BludgerTrack: 53.8-46.2 to Labor

A lurch back to Labor in the BludgerTrack poll aggregate, plus further polling tidbits and preselection news aplenty.

The addition of this week’s Newspoll and Essential Research polls have ended a period of improvement for the Coalition in BludgerTrack, which records a solid shift to Labor this week. Labor’s two-party lead is now 53.8-46.2, out from 53.1-46.9 last week, and they have made two gains on the seat projection, one in New South Wales and one in Queensland. Despite that, the Newspoll leadership numbers have resulted in an improvement in Scott Morrison’s reading on the net approval trend. Full results are available through the link below – if you can’t get the state breakdown tabs to work, try doing a hard refresh.

National polling news:

• A poll result from Roy Morgan circulated earlier this week, although there’s no mention of it on the company’s website. The primary votes are Labor 36%, Coalition 34.5% and Greens 12.5%, which pans out to a Labor lead of 54-46 using past preference flows (thanks Steve777). Morgan continues to conduct weekly face-to-face polling, but the results are only made public when Gary Morgan has a point to make – which on this occasion is that Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party is on all of 1%. One Nation doesn’t do great in the poll either, recording 3%. The poll was conducted over two weekends from a sample of 1673.

• The Australian had supplementary questions from this week’s Newspoll on Tuesday, which had Scott Morrison favoured over Bill Shorten by 48-33 on the question of best leader handle the economy – little different from his 50-32 lead in October, or the size of the lead consistently held by Malcolm Turnbull. It also found 33% saying the government should prioritise funding of services, compared with 27% for cutting personal income tax and 30% for paying down debt.

• The Australian also confused me by publishing, together with the Newspoll voting intention numbers on Monday, results on franking credits and “reducing tax breaks for investors” – derived not from last weekend’s poll, but earlier surveys in December and November (UPDATE: Silly me – the next column along is the total from the latest poll). The former found 48% opposed to Labor’s franking credits policy and 30% in support, compared with 50% and 33% when it was first floated in March (UPDATE: So the latest poll actually has support back up five to 35% and opposition down two to 38%). Respondents were instructed that the policy was “expected to raise $5.5 billion a year from around 900,000 Australians that receive income from investments in shares”, which I tend to think is friendlier to Labor than a question that made no effort to explain the policy would have been. The tax breaks produced a stronger result for Labor, with 47% in favour and 33% opposed, although this was down on 54% and 28% in April (UPDATE: Make that even better results for Labor – support up four to 51%, opposition down one to 32%).

With due recognition of Kevin Bonham’s campaign against sketchy reports of seat polling, let the record note the following:

• Ben Packham of The Australian reports Nationals polling shows them in danger of losing Page to Labor and Cowper to Rob Oakeshott. Part of the problem, it seems, is a minuscule recognition rating for the party’s leader, one Michael McCormack.

• There’s a uComms/ReachTEL poll of Flinders for GetUp! doing the rounds, conducted on Wednesday from a sample of 634, which has Liberal member Greg Hunt on 40.7%, an unspecified Labor candidate on 29.4% and ex-Liberal independent Julia Banks on 16.1%. That would seem to put the result down to the wild card of Banks’ preference flows. There was apparently a respondent-allocated two-party figure with the result, but I haven’t seen it. UPDATE: Turns out it was 54-46 in favour of Greg Hunt, which seems a bit much.

• The West Australian reported last weekend that a uComms/ReachTel poll for GetUp! had Christian Porter leading 52-48 in Pearce, which is above market expectations for him.

• Another week before, The West Australian reported Labor internal polling had it with a 51.5-48.5 lead in Stirling.

Preselection news:

• Following Nigel Scullion’s retirement announcement last month, the Northern Territory News reports a field of eight nominees for his Country Liberal Party Senate seat: Joshua Burgoyne, an Alice Springs electrician, who was earlier preselected for the second position on the ticket behind Scullion; Bess Price, who held the remote seat of Stuart in the territory parliament from 2012 to 2016, and whose high-profile daughter Jacinta Price is the party’s candidate for Lingiari; Tony Schelling, a financial adviser; Tim Cross, former general manager of NT Correctional Industries; Gary Haslett, a Darwin councillor; Kris Civitarese, deputy mayor of Tennant Creek; Linda Fazldeen, from the Northern Territory’s Department of Trade, Business and Innovation; and Bill Yan, general manager at the Alice Springs Correctional Centre.

