BludgerTrack: 53.2-46.8 to Labor

The BludgerTrack poll aggregate again records little change this week. Also featured: updates on important preselections for the Liberal Party, who are persistently butting their heads against gender issues.

The BludgerTrack poll aggregate, updated with this week’s results from Newspoll and Essential Research, remains unimpressed with much of the recent opinion poll commentary, maintaining a slow trend back to the Coalition that appears to go back to December. The movement since last week on two-party preferred is negligible, with a weak result for the Coalition cancelling out a somewhat stronger one from Essential Research, converting into a one-seat gain for the Coalition on the seat projection. Newspoll provides new numbers for the leadership ratings trends, which are all but unchanged. Full details on the link below.

Other news:

• The Guardian reports uComms/ReachTEL polls for GetUp! conducted on Thursday found independent Zali Steggall leading Tony Abbott 57-43 in Warringah, while Labor’s Ali France led Peter Dutton 52-48 in Dickson. The poll also found majority support for the medical evacuations bill in both electorates.

• Following Julie Bishop’s retirement announcement, Andrew Burrell of The Australian reports Bishop’s hope of anointing her own successor in Curtin is likely to be scotched by her opponents, most notably Mathias Cormann. Bishop has reportedly been pushing for Erin Watson-Lynn, 33-year-old director of Asialink Diplomacy at the University of Melbourne. However, a highly fancied rival has emerged this week in Celia Hammond, who resigned on Monday as vice-chancellor at Notre Dame University. Hammond’s social conservatism is noted in a further report in The Australian today, relating a speech from 2013 in which she “railed against sex before marriage and contraception, while arguing against ‘militant feminism’”.

• A Liberal preselection vote on Saturday to choose Michael Keenan’s successor in the Perth northern suburbs seat of Stirling was won by Vince Connelly, risk management adviser at Woodside and former army officer. This was despite the wish of local party heavyweights Mathias Cormann and Peter Collier, along with Keenan himself, for the seat to go to a woman – specifically Joanne Quinn, legal counsel at Edith Cowan University. Quinn was in fact knocked out in the early rounds, together with Georgina Fraser, business development manager with a subsidiary of Kleenheat Gas, and Taryn Houghton, manager with a mental health support not-for-profit. Connelly prevailed in the final round over Michelle Sutherland, high school teacher, Bayswater councillor and wife of former state MP Michael Sutherland. His win out of an otherwise all-female field of five excited much commentary about the Liberal Party’s deficiencies in preselecting women, including my own analysis in Crikey on Monday.

• Sighs of relief could be heard from the Liberal hierarchy the following day when the preselection to replace Kelly O’Dwyer in Higgins was won by Katie Allen, paediatrician and unsuccessful candidate for Prahran at the state election in November. Allen prevailed in the final round with 158 votes to 116 for a male rival, Greg Hannan, former state party vice-president and factional moderate who ran against Michael Kroger for the presidency. Excluded after the penultimate round was Zoe McKenzie, “a non-executive director of the NBN board and former chief of staff to Abbott/Turnbull government trade minister Andrew Robb”.

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.

2,270 comments on “BludgerTrack: 53.2-46.8 to Labor”

Comments Page 42 of 46
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  2. I win because I picked the Quaddie in Melbourne which has paid over $3k.

    My ability to guide in this Nation of ours is compelling.

  3. I really don’t want to comment on the Pell case as I wasn’t in the court room during the 3 days that were held in camera with the victim, nor the 3 and a half days of jury deliberations or the time back in 1996 in the Cathedral. However, it does seem that the prosecution did a decent job and poked large enough holes in the defence.

  5. Does anyone know why NASA launches always start with the letter T? In any case it is now T minus 3 minutes to the launch of the 1st commercial astronaut capable rocket to the international space station. Unfortunately the number of people watching is also rocketing up. Buffering is becoming a problem. This is the link if you want to make it worse for me. 😉
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21X5lGlDOfg&feature=youtu.be

  8. DWH

    Yes.

    Its also ok to leave out the subject to appeal part as is common usage as long as you don’t deny that an appeal is taking place.

  9. Confessions @ #2024 Saturday, March 2nd, 2019 – 6:14 pm

    Jeez WTF is in the Pollbludger water this afternoon? People advocating banning churches and having the courts casting judgement on ridicule!

