BludgerTrack: 52.5-47.5 to Labor

Not much doing in the one published poll to emerge since the start of the election campaign, reflected in a stable reading from the BludgerTrack poll aggregate.

Despite the onset of the election campaign, there is only one new data point to add to BludgerTrack this week, which is a status quo 52-48 result from Newspoll that has duly little effect on the national vote trends. Such movement as there is is away from One Nation and towards the Coalition on the primary vote, with next to no impact on two-party preferred or the seat projection, where the Coalition makes a single gain in Victoria.

Since there is no new state-level data this week, the breakdowns continue to record an unnatural looking lurch to the Coalition in New South Wales, which I would want to see corroborated by more data. The leadership trends are interesting in that an upswing in Scott Morrison’s net approval has returned him, just barely, to net positive territory. The effect on preferred prime minister is more modest, but there appears to be a slight trend in his favour there too.

However, the biggest news in BludgerTrack this week as far as I’m concerned is that a helpful reader has told me how to fix the bug that was preventing the state breakdown tabs from working much of the time. If this was causing you grief before, there is a very good chance it will not be doing so if you try again now, which you can do through the link below.

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.

1,586 comments on “BludgerTrack: 52.5-47.5 to Labor”

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  1. EGW @ #1231 Friday, April 19th, 2019 – 5:39 pm

    Greensborough Growler @ #1224 Friday, April 19th, 2019 – 5:32 pm

    EGW @ #1220 Friday, April 19th, 2019 – 5:28 pm

    Greensborough Growler @ #1200 Friday, April 19th, 2019 – 4:56 pm

    I’m sure Morrison works with local charities as well.

    Facile pissing contests about who is more virtuous is rubbish.

    You don’t understand the ‘Prosperity Gospel’ do you?
    If they were any good, they would have “had a go and got a go”.
    God would have rewarded the virtuous.

    I understand you are a moron. That’s enough for me to deal with you.

    WOW! Wait till Yabba sees this.
    You appeared to have transferred allegiance from the Roman Paedophile Protection Society to the Pentecostal nutters.
    Or have you diversified your superstitions?

    yawn!

  2. 2353NM

    Yes but at least Queensland still gets its fair share of overall Commonwealth funds, however mis- allocated. ACT does not.

    This highlights the need for reform in Australian infrastructure funding processes. All very well for IA to have a good assessment process if ScumMo just ignores it and gives most of the money to his mates’ pet projects, some of which were not even assessed.

  3. Firefox

    I didn’t know that about Canberra. I does look like a pretty city. And I guess you have a dry climate there or has climate change messed with things?

  4. Boerwar @ #1233 Friday, April 19th, 2019 – 5:41 pm

    GG
    I have been following this closely for three years.
    I do believe that I was the first scribe in any context anywhere in Australia who pointed out the Irish issues relating to Brexit.
    You read it first on Bludger!
    My view, FWIW, is that there was a constellation of related views that doomed the UK to a Brexit fuck up.
    They went into the first 18 months of the negotiations believing that the EU was going to have the same view about the Irish that they did: that the Irish were expendable.
    IMO, FWIW, it was not a realization that the Troubles would return that woke them up to Ireland. It was their fundamentally bad judgement that the EU was going to go along with some set of flub words that equated to betraying the Irish.
    One fulcrum in this total cockup was that May’s election handed the NI ratbags the BOP.
    Things that were already bad suddenly became immeasurably worse.
    The problem might just go away to some extent if a customs union is negotiated.
    But this would still leave a fundamental issue.
    The Leavers wanted to control their borders in the sense of controlling people flows.
    This would imply the need to have 500km of people controls (aka hard border) along the Irish border even if there is a customs union.

    John the Baptist ddi the same sort of thing.

    Jt didn’t end well for him personally>

  5. a r says:
    Friday, April 19, 2019 at 6:12 pm

    Labor tanking in the betting markets. Especially for Bass.
    __________________________
    I wonder how things are going in Dunkley. Although I place no weight on anecdotal evidence, I have some that the Libs anti-EV sentiments went down pretty well there. Guess we will see.

  6. My partner is wondering if we will get an Easter message from the Cardinal….from Pentridge (or its equivalent)…

  7. torchbearer says:
    Friday, April 19, 2019 at 6:16 pm

    My partner is wondering if we will get an Easter message from the Cardinal….from Pentridge (or its equivalent)…
    ________________________________
    In Victoria they keep the pedophiles and corrupt cops in Ararat.

  8. Socrates ,

    The ACT is basically a city state.

    Very different funding requirements to the other States, where the population is more dispersed and the areas are larger.