• Andrew Burrell of The Australian reports Liberal nominees to succeed Michael Keenan in Stirling include Vince Connelly, Woodside Petroleum risk management adviser and former army officer; Joanne Quinn, a lawyer for Edith Cowan University; Michelle Sutherland, a teacher and the wife of Michael Sutherland, former state member for Mount Lawley; Georgina Fraser, a 28-year-old “oil and gas executive”; and Taryn Houghton, “head of community engagement at a mental health service, HelpingMinds”. No further mention of Tom White, general manager of Uber in Japan and a former adviser to state MP and local factional powerbroker Peter Collier, who was spruiked earlier. The paper earlier reported that Karen Caddy, a former Rio Tinto engineer, had her application rejected after state council refused to give her the waiver required for those who were not party members of one year’s standing.

• The Nationals candidate for Indi is Mark Byatt, a Wodonga-based manager for Regional Development Victoria.

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.

1,132 comments on “BludgerTrack: 53.8-46.2 to Labor”

Comments Page 16 of 23
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  1. The $5.20 (now $5.40) is from Betfair. It’s a betting exchange which takes a commission from winnings, so its numbers are usually a bit higher than those of Sportsbet/Ladbrokes.

  2. TPOF

    And how many of those who arrive with visas as tourists or workers decide to stay without applying to do do so?

    I would wager there are plenty who simply “disappear” into the community, probably working illegally for low wages.

  4. Itza

    I would suggest … ‘there are no boats that we hear about

    _________________________________

    Indeed. But it amounts to the same thing in terms of the point I’m making!

  5. Cassidy seemed mighty pissed off with Morrison and Dutton. I wonder if there had been a formal complaint against the clip of him unravelling their bull shit, which he then played again, with explanations of its accuracy.

  6. The children overboard was based on the libs/nats and pro coalition media lie , it makes me laugh how especially the newscorp hacks are saying this is Morrison’s tampa moment , that the public is going to reward the libs/nats for another lie which involves human being lives?

  8. ItzaDream @ #754 Sunday, February 17th, 2019 – 10:57 am

    Cassidy seemed mighty pissed of with Morrison and Dutton. I wonder if there had been a formal complaint against the clip of him unravelling their bull shit, which he then played again, with explanations of its accuracy.

    Sounds entirely possible. Don’t forget. Morrison is the ‘Whatever it takes to win’ PM.

  10. Rossmcg says:
    Sunday, February 17, 2019 at 10:55 am
    TPOF

    And how many of those who arrive with visas as tourists or workers decide to stay without applying to do do so?

    I would wager there are plenty who simply “disappear” into the community, probably working illegally for low wages.

    ___________________________________

    The stats on overstayers are published by Immigration. But the issue being noted is the huge increase in the number of visaed arrivals who subsequently apply for protection visas to get bridging visas with work rights. These people mostly are granted work rights and stay in the community (perhaps with relations or in organised work groups) while their applications are being dealt with. This is a valuable opportunity to make money to take home (albeit while living in very straitened circumstances) and set up for life there. Some can be women too who are recruited (knowingly or unknowingly) for prostitution.

    Every one is an individual who could have individual circumstances. Many are genuine refugees (like the Saudi girls fleeing maltreatment as women) but the majority are likely on a scam.

  11. Yes. But the secret is that “75% of the people that talked” is excluding the 60% of all people who pretended to not be home when they saw a political door-knocker on their porch.

    Exactly. I have done a lot of door knocking over the years during weekends. If one in four are home and answer the door that’s good going.

  12. I should add to my previous comment that it is critical for the Immigration officers not to prejudge, though, because of the very real risk of denying asylum to genuine refugees.

  13. Sportsbet is owned by an Irish RWNJ and employs YoungLiberal types in its politics market making section. They have been known to use odds to further an agenda in the past.

  14. C@tmomma @ #732 Sunday, February 17th, 2019 – 10:38 am

    Good luck with the application rhwomabat!

    Could you clarify this point for me please?

    199C(3)

    The panel may, at any time it considers appropriate, make recommendations to the Minister in respect of the health of transitory persons who have been taken to regional processing countries, including recommendations relating to:

    the treatment of individual transitory persons; and
    the treatment of a cohort of transitory persons in regional 12 processing countries; and
    medical processes and procedures for managing the treatment of a cohort of transitory persons in regional processing countries.

