BludgerTrack: 54.9-45.1 to Labor

The poll aggregate finds the year ending with a further surge to Labor, with probably only next week’s Essential Research poll still to come.

The addition of this week’s Newspoll to the BludgerTrack poll aggregate has prompted a solid increase in Labor’s already commanding lead, amounting to 0.6% on two-party preferred and three on the seat projection. The latter gains amount to one apiece in Victoria, Queensland and South Australia. Full results as always on the link below.

Holiday reading:

• Democracy 2025, a collaboration between the Museum of Australian Democracy, the University of Canberra and the Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, has produced a report entitled Trust and Democracy in Australia, based on an online survey of 1000 respondents conducted by Ipsos in late July. It finds only 41% of respondents expressing satisfaction with the way democracy works in Australia, which presumably hasn’t improved any in the wake of Malcolm Turnbull’s demise. This is a remarkable 31% lower than in 2013, though not much different from when the previous result in 2016. The results were also fairly consistent across age cohorts, contrary to an expectation that it may have been driven by the young. Compared with the 2014 survey, respondents were a lot less likely to think the media had too much power, and more likely to complain that politicians didn’t deal with “the issues that really matter”. Presented with various reform options, far the most popular with campaign spending and donation caps.

• The Electoral Regulation Research Network has published a research paper on the implications of the dramatic increase of “convenience voting”, i.e. pre-poll and postal voting.

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.

2,048 comments on “BludgerTrack: 54.9-45.1 to Labor”

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  2. D&M
    Yep but that has little to do with pre-selection in the NSW ALP.
    The pre-selection of an ex-Terrigal who has been out of parliament for several years is very worrying

    (Probably best not to talk about neurosurgeons at Nepean after Suresh Nair)

  3. The United States has a very high rate of gun violence because it has a massive number of guns in the population (almost a gun for every resident) and it has a very high degree of inequality (which is causally connected to a variety of social ills such as crime, anti-social behaviour, suicidality).

    One of the worst, most counterproductive things that gun safety advocates say is, “I respect the Second Amendment; I own several guns; some of my best friends own guns etc etc.”

    Realistically, the Second Amendment is the key contributor to the first problem (surfeit of guns in the population).

    In a normal society with low levels of gun violence, gun ownership is regulated as a privilege, not worshipped as a right.

    So Americans who want their society to be safer need to make the case for scrapping the Second Amendment.

    It is a terribly drafted provision that has been interpreted in a bizarre way by politically active and disingenuous conservative judges.

    The Constitution has been amended many times in the past and it can be amended again.

    Sure, it is an uphill struggle to remove the Second Amendment, but just making the argument publicly and repeatedly helps to discredit gun ownership and puts the gun lobby on the defensive.

    It is very important to discredit and delegitimize gun ownership as a RIGHT. It must not be a RIGHT. It must be treated as a PRIVILEGE that is carefully regulated in the PUBLIC INTEREST. That is how you make a society safe.

    The USA also has to reduce the degree of inequality of income and wealth in its society.

    All the platitudes about “We respect the Second Amendment, we just want common sense reforms” are not helping at all. If you have 300 million guns in your population you will continue to have 20,000 gun suicides and 10,000 gun homicides every year until the end of time.

    You need the federal government to buy back and destroy most of those 300 million guns, and you can’t do that unless the Second Amendment get scrapped (or rewritten to say something like “People may have the privilege to own guns provided that they meet all public safety requirements prescribed by Congress and by state legislatures.”)

    They need to stop pretending that background checks will solve anything.

    They need to eliminate about 90 percent of the guns.

    They need to demilitarise their police forces too.

    And flatten the distribution of wealth and income so that the top 1 percent of the wealth distribution have about 3 percent of the income and 6 percent of the wealth.

  6. D&M:

    While you’re here I haven’t heard back from Lisa Harvey-Smith via her CSIRO email you supplied.

