BludgerTrack: 52.6-47.4 to Labor

With the final pre-campaign polls added, the poll aggregate records a continuation of the improvement in the Coalition’s position that has been evident for some time, rather than anything that might be called a “budget bounce”.

The BludgerTrack poll aggregate has been updated with the three post-budget polls from Newspoll, Ipsos and Essential Research, the combined effect of which is to reduce Labor’s two-party lead from 52.9-47.1 to 52.6-47.4. There’s also a fair bit going on within the state breakdowns – in fact, probably too much.

The recovery the Liberals believe they are detecting in New South Wales is well and truly coming through on BludgerTrack, albeit that Labor is still credited with a net gain of two seats there. A significant improvement has also been recorded in the Coalition’s position recently in Western Australia, although here too Labor is credited with a net gain of two seats. What we’re not seeing any sign of is the improved position the Coalition claims to be seeing in Queensland, where reports have suggested they are now hopeful of breaking even by gaining Herbert and limiting the damage in the south-east. BludgerTrack is stubbornly detecting a swing to Labor in the strategically crucial state of over 6%, translating into a gain of nine seats.

I would be a lot more confident of all this if I had more data at state level, which I’m hoping Ipsos might publish in due course – they appeared to have adopted the Newspoll practice last year of publishing quarterly state breakdowns, but we didn’t see one for October-December and are now due one for January-March. I’ve been trying to chase this up and will keep you posted.

Newspoll and Ipsos both provided new data for the leadership ratings, which are now detecting an uptick in Scott Morrison’s personal ratings, although the picture remains fairly static on preferred prime minister. All of which you can learn more about through the link below.

TECHNICAL NOTE/APPEAL FOR HELP: I’m hoping those of my readers who know their way around web programming might help me resolve an irritating niggle that’s been bedevilling the BludgerTrack display for some time. Namely, that the state breakdown tabs tend not to work, particularly when the page is first loaded. My own experience is that it requires a hard refresh before they will respond. Tablet users, I am told, can’t even do that well.

Based on my research, it would seem to be that the problem lies with the following bit of Ajax code. If anyone thinks they can offer me any pointers here, please get in touch by email at pollbludger-AT-bigpond-DOT-com.

$(document).ready(function() {
$.ajax({
cache: false,
type: "GET",
url: "bt-output.xml",
dataType: "xml",
success: xmlParser
});
});

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.

799 comments on “BludgerTrack: 52.6-47.4 to Labor”

Comments Page 6 of 16
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  1. “She spent over $100,000 of her compensation money just getting the house she lives in. She doesn’t own eight or nine houses, by the way. She just owns the house she lives in. She invested over $100,000 to get that house right. She’s a strong woman.””

    Thats the kind of statement that will resonate. Dutton is fwarked….just as the grub he is should be.

  3. Even Andrew Probyn saying Shorten doesn’t look worried by the tax stuff, and looks confident. Nearly fell off my chair hearing him being positive.

    Good to see him dropping hints about lifting Newstart as well.

    My prediction arising from that is:

    Govt ministers to come out and say “Shorten wants to give the bludgers a lift while taxing hard working, real Aussies to death.”

    It’ll fall flat too. Even John Howard said it should be raised.

  4. Nath (quoting Peter ‘pompous arse’ Hartcher): “a sad sack who looks like he learned public speaking at a funeral parlour.”

    So Mr Shorten introduces policy regarding the extremely serious problem of cancer and end-of-life care, and a week later Hartcher thinks it’s funny to make a joke about funeral parlours… I suspect few people with advanced cancer will like the joke.

  5. Nicholas @ #241 Friday, April 12th, 2019 – 12:41 pm

    The Norvill-Rush case would probably had a different outcome had the judge not been an old privileged white man.

    Exactly. The legal community – particularly the judiciary – is culturally conservative and has many blind spots, one of which is preventing and responding effectively to various forms of sexual misconduct.

    Gosh you talk a load of cobblers.

  6. “newstart recipients aren’t laughing… they’re just waiting for an announcement”

    All in good time. The thing is that so far the ALP have shown both skill and restraint so far as timing of announcements go. They wont always get it exactly right, but there is reason for some confidence that just as they have the strategic side of a very viable campaign in place, they will manage the tactical side well. This lot have shown they can think on their feet.

    The Morrison Muppets can barely walk and whistle at the same time.