    Does this mean that there are 12 countries in the region in total where people are assessed medically by Australia?

    Potentially, yes: PNG, Nauru, Indonesia (including West Papua), Timor Leste, Malaysia, Brunei, The Philippines, Thailand, Burma, Vietnam, Cambodia & Laos. Practically, so far, it has been PNG & Nauru only as far as I’m aware.

  15. “An upgrade of the Australian Dictionary of Biography is long overdue – it’s time to include the many Australian women and Indigenous leaders time forgot”

    Frank Bongiorno, head of the history school at the Australian National University – which produces the ADB – describes what is happening as a “decolonisation”.

    “Inevitably when you’ve been running for 60 years, and your life spans a revolution in how Australians understand their identity, their history and their place in the world, the earliest work will sometimes be out of date, and especially so in relation to the Indigenous experience of dispossession and violence.

    “But the ADB team – which like so many of our great cultural institutions is much smaller than it once was – is decolonising a project whose origins lie in an era before most white Australians were prepared to face what they and their ancestors had done to Aboriginal people,” Bongiorno says.

    “Clearly, updating the early colonial entries – most of them written over 50 years ago – is highly desirable but a multimillion dollar task involving thousands of hours of research, writing, fact-checking and editing.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/feb/17/decolonising-the-dictionary-reclaiming-history-for-the-forgotten?CMP=share_btn_tw

    This article is worth reading for the detail.

  16. Labor can use the on water matters secrecy bullshit as well after the next election.
    Would drive the Tories mad to use their own policy against them.
    That said, if I were labor I would be upfront with the public about the turn backs etc.
    “In the 6 months to X there have been 6 boat ‍♂️ turn backs, with 300 people on board. All returned safely to their point of origin etc”.
    I think the public would appreciate being treated like adults and not taken for mugs.

  18. Thanks, rhw. 🙂

    Ima thinking that that countries may have been inserted into the legislation with a bit of forward thinking in mind.

  19. And furthermore:

    Nolan explains: “In a revised version I would both revise the articles we have, add a few hundred more and then add the same number of female, convict and Indigenous Australians … a total of, say, 3,000 subjects. So a really realistic costing to just revise the period up to 1,850 would be $8m over eight years.”

    It is a lot of money. Though not in the scheme of funds allocated to other cultural projects; think about other potential usages of the more than $500m granted to the war memorial, which has not been subjected to the cuts of many other national institutions.

    Other countries have placed comparatively greater value on their own equivalent national dictionaries of biography.

  20. ‘In the 6 months to X there have been 6 boat ‍♂️ turn backs, with 300 people on board. ‘

    I thought boats were female, Henry? 🙂

  22. “Curious as to the destination of AS who arrive here by plane. They’re obviously not shipped off to manus or Nauru so what becomes of them?”

    They disappear into the community, hook up with family or friends already here, get jobs, often paid cash in hand…

    If they get caught they’re asked to leave, deported if they don’t comply, possibly after a period in detention in Australia.

    Some are tricked with promises of jobs and study and find themselves trapped in brothels.

  27. Henry @ #765 Sunday, February 17th, 2019 – 10:06 am

    That said, if I were labor I would be upfront with the public about the turn backs etc.
    “In the 6 months to X there have been 6 boat ‍♂️ turn backs, with 300 people on board. All returned safely to their point of origin etc”.

    Labor should only do that if they’re able to acquire (and verify) and publicize the numbers from the Coalition’s time in office. Transparency is great, but it has to be applied equally to all sides. It’s basically political suicide for Labor to provide those numbers with no comparison point.

  29. Grog really is one of the finest journos in this country.
    Always factual, always insightful. His charts and graphs are rightfully legendary, love reading his stuff.
    Give the bloke a gig on Insiders.

  33. Great news for those looking to switch to EVs. 2019 will see a range of new EV models enter the market including a few only slightly above the mainstream. https://t.co/dY7a6E0cKE— Tim Storer (@storertim) February 17, 2019

    https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/the-deal-magazine/electric-cars-2019-hyundi-kona-nissan-leaf-tesla-model-3-mercedesbenz-eqc-audi-etron-aston-martin-rapide-e-porsche-taycan-mini-ev/news-story/30feda62fe6a91b8478b439286c6f01a

  34. For 15 to 20 years the facts have been pointed out about the problem of visa over-stayers arriving by plane whenever the hysteria about unlawful (not illegal) boat arrivals (and their relatively low numbers) ramps up.

