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”

Comments Page 5 of 28
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  1. I wonder whether the AFR, Oz, Sky, or Jones/Hadley/Bolt will pursue any Coalition Government figures over their fiscal slackness relative to Labor?

    Nope. Nope. Nope. However, the switch will be flicked again in May 2019 should Labor win the federal election.

  3. C@tmomma says:
    Friday, October 12, 2018 at 12:18 pm
    I wonder whether the AFR, Oz, Sky, or Jones/Hadley/Bolt will pursue any Coalition Government figures over their fiscal slackness relative to Labor?

    Nope. Nope. Nope. However, the switch will be flicked again in May 2019 should Labor win the federal election.
    —————————————

    It’s always aggravated me how the Right in the media has always given the Liberals a completely free pass for the very same “high taxes and even higher spending” for which they berate Labor, just because the Liberals will do more to ensure the rich enjoy largesse and the poor pay the price.

  5. C@tmomma @ #202 Friday, October 12th, 2018 – 8:16 am

    Thanks, shellbell. Btw, is Dio correct about the jurisdictional issues?

    If you read down shellbell’s link it describes the Vienna Convention.

    Vienna convention and diplomatic protection

    The protection of diplomats and their official premises is based on the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations 1961, an international treaty; it was signed by 141 countries, including the UK and Libya.

    It was incorporated into UK law in the Diplomatic Privileges Act 1964. Among other measures, the act protects diplomats from prosecution for any crime unless the diplomat’s home country waives his right to immunity.

    A country can declare a diplomat from another state to be persona non grata, and demand that they leave the country, but no other action can be taken against them.

    Diplomatic premises are also protected from entry by the police or security services, unless given permission by the country’s ambassador.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Yvonne_Fletcher

  6. Hi C@tmomma

    Gave an anecdotal update last evening. If a slight one, of course.

    Will add it is of considerable interest that outright and notably extensive antipathy for Mr Morrison is being expressed by a number of people who usually maintain their own counsel on things political. As well, across my acquaintances, almost everyone knows Dr Phelps and wasn’t impressed from before the start of this latest ‘launch’ (as a result, still think Labor has missed a strategic chance to highlight its policy suite more comprehensively). Climate change, outrage over the Opera House stunt, the Ruddoch Report, longstanding unease at the general economic environment (including, natch, residential property) and concerns for all manner of demonstrable ills facing our young people seem to me the ‘vox pop’ in passing points.

  7. Catmomma

    Dio’s idea seems right but presumably there were acts associated with conspiring to murder or accessory after the murder performed outside the Embassy which you can arrest and charge for?

  9. Puffytmd @ #208 Friday, October 12th, 2018 – 11:32 am

    All bets will be off when the world warms, err, gets hotter than a blacksmith’s forge. The first to be sacrificed to the Climate Goddess should be the rich, then the RWNJs and any narcissists, and the warmongers/weapons manufacturers, and the capitalists who put money before the Earth.
    http://nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2018/10/un-says-climate-genocide-coming-but-its-worse-than-that.html

    The problem with this is that all those living in rich Western countries should logically be fairly close to the head of the queue. Not sure if I like that idea.

  10. Hi Zoomster

    Watcha only watches and calls out the IGEC as necessary. Arguing is not my go.

    Hi jenauthor

    Rest assured Watcha will only watch, and will never endorse the coalition.

  11. Hi Poroti

    Thanks. Andrew Street offers a nice base from which to highlight all prospective Turnbull hagiography. And a fair bit of it has yet to arise. Still, attempted legacy-crafting when it can be readily demonstrated one has been unvaryingly on the wrong side of history is doomed to fail too.

  12. Eunoe says:
    Friday, October 12, 2018 at 11:57 am
    “Barrie Cassidy continues the media’s hagiography of Malcolm Turnbull, describing Mr Turnbull as ‘a small-l Liberal’.”
    ————————————-

    I think you’re being too harsh on Barrie Cassidy here. He was contextualising MT’s far higher level of support in Wentworth than would have been obtained – and was being obtained – by any ‘generic Liberal’. I didn’t detect any particular enthusiasm for MT’s “accomplishments” from Cassidy on his own account – just a recognition of the incontrovertible enthusiasm for MT among Wentworth voters in 2007- 2016.