  7. Waleed Aly on Newstart

    https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/both-parties-talk-about-fairness-until-it-comes-to-the-unemployed-20190411-p51d4o.html

    So, how is it, at a time when politics is increasingly sympathetic to the struggling, and when the idea of fairness is so cardinal, that even Labor cannot find its way to making a clear statement of intent on Newstart? How does Newstart somehow escape the fairness calculation?
    :::
    Newstart remains stalled because, for now at least, our notion of fairness is tied to the worker. It doesn’t extend to the unemployed. You hear this most nakedly in Scott Morrison’s repetitions that “if you have a go, you get a go”. But you hear it more subtly in Kevin Rudd’s famous obsession with “Australian working families”, and even Bill Shorten’s overtures on stagnant wages and penalty rates. Labor’s narrative is currently one of an economy whose benefits flow upwards; of bosses who get wealthier while their employees don’t. The unfairness here is one of work not being rewarded. That’s different from work not being afforded in the first place.
    :::
    In this vision, the worker is being exploited. That’s what makes the treatment undeserved. But it’s hard to exploit the unemployed in this way. We’re left with a sense that Newstart recipients get benefits as a matter of our own largesse, rather than as of right. Follow this logic a distance and you reach a point where Newstart recipients deserve nothing much at all. And once you’re there, even a manifestly paltry allowance ceases to be unfair.

    Neither major party would put it in such stark terms, of course. But the truth is that so much of our public culture over decades has found it extremely easy to take a punitive approach to the unemployed. Sure, it was a miscalculation of the government to deny them the energy rebate, but there’s a reason it was possible to imagine doing so in the first place, just as it’s possible to penalise Newstart recipients for overpayments they might never have received.

    The mythology is that people are unemployed more by choice or weakness than because of bigger, structural factors beyond their control. Hence the logic of “mutual obligation” underpinning the work for the dole scheme that has survived more than 20 years. This assumes the unemployed need to be pushed into work. The spectre of the dole bludger, rorting the system, persists. The aim of policy is to prevent them from doing so. Hence governments’ fondness for “crack downs”.

    Over time, this becomes ingrained as a kind of mental reflex. The result is that we think of the unemployed as though they’re not present, as if they’re not part of our political community. Political solidarity doesn’t extend to them, so the concept of fairness can’t either. That’s why it’s so hard to close your eyes and imagine a press conference where a prime minister announces they’re raising the dole. It doesn’t feel like something to be trumpeted.

  8. Getting outraged at Israel Folau’s belief that everyone but straight people will burn in hell after they die, makes as much sense as it would to be outraged at someone expressing a belief that christians will all end up locked away in Barad-Dur in Mordor, and for exactly the same reason.

  9. Only two days in and the overanalysis and nitpicking is already over-the-top. People are going to be tearing their skin off by week 3, at this rate!

  10. “Govt ministers to come out and say “Shorten wants to give the bludgers a lift while taxing hard working, real Aussies to death.””

    Yup. To which i say….come in spinner. 🙂

  11. Michael A @ #257 Friday, April 12th, 2019 – 12:57 pm

    Getting outraged at Israel Folau’s belief that everyone but straight people will burn in hell after they die, makes as much sense as it would to be outraged at someone expressing a belief that christians will all end up locked away in Barad-Dur in Mordor, and for exactly the same reason.

    What about getting outraged at people getting outraged at Israel Folau’s employer for terminating his employment in light of his remarks, as the employer has every right to do?

  12. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-12/nsw-election-results-mean-nervous-wait-for-david-leyonhjelm/10996526

    Mr Leyonhjelm claimed victory in his quest for an Upper House seat two weeks ago, but as counting reaches its final stages, success for his Liberal Democrats is anything but certain.
    :::
    If Mr Leyonhjelm’s ambitions for the NSW Upper House are thwarted, he could always have another tilt at the Senate in the May Federal Election.

    Nominations close at noon on April 23.

  13. https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/full-house-victorian-socialists-election-launch

    More than 350 Victorian Socialists members and supporters packed out Preston Town Hall on April 6 to launch the party’s federal election campaign.
    :::
    Anti-war and anti-racism campaigner Jerome Small, who is running in Calwell, spoke about the shocking response from the political establishment to the recycling plant fire in Campbellfield. Small said the overall neglect of the working class in those areas represents how little capitalism cares for human life.

    In contrast, Small said socialism represents a politics of hope but that, “if we want the politics of hope, we need to work hard for it”.

    Many signed up to volunteer for the election campaign, which will kick off with a mass doorknock in Calwell on April 13.

  14. Fun and games continue

    Conversation

    The Associated Press
    @AP
    BREAKING: Swedish software developer who is allegedly close to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is arrested at Quito airport, Ecuadorian official says.