    Have Bludgers forgotten two of the cornerstones of democracy are freedom from religious persecution, and free speech?

    People seem to lose their minds when I’m not around to keep them in line. 😉

  14. C@tmomma @ #2059 Saturday, March 2nd, 2019 – 6:54 pm

    Confessions @ #2024 Saturday, March 2nd, 2019 – 6:14 pm

    Jeez WTF is in the Pollbludger water this afternoon? People advocating banning churches and having the courts casting judgement on ridicule!

    Have Bludgers forgotten two of the cornerstones of democracy are freedom from religious persecution, and free speech?

    People seem to lose their minds when I’m not around to keep them in line. 😉

    Thank goodness for that!

  15. Confession time. I thought that he would stick to Sturt for life. I was wrong.

    There’s a story his bride said she was marrying a future prime minister. They must have decided it wasn’t going to happen.

  16. nath @ #2041 Saturday, March 2nd, 2019 – 6:36 pm

    And if it wasn’t for BB that angry mob with pitchforks might have stormed the court and executed any who stood in their way. As usual BB has saved the day. I will be recommending him for Australia Day Honours for his efforts in stopping a riot.

    I think it would have been nigh on impossible to organise the PB ‘mob’ to storm anything. We’re all in different parts of Oz and a bit past storming anything but the buffet at our local club. 😆

  17. Greensborough Growler @ #2062 Saturday, March 2nd, 2019 – 6:56 pm

    C@tmomma @ #2059 Saturday, March 2nd, 2019 – 6:54 pm

    Confessions @ #2024 Saturday, March 2nd, 2019 – 6:14 pm

    Jeez WTF is in the Pollbludger water this afternoon? People advocating banning churches and having the courts casting judgement on ridicule!

    Have Bludgers forgotten two of the cornerstones of democracy are freedom from religious persecution, and free speech?

    People seem to lose their minds when I’m not around to keep them in line. 😉

    Thank goodness for that!

    I know, orright!?! 😀

  18. “The Day of the Dead in Mexico long precedes any Christian/Catholic belief though the Catholic church has managed to weave this pagan belief into some kind of Catholic one”

    It’s been grafted onto the traditional Catholic observance of All Souls Day (or vice versa), November 2, the day after All Saints Day.

  19. Toff

    Confession is a loaded term today 🙂

    I can see why you would have thought it. Look how many of us had to wait for confirmation (another loaded term?) before we would believe it.

  21. No, I’ve been spending most of the afternoon watching the European Indoor Athletics Championships and the Skiing World Cup, plus the World Championships of Cycling from Poland.

    I haz had access to Foxtel for the day. 🙂

  25. I remember seeing a show about the Mexican Drug Lords and how they finance the shrines to the dead in their local area, which includes supporting the little old lady who looks after it. They believe it protects them from being apprehended.

    El Chapo must have fallen behind with his payments. 😉

  26. Kerryn Phelps is doing a Turnbull and watching from VIP area not marching. Very different reaction

    Mardi Gras On PB.

    Its on Periscope if you want to watch live.

  29. Looks like Fred Nile’s prayers for rain on the parade didn’t work, although there’s a while yet. There’s nothing on the radar, however.

  32. The point in Mexico, as is the case in much of South America, and this is a gross simplification – the Spaniards came into the country with a sword in one hand and a bible in the other. Cortez – in cahoots with some of the locals, managed to destroy the existing religious framework. In its place came an amalgam of very ancient beliefs and finessed Catholic ones. This still largely holds today. And before anyone accuses me of some kind of disrespect, that fact that non-Catholic churches can make something out of Christmas trees, Yule Logs, Easter Bunnies, Father Christmas and Stonehenge suggests that ancient stuff (and not so ancient stuff) has also been grafted onto these current beliefs – such as they are.

  34. This article answers some questions about the appeal process that is interesting. A couple of points I learned:

    1. The jury got to handle a chasuble, alb and cincture during the trial. For someone reason the vestments ‘impossible’ is one of the most mentioned of ‘impossibles’ by Pell’s defenders. IMO, if the jury handled the vestments they would have learned that the chasuble can be lifted to one side and that the alb is of very light material and can readily be lifted.

