BludgerTrack: 54.3-45.7 to Labor

BludgerTrack ends a year to remember by showing a slight narrowing in the still-yawning two-party gap.

Ipsos and Essential Research closed their accounts for 2018 this week, and their combined effect has been to reduce Labor’s lead to 54.3-45.7 after a blowout to 54.9-45.1 last week. This is good for one Coalition gain on the seat projection, that being in Queensland. Full results through the link below.

We’re unlikely to see any more poll results until mid-January, although Newspoll should be unloading its quarterly state breakdowns in a week or so, and hopefully a few state voting intention results as well. Nonetheless, things should be pretty active around here over the silly season, as there’s a backlog preselection analysis to attend to, and I should finally get time to attend to my long-promised Morrison-era overhaul of BludgerTrack.

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.

2,141 comments on “BludgerTrack: 54.3-45.7 to Labor”

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  1. Dixon Street, Chinatown yum cha is the best there is.

    I always eat in Chinatown when I go to Sydney.

    It would be unLabor not to.

    d=(´▽｀)=b

  2. My final post on the SHYR crosses back to politics…

    The Liberal Party has developed a habit of dumping its leaders overboard. But when former Foreign Minister Julie Bishop jumps off Sydney to Hobart yacht Wild Oats X as it passes Bondi Beach on its journey south on Boxing Day, her actions will be entirely voluntary.

    And my pick for best reader’s comment on this story goes to…

    P1, 3 DAYS AGO
    Can they keep her please, we don’t want her back in Mainland Australia!

    https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/sport/sailing/julie-bishop-jumps-ship-for-all-female-racing-team-in-sydney-to-hobart-20181221-p50no2.html

  3. Wouldn’t it be rather frightening to live in a country where you are never sure whether your president is lying?

    Is that really so different from the current situation in Australia? Why would Morrison be trusted to not lie when it suits him?

  5. lying about lying?
    lying about lying about lying?

    I predict a Trump lie singularity.

    That’ll beat all of your squidgy infinities 🙂

  8. Barney in Go Dau @ #2057 Tuesday, December 25th, 2018 – 5:02 pm

    Cud Chewer @ #2055 Tuesday, December 25th, 2018 – 1:52 pm

    lying about lying?
    lying about lying about lying?

    I predict a Trump lie singularity.

    That’ll beat all of your squidgy infinities 🙂

    So he’ll collapse in on himself!

    What will he take with him? 🙂

    You’re ahead of me wrt to singularities, and on that line of thought this article advances an encouraging thought.

    why don’t black holes just keep expanding and expanding and simply swallow the Universe?

    black holes expand by increasing in complexity inwardly

    The properties of our Universe’s rubber sheet means [a black hole] can form deep gravity funnel that stretches ‘down’ without stretching much further ‘out’.

    https://www.sciencealert.com/black-holes-expand-in-not-out-and-the-reason-why-could-fix-physics

    To paraphrase, Trump will just expand down (or up) his own…

  12. @AR:

    “They didn’t, it’s the analysis that’s off.”

    OK. So not a great deal of love on either side of the isle for the wall. Plus the filibuster is sacrosanct for republicans (except when amazingly it isn’t).

    My point is, having listened to Trump’s various oscillations on the detail, but bearing in mind his bottom line – some kind of wall like structure that he can claim as a win – why didn’t the republicans – back in the first part of 2017 – simply leaf through the old plans to beef up the physical structures on the Mexican border and pick one that (a) they can sell to Trump and their base, (b) is at least half sane, but (c) guarantee democrat resistance and call the democrats out? It’s harder to run a filibuster than resist one, and if you have the numbers it’s only a matter of time before the senate has to vote – force all those democrat septuagenarian senators to speak for 40 hours straight, just like they did to the republicans over Obamacare.

    It’s too late now, but they did royally frack this up when they had a chance to show a unity of purpose and strength with their newly elected president before the rot set in. Also issues with costs and blow outs are nothing to republicans – they on,y care about the budget bottom line when it comes to cutting democrat programs: this mob are quite happy to put a trillion dollar black hole into the budget whenever they can ram yet another round of tax cuts through. A few trillion on stupid wars? No problems there either. So. What’s a lazy 10 or even 100 billion blow out on a totem policy like the wall between friends?

