BludgerTrack: 53.9-46.1 to Labor

Ipsos and Essential’s 52-48 results have knocked nearly a full point off Labor’s lead in the BludgerTrack aggregate, although that still leaves plenty to spare.

Two much better results for the Coalition this week, from Ipsos and Essential Research, have knocked 0.8% off Labor’s still commanding two-party lead on the BludgerTrack poll aggregate. This converts into three gains on the seat projection, being one apiece in Victoria, Queensland and South Australia.

For those playing particularly close attention, I am not making use here of The West Australian’s local poll by unheralded market research outfit Painted Dog Research, as I have no benchmark for calculating bias adjustments for them. In any case, it was a small sample poll that particularly low primary votes for both major parties. I have, however, included it in the archive of poll results you can find with a bit of digging under the “poll data” tab at the top of the BludgerTrack page.

Bill Shorten maintains a steady upward trend on the leadership ratings, on which I’m still not producing a result for Scott Morrison – this will require a fair bit of tinkering that I won’t have time for until the poll drought over new year. Full results, as always, on the link below.

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.

2,091 comments on “BludgerTrack: 53.9-46.1 to Labor”

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  1. Socrates @ #1708 Sunday, November 25th, 2018 – 11:15 am

    I asked a question earlier which I am genuinely interested to hear the answer:

    If the swing in Melbourne to Labor were to be repeated at the next Federal election, would that alone be enough to ensure a Labor federal government, given that the AEC redistribution is already giving Labor two seats?

    My take Socrates and sorry you may have the info.

    Do able on swing, Higgins (Kelly O’dwyer), Deakin (Micheal Sukar), Chisholm (Julia Banks), Dunkley (Chris Crewther)

    Outside the mark but possible given the situation Aston (Allan Tudge), Kooyong (Josh Fryendburg).

    Josh really is on the nose in his electorate. This will be a seat to watch. Aston after a little Dan action should still hold for Tudge

    Socrates my feel for what it is worth is that labour is good for 3 of the seats max and they might not be the obvious candidates. I feel that Victoria will turn over only 3 seats and not the obvious ones. I am afraid the unwashed may feel a little better after kicking the Lieberals and if change occurs within the Lieberals some forgiveness may be given

  2. In relation to the ‘hopeless slaughter’, Hair was right.

    The only way to win WW1 was to keep slaughtering each other until one side or the other ran out of the means or the troops or the will to keep slaughtering. There was scope for tactical and technical (gas, better planes, subs and tanks) improvements but these were never war winning. They did, of course, add to the slaughter.

    What WAS war winning was killing them until they were convinced that they were going to run out of troops well before you did.

    The territory gained hardly ever meant anything except at a local or regional tactical level. The aim was to create slaughter rather than to gain yards, per se.

    The only real strategic alternatives to the slaughter was to negotiate a deal or to surrender. Neither option was particularly live until the end.

    So, the 23,000 dead Aussies at Pozieres added their numbers to the numberless numbers on the ledger of mass death.

    Their deaths were only ‘senseless’ if you thought that WW1 was senseless or that surrender was sensible.

    Haig was right.

  3. ABC Planet America did an excellent interview with Stephanie Kelton, a distinguished macroeconomist from the United States. She outlines a federally funded, community-administered Job Guarantee. She talks about the fact that a currency-issuer that allows its currency to float in foreign exchange markets has no financial constraint on its spending; the constraint is real resource availability. She explains why what we term “public debt” is not a burden for the government or for taxpayers and is not really debt at all in the conventional sense of the word. She explains that it is not necessary for a currency-issuer to borrow its own currency. She explains that if a currency-issuer net adds financial wealth to the non-government sector in a financial year, this is called a fiscal deficit. If a currency-issuer net deletes financial wealth from the non-government sector in a financial year, this is a called a fiscal surplus.

    https://www.facebook.com/abcplanetamerica/videos/1109792772514501/?t=1

  4. The messages I hear from the Greens party appeal to comfortably off educated professionals. You find lots of them in inner city electorates. (I am one myself. There is a personal appeal. But Labor has a stronger appeal to me because it relates better to people.)

    With the Liberal party in disarray the Greens could do better overall by targeting small-l Liberal voters. I don’t see them doing that. I see them fading.

  5. Of course if you support the Greens on here you are automatically a troll. Perhaps we should just go away and let PB just realise it’s destiny and become the online branch of the ALP.

