Tasmanian pollster EMRS has published its regular quarterly poll of state voting intention, and supplemented it with federal voting intention results – which they will hopefully be making a habit of, since no regular source of published federal voting intention for Tasmania exists. The state results show the Liberals recovering three points after an 11% collapse in the previous poll, leaving them at 39%, while Labor is up one to 35% and the Greens down two to 14%. Labor’s Rebecca White has retained the lead she opened over Will Hodgman as preferred premier in the previous poll, which is now at 46-40, narrowing from 46-38.
The federal results have Labor on 40%, compared with 37.9% at the 2016 election; the Liberals on 33%, compared with 35.4%; and the Greens on 11%, compared with 10.2%. Seat breakdowns with tiny samples suggest Labor would be competitive against Andrew Wilkie in Clark (as Denison is to be renamed) while struggling to retain Bass, but this should naturally be treated with very great caution. The poll was conducted last Saturday to Monday from a sample of 1000.
Also of note from Tasmania was the release this week of a government report on reform to the state’s Electoral Act. This recommends lifting the blackout on press reporting of election news on polling day, which prevented The Mercury reporting a late-breaking story on a Liberal policy to soften gun laws at the state election in March, and giving consideration to public funding for political parties based on electoral performance and a state-based donations disclosure regime, as exist in every other state.
Can we please keep this thread related to Tasmania, in one way or another – the BludgerTrack post is still the main thread.
William, as long as no-one mentions the Greens, you should be fine. Oh no, I did it!
“This recommends lifting the blackout on press reporting of election news on polling day, which prevented The Mercury reporting a late-breaking story on a Liberal policy to soften gun laws at the state election in March”
The story broke on the Friday. The Australian newspaper broke the story in its paper edition and The Mercury did put the story up on online.. but did not give prominent attention to it; curiously by the end of the day, it had disappeared off the online main page while other election stories stayed up. They also locked the story for comments.
Under the new editor Chris Jones, formerly of The Courier, The Mercury newspaper has become emphatically Liberal and conservative leaning.
http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2018/12/emrs-some-respite-but-labor-at-nine.html
EMRS: Some Respite, But Labor At Nine Year High
http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2018/12/emrs-small-swing-to-labor-in-tasmanian.html
EMRS: Small Swing To Labor In Tasmanian Federal Poll
Does Tasmania currently have no public electoral funding at all? What is the status quo there that’s different from other states?
That’s right; Tasmania doesn’t currently have public funding.
Kevin. Thanks for all your amazing Tasmanian info here and on your site. I actually got to North West Tasmania a few years ago – first time ever and it was just so green (vegetation, not politically!) compared to rural Victoria.
Do you (or William) think that these ‘combined’ polls lose a bit of reliability given that (I presume) they go through the State and Federal questions with the same people. I would be concerned that the results for each party may be closer between jurisdictions than would actually be the case if elections were really held close together.
I suppose the test would have been the 1996 elections which were only one(?) week apart.
Ps – tiring at family Xmas event. Various anti-Labor relatives fuming about Glenn Druery!
Tasmanians seem pretty good at separating state and federal elections, but there is a bit of an effect that state and federal results here are less different when the two elections are close together. Yes generally it’s preferable to have the questions asked in separate polls just in case. Suspect in this case state was asked first.