  13. “Wouldn’t it be rather frightening to live in a country where you are never sure whether your president is lying?”

    On the balance of probabilities they could be fairly confident most of the time.

    We just finished watching the movie The Post with Streep and Hanks, which I had missed the first time around. Good movie, with some great acting, on the Pentagon Papers; Watergate being Nixon’s second scandal for the year.

    The movie is obviously timely relative to Trump (and ScumMo and co trying to hide their own scandals, on Bernard Colliary and others). Obviously this isn’t the first time there has been a corrupt (right wing) government lying to cover up its tracks. But the difference then to now was a committed fourth estate and a supreme court not willing to roll over on party lines. Its sobering to remember Nixon still got reelected, and Carter only srved four years.

    When elected, Labor must clean out the ABC board and make it as statutorily independent as the RBA ASAP. This is not only in the public interest. An unmuzzled ABC might bring to light a lot of dirt on the Liberals in office. Personally I have suspivions over many infrastructure project deals, where the choice of project and/or contractor seemed inexplicable in engineering and economic terms.

  19. It’s shocking that one would paint such an awful picture of the economy; but there’s sufficient evidence to predict that we’re close to another GFC. If that be true, divest your shares, invest in?

  20. For the New Year, I hope all yous yankeephiles get the hippo-potus you so crave.

    And, may it be a year when Australian politicians developed loyalty to our country and seperated us from that Malign Republic and its knavish tricks. 🙂

  24. Andrew_Earlwood,
    The reason the Repugs and the Mango Mussolini didn’t get ‘The Wall’ financed in the first 2 years of Trump’s farcical reign, is because they were trying to get Mexico to pay for it.

    That went as well as expected, so now they are trying Plan B.

  25. C@tmomma:

    [‘Why does Labor always get into government when the economy is about to go tits up!?!]

    Only Laobr can fix the mess the Tories leave, but then it’s bagged. I guess that’s politics.

  26. Wouldn’t it be rather frightening to live in a country where you are never sure whether your president is lying?

    FMD ! The comment is aimed at Truymplestiltskin but HELLO George Dubya WMD , hello Vietnam, hello it is SOP.

  27. BiGD,
    I hope we get some more necessary infrastructure financed by them then. I don’t think families will be able to cope with insecure or no work at atrocious rates of pay, such as it is now when things are supposedly going well. So, to add insult to injury with a global recession would be devastating.

    I wish dtt would come out and face the music and admit that Donald Trump is being an infinite number of times worse than Hillary Clinton ever could have been!

  28. Tokyo stocks plunged on Tuesday as the few Asian markets open on Christmas Day suffered a holiday rout on fears about the US economy and a government shutdown in Washington.

    Tokyo markets, which were closed on Monday for a national holiday, plummeted at the open on Tuesday, with the Nikkei down more than 5% – over 1,000 points – shortly before the morning break.

    The fall followed a brutal holiday-shortened session on Wall Street that saw US stocks sink for a fourth straight session as investors took little heart from efforts by the US Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, to reassure them.

    In Asia, many markets were closed for Christmas, including in Australia, Hong Kong and South Korea. US and European markets will also be closed for the holiday.

  29. C@tmomma

    The ‘wall’ is now down to a farcical argument about the difference between what is a wall and what is a fence. Steel slats are in the mix and are ok despite being wall like.

  30. Merry Christmas and looking forward to a big year in the law in 2019:

    (a) Full Federal Court on casual employment;
    (b) High Court on union rights for the NSW election: and
    (c) the odd criminal trial in the jurisprudential backwater that is Victoria.

  31. Mavis Smith

    The reality is the economy and its health is largely in the hands of the world economy and especially that of the hegemony de jour. It is parochial insularity that sells the idea the health of the economy is all about the likes of the ‘Strayan’ treasurer.

  34. If everyone and everything is a debtor, to whom exactly do we all owe money?

    Who’s doing all the lending if everyone’s broke?

  37. Bushfire Bill says:
    Tuesday, December 25, 2018 at 8:44 pm
    If everyone and everything is a debtor to whom exactly do we all owe money?