  6. Funniest thing I read during the Vic election was the greens saying that 7 or 8 members were female and that they were all for equality.

  7. I go now to set up my rival blog to Poll Bludger. I leave the unfortunate William to his unfortunate fate: dragging along a gaggle of bitter elderly ghoulish ALP nutters.

  8. Boerwar.
    Your opining on the overarching strategy of WWI, calls to mind George C. Scott playing General George S. Patton (who was wounded as a tank commander in The Great War) opening the film ‘Patton’ with an oration given in front of huge American flag:

    “Now, I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country. “

  9. Dear Nath – ’tis a far far better thing that you do set up your own blog. We on PB fully appreciate your sacrifice, and thank you for your service.

  10. Late Riser: “With the Liberal party in disarray the Greens could do better overall by targeting small-l Liberal voters. I don’t see them doing that. I see them fading.”

    This was always an option for the Greens, and was the basis for their initial approach.

    But the Greens in mainland Australia have experienced a large influx of communists/Trotskyists, whose economic positions do not have a significant appeal to small-l Liberals. (And there’s also the point that, wherever communists have been able to seize power around the world, they have trashed the environment far more comprehensively than has been achieved by capitalism, even in its most rapacious form.)

    The Greens seem to be perennially dissatisfied with being relegated to the role of a single issue party. Personally, despite my generally right-leaning views, I would prefer them if they were such a party and did indeed vote for them in Tassie back in the day when they were mainly on about protecting the environment.

    IMO the environment is such a significant issue – the most significant of all political issues – that it warrants having its own party to represent it. Committed environmentalists in Australia do not hold identical views on a wide range of other political issues, and it is not necessary for them to do so. The idea, promoted by some in the Greens party, that being an environmentalist means that you must also be a socialist, be in favour of open borders, etc. is unhelpful to the environmental cause, giving credence to the Sky News After Dark brigade’s contention that climate change is a left-wing conspiracy to overthrow capitalism, etc, etc.

  11. nath

    A relentlessly echoing echo chamber where Lizzie’s pearls of wisdom are treated with the reverence they deserve.

    What the hell are you talking about?

  12. meher baba

    The idea, promoted by some in the Greens party, that being an environmentalist means that you must also be a socialist, be in favour of open borders, etc. is unhelpful to the environmental cause, giving credence to the Sky News After Dark brigade’s contention that climate change is a left-wing conspiracy to overthrow capitalism, etc, etc.

    Well said. 🙂
    I, too, was a Greens supporter when they were a single issue party.

  13. meher baba, agreed. To preserve our world so that we may continue to live in it is a fundamental challenge across the political spectrum.

  14. nath says:
    Sunday, November 25, 2018 at 1:22 pm
    briefly
    The nath-troll is a 2-d illustration of the ultimate futility of baiting. In the end, it drives resentment.
    _____________________
    that’s not very nice briefly, especially since I have been complimentary of much of your non-political stuff. I am slightly wounded.

    I know. It was cutting. I hesitated. But I’m reacting against your political messages, which are bait, for the most part.

    If any bludger were to take the trouble – as I have done – to go and ask voters how they feel about politics, they will nearly all say they dislike the “fighting”. They are repelled by the mud-slinging, the baiting, the trolling. They appeal to be treated as adults, as intelligent and respected beings. This is true of the Labor-positive as well as the Liberal-positive. I’m with them. I am contra-baiting. It’s idiotic. The bait drives disengagement and apathy. It saps the life out of a vital process.

  15. Personally, despite my generally right-leaning views, I would prefer them if they were such a party

    I’ve been saying this for a while now, and nothing I’ve seen in the past few years leads me to believe the Greens are prospering as an everything-goes party.

    I can’t recall either the Victorian Greens leader or RDN even once mentioning the environment or climate change in their interviews with the ABC last night.

  16. Insider spills on Liberal ‘shambles’

    1:11PM SAMANTHA HUTCHINSON
    Party consultant and former Liberal candidate says she was “mortified” by what she witnessed during Victorian campaign.

    The knives are out.

  17. Boerwar says:
    Sunday, November 25, 2018 at 1:33 pm
    In relation to the ‘hopeless slaughter’, Haig was right.

    In 1917 and again in 1918 Monash and Hobbs showed it was possible to take territory without insane, futile sacrifice. This in itself came too little and too late to bring the war to a conclusion, which was hastened in the end by revolts against the Hapsburgs in Austria and the collapse of their army in Italy.