  9. What?

    Tanking in the betting markets so badly that Sportsbet are offering
    Labor @ $1.22
    Coalition @ $4.00.

    You mean that sort of tanking?

    I suspect that you assumed no-one would fact check you

  10. Sportsbet is still showing Labor pretty short paying about $2.80 to win between 81 and 90 seats.

    Also showing Labor favourite in 24 Victorian seats. Does that sound about right?

    AR

    Which seats are Labor tanking in?

  11. nath @ #1259 Friday, April 19th, 2019 – 6:18 pm

    torchbearer says:
    Friday, April 19, 2019 at 6:16 pm

    My partner is wondering if we will get an Easter message from the Cardinal….from Pentridge (or its equivalent)…
    ________________________________
    In Victoria they keep the pedophiles and corrupt cops in Ararat.

    It’s ironic we keep the worst of the worst in facilities that provide the maximum personal protection.

  12. Late Riser @ #1176 Friday, April 19th, 2019 – 4:06 pm

    Barney,

    Sure there is some level of creativity in the science, coming up with an original question to explore, deciding how you use the tools available or inventing new ones to investigate it.

    As for science not being independent, that to me goes against one of the core principles of science.

    If I set up an experiment, then my results need to be able to be duplicated by others performing the same experiment independent of my direct input.

    I would argue that creativity is the very soul of science. New ideas have to come from somewhere. Science works as it does because we force ourselves to ask the universe the same questions we ask ourselves. And we don’t accept the first or even second answer that it gives us. Science is anchored in the universe, but it is a product of our imagination.

    So for me science is dependent on human interpretation of experimental results. If you like, the universe keeps us honest. (That was a value judgement. 😊) If I may, you said it yourself about asking original questions. Questions frame the answer. The frame is human.

    The scientific proces comprises:
    1. Proposing a testable hypothesis, about a natural process or phenomenon, and its salient features or outcomes.
    2. Devising repeatable experiments and / or data collection procedures which will demonstrate the correctness, or otherwise, of your hypothesis.
    4. Carrying out the proposed experiments, and/or data collection procedures, multiple times, and recording all data and outcomes which relate to your hypothesis.
    5. Carrying out appropriate statistical analysis to show that the experimental outcomes, or conclusions stemming from the data are highly unlikely to occur due to random variation.
    6. Recording the whole process, in detail, so that your procedures and analysis can be replicated by others.
    7. Publishing a paper setting forth the hypothesis, the scientific process undertaken, and the conclusions drawn.

    The fascinating observation, to me, is that there are, of course, an infinite number of hypotheses that can be postulated and tested, and therefore an infinite number of ‘provable’, ‘correct’ hypotheses that exist, floating in the ether, to be discovered.

    The true genius of science lies in the formulation of hypotheses to test, which relies on the ‘gut feeling’ of the scientists in any particular field. Einstein came up with the theories of relativity, and the ‘necessity’ of existence of black holes, out of pure ‘thinking’ about the nature of time and light.

  13. BW, the Brits forgot or failed to appreciate the depth of the German dislike of internal borders. And as a former East German Merkel would have been easy to bring to the Irish point of view.

  14. Once again, the reporting backed my intuition – highest percentage enrolment in history. Guess where the increase came from.…………… young people!!!!
    Greens 13% is also not out of the question, considering ABC Vote Compass found for the first time ever that Climate Change is the number 1 issue. My big call is Greens to win the toffee nosed seat of Higgins.

  15. yabba

    Einstein came up with the theories of relativity, and the ‘necessity’ of existence of black holes, out of pure ‘thinking’ about the nature of time and light.

    He also had the data that Michelson & Morley gave the world, which you can trace back to earlier thinking and experimenting.

    Thank you too for pointing out that it’s not science unless it is reported and verified.

  16. ‘Late Riser says:
    Friday, April 19, 2019 at 6:30 pm

    BW, the Brits forgot or failed to appreciate the depth of the German dislike of internal borders. And as a former East German Merkel would have been easy to bring to the Irish point of view.’

    Lots and lots variables. One of these is that the Irish Government was, energetic, coherent in its diplomacy on this matter. For example, while everyone else was just starting to think about things, the Irish had already locked in the EU to protecting wtte The Good Friday Agreement. The EU itself may not have twigged what this meant in the early days. And once the EU were committed to maintaining the equivalent to the Good Friday Agreement it was sort of boxed in.

  17. I have read that voter enrollment is considerably up at this election, especially among the 18-24 year old voters. Climate change is an existentialist issue to many in that age bracket, that could mean a considerably higher vote for the Greens than the polls are showing. They could get senators elected in every state, along with winning a few more lower house seats.

  18. a r says:
    Friday, April 19, 2019 at 6:12 pm
    Labor tanking in the betting markets. Especially for Bass.