    Do you have an alternate contact for her?

  8. Oakeshott Country
    says:
    Saturday, December 15, 2018 at 7:24 pm
    OK
    Only look at this if you want to see a future PM eat his earwax
    https://youtu.be/_ipvdBnU8F8
    _______________________
    If you had posted that from 2007-2010 boy you would have copped it! In fact, it might be said that you were not even a person.

  9. OC,

    Whoops! Been in the city too long and missed the problems at Nepean.

    In our little (unaligned) CABAL in the southern fringe of the city, we are quietly trying to change the preselection criteria, and having some (slow) success. We are left-leaning, but will not sign up to a faction, because we believe our independence and strident voice helps the party. Our branch once made the from page of the daily Telegraph, when we bought internal action agains Morris Iemma and Michael Costa over electricity privatisation in NSW. By the time our case came to admin committee both had resigned, and we got the $50 we needed to lodge to start the action refunded.

    As our local state member says, it does not matter whether you have worked as an engine driver or a surgeon before contesting for preselection as a local member. At least you have shown that you can competently do a job.

  10. Late Riser @ #749 Saturday, December 15th, 2018 – 10:48 am

    KayJay @ #739 Saturday, December 15th, 2018 – 9:36 am

    Because the varied opinions of the lurkers remain clouded in mystery – we don’t know how many are turned off with the constant ………………..wrangling*

    Selective blocking – scrolling – to suit oneself – comfortable blogging. 😇

    You describe the Dark Forest of PB. I like your analogy. (We are all both hunters and prey, alone, in a dark forest. Your worst mistake is to shine a light.)

    I learned of the ‘Dark Forest’ from a (poorly) translated novel by a Chinese author, Liu Cixin.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Forest

    LR: I thought Liu Cixin’s trilogy is a fascinating perspective on both the Han view of the world and Fermi’s paradox. Liu’s “prequel” Dark Lightning is much less convincing.

  11. The voters of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, all of which are obviously separate from London, voted very strongly to Remain. Regional English towns and cities with export-facing manufacturing industries also voted to Remain. The Leave case exploited Anglo-centric xenophobia and economic anxiety, appealing to the nostalgia of the aging in the English provinces, while lying remorselessly about their prospects following Brexit.

    Brexit is an expression of nationalist reaction. It is Trumpy. It is by turns Anglo-Supremacist, anti-Semitic, neo-Imperialist and separatist. It is romantic and decadent, violent and repressive.

    It is also self-destructive and impossible to execute without sacrificing the economic interests and human rights of the young.

  12. Confessions

    While you’re here I haven’t heard back from Lisa Harvey-Smith via her CSIRO email you supplied.

    Do you have an alternate contact for her?

    I was wondering how this had gone. She has left CSIRO, and is now on her book tour. Let me contact her by my various channels, and I will let you know as soon as I make contact!

  14. briefly @ #1163 Saturday, December 15th, 2018 – 7:31 pm

    The voters of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, all of which are obviously separate from London, voted very strongly to Remain. Regional English towns and cities with export-facing manufacturing industries also voted to Remain. The Leave case exploited Anglo-centric xenophobia and economic anxiety, appealing to the nostalgia of the aging in the English provinces, while lying remorselessly about their prospects following Brexit.

    Brexit is an expression of nationalist reaction. It is Trumpy. It is by turns Anglo-Supremacist, anti-Semitic, neo-Imperialist and separatist. It is romantic and decadent, violent and repressive.

    It is also self-destructive and impossible to execute without sacrificing the economic interests and human rights of the young.

    Blatant scaremongering.

  16. Itza
    When in Amsterdam I saw a production of Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder at the National Opera. A great experience (as with all late German romantics)

  18. All goods from China are unloaded at Rotterdam then transferred to smaller vessels because UK can’t handle super cargo
    ____
    This is a HUGE issue with Brexit!

