BludgerTrack: 53.2-46.8 to Labor (still)

No new grist for the BludgerTrack mill this week, but there’s a Greenpeace-sponsored federal poll and some preselection news to relate.

There haven’t been any new polls this week, so the headline to this post isn’t news as such – the point is that a new thread is needed, and this is it. Developments worth noting:

• We do have one new poll, but it was privately conducted and so doesn’t count as canonical so far as BludgerTrack is concerned. The poll in question was conducted by uComms/ReachTEL for Greenpeace last Wednesday from a sample of 2134, and has primary votes of Coalition 38.8%, Labor 36.7%, Greens 9.7% and One Nation 6.1%. A 53-47 two-party split is reported based on respondent-allocated preferences, but it would actually have been around 51.5-48.5 based on preferences from 2016. The poll also features attitudinal questions on carbon emissions and government priorities, which you can read all about here.

• The Greens have landed a high-profile candidate in Julian Burnside, human rights lawyer and refugee advocate, to run against Josh Frydenberg in the normally blue-ribbon Melbourne seat of Kooyong. This further complicates a contest that already featured independent hopeful Oliver Yates, former Liberal Party member and chief executive of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

• The Liberal preselection to choose a successor to Julie Bishop in Curtin will be determined by a vote of 60 delegates on Sunday. Initial reports suggested the front-runners were Celia Hammond, former vice-chancellor of Notre Dame University, and Erin Watson-Lynn, director of Asialink Diplomacy at the University of Melbourne, which some interpreted as a proxy battle between bitter rivals Mathias Cormann and Julie Bishop. However, both have hit heavy weather over the past week, with concerns raised over Hammond’s social conservatism and Watson-Lynn’s past tweets critical of the Liberal Party. Andrew Tillett of the Financial Review reports that some within the party believe a third nominee, Aurizon manager Anna Dartnell, could skate through the middle.

Tom Richardson of InDaily reports moderate faction efforts to install a male candidate – James Stevens, chief-of-staff to Premier Steve Marshall – in Christopher Pyne’s seat of Sturt are prompting a slew of conservative-aligned women to nominate against him. These include Deepa Mathew, a manager at the Commonwealth Bank and state candidate for Enfield last year; Joanna Andrew, a partner with law firm Mellor Olsson; and Jocelyn Sutcliffe, a lawyer with Tindall Gask Bentley. However, Stevens remains the “overwhelming favourite”.

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.

2,867 comments on “BludgerTrack: 53.2-46.8 to Labor (still)”

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  1. Cud Chewer @ #2766 Sunday, March 10th, 2019 – 6:09 pm

    With the evidence being as stark as that, why isn’t Federal labour portraying Turnbull as the man who wasted tens of billions of taxpayers dollars on a temporary network?

    It’s kind of pointless since the Shadow Comms Minister has basically admitted that areas connected via FTTN are stuck with it.So it isn’t really temporary, and may very well be permanent.

    This isn’t a criticism of Labor, it’s just an acknowledgement of how much damage has been done by MTM (Malcolm Turnbull’s Mess).

  2. If the nationals are jittery over keeping their seats and their snouts in the trough under McCormack it totally escapes me why they would wait until after the election to change leaders.

  3. It’s easy to see why Berejiklian didn’t ask Morrison to give a speech at the LNP launch today. Who wants to be associated with such a loser?

    Remember Morrison is the secret weapon, according to the Daily Telegraph, you can’t put a secret weapon up on stage.

  4. The list of people being ignored: Murdoch,Benson,Kenny,Shanahan,Kelly,Sloan,Gottliebsen,Hadley,Jones,Price,Bolt,
    Murray,Helicopter,Credlin,Dean,Cameron,Abbott,Dutton,Morrison,McCormack,
    Joyce and many more.

    Its a beautiful thing.

  5. It’s a tough ask for any government to hope for a third term these days. Having said that, the impression to those in the electorate who are tuned in, is that this government has had its go and this does not bode well for it in the next few weeks……………………..Black Swan events aside, normal events should lead to a Labor government. The LNP forget that Shorten has now been around as leader for what is now, quite a long time, while their own side is falling to pieces. I suspect the general mood out and about, is that Shorten is entitled to be considered for his run.

  6. We have Ad Man from Mad Men in full election campaign mode, a headline a day duly heading media coverage

    Plus his attacks on Labor including warnings

    Meanwhile there has been little publicity afforded to Shorten – except for the now attack that wages increases can not be afforded by business in a challenging market place

    In this context, the Ad Man from Mad Men being all over the media polling is showing where it is showing, the Coalition primary vote falling

    Collateral to the publicity is the usage of office to promote the performance of the government

    This also seems not to be impacting

    Simply, from those I associate with and who are the ones who will determine a change in government, their course is not for changing – only reinforced by the more they see of Ad Man from Mad Men

    I am not one who guesses but I would offer that this is as good as it is going to get for the Coalition

    I was privy to the concerns at internal polling leading to the Victorian State election, where the result was no surprise and it may well be that result will be replicated federally

    For those who present that there was a late move to Labor in Victoria, there was not

    The writing was well and truly on the wall a long way out

  7. zoomster

    “Um, we are allowed to talk about things which don’t interest you, you know.”
    —–

    Of course you are. I was not stating otherwise because i have never thought otherwise.

    I was responding to Boerwar. I was saying his justification were not real/accepted to me.

    (as an aside, your irrelevant (snide?) comment reinforces my view that reading this blog gives one a pretty negative view of the ALP: or maybe it’s just the ALP attracks boring bombastic members)

  8. Morrison & Dutton must be very tempted right now to let it be known to the people smugglers that Christmas Island is open for business.

  9. Andrew Earlwood, I agree that re nationalization of power should be restricted to lines and wires, not generation infrastructure.

  10. There is no particular reason to proscribe men-only clubs if there are equivalent women-only clubs available. For example in Adelaide there are:

    – QAC (Queen Adelaide Club) – women-only (formerly it was the wives of rich men and the occasional independently successful woman without a degree, but most now have degrees);
    – Lyceum – women-only (?), but must have degrees; now that the QAC members mostly have degrees I’m not sure what happens to the Lyceum;
    – Adelaide Club – men-only (plus the Governor, even if a woman…) – best avoided in my view (I would far rather be a guest of a woman at the QAC than visit the Adelaide Club);
    – Naval and Military (in one of the strangest buildings within the square mile), open to all with a services association;

    In the Adelaide case, the QAC is the most desirable and perhaps men should seek to get in (perhaps nath will climb in through the window? I can tell you that the women in the QAC will be really pissed off at such an invasion.

    Burnside was a member of the Savage Club for forty years, and apparently got married to Kate Durham there too. He should have stuck by the principles that led to this behaviour, stayed in the club and defended himself; capitulating when caught out just makes him look flakey.

    The whole thing reminds me of the 2007 Brian Burke affair, which resulted in Howard forcing a Cabinet Minister to resign from Parliament simply for the sin of once being in the same room as Brian Burke.

    The clubs that are problematic are those such as Bohemian Grove: all male (and mostly very powerful too) and there is no equivalent for women (nor realistically could there be: Bohemian Grove should accept both women and men, for the same reason as it decided in the 60s to accept non-white men.

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