    The Latest: Assange to fight US extradition, lawyer says
    LONDON (AP) — The Latest on the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London (all times local): 4:15 p.m. Julian Assange’s lawyer says the WikiLeaks founder will fight his…
    apnews.com

  17. I can only agree with others that both the PM/Treasurer and Treasury are behaving appallingly over the alleged costing. Done to Treasury standards that work is not a one day job. It could not have been done between the last parliament sitting and ScumMo visiting the GG. This leaves a few possibilities, all bad:

    – Treasury did the figures after Labor’s speech (before the caretaker period) and lied to Labor. In that case Treasury is being partisan and Gaetjens should be sacked.
    – Treasury did not do the figures at all, in which case the Liberals are lying. If so Gaetjens should immediately make this clear, as Treasury’s reputation is being impugned, and a fraud would be being committed.

    Gaetjens is in the same position as Stephen Comey was in 2016. Journalists must ask him. He is not a Liberal staffer. He is the most senior public service chief in the land.

    This all highlights why appointing mates to high public offices is not only inappropriate, but dangerous.

  18. Back when the accusations against Geoffrey Rush were being vigorously discussed on these pages last year, I said some scathing things about Rush. This is my exercise in eating humble pie over them. I do so because I think it is important to respect the outcomes of legal proceedings, when they bear upon the content of beliefs we form about public figures. I think it is OK to be scathing towards a convicted pedophile like Pell, but not OK to maintain the rage against a man found by a court to have been accused without credibility, like Geoffrey Rush.

  19. Some people get sacked for hating gay people. Others get tax deductions for it and for telling their tale about the invisible man in the sky.

  20. Bushfire Bill @ #119 Friday, April 12th, 2019 – 9:30 am

    I will not be surprised if Ms Norvalis ends up as the “winner” (poor choice of term, I know) out of this legal stoush. Nice to see she turned up on the steps of the court and said to the judge: “Yeah, nah”.

    She has done a lot worse than say “Yeah, nah.”

    She has walked out of the Court that has just awarded nearly a million dollars to a plaintiff for defamatory words used against him – with millions more to come – and has deliberately, publicly *restated* the original defamation. This time she has defamed Rush in her own words, not on behalf of the newspaper that has to pay the bill, and not under privilege.

    This is gold medal idiocy on Norvill’s part. She is a narcissistic loose cannon, and proves the judge’s assessment of her tendency to embellish and exaggerate. Norvill just cannot keep her mouth shut.

    The case is ongoing. It’s not over. The question now is how much damage Rush has suffered; how much it will cost the Telegraph for reproducing her allegations in a defamatory way.

    One of the issues will be how much ongoing damage Rush will suffer as a result of the inevitable whispering campaign that will run against him. Norvill just proved Rush’s point in the most compelling way possible. Before the ink was dry on the judgement she re-uttered the defamation in public immediately permitting the chattering classes to start muttering about “old white men” sitting as judges and how hard it is to get away with defaming obviously guilty people nowadays.

    Rush should get many millions in compensation, just out of Norvill’s remarks on the steps of the court yesterday. One would hope she has her own lawyer too because, if Rush is feeling grumpy, those words of hers will cost her and those financially backing her an awful lot of money. She can’t just claim to be an innocent young gel dragged into a nasty court case against her will anymore.

    The Tele would be ruing the day they ever heard of Eryn Norvill and her obsession with herself.

    The case was against the gutter press, not Norvill.
    They have the deep pockets that will be able to pay the substantial damages. Norvill does not. She will be ignored.
    To some extent, I have sympathy for her.
    People can have different perceptions about things that happen, and it seems not much happened, and she would have settled for an apology and a promise not to upset her sensibilities any further. It all should have been handled in-house.
    It is the gutter press that have done damage to Rush and Norvill by beating it up and giving it wide public exposure.

  21. Pegasus

    I note Leyonhjelm got a first vote of 2.2%. He has less of a mandate than some independents. Why do people keep voting for these cynical players of the political system? His only policy is to offend people for name recognition.

  24. Nicholas @ #243 Friday, April 12th, 2019 – 12:43 pm

    Reading this makes me very thankful that you aren’t a judge.

    I am very thankful that you are likely a superannuated centrist, not a manager with responsibility for making workplaces safe and inclusive.

    Just proves that you don’t know shit, in which case there’s no downside to blocking you.

  25. a r @ #139 Friday, April 12th, 2019 – 10:01 am

    guytaur @ #134 Friday, April 12th, 2019 – 9:56 am

    Remembering she did not want to take anything public.

    If that’s her position then she should have a case against the paper as well. Or at least would have, had she not aided their defense in court and then publicly reiterated the accusations after the paper lost.

    It becomes hard to claim that you don’t want the stuff made public if a paper does just that and then you defend their coverage instead of refuting, condemning, or at least refusing to comment on it.