  19. Oakeshott Country @ #1166 Saturday, December 15th, 2018 – 7:39 pm

    Itza
    When in Amsterdam I saw a production of Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder at the National Opera. A great experience (as with all late German romantics)

    Without a doubt some of the most moving experiences I’ve had have been in he Concertgebouw. Heard a concert Gurre-Lieder in Bergen. I imagine a production would be some challenge, and a good one as you found it – great.

  20. DaretoTread says:
    Saturday, December 15, 2018 at 6:46 pm

    Farmers, fisher persons, industrial workers, tradies and sex workers have fared less well.

    This is entirely false. Entirely. UK agriculture derives very significant benefits from the CAP, including access to the huge markets outside the UK and to the EU labour force, while receiving income support from the EU, support that sustains small-scale agricultural enterprises in the UK as it does elesewhere.

    Industrial production in the UK is deeply integrated with the EU economy, offering advantages of scale, access to markets, investment and technology that absolutely would not exist without that integration. Industrial workers in export-facing UK-based firms are very direct beneficiaries of EU membership.

    There is also no doubt at all that UK fisheries benefit from management that extends beyond national boundaries – from whole-resource management. There are nationalist voices who suppose they will benefit excluding vessels from non-UK ports. But this ignores the past. Fisheries management in the EU relies on shared access to resource by means of quotas and shared access to the total market. This has been very well established in both theory and practice since the 1970s. (I know about this, having written on it while completing a degree in Economics back in the dark ages.) The results of shared management by use of quotas have included the stabilisation of production, the prevention of mis-investment and over-capitalisation and the protection of resources against dangerous over-fishing. UK participation in common fisheries management predates and is separable from EU membership precisely because it benefits all fishers and consumers.

    In general the UK construction industry is better performing because it has access to EU-sourced materials, technologies and skilled labour, while also allowing UK workers at all levels of skill and size to benefit from construction and engineering work right across the EU. This is a capital intense service-based industry, usually offering varied and rewarding work. By excluding itself from the EU, the UK would be depriving itself of access to a very large, varied and sophisticated market.

    As for sex-workers….dtt’s claim is just mystifying.

  21. Brexit is a study in politics, no doubt. My ignorant perspective from the other side of the world is just that, profoundly ignorant. (Dunning-Kruger.) But what little I have learned since I started paying attention is that it would be a bitter irony for the Irish if it is they who save Britain from its stupidity.

  23. lizzie @ #808 Saturday, December 15th, 2018 – 11:49 am

    First catch your Skua, but mind the beaks.

    Now, human-linked pathogens in bird poop reveal, for the first time, that even animals on this isolated, ice-bound landmass can pick up a bug from tourists or visiting scientists. This newly identified infection route could have devastating consequences for Antarctic bird colonies, including population collapse and even extinction.

    “[We’re] obsessed about the potential for novel diseases to jump from wildlife to humans and cause an epidemic,” says ornithologist and ecologist Kyle Elliott at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, who was not involved in the new study. “In reality, the transmission of novel diseases from humans to wildlife has been far more disastrous.”
    …
    Microbiologist Marta Cerdà-Cuéllar at the Research Center for Animal Health in Barcelona, Spain, was skeptical of a mainstream scientific idea—that reverse zoonosis doesn’t exist in Antarctica. So she and colleagues collected fecal samples from 666 adult birds from 24 different species throughout the Southern Ocean, including rockhopper penguins, Atlantic yellow-nosed albatrosses, giant petrels, and skuas. Fearing that already deposited waste might be contaminated, the scientists scooped their poop from the birds themselves, a tricky business that meant catching them and cleaning them out with sterile swabs.