    All of which really just further highlights Wentworth as an “only just Liberal” seat, given a neutral NSW-wide ALP-Coalition political climate, and generic, non-incumbent ALP & Lib candidates.

  15. Shellbell @ #210 Friday, October 12th, 2018 – 8:31 am

    Catmomma

    Dio’s idea seems right but presumably there were acts associated with conspiring to murder or accessory after the murder performed outside the Embassy which you can arrest and charge for?

    The Convention seems to say, no they can’t if you claim immunity and your Country supports you.

    The article talks about the bombing and shooting campaign and what happened to those thought responsible.

    Between 1980 and 1984 Gaddafi had ordered the deaths of several exiled opponents of his regime; bombings and shootings, targeted at Libyan dissidents, occurred in Manchester and London.

    Five Libyans thought to be behind the attacks were deported from the UK.

  16. Michael

    Wentworth will be getting less and less Liberal as it goes more and more liberal.

    I expect Labor to benefit but who knows maybe the Greens will.

    An Independent candidate is just the first flirtation. Now that buying a house in the East is not much different to buying one in the West on dollar terms the rich enclave vote the Liberals rely on is receding in area.

  18. Some climate ‘crazy’ from Trumpville.
    .
    .
    Trump administration sees a 7-degree rise in global temperatures by 210

    But the administration did not offer this dire forecast, premised on the idea that the world will fail to cut its greenhouse gas emissions, as part of an argument to combat climate change. Just the opposite: The analysis assumes the planet’s fate is already sealed.

    “The amazing thing they’re saying is human activities are going to lead to this rise of carbon dioxide that is disastrous for the environment and society. And then they’re saying they’re not going to do anything about it,”
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/trump-administration-sees-a-7-degree-rise-in-global-temperatures-by-2100/2018/09/27/b9c6fada-bb45-11e8-bdc0-90f81cc58c5d_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e2718cac7a8e

  19. Eunoe says:
    Friday, October 12, 2018 at 12:28 pm
    “Will add it is of considerable interest that outright and notably extensive antipathy for Mr Morrison is being expressed by a number of people who usually maintain their own counsel on things political.”
    ————————————-

    That is an extremely bad sign for the Liberals. If people agree a party are bastards, but want to vote for them anyway to protect their own personal interest, they tend to keep their trap shut out of shame about the way they’re going to vote. When they pipe up about the disgrace their usual party has become, they’ve made up their mind to vote them out.

  21. Hi Michael

    My concern is that Mr Turnbull – and others, no doubt – would continue to like to see MT characterised as ‘a small-l Liberal’. He wasn’t. As such, to me, then, it’s important that this meme be called out. Wentworth Liberal voters ought not be given that excuse. The Liberal Party – during Mr Turnbull’s tenure and active facilitation – has become hollowed-out. It is a brand whose contents have radically changed. The Liberal Party is not a party for small-l Liberals. It houses the extremist radical right. Mr Turnbull was a willing part of that transformation.

    By the way, I always enjoy your comments. Thanks.

  22. guytaur says:
    Friday, October 12, 2018 at 12:42 pm
    “Wentworth will be getting less and less Liberal as it goes more and more liberal.”
    —————————————

    Yes.

    I would also put it like this”

    “Wentworth will be getting less and less Liberal as the Liberals get less and less liberal.”

  24. Puffytmd @ #208 Friday, October 12th, 2018 – 12:32 pm

    All bets will be off when the world warms, err, gets hotter than a blacksmith’s forge. The first to be sacrificed to the Climate Goddess should be the rich, then the RWNJs and any narcissists, and the warmongers/weapons manufacturers, and the capitalists who put money before the Earth.
    http://nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2018/10/un-says-climate-genocide-coming-but-its-worse-than-that.html

    Yep. This is the reality of the IPCC report, deliberately (it seems) buried in hundreds of deeply impenetrable pages, and only just beginning to be uncovered. It’s much, much worse than the “headlines” “extracts” or “summaries” would have you believe …