    She would have been under oath when she gave her evidence. She cannot be expected to lie to get herself out of a hole.

  26. Socrates – If Gaetjens does not speak up immediately and honestly, he should be sacked on the first day of a Labor govt. No, the first hour. Don’t bother turning up to work, chum.

  27. Victoria says: Friday, April 12, 2019 at 1:08 pm

    Fun and games continue

    Conversation

    The Associated Press
    @AP
    BREAKING: Swedish software developer who is allegedly close to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is arrested at Quito airport, Ecuadorian official says.

    ************************************************

    Our old friend Pete Evans :

    Pete EVANS‏ @911CORLEBRA777

    I have money that says FVEY are dropping info to Ecuadorian Intelligence on these gooses

  28. Asher Wolf
    ‏@Asher_Wolf
    2h2 hours ago

    Australia’s immigration policy of refusing visas and residency to people with disability is at its core a decision to dehumanise people with disability

  29. Pleased to see ALP spruikers at a busy intersection in Sunbury this this morning. Stopped for a quick chat and a shopping bag with the members name on it. Proved useful later on in the morning. I was thinking they were quick off the mark.

  30. ‘No taxation without representation’ is a reasonable request for a democracy, but it seems to me that these days we need a complementary cousin: ‘No representation without taxation’.
    Too many corporates & wealthy individuals pay no tax and hence make no financial contribution to our nation.
    I would like to see a regime where they should are not permitted lobbyists or approaches to their local representative for favours to benefit them until they pay a fair(?) share of tax.

  32. abbott has just said The “so-called called settled climate science is not settled”

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2019/apr/12/federal-election-2019-coalition-labor-tax-economy-morrison-shorten-politics-live

    is he really an ALP mole determined to destroy the illiberal party? talk about the gift that keeps on giving.

    Put Warringah is the “LNP loss” column 🙂 – and add a couple more seats per state.

    when will labor start saying “We all know that Tony Abbott wants to be back in cabinet and then back in the PMs chair. We all know Mr Dutton wants to be in the PMs chair, and we we know Barnaby Joyce wants to be in the deputy PMs chair. None of them will stop plotting and undermining Mr Morrison and the nationals party bloke, whatshisname, after the election, adn we’ll have another three years or the three ring circus and muppet show that in the LNP”

  33. PWD Australia (PWDA)
    ‏
    Verified account

    @PWDAustralia

    PWDA is very concerned about comments made by the Hon. Peter Dutton MP in the Australian today that demonstrate a lack of understanding about the routine discrimination faced by people with #disability in securing accessible and appropriate housing. [1/6]

  34. Pegasus @ #256 Friday, April 12th, 2019 – 12:56 pm

    Waleed Aly on Newstart

    https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/both-parties-talk-about-fairness-until-it-comes-to-the-unemployed-20190411-p51d4o.html

    So, how is it, at a time when politics is increasingly sympathetic to the struggling, and when the idea of fairness is so cardinal, that even Labor cannot find its way to making a clear statement of intent on Newstart? How does Newstart somehow escape the fairness calculation?
    :::
    Newstart remains stalled because, for now at least, our notion of fairness is tied to the worker. It doesn’t extend to the unemployed.

    Thank you Waleed Ali. I have a friend down in Tassie who is getting the worst of this. A widow living well out of Hobart. Unable to drive. Over 60. She did a TAFE bookeeping etc course in her 50s but of course it did not bring work.
    She still has to go through the motions even though she knows it is pointless. She is volunteering at the local Op Shop and enjoying it -but why in the circumstances should she have to?

  35. Anton

    Agreed re: Gaetjens. He appears to have crossed the line and acted in a partisan manner. If he doesn’t speak up now he is implicitly consenting to both ScumMo’s claims about Labor’s tax policies and Labor’s claims that Treasury does not cost them. It is an impossible contradiction regardless of which is true, and his position is untenable IMO.

  36. phoenixRED says:
    Friday, April 12, 2019 at 6:56 am
    BUSTED: Trump had an Assange poster in his debate war room

    President Donald Trump on Thursday denied knowing anything about WikiLeaks, the organization that helped his 2016 presidential campaign by releasing emails stolen by the Russian government that damaged Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

    In the wake of the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on alleged hacking and conspiracy charges, reporters asked the president if he had any comment on the man whose organization he heavily promoted during his election campaign.

    “I know nothing about Wikileaks,” Trump told reporters. “It’s not my thing.”