    2. We don’t know if the first mistrial was 10-2 for a conviction – despite this being claimed by Tess Livingstone. It is a crime for juries to reveal this sort of detail.

    3. There is quite a lot of text on the directions to the jury by the trial judge about who to use the evidence. This is particularly interesting, IMO, and too lengthy to discuss here. Some of this discussion goes to the heart of concerns about a single uncorroborated main witness for the prosecution.

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/mar/02/cardinal-george-pells-conviction-the-questions-that-remain

  36. briefly:

    On Jay Inslee this was written on Jan 3 by a Never Trump ex-Republican.

    On Wednesday, a successful West Coast governor who knows something about trade, Democrat Jay Inslee, suggested he would throw his hat into the ring for 2020. He is pitching himself as the guy to put climate change at the top of the nation’s priority list. “To govern is to choose,” Inslee told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes. He offered a list of his progressive successes — on voting rights, minimum wages, net neutrality, transportation, etc. — and made the case that green technology makes climate change a “jobs message” as well. He might consider stressing his entire record as evidence of his ability to successfully govern, which includes climate change policies, and his role in challenging Trump’s vile immigration policies. Almost as an afterthought, he notes that renewable-energy legislation helped launched a multibillion-dollar wind industry and helped his state lead in GDP growth and wages. That seems to be his greatest selling point — creating a progressive haven while growing the economy, raising wages and saving the planet. If Inslee can articulate a vision entirely at odds with Trump’s and evidenced by his successful stewardship, he could be onto something.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/03/watch-out-two-successful-democratic-governors/?utm_term=.f69c9ad3a1e3

  39. The Nath-thing and the Mavis-thing are relatively recent blow-ins who came here claiming some mysterious connection to, or protection by The Management.

    Their aim is to sow dissension and unease by taking sides in almost every disagreement here, urging it on or, in the absence of a disagreement, starting one (preferably with as nasty and stupid a remark as possible). Nath-thing’s remark this afternoon canvassing castrating Pell is a case in point. A truly disgusting performance, beyond merely obnoxious, and into the realm of sickening.

    You respond to or in any way agree with the contributions of these shit-stirrers at your peril. I know some people here live to argue, but validating these malignant troublemakers by responding to them is crazy. They’re here to wreck, not to contribute.

  40. LR

    NASA uses the launch point as the datum for measuring time in a mission. So anything that happens after that (in the flight) is at time “T plus x”.
    All of the countdown occurs before the scheduled launch time, so is at time “T minus x”.
    The launch moment is T = 0.

    They log and record every mission.

  41. “I love to see Shorten do this out of spite”

    On Dutton being referred to the HC, I’d love to see Shorten do it out of a desire to get some sense of proprietry back into parliament. The AG gave Dutton a very qualified clearance. It seemed grossly inequitable not to refer Dutton after others were booted for seemingly similar issues.

  44. Socrates, thank you. That makes a lot of sense. T=whatever the scheduled launch time stamp is. Probably harks back to Data Management when 1K was a lot, and it made it easier to communicate with “management” and “marketing”.

    Q: How many zeros are there?
    A: As many as you need.

    But for me, tonight, I was watching at T=0. Superb.

  45. Bushfire Bill @ #2086 Saturday, March 2nd, 2019 – 7:29 pm

    The Nath-thing and the Mavis-thing are relatively recent blow-ins who came here claiming some mysterious connection to, or protection by The Management.

    Their aim is to sow dissension and unease by taking sides in almost every disagreement here, urging it on or, in the absence of a disagreement, starting one (preferably with as nasty and stupid a remark as possible). Nath-thing’s remark this afternoon canvassing castrating Pell is a case in point. A truly disgusting performance, beyond merely obnoxious, and into the realm of sickening.

    You respond to or in any way agree with the contributions of these shit-stirrers at your peril. I know some people here live to argue, but validating these malignant troublemakers by responding to them is crazy. They’re here to wreck, not to contribute.

    I thought this type of forum abuse was a thing of the past… ?

  46. LR

    Exactly. When they started that system it was back in the early 60s and they were probably running on old Fortran programs.

  50. I am watching an absolutely mesmerisingly beautiful show about Morocco on SBS. It’s all filmed by drone so you get a unique perspective of the country.

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