    “Penguins are very strong … and skuas are extremely clever,” says Jacob González-Solís, an environmental and evolutionary biologist from the University of Barcelona who was on the team. If you fail to catch a skua during your first approach, he says, it will never let you get close again.
    …
    Elliott is pessimistic. “One reason that Antarctica remains largely protected is because of lobbying from tourist and scientific groups,” he says. “While we should do as much as possible to reduce transmission, it’s hard to believe that we will stop tourism and science at these sites, and so it is hard to believe that humans won’t continue to transmit pathogens.”

    https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/12/tourists-may-be-making-antarctica-s-penguins-sick

    We have been using Antarctic over-winterer’s gut microbiome changes as a model for extraterrestrial contamination for a few years now. Microbiologically, the one over-riding principle is: shit happens. I have climbed and skied in areas where carrying one’s shit out in poo tubes was mandatory. It isn’t easy.

  24. rhwombat
    I have climbed and skied in areas where carrying one’s shit out in poo tubes was mandatory. It isn’t easy.
    ___________________________________
    You’re just better than normal people…we all know that by now.

  25. Player One @ #1147 Saturday, December 15th, 2018 – 6:11 pm

    I’ve always said that finding a solution to the Northern Island issue was critical. If they can do that, then Brexit will proceed. If not, then … 🙁

    You mean, if not then 🙂 🙂 🙂 .

    The best Brexit outcome is no Brexit. Doing the most sane thing is a win for everyone.

    The second best outcome is a hard Brexit that inflicts as much pain on the UK as possible. Maybe they’ll eventually learn something and come crawling back to the grown-up table.

    A negotiated Brexit is a distant, distant third.

  26. BB and BW, can only agree with you regarding people responding to the trolls.

    For those of you who do engage with trolls, don’t. They make you look undisciplined and stupid, despite your valuable and interesting contribution interacting with others.

    And the rest of us suffer as we start to scroll past your valuable contributions as we can’t be bothered separating those from the crap you write responding to the trolls.

    Remember: Don’t feed the trolls.

  28. rhwombat:
    “I have climbed and skied in areas where carrying one’s shit out in poo tubes was mandatory. It isn’t easy.”
    ___________________________________
    nath:
    “You’re just better than normal people…we all know that by now.”
    ___________________________________
    I for one look forward to rhwombat’s Magnum Opus, namely GI-Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

  31. Apologies if I missed the previous discussion on this but may I ask why the federal ALP were happier throwing pebbles from the sidelines than pushing for a no confidence and taking government?

  32. Tom…thanks for pointing that out….the very depressed parts of Wales, the districts that were economically dismembered by Thatcher and remain impoverished, voted to leave…..

  34. Where the rort began
    .
    .
    After a 96 year losing streak, is time up for negative gearing?

    In 1922, a tax bill of the pro-business government of Stanley Melbourne Bruce contained a provision that enabled a person to deduct all losses and outgoings from their assessable income.

    The focus was on business operators who might incur early losses. The property market didn’t get a mention.

    …………….The Howard government followed the advice, slicing capital gains tax.

    But within two years of that concession coming into operation something had happened to the rental market.

    Whereas landlords had been “positively geared” ahead of the change, the size of losses exploded with investors moving their cash into the property market to chase capital gains.

    Total rent collections turned negative in 2001-02. They have not been positive since, reaching a record $10.8 billion in 2008-09.

    https://outline.com/M2ajEY

  35. If it’s as real as your claim that you initiated a policy to put a nurse in every Victorian state school then you have answered your own question….yes it did only occur in your imagination. Here’s a litttle tip Zoomster, when posting try to cut back on the use of the personal pro noun ‘I.’ As in I did that, I met this famous politician, I sat on this committee, I … you know the rest.

  37. Brexit is a perfect storm of unresolved problems: neoliberal economics, undemocratic political institutions, the nationalist aspirations of Scotland, the fragile peace between Protestant Unionists and Catholic Republicans in Northern Ireland.

    A binary question of in or out cannot easily bear the weight of those accumulated grievances and hopes.

    It will be very difficult to get an outcome that will be seen as legitimate by the losing side.

