The day of the happy event

The false starts and prevarications are set to end this morning with the official announcement of a May 18 federal election.

It’s now a known known that Scott Morrison will be visiting the Governor-General early this morning to advise an election for May 18. Two things to mark the occasion: first, what I’ll call a provisional update of BludgerTrack, since it doesn’t include some state-level data I’m hoping to get hold of today. Adding the post-budget polling from Newspoll, Ipsos and Essential Research, it records a 0.3% improvement for the Coalition on two-party preferred, reducing the Labor lead to 52.6-47.4 from last week. If you observe the trendlines in the display on the sidebar or the full BludgerTrack results page, this shows up as a continuation in an ongoing improvement for the Coalition from their miserable starting point in the immediate aftermath of Malcolm Turnbull’s removal, rather than a “budget bounce”.

Secondly and more importantly, I offer the Poll Bludger’s federal election guide, even if it’s not what I’d entirely regard as ready yet.

Here you will find the most finely appointed Poll Bludger election guide yet published, with exhaustive and exhausting summaries of all 151 House of Representatives, each of which features bells and whistles both familiar (previous election booth results maps and displays of past election results) and new (data visualisation for a range of demographic indicators that now extends to ethnicity on age distribution). A Senate guide remains to be added, the betting odds are yet to be added to the bottom of the sidebars, and the whole thing is badly in need of proof reading. Rest assured though that all that will be taken care of in the days and weeks to come, together with campaign updates and further candidate details as they become available.

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.

1,010 comments on “The day of the happy event”

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  1. William, I have long thought you should place an ad at the top of your site. Just a small 320×50 banner. You do so much work on here with your guides and polling analysis. An ad up the very top out of the way would receive an impression every time someone loads a page. Just a thought from a fellow web designer. 🙂

  2. I’m not sure if this has been posted yet but here’s a letter drop from Advance Aus Ltd:

    Obverse:
    What do all these LABOR
    leaders have in common?
    [Photos of Keating, Beazley, Latham, Rudd, Gillard, same of Rudd again, Shorten]

    Reverse:
    Zali Steggall
    voted for ALL of them!
    [Photo of Zali Steggall with a speech bubble]
    “I have never voted Liberal in a Federal Election”
    Source: News.com.au February 18, 2019 – Australian Politics Live.
    The Australian Newspaper, February 18, 2019 – Politics Live. Sky News, 30 January 2019 – David Speers Sky News Interview
    For over 20 years Zali has never voted Liberal
    but now she wants you to believe she’s a Liberal.
    This election don’t be fooled by an imposter.
    Authorised by Gerard Benedet for Advance Aus Ltd, 9A/204 Alice Street, Brisbane QLD 4000. Printed by The Cameron’s Group, 28 Swettenham Road, Minto NSW 2566

    Not sure what the cane toads have to do with Warringah but I do wish they’d keep out.

  3. “Thanks Firefox, but there’s an ad at the top of the sidebar, and it earns me tuppence ha’penny.”

    Ah that’s good then. I’m viewing the site on my Galaxy S8 though and there is no sidebar that I can see. I’m guessing it’s a responsive layout which hides the sidebar on mobile devices, or displays it below the main content. Anyway, thanks for providing this highly informative blog. You and Ben over at the Tally Room really do some incredibly detailed guides and analysis.

  4. I would have thought it’s quite possible for Stegall to NOT vote for either Liberal or Labor, thus making her statement that she has never voted Liberal quite plausible.

    Furthermore, I thought she was trying to get voters to believe she is an *independent*, not to belueve she is a Liberal.

  5. The other thing I might note as well, it has no party/organisation branding on it whatsoever. I assumed it came from the Liberal Party directly (the back is blue and front red) until I read William’s note in the previous post about AA spending their money questionably, pulled it out of the recycling and read the fine print.

  6. calumnious fox

    Thanks, interesting. It would be amusing if the ultra far right activists (freedom of speech!) cost a far right member his seat, given how badly I suspect that pamphlett would go down in an electorate as well educated as Warringah.

  7. Advance Australia is the creator of Captain GetUp and is the conservative attempt to copy GetUp.

    The problem with them is that they’re pro-Liberal, not anti-progressive, unlike GetUp who are anti-RWFW, but not pro any particular progressive Party or candidate.

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