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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  2. “He deserves a lot of credit but you have to admit he drew an inside straight flush Abbott,Hockey,Turnbull,Morrison,Barnyard. ”

    On the other hand, he’s also drawn a rabid right wing media, corrupt corporate opposition and a nation containing many bigots who will apparently vote for a literal cannibal if said cannibal promises to stop scary brown people coming to the land by eating them.

  3. Gillard was prescient about the growing threat to abortion rights which are now being reduced in the US by one means or another.

    It would be fair to say that it took a female MP to have the sense and the gumption to raise this issue.

    Clinics are now being closed by threats. Women are having to travel further and further. Other hoops include more and more bureaucratic restrictions, additional costs and less support. The passing of state laws that in one way or another restrict women’s control over their bodies have speeded up with Trump’s Supreme Court nominations.

    The lead taken by LOTO Shorten in this matter is exemplary because it sends a clear signal from the top: women own their own bodies.

    Should he be elected prime minister, he will be in a position to put actions to his words.

    There are people in Australia who would dearly love to follow the US lead in this space.

    And, of course, the Greens are up to their usual white-anting. Are they criticizing the Coalition for supporting restrictions on abortion? No. Are they white-anting Labor? Yes.

    Well done Mr Shorten! Well done Labor!

  4. jenauthor @ #447 Thursday, March 7th, 2019 – 4:58 pm

    One of the reasons the LNP have imploded is Shorten. People say he has luck, but I for one, think he has strategy and knows how to take advantage of little cracks in the LNP’s framework. While the LNP successfully wedges itself, Shorten is adept and grabbing the undies and pulling them higher!

    Give me a spell jen. Shorten has nothing to do with the ideological split that has destructed the Liberal party.

  5. jenauthor

    He was damn good at saying “Nope” when Abbott was asking for a fight. Drove Abbott to even greater heights of crazy trying to get into a public brawl. The lifelong brawler without a brawl cut a sad figure 🙂

  6. poroti @ #454 Thursday, March 7th, 2019 – 5:01 pm

    jenauthor

    He was damn good at saying “Nope” when Abbott was asking for a fight. Drove Abbott to even greater heights of crazy trying to get into a public brawl. The lifelong brawler without a brawl cut a sad figure 🙂

    ‘damn good’ ??

    No, he was cravenly unprincipled and cruel falling into line behind Liberal policy time after time to avoid a debate.

  7. PB

    On the other hand, he’s also drawn a rabid right wing media, corrupt corporate opposition

    That,sadly , is a ‘hardy annual’ that every Labor leader starts off with in the saddle bag.

  8. I think BW is upset that NSW may follow the ACT government in formation.

    Myself I think it’s getting better for a Labor majority but it would explain the BW panic lately.

    Good pro stadium anti SCG Trust rally today. Alex Greenwhich Greens and Labor going from the photo Mr Greenwhich posted on twitter.

    Its very good to see progressives united.

  9. Diogenes @ #432 Thursday, March 7th, 2019 – 3:48 pm

    I’m being told that it is almost as much of an existential threat to mankind as climate change and countries are pouring billions into its control. Any truth to it?

    AI poses an existential threat to mankind in precisely the same way “boat people” pose an existential threat to Australia.

  10. ItzaDream says:
    Thursday, March 7, 2019 at 5:00 pm
    The trouble with happiness is it can’t buy money.

    (Woody Allen I think)
    ———————————————————————————-
    We had one thing money couldn’t buy as a kid – poverty.

  14. I reckon Plibs call on abortion availability was to ensure Tasmanians don’t have to travel inter-state to access the service. It may also be a regional issue for the same reasons.

    It’s the sort of policy announcement designed to attract a small cohort of the population not usually considered important to the Libs.

  19. GG

    You are underestimating Plibersek’s announcement.

    It will have a big impact. It will have same equality flow on as Marriage Equality does (Gay men campaigns for woman’s right to choose).

    In addition of course it affects over 50 % of the population directly

  20. Burnside’s main mistake was not inaccuracy. Consider the following:

    “Accuse your opponents of what you yourself are doing”

    Coalition figures do that every time they accuse Labor, the Unions or the Greens of invoking “class warfare”, or of politicising the asylum seeker issue.

    Then there’s “The views of the opposition should be denounced categorically, never entertained” and “It should contain one central message, to be repeated over and over”.

    Actually, the Nazis said they copied from the Communists or the Catholic Church.

    Be that as it may, Burnside didn’t allow for the Coalition’s ability do do outrage, magnified by any number of bellowing megaphones among their media allies, drowning out whatever point he was trying to make. The Coalition’s opponents need to be much more careful that the Coalition itself. Their friends don’t control the old media.

    By the way, what happened to HelloWorldGate, PaladinGate and AFPRaidGate. They seem to have been buried.

  21. Scott Morrison has shut down the push by restless Queensland Nationals MPs to have Parliament vote on new powers to break up power companies before the election, saying his priority is legislating the budget and flood recovery measures for the Sunshine State.

  24. Interesting that probably 90% of Australians have suffered a personal “recession” over the last 2 quarters but conservative economists think the economy is going very well.