    Perhaps the best outcome now is for a second referendum, and if it results in Remain, the UK pledges to ignore the EU’s nonsense on deficits, state aid, and competition, and to build a coalition of the willing with Spain, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, and Greece to dump the neoliberal economic aspects of the EU and retain the good bits (the cooperation on natural resource management and environmental restoration work, etc).

    The EU is long overdue for a scorched earth campaign against its neoliberal dogma. The UK could lead that campaign.

  38. PeeBee @ #1176 Saturday, December 15th, 2018 – 8:09 pm

    BB and BW, can only agree with you regarding people responding to the trolls.

    For those of you who do engage with trolls, don’t. They make you look undisciplined and stupid, despite your valuable and interesting contribution interacting with others.

    And the rest of us suffer as we start to scroll past your valuable contributions as we can’t be bothered separating those from the crap you write responding to the trolls.

    Remember: Don’t feed the trolls.

    Yep.

    But the same people respond over and over and over and over and keep it going.

    Crazy.

  40. Vogon Poet @ #1183 Saturday, December 15th, 2018 – 8:24 pm

    ICanCU @ #1019 Saturday, December 15th, 2018 – 7:19 pm

    Apologies if I missed the previous discussion on this but may I ask why the federal ALP were happier throwing pebbles from the sidelines than pushing for a no confidence and taking government?

    Unlike LNPers, Labor can count. The Independent Liberal Ladies would vote against no Confidence

    Plus we are so close to an election – let that happen – let voters decide.

    morrison will Fcuk up further as the clock counts down.

    Don’t interrupt him and let the tories continue to tear themselves apart.

  41. Oakeshott Country @ #996 Saturday, December 15th, 2018 – 3:52 pm

    BW
    I have only been to Amsterdam which was fun. I have just retired and intend to include Netherlands in my next trip. I think Friesland will be worth a diversion

    OC: I’ve also just semi-retired and have moved to Coffs Harbour, where I intend to try and set up an informal Medical History group in the UNSW Rural Clinical School there (possibly called Clubbed Med). Cognisant of your extra-medical skills and interests, do you know of any others in the Coffs/Port Mac region who might be interested?

  42. clem

    I made it clear throughout that I initiated certain policies, which were then developed by others. I also referred to the committee.

    Policies have to come from somewhere. In the case of school nurses, from my local primary school, which asked me to take it through the policy process; in the case of mentoring, from my own experience.

    In both cases, these were initially intended to be part of the rural and regional educational policy, and thus the remit of the policy committee I was involved with. However, both were considered to have broader implications, and were thus passed on to the Education Policy Committee, and I lost sight of their development.

    As I’ve said earlier, I was made aware that the school nurse policy had been (partly) implemented, because the school who had initiated the policy concept contacted me to complain that they’d missed out. I then had the priviledge, at a couple of schools, of watching these nurses in action.

  45. C@t:

    Either your thunderstorms over there are esp powerful, or you have insecure electricity supply, or you are extremely unlucky, or all three!

  46. “If an election were held in the inner-suburban Melbourne electorate this weekend, Mr Frydenberg could potentially lose the seat on a two-party-preferred split of 52-48 to Labor.”

  47. Murdoch media seems to be ramping up the ‘African gangs’ rhetoric in Melbourne after a quiet period post election.

    Presumably they’re preparing for the Federal election. Morrison and Dutton will doubtless be joining the chorus again soon.

    We might even see some African/Middle Eastern gangs in other cities as well if LNP polling remains dire.

  48. …years ago, there was another blog I contributed to, under another pseudonym. One posters catalogued all the things I had claimed I’d done, with an ‘as if’. In every case, I had done exactly what I’d claimed.

    It did look quite impressive set out like that, but it wasn’t really. I’ve just had a lot of interesting opportunities.

  49. Under Galdys rule Sydney missed the opportunity to be a great city, now we’ll just have to live with the their cheap philistine view. Vale Sydney, I knew you well.

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