26 am

    @joncoopertweets tweets

    BREAKING: Georgia GOP Secretary of State Brian Kemp is now under investigation by @TheDemCoalition. We found something really shady in his campaign finance reports. We will send out an update shortly.

    #FireKemp #VoteDem #VoteBlue #BlueWave #GOPCorruption #RedToBlue

    I hope so! He needs to be kicked to the gutter, where he belongs. Oh wait, that’s where he had been operating from all along. 🙂

  27. Ven,
    It’s implying that Dave Sharma is actually Dave Charmer. That is, a nice guy. Not a person seeking to represent a bad government.

  28. You can vote for Labor and their infrastructure plans for the State of Victoria, or you can vote for bigotry and the Liberal Party.

  29. Guytaur wrote:

    BB

    People who like Nicola Rozon introducing plain packaging cigarettes are not wowsers. They are looking at the very real tactics of Big Tobacco to entice NEW numbers onto nicotine addiction.

    There is a difference between those concerns and wowsers.

    I fully agree with you, Guytaur.

    The “wowsers” I refer to are those who would rather see addicted smokers keep smoking, rather than take a path which is vastly less costly, has immediate health and lifestyle benefits, and which may lead to quitting nicotine altigether. It is also far less likely to introduce non-smokers to nicotine addiction. All this is merely to spite Big Tobacco, for whose involvement the evidence is unclear anyway.

    I also believe there is a distinct element of moral uppityness involved. Some non-addicts love to look down on addicts, even when the addiction in question is under control and is doing little or no apparent harm. Combine that with a hatred of anything that Big Tobacco does (or allegedly does) and it’s dynamite for wowsers. Anecdotally, I have experienced this directly myself, several times.

    It would be ironic if e-fags were banned, and everyone had to go back to the real thing. The only profit woukd go to Big Tobacco, but it’s always great to hate.

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