    Hobbs had been thinking about the techniques required to successfully attack entrenched defensive positions with few casualties for many years prior to the War, and had trained infantry in this at the Fremantle barracks from the 1890s onwards. It was a very great pity the British did not listen to Hobbs, who may have saved millions of lives and brought the war to a much earlier conclusion.

  18. Fiona Patten looms as one of the biggest names to surrender a spot in the Victorian parliament following Saturday night’s state election, with the Reason Party founder firing a shot at the so-called “preference whisperer” Glenn Druery on her way out.

    Ms Patten, who entered the Legislative Council at the 2014 election as a member of the then-called Sex Party, is likely to be squeezed out of the northern metropolitan region in place of Derryn Hinch Justice Party candidate Carmela Dagiandis.

    https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/no-champagne-breakfast-patten-falls-victim-to-preference-deals-20181125-p50i6t.html

  19. Plus

    Mr Druery looks like making an absolute fortune out of this election.

    “As you know, I refuse to play the game and called it out … It’s a travesty of the electoral system.

    “Basically he [Mr Druery] told me if I paid him money good things would happen, and if I didn’t pay him money, bad things would happen. That is exactly what has happened.

    “Most of them weren’t even at polling booths, none of them ran campaigns and they relied on the preference negotiations and that’s where they invested their campaign money.

  20. I hope that Senator Whish-Wilson, newly appointed Treasury Spokesperson for the federal parliamentary Greens, will persuade his party to argue that the federal government should spend within the productive limits of the economy instead of targeting arbitrary and irrelevant deficit to GDP and public debt to GDP ratios.

    I’d like to share these articles by Michael Janda and Patrick Wood, who are writers for the ABC website.

    These articles make valuable contributions to the discussion about how to eradicate involuntary unemployment and poverty in Australia.

    Patrick and Michael both got one point wrong.

    When they write, “Simply start the printing presses”, they are using an inapt metaphor that reinforces a common misconception about how currency-issuers spend.

    The “crank up the printing press” metaphor implies that there is a proper, legitimate way for the government to spend (gather dollars from households and firms and spend those dollars on the government’s programs) versus a sneaky, illegitimate way for the government to spend (“start up the printing presses”).

    The reality is that the federal government ALWAYS spends its currency in precisely one way thousands of times every day: it writes up numbers in the retail banks’ reserve accounts at the Reserve Bank of Australia (which is the federal government’s bank). The official name for reserve accounts is Exchange Settlement Accounts. These accounts are used to settle transactions between retail banks and between the central bank and the retail banks. The accounts hold a form of High Powered Money (issued directly by the central bank) called reserves.

    That’s it. It’s pretty simple.

    The Australian Government spends by writing up numbers in reserve accounts.

    The Australian government taxes by writing down numbers in reserve accounts.

    The constraint on the federal government’s spending is not financial. It cannot run out of keystrokes on computers at the central bank to write up numbers in reserve accounts.

    The retail banks use some of their reserves to purchase physical currency (banknotes and coins) from the central bank based on demand from their customers.

    The government does not spend by printing money. It spends by using keystrokes on computers at the central bank to write up numbers in retail banks’ reserve accounts.

    High Powered Money (the monetary instruments issued directly by the government and the only instruments that the government will accept in payment of tax obligations) comprise reserves and physical currency.

    The constraint on the federal government’s spending is the availability of real resources, goods, and services that are for sale in Australian dollars.

    Our society can run out of real resources. We can reach the limits of our technology and knowledge; we can exhaust our supplies of labour, people with particular skills, physical materials, and energy.

    The Australian Government cannot run out of Australian dollars.

    Taxation is extremely important because it drives demand for the government’s currency. Millions of people need to get their hands on Australian dollars so that they can extinguish their tax obligations to the Australian Government. The currency is valuable because millions of households and firms need it to pay taxes and avoid the penalties for non-compliance.

    The fact that so many people are looking to sell goods, services, and labour power in exchange for the government’s currency ensures that the government can buy the real resources it needs to provision itself and fulfill the functions of a government.

    The private sector provides the government with real goods and services.

    The government provides the private sector with money.

    That is the exchange that takes place between the government and the non-government sector.

    The Australian dollar is effectively the Australian Government’s tax credit. It is a kind of token or voucher that the government issues into existence and then redeems when you present it to the government as fulfilment of your tax obligations. When the government spends its currency into the non-government sector, it is saying to the non- government sector:

    “I owe you this amount of tax liability extinguishment if you present this currency back to me in payment of the tax obligations that I have imposed on you.”