  25. Eryk Bagshaw Twitter:

    Prime Minister Scott Morrison says the per capita recession figures in the national accounts yesterday are “made up statistics.” #auspol

  26. Dio

    I know only one particular area of AI at all well.

    I am a true expert in only one tiny field: identifying the species of Australian birds in the field.

    I can ID most Australian birds with an almost automatic response. I can ID many species just from their calls. I can often tell their behaviour from their calls. I can work out gender and age classes just from their calls. I can often tell you stories about interpersonal bird relations within a flock by behaviour and calls. I can often predict where they are going to go next in a tree. A fleeting glimpse of a distant bird is enough for me to get the ID right in the vast majority of cases. Each species has many, many different calls. Each species has many subspecies – usually with variations in plumage. Males and females and age class plumages all vary.

    I am good enough at this to be employed, on a casual basis, for the highest quality most rigorous scientific field surveys. These include the sort of surveys of heathland birds where you species ID and count individuals within a certain range without necessarily seeing a bird all day – they remain hidden in the heath vegetation.

    In comes AI.

    I forget which outfit it was, but they have gathered something like 10 million bird images. The ran some AI algorithms over it endlessly. The result is that, for 300 species (and climbing all the time), you send in an image and back comes the answer. They are working on the same thing for bird calls.

    Fifty years of education, experience and learning is now the equivalent of an iPhone snap you send in to a computer. This small field of AI, literally, changes the way I sense and value my own expertise.

  28. You’re going to have to be careful there Darc. There are lot of quotes from Blazing Saddles that start flame wars here on PB 🙂

  29. People say he has luck, but I for one, think he has strategy and knows how to take advantage of little cracks in the LNP’s framework.

    As I’ve stated many times, the dude knows his Sun Tzu. He can spot the Libs best laid traps a mile off, but still keeps luring them to fight on his preferred turf.

  31. guytaur @ #468 Thursday, March 7th, 2019 – 5:16 pm

    GG

    You are underestimating Plibersek’s announcement.

    It will have a big impact. It will have same equality flow on as Marriage Equality does (Gay men campaigns for woman’s right to choose).

    In addition of course it affects over 50 % of the population directly

    …and most importantly the SDA gets their way

  32. It was interesting that whilst Shorten was on the same platform as the RBA Governor yesterday, both highlighting the dangers of a “wages recession”, our pm was as far away as he possibly could be – on Xmas Island

    This is the very same Ad-man pm who attacked Shorten in the parliament for (also) associating with business.

    Simply, the correction Australia needs and needs now is a pm who has the experience and reputation to walk both sides of the street to address the needs of the Nation.

    And that is Shorten (witness the Morrison attack)

    Aka Hawke in addressing what he was “gifted” by Howard as treasurer (a recession where the “fix” of Howard was to freeze wages and salary increases in the early 1980’s)

  37. PvO certainly gets around. Now he’s the political editor for Channel 10. Appeared on the 5pm news with a piece on Morrison in the West. Didn’t seem impressed with the PM.

  38. Poll guesses update
    Only showing new guesses since late last night

    ————————–
    PB-Guess: Newspoll 2019-03-11

    PB mean: ALP 54.7 to 45.3 LNP
    PB median: ALP 53.0 to 47.0 LNP
    No. Of PB Respondents: 40
    NEW GUESSES since: 22:47 AEST yesterday
    ALP / LNP
    53 / 47 max
    55 / 45 Puffytmd
    53 / 47 Tricot
    54 / 46 Whisper

    ————————–
    PB-Guess: Essential 2019-03-12

    PB mean: ALP 53.5 to 46.5 LNP
    PB median: ALP 53.0 to 47.0 LNP
    No. Of PB Respondents: 30
    NEW GUESSES since: 22:47 AEST yesterday
    ALP / LNP
    53 / 47 max
    54 / 46 Puffytmd
    54 / 46 Whisper

    ————————–
    PB-Guess: Ipsos 2019-03-17

    PB mean: ALP 52.4 to 47.6 LNP
    PB median: ALP 53.0 to 47.0 LNP
    No. Of PB Respondents: 7
    NEW GUESSES since: 22:47 AEST yesterday
    ALP / LNP
    52 / 48 max
    50 / 50 Puffytmd

  43. Murphyroo explained how f****d up the Nats are before elections and how they screwed the LNP so called ‘Energy policy’.
    But not once did she mention Joyce name, who is responsible for most of the Nats problems .

    https://amp-theguardian-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/mar/07/nationals-rebels-put-the-boot-into-their-leader-as-party-feels-regional-backlash?amp_js_v=a2&amp_gsa=1#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Faustralia-news%2F2019%2Fmar%2F07%2Fnationals-rebels-put-the-boot-into-their-leader-as-party-feels-regional-backlash

  46. Zoidlord @ #475 Thursday, March 7th, 2019 – 5:21 pm

    Eryk Bagshaw Twitter:

    Prime Minister Scott Morrison says the per capita recession figures in the national accounts yesterday are “made up statistics.” #auspol

    And here I thought all statistics were made up – usually by statisticians working over lots of raw data and using universally agreed upon algorithms to present the ‘picture’ of what has happened or is happening.

  47. Voila!

    “The Nats siding with miners over farmers wouldn’t have anything to do with the $2,420,921 received from mining and energy companies, would it? #auspol”

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