    However, as CNBC’s Christina Wilkie reports, Trump loved WikiLeaks so much back in 2016 that he had a poster of Assange in his campaign’s debate war room that featured the caption, “Dear Hillary, I miss reading your classified emails.”

    https://www.rawstory.com/2019/04/busted-trump-denies-knowledge-wikileaks-assange-poster-debate-war-room/

    Judas Iscariot would blush. While his Neocon bover boys, Pompeo and Bolton, do the dirty deed, Mr Trump knows nothing!

    What are our fearless leaders, going to do to stop this travesty??? Mr Morrison and Mr Shorten, that means you…

  38. Rick Wilson :

    Bill Barr lost the last of his credibility when he threw out his ‘boob bait’ spying allegations for Trump’s base

    Appearing on The Last Word with host Lawrence O’Donnell, conservative consultant Rick Wilson said he had given Attorney General Bill Barr the benefit of the doubt so far when it came to performing his job, but hinting that there was government spying on the Trump campaign was a bridge too far.

    “I hoped Bill Barr was going to be one of those guys that he was going to meet that standard,” he continued. “But throwing out the boob bait of spying and all these other things knowing what he was doing and having built this elaborate strategy to allow Trump to declare victory and hide and redact and try to not let the American people to know what the Mueller report contains, he has shown us at every turn since he signed that four-page memo he is not an honest broker or a player who has come to the table to stand up for justice and the American people.”

    “He is there to work for Donald Trump,” he added before warning, “He’s going to find out that Donald Trump is the death touch of everybody’s career and honor.”

    https://www.rawstory.com/2019/04/bill-barr-lost-last-credibility-threw-boob-bait-spying-allegations-trumps-base-rick-wilson/

  42. Earlier someone despondently commented that all the press is looking for is a ‘let’s you and him fight” scenario over the next 36 days……….Well, this wish is partly granted in the West newspaper which today has “Who won on the day” score for Shorten and Morrison.
    No guesses as to who got the first vote from this Stokes pro-LNP rag. Morrison – because…………well he is the PM and he picked the date…………
    If Shorten “wins” more than 10 days out of the 36 I will be surprised. However, like the coffee beans in the coffee shop, “Which always gets it right”, this measure is kind of simple for the shrinking lot who still place any credence in the West.

  43. Apparently Turnbull is going to visit his New York apartment for the duration of the campaign and doesn’t intend to interfere with what Morrison is doing.

    However we know he will be sought out by the MSM and probably won’t be able to resist lobbing a few missiles aimed at the Libs.

    Also, he won’t be able to help Sharma’s campaign beyond their photo op this morning.

    https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6037138/turnbull-to-stay-away-and-let-morrison-run-his-own-race/?cs=14350

  44. guytaur @ #193 Friday, April 12th, 2019 – 10:43 am

    Cat

    Jordan Steel John has been an excellent addition to the Senate. The Greens in Western Australia did well recruiting him.

    Agree. We could do with a few more MPs of that calibre.

    Burgey @ #236 Friday, April 12th, 2019 – 12:01 pm

    Shorten just buried Dutton. Absolutely hammered the turd. Good on him

    🙂

    –––––––––

    “I believe in a fair go for those who have a go in this country,”
    “if you have a go, you get a go”
    ScoMo

    The fair go is not the reward for having a go, it is what gives you the chance to have a go.

    That is what ‘fair go’ means.

  45. ‘It’s a bit rich of Josh Freydenburg talking about the highest taxing government in Australia’s history when his party under John Howard actually is the highest taxing government in Australia’s history…’

    Something you didn’t hear anybody from the ALP say today.
    Come on, time to push back, don’t let the opportunities go begging we’re in an election campaign.

  46. Self-aggrandisement, narcissism and false empathy. ……..Nath, you’ve got Morrison down to the tee. Holding -off elections, shutting down Parliament, tears during his disability policy launch, millions of bucks on “Government” advertising and “look-at- me”appearances, plum jobs for the boys. All out of the public purse. Tell ’em how it is.

  47. I’m told the Treasury Costings emanated from Frydenburg’s Office.
    The Treasury crime is the silence from their end.

  49. RED13 – if Treasury are being silent, there will have to be a serious purge after the election, which will be entirely justified. I can recall, in the back of my mind, something similar happening in a previous election (2013) and the secretaries of PM&C and Treasury made a public statement.

  50. “I’m told the Treasury Costings emanated from Frydenburg’s Office.
    The Treasury crime is the silence from their end.”

    Yes. If it is so, Gaetjen’s job, for which he is paid over $500K per year of our taxes, not Liberal Party funds, is to protect the reputation and integrity of Treasury. IF somebody falsely claims something is a Treasury document, and it is not, he must act. At present, Frydenberg is not his boss.

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