    This why the currency is the government’s IOU. The government owes us extinguishment of tax liabilities if we present the currency back to the government. That is the promise that the government makes to us.

    Tax receipts are just a record that households and firms have met their tax obligations. Tax receipts do not finance the government. The government finances itself by writing up numbers in reserve accounts at the RBA.

    The Australian Government is the monopoly issuer of the Australian dollar.

    A second weakness of Patrick Wood’s article is that he should not have quoted Richard Holden for criticism of Modern Monetary Theory. Richard Holden is not a macroeconomist. He has very little knowledge of the large and rigorous body of scholars work by modern monetary theorists. He was a poor choice for a quote. Patrick should have found a mainstream New Classical macroeconomist who has actually read all of the core academic literature by William Mitchell, Stephanie Kelton, Warren Mosler, Randall Wray, and Pavlina Tcherneva.

    https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-21/stephanie-kelton-on-modern-monetary-theory-and-a-job-guarantee/10510758?pfmredir=sm

    https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-23/trump-and-sanders-agree-on-one-key-aspect-of-economic-policy/10519388?pfmredir=sm

  21. Can some knowledgeable Bludger inform me what transpires when the Victorian L.C. vote is tied at 20 for each side of a motion? Would 21 votes always be required for legislation to pass the L.C. ?

  22. So, Carmela Daggypanties will obviously vote against any reform of the Group Voting Tickets. As will the other fortunate rubes that benefited from the Gamer of the System. I wonder how many that leaves in the Upper House to vote for the reform?

  23. BK @ #1835 Sunday, November 25th, 2018 – 2:22 pm

    The NSW Police Commissioner didn’t mince his words here!
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-25/nsw-police-mick-fuller-says-anthony-sampieri-should-die-in-jail/10552768

    This is a terrible crime. However the Commisioner’s job is to detect the crime and provide the evidence to present to court and bring about a conviction. The perps guilt and the penalty required is not his decision.

  24. C@tmomma @ #1834 Sunday, November 25th, 2018 – 2:21 pm

    So, Carmela Daggypanties will obviously vote against any reform of the Group Voting Tickets. As will the other fortunate rubes that benefited from the Gamer of the System. I wonder how many that leaves in the Upper House to vote for the reform?

    The Libs, Nats and Greens! More than enough to effect change to the system.

  25. The MSM in this country are totally out of touch with the voters as well as the Libs but you can guarantee they will never admit it.

  26. It is a community where, for example, there are electorates in which greater than 50% of people were born in non-English speaking countries, electorates where more than 30% of the population are of Muslim faith, and electorates where nearly 50% have no religion. The contemporary Liberal Party appears bereft of a vocabulary to speak to this pluralism.
    Precisely!
    https://theconversation.com/victorian-labors-thumping-win-reveals-how-out-of-step-with-voters-liberals-have-become-105574

  27. “preference negotiations and that’s where they invested their campaign money.”
    Is she saying Druery worked out pref deals based on who gave him the most money? Surely that is illegal?

  28. “Basically he [Mr Druery] told me if I paid him money good things would happen, and if I didn’t pay him money, bad things would happen. That is exactly what has happened.

    How is this legal? Preference whispering is one thing, but allegedly extorting money out of candidates in order to arrange special preference deals is quite another.

  29. Diogenes @ #1843 Sunday, November 25th, 2018 – 2:51 pm

    “preference negotiations and that’s where they invested their campaign money.”
    Is she saying Druery worked out pref deals based on who gave him the most money? Surely that is illegal?

    Digs,

    It was $5k to play and $50k asa success fee.

    All Druery did was hold the preferences tight between the various participants and they would win. The Greens and Patten did not pay and they lost because they had no preference partners.

  30. Dio GG

    Rumours abound that some groups paid for “premium service” in a region and were thus rewarded in the very obscure 14 group voting tickets with more favourable status, something which really only became obvious when Antony Green’s calculators started spewing out pretty much the same micro in 4th or 5th place no matter what initial conditions you assumed.

    “All micro parties are equal, but some are more equal than others”

    Especially those who paid more?

    I knew someone involved in this and there was much gnashing of teeth and fighting within their own “party” about the agreements and payments.

    GG – I am not sure about Patten’s group not paying.

  31. BREAKING: Minister for Home Affairs advises there will be no further terror attacks until closer to the forthcoming federal election.

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