    Despite the facts , for 15 to 20 years successive Coalition and Labor governments focused on the threat of brown people breaching Fortress Australia.

    For 15 to 20 years refugee advocates, a few journalists, and the Greens, have pointed out the facts, in their efforts to humanise asylum seekers and refugees.

    For 15 to 20 years both major parties have been more than happy to beat the xenophobic drum for cynical political reasons to garner the votes of swinging voters in marginal electorates, particularly in Queensland.

    Public sentiment has begun to change and there is now an understanding from a greater section of the citizenry of what has been done in our name to innocent people in our in torture hell-holes.

    Finally, Labor is starting to get on board and has changed it’s rhetoric, though not to any great degree, as its amendments to the medivac bill attest.

    Not before time.

  41. A (biased) response to insiders — The guests showed how empty the govt’s claims are on AS, Porter made matters worse for his party by his obfuscations and then Barrie capped the bottle by showing his insiders extra clip.

    Whatever they thought might be gained by their hysterical carry-on, the Libs have failed miserably.

    It is a shame there will not be a Newspoll until next week – I reckon it would have been diabolical after this week’s antics.

    That said, we have estaimates this week (as well as several house vote losses for the govt) so the “party has just started”.

  43. Apologies for multiple posts at the minute. Am desperately trying to delay starting my next assessment for my online course, it was only due last Wednesday…
    Hmm, I’ll have another coffee ☕️ and think about it some more, then I’ll get stuck in. Definitely maybe.

  44. Benjamin Studebaker analyses Howard Schultz’s presidential campaign:

    “There are really several different reasons the press gives Schultz a platform:

    1. The media companies want his ad revenue. If the press helps Schultz get his campaign off the ground and Schultz stays in the race, he’s liable to use his billionaire money to purchase a lot of ads. The networks that give him free airtime now anticipate that Schultz might pay for more airtime later. He might even be grateful to them for the early exposure and be more likely to return to the specific platforms that helped him initially.

    2. The billionaires who own the media outlets share his politics. Many billionaires don’t like the Democratic Party’s left wing–especially Bernie Sanders–and are concerned that the party establishment may be losing its grip on the primaries. These billionaires may genuinely think that Schultz is saying the things that need to be said, and they may even like the idea of Schultz blackmailing primary voters into supporting centrists. The 4% that favors Schultz is over-represented in the billionaire class, and the bulk of our newspapers, magazines, and TV networks are owned by wealthy individuals. They share Schultz’ politics, his social class, and his wider worldview.

    3. Schultz generates clicks. A lot of us hate watch or hate read stories about Schultz, and that sends a signal to media outlets that there is money to be made (and hits to be had) in generating content about him. I myself expect to get some number of hits from readers who enjoy reading pieces about how horrifying and unpleasant the man is. Maybe you yourself are one such person!”

    https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2019/02/16/the-press-is-helping-howard-schultz-blackmail-the-democratic-party/?fbclid=IwAR3VSkAw4Hu0shdW6W1y2i0xOrE6byor1iuMXnpCaWQm5apzCkquYoFkksM

  46. I smile when I see a journo breathless express the view that a pollie “really believes” is “authentic” and and man/woman who “calls it like is it”. We only have to go back a little way to Barnaby Joyce to whom these fine qualities were applied in lavish fashion. That he was, or turned out to be, shallow, deceitful and full of crap was a truer picture of his personality. I hasten to add, there are some on the Labor side of politics who are equally full of it……………………

  48. There’s something missing from this picture of the Government’s front Bench in the HOR. I just can’t work out what it is.

  49. Tricot @ #786 Sunday, February 17th, 2019 – 11:27 am

    I smile when I see a journo breathless express the view that a pollie “really believes” is “authentic” and and man/woman who “calls it like is it”. We only have to go back a little way to Barnaby Joyce to whom these fine qualities were applied in lavish fashion. That he was, or turned out to be, shallow, deceitful and full of crap was a truer picture of his personality. I hasten to add, there are some on the Labor side of politics who are equally full of it……………………

    Not to mention all of the Greens!

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