    Who’s doing all the lending if everyone’s broke?

    Excellent question. Unfortunately I don’t have the answer.

  38. What can’t any cricket reporter observe that Mitch Marsh has the lowest batting average for any top six Australian batsmen selected since at least before WW11 (minimum 20 test innings)?

  39. Cat

    I think when Australia is really in big trouble or people sense trouble is around the corner, Labor win.

    So Labor won the snap election in 1914, also in 1929 (days before the Crash), ‘won’ over two independents to put Curtin in power in WW2, won in 72 before world oil ‘crisis’, won in 1983 after recession started under Fraser and Howard, win in 2007 pre GFC.

    Sixth sense?

    Labor is clearly better at looking after the less fortunate, of whom there are more during crises. I think this is why Labor win when times are tough or trouble looms.

    The Murdoch media and their subsidiary political parties the Liberals and Nationals will no doubt blame Labor and Bill Shorten personally should the world have another economic crisis.

    But most people are not stupid enough to be fooled by them. Labor saved Australia from a major recession with mass unemployment in 2008 and I am sure they are much more able to help us in difficult times compared to Morrison and co.

    Ps – have generally steered clear of politics at gatherings today, but did have some non-Labor relatives fuming about ‘preference whisperer’ Glenn Druery!

  40. Who’s doing all the lending if everyone’s broke?

    The central banks are busy ‘quantitative easing’ it will not end well. Even worse the banksters,yet again, will not be sent to jail and stripped of their assets when it eventually goes tits up. 🙁

  43. We’ve dropped a struggling batsman for a struggling all rounder sb. No net gain or loss really although they would be better off giving stoinis an extended crack at it.
    I expect Mitch to make a solid 24 with the bat and an equally solid 1 for 65 with the ball. Playing his part and all that.

  47. The wicket is apparently a bit juicier than the traditional mcg deck RR. This according to the groundsman.
    Mitch Marsh is from the Carl Hooper school of all rounders; averages 20 with the bat and 40 with the ball.

  48. Add “state significant” fast-track approvals, council mergers that have abolished the original chain of planning responsibility, plus privatized certification, a government in the thrall of spiv developer-donors in for the kill, and an unstable building erected on reclaimed land.

    What could possibly go wrong, Gladys?

    The Opal Tower building was approved by the Department of Planning as a state significant development in 2015, according Mr Roberts’ spokesman. The Planning Minister at the time was Rob Stokes.

    The department would have had input from the now-defunct Auburn City Council, which has since merged into Parramatta City Council.

    A council spokeswoman said the construction and occupation certificates had been issued by a private certifier, as opposed to a council certifier, who had inspected and monitored the tower.

    https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/extreme-urgency-state-scrambles-to-investigate-opal-tower-crack-20181225-p50o6i.html

  50. Have had the best christmas in Chinatown. Yum cha lunch as a big family do. Tonight a more intimate affair in ‘Thai Town’, but no less filled with boisterous Asian people.

    I’ve loved it. In Boganville our local Chinese is crap to the extent I’ve eaten there once and never went back. We don’t have yum cha, and certainly don’t see troves of Asian people out and about and enjoying themselves. My family is somewhat racist and today was challenging for them, but I didn’t care. I was determined to have the xmas I wanted, and I wanted to experience it in a culturally diverse manner, and seeing as I made the trip here, it was literally my way, or the highway.

    Tonight was also awesome. People queuing to eat out at Chat Thai. I’d have loved to do that, but we had a diabetic family member with us so figured we had to head to a table to sit down so we had some food service certainty. We chose a nearby Thai restaurant filled with Thai people who all knew one another, including the hordes of Thai families trucking in the doors. Good times. And nobody was dressed to the nines, something my late grandmother would’ve had conniptions over.

    Today’s Liberals and their supporters don’t get that this is also Australian, the love of good food, good company, enjoying the experiences of people we get to learn something from. Even though it might be far from Scott Morrison’s family roast, BBQ, beach cricket and whatever else it was he banged on about in his cheesy and kitsch xmas message. They just want us to be all the same and think like them – that Qld LNP message about who says merry christmas is a case in point. Thankfully the majority of Australians just roll on regardless.

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