    —————-

    The same tanking like in the by-elections where labor was suppose to lose Batman , Braddon and Longman ?

  19. a r @ #1256 Friday, April 19th, 2019 – 6:12 pm

    Labor tanking in the betting markets. Especially for Bass.

    ONLY for Bass, if you call Labor 1.90 to Coalition 1.82 ‘tanking’.

    The 3 other seats that Labor holds are all firmly in the tank for Labor and Andrew Wilkie is home and hosed in his seat.

    https://www.sportsbet.com.au/betting/politics/australian-federal-politics/australian-federal-election-tas-seats-4147613

    You have a very loose definition of ‘tanking’, a r.

  20. Rex Douglas says:
    Friday, April 19, 2019 at 6:28 pm

    Not even Shorten can lose this election.

    Take the odds on Labor NOW !

    You’re still here!

    I thought you’d gone off to map out your grand 6-9 year plan for urgent change.

  21. Yabba: “The scientific proces comprises:
    1. Proposing a testable hypothesis, about a natural process or phenomenon, and its salient features or outcomes.
    2. …”

    and (related to this first step):
    “The true genius of science lies in the formulation of hypotheses to test, which relies on the ‘gut feeling’ of the scientists in any particular field.”

    C S Peirce tried (with some success) to formalize this first step more fully, based on the notion of “logical abduction” / “abductive reasoning”:
    – “a form of logical inference which starts with an observation or set of observations then seeks to find the simplest and most likely explanation for the observations”

    This process is more than “gut feeling” (though there’s a lot of that) and also includes Occam’s Razor, parsimony etc. The aim is to generate plausible hypotheses for which it is worthwhile to conduct experiments. Peirce had a sort of economic model: given scarce resources are available to science, which experiments should be performed.

    Observing that robots/AI will soon start to do science, there is renewed interest in this (partial) mechanisation or automation of the scientific process. And the Peirce approach is much more useful in practice than the doctrine promulgated by Popper (who actually admired the work of Peirce, though not as much as he admired his own cleverness)

  22. Hamish Macdonald
    ‏Verified account @hamishNews
    15m15 minutes ago

    Angus Taylor YESTERDAY: “has never had a direct or indirect financial interest in EAA or any assoc’d company.”

    TODAY: He was also a consultant for EAA 09/10 “on normal commercial terms”.

    TONIGHT: there’s a difference between ‘an interest’ & being paid as consultant. #auspol

  23. Rex Douglas says:
    Friday, April 19, 2019 at 6:28 pm
    Not even Shorten can lose this election.

    Take the odds on Labor NOW !

    —————-

    That is correct Rex , Shorten will be re-elected for his seat and Labor will comfortably win the seats required to be in government

  24. Wayne: “Breaking news the Coalition are now favourites to win the May election 1.22 Coalition to ALP 4.00”
    If only the Libs had made Wayne Treasurer – and not Joe, Scott and Josh – things might have been better for them right now.

  25. C@tmomma says:
    Friday, April 19, 2019 at 6:48 pm

    Has a r been drinking The Greens’ Kool Aid!?!
    __________________
    Careful a.r. It doesn’t take much to be sent for re-education around here.

  26. Zoidlord @ #1280 Friday, April 19th, 2019 – 6:49 pm

    Hamish Macdonald
    ‏Verified account @hamishNews
    15m15 minutes ago

    Angus Taylor YESTERDAY: “has never had a direct or indirect financial interest in EAA or any assoc’d company.”

    TODAY: He was also a consultant for EAA 09/10 “on normal commercial terms”.

    TONIGHT: there’s a difference between ‘an interest’ & being paid as consultant. #auspol
    ” rel=”nofollow”>

    Soooo happy CBS bought Channel 10 and not the scurvy Murdoch knaves.

  27. nath @ #1284 Friday, April 19th, 2019 – 6:50 pm

    C@tmomma says:
    Friday, April 19, 2019 at 6:48 pm

    Has a r been drinking The Greens’ Kool Aid!?!
    __________________
    Careful a.r. It doesn’t take much to be sent for re-education around here.

    He needs to go to Maths Camp. Then English camp. 🙂

    Re-education Camp obviously hasn’t worked on you. 😆

  28. Sohar says:
    Friday, April 19, 2019 at 6:50 pm

    Wayne: “Breaking news the Coalition are now favourites to win the May election 1.22 Coalition to ALP 4.00”
    If only the Libs had made Wayne Treasurer – and not Joe, Scott and Josh – things might have been better for them right now.

    Yep, they would have reported a surplus for every year.