    Barring the arrival of dramatic new carbon-sucking technologies, which are so far from scalability at present that they are best described as fantasies of industrial absolution, it will not be possible to keep warming below two degrees Celsius — the level the new report describes as a climate catastrophe. As a planet, we are coursing along a trajectory that brings us north of four degrees by the end of the century. The IPCC is right that two degrees marks a world of climate catastrophe. Four degrees is twice as bad as that. And that is where we are headed, at present — a climate hell twice as hellish as the one the IPCC says, rightly, we must avoid at all costs. But the real meaning of the report is not “climate change is much worse than you think,” because anyone who knows the state of the research will find nothing surprising in it. The real meaning is, “you now have permission to freak out.”

    Although some of us have in fact been freaking out for years now 🙁

  25. @alexbhturnbull tweets

    @MikeyOxy72 If you want blind unthinking faith you can go to a place of worship. If all you are is barracking for a football team in politics you’re just a useful idiot footsoldier for the vested interests that run the place. Wake up.

  26. guytaur @ #228 Friday, October 12th, 2018 – 8:57 am

    @alexbhturnbull tweets

    @MikeyOxy72 If you want blind unthinking faith you can go to a place of worship. If all you are is barracking for a football team in politics you’re just a useful idiot footsoldier for the vested interests that run the place. Wake up.

    I think Turnbull should have let his son off the leash whilst he was PM. 🙂

  27. Eunoe says:
    Friday, October 12, 2018 at 12:47 pm
    “The Liberal Party is not a party for small-l Liberals. It houses the extremist radical right. Mr Turnbull was a willing part of that transformation.”
    —————————————

    Absolutely! And you are right to point out that his support base among the voters of Wentworth seemed hypnotised by his pathetically unfounded charade of “really being progressive”. He was quite successful in hoodwinking a lot of them into believing his public progressive posturing pre-PM was the “real Malcolm Turnbull”, and not the PM we all saw on election night 2016, and in his contempt for the Uluru Statement, and on every retreat on climate change action.

    This sort of blindness to his true nature, among so many of those who actually had him as their MP, is a subject worthy of academic study, IMO.

    I also wonder whether, now he has departed the political scene, the scales will quickly fall from the eyes of those “Turnbull progressives”.

  28. Back in 1989, when I was in grade 5, we had weekly classes with a science teacher who was new to the school. In those classes, we learnt a little bit about things like photosynthesis, the rain cycle, and the greenhouse effect. It was a bit over our heads, at that age with the way it was taught (and the teacher gave us university grades – HD, Distinction, Credit, and so on – for our work), but enough sank in to make me think that the planet was doomed, when I was 10 years old. It’s hard for me to fathom that, almost 30 years later, our government is still doing very little to address this problem.

  29. poroti @ #217 Friday, October 12th, 2018 – 11:44 am

    Trump administration sees a 7-degree rise in global temperatures by [2100]

    Well, the silver lining there is that as it’s a US administration being reported on by a US media outlet, the ‘7-degree rise’ is almost certainly in Fahrenheit. So really they’re “only” predicting a ~3.5 degree rise using proper units.

  34. KayJay

    Three tickets are on the way to your office at the Oil Ministry in Nairobi. Each ticket gives you a chance to win the right to ‘trebuchet’ one of the ‘goats’ into the crater.

  35. “Not a fan of any of this corporate tax cut Malarkey, but isn’t it nice to be the LOTO and blessed with a shit load of money due to courageous revenue measures previously taken so that you can just yawn and swat down a bug like Morrison when he tries on a pathetic wedge?”

    Oh get with the program ratty! Sco Mo has such an utterly brilliant background in marketing that there is no way this can fail to be the final nail in Shortens coffin. I mean….look at what they are about now in theri march to a comprehensive victory in Wentworth. Really shows how much they have learned and how invincible the Liberal Machine is. 🙂

    Now…….off the the chemist for more pills………

  36. Regarding the usefulness of preferred prime Minister.
    William in his post exposed it here :
    This demonstrates that Morrison’s lead over Shorten is more or less the same as Turnbull’s was.

    If a change as significant as dumping a PM, which is reflected in primaries and 2PP results in no meaningful change in PPM, then it must reflect something else, perhaps the office as opposed to the office holder.

  37. John Reidy @ #236 Friday, October 12th, 2018 – 12:20 pm

    Regarding the usefulness of preferred prime Minister.
    William in his post exposed it here :
    This demonstrates that Morrison’s lead over Shorten is more or less the same as Turnbull’s was.

    If a change as significant as dumping a PM, which is reflected in primaries and 2PP results in no meaningful change in PPM, then it must reflect something else, perhaps the office as opposed to the office holder.

    It’s very simple – a proportion of the people surveyed hear the question as “Who is the current PM?” and get the answer to that question correct.

    For political analysis it’s worse than useless – it’s not only meaningless but actively deceiving.

  41. Either for a Wentworth loss or the national election loss some comedy crew should do a remake of Scotty’s “So where the bloody hell are you ?” ad directed at voters with Morrison taking Bingle’s place.

  42. Mr Newbie says:
    Friday, October 12, 2018 at 1:02 pm
    Back in 1989, when I was in grade 5, we had weekly classes with a science teacher who was new to the school. In those classes, we learnt a little bit about things like photosynthesis, the rain cycle, and the greenhouse effect. It was a bit over our heads, at that age with the way it was taught (and the teacher gave us university grades – HD, Distinction, Credit, and so on – for our work), but enough sank in to make me think that the planet was doomed, when I was 10 years old. It’s hard for me to fathom that, almost 30 years later, our government is still doing very little to address this problem.
    ————————————-

    In 1989, I was in year 11 and took 1unit General Studies among my subjects. We studied the topic of greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting global warming as an explicit topic, and came away equally convinced that serious action, especially at the level of national and international public policy, to curb emissions had to be urgently embarked upon and then pursued with determination. Even Margaret Thatcher (!) in 1990 recognised as much.
    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/iron-lady-took-strong-stance-on-climate-change/

    And here we are, nearly 30 years later, and look at the COALition, with its head in the sand and its bum resolutely sticking up in the air over this latest of many, many reports urging action.

  43. @CUhlmann tweets

    Admire the tactical genius: call a gay marriage plebiscite to prove the silent majority opposes it; get flogged. Launch an inquiry into religious freedom that spotlights the fact the law allows religious groups remarkable licence to discriminate. This is exploding cigar politics.

  46. guytaur says: Friday, October 12, 2018 at 1:27 pm

    @kylegriffin1 tweets

    Jeff Flake calls the actions of Trump supporters at rallies “disturbing,” says “I do hope that somebody does run in the primary against the president.”

    *************************************************

    Flake by name and Flake by his actions ……. voted with Trump 92 % of the time – including Kavanaugh

    https://www.axios.com/flake-voted-with-trump-92-of-the-time-1513306423-7f195bd2-4e01-4da5-b6ed-98204d98e480.html

  47. poroti @ #234 Friday, October 12th, 2018 – 1:17 pm

    KayJay

    Three tickets are on the way to your office at the Oil Ministry in Nairobi. Each ticket gives you a chance to win the right to ‘trebuchet’ one of the ‘goats’ into the crater.

    Then kew, zir ❗ My life is complete. I will now plan on standing about looking shifty. Something along the lines of a role model for us all, George Cole, as he portrayed Flash Harry in the St. Trinians movies.

    The object of the exercise is, of course, to flog my tickets (and the trebuchet) to any likely lads who may appear on the horizon.

    Good afternoon to all. 😵😲

  48. Michael @ #242 Friday, October 12th, 2018 – 1:30 pm

    And here we are, nearly 30 years later, and look at the COALition, with its head in the sand and its bum resolutely sticking up in the air over this latest of many, many reports urging action.

    You are mistaken if you believe the Coalition’s inaction is a result of them not being aware of what’s going on. You only have to look at what they have done to both the CSIRO and the BOM over the last decade or two to know that they have heard and understood the message, and then decided to try and hide it from the public.

    As usual with the Coalition, the answer is to follow the money 🙁

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