    Shame they expect a deficit in 2 years time. 😆

  29. Boerwar @ #2641 Friday, April 19th, 2019 – 4:39 pm

    rhw
    OH and self were discussing priorities for genuine massive reform of the health system.
    I would be curious to know what your views are on, say, the top five.
    One question we have is whether the College system tends to generate de facto monopolies combined with artificial scarcity and hence high pricing.

    Complex – and I’m not sure that a superannuated socialist zealot of a non-procedural Physician like me can be informed or objective enough to give reasonable responses. But that has never stopped me offering an opinion it the past, so I’m going for it.

    Medicine is seriously weird in most societies, but very peculiar in Australia. Medicine is an evolving Frankenstein’s monster. It is essentially a chimera of craft groups: diagnostic and theoretical Physicians (like me), Apothecaries and their descendant pharmacologists and oncologists, practical procedural Surgeons and their ilk (like the high -income procedural physicians, eg the interventional Cardiologists & Gastroenterologists), Intensivists & Anaesthetists who keep the victims of proceduralists alive long enough to survive, plus a smattering of even more obscure subspecialists, like psychiatrists, ophthalmologists, dermatologists etc. These are all very different roles, skills and extensive knowledge bases, all of which evolve rapidly within each practitioner’s working lifetime. No one, not even the most strenuously selected that get into the decade of basic training needed to practice Medicine independently, can get their head around all of it any more. When my father graduated in Medicine in 1954, there were 14 drugs in common use in hospitals – now the formulary runs to thousands. So most of us chose to subspecialise – apart from the poor bloody GPs, who have to cope with everything that comes through the door. This means that the spend most of their time reassuring the worried well, and getting anxious that they will miss something important during the 6 minutes that they have on the public tab. Specialisation (including General Practice) takes a minimum of 4 years on top of the decade of basic training – most of us spend at least 15 years to get to the point where we can practice independently. Medicine is not algorithmic, like nursing – you are only really needed when things go unexpectedly wrong. Every case is an exception. This cannot be taught theoretically and academically – it has to be experienced in systems where there is sufficient exposure and oversight to ensure that errors are picked and corrected before a patient suffers. That means that the teaching, enculturing and assessment of safety has to be like an apprenticeship by those with the esoteric practical skills already.

    On this background I cannot see any other system than the Colleges that would underwrite the teaching and assessment of the subspecialties. The power of the old exclusive guilds (like the Urologists or the Orthopods) to discriminate and regulate their numbers is slowly being eroded by numbers (and, in the case of the urologists by threats from the ACCC a few decades ago). Proceduralists have always been advantaged in the Australian system: they pay much more for cutting than thinking, mainly because non-medical funders cannot assess the complexity of thinking.

    If I had my druthers, I would like to see a Canadian (or Scandinavian)-like system that funded all parts of Medicine from a single central fund that paid public practice (including primary practice) by salary bands, and let the privateers squabble for the convenience of the worried wealthy. Not going to happen though.

  30. “still negging…”

    He never stops. Apparently there is no low he won’t stoop to in his quest to troll progressives. Typical RWNJ. So pathetic.

  31. William Bowe @ #1031 Friday, April 19th, 2019 – 12:44 pm

    Is it possible to have “Green contributors” on here identify their status in their posting names?

    Perhaps a green triangle in their avatars.

    I think it is a good idea to read or at least skim through people’s posts and not automatically scroll past someone because of their avatar. If their posts are consistently not of interest, then scroll past that poster. Just because someone is of a certain party does not mean their comments are always useless. At least give them time to create a track record. Otherwise it will end up as an exercise in confirmation bias.

  32. Wow. Some people are really touchy about the betting markets. I’m just saying what’s happened.

    that Sportsbet are offering
    Labor @ $1.22
    Coalition @ $4.00.

    You mean that sort of tanking?

    I suspect that you assumed no-one would fact check you

    Fact check? And yes, that sort of tanking.

    A week ago Labor was on 1.15/5.00 (or better). They’ve been trending steadily downwards since. If they stay on the same trajectory their election day prospects will not look good. That’s the only sort of tanking that matters this far out from polling day.

    ONLY for Bass, if you call Labor 1.90 to Coalition 1.82 ‘tanking’.

    I do. They’ve gone from 1.30/3.00 in front to evens.

    You have a very loose definition of ‘tanking’, a r.

    Perhaps. It’s ‘trending consistently downwards at a rate that, if sustained, will see Labor with no better than even odds come election day’.

  33. Anyone who is going to vote “1 Labor, 2 Greens” or “1 Greens, 2 Labor”, and also urge others to do the same, will get no argument from me. I suggest anyone else interested in seeing this Coalition Government replaced with a Labor one adopt the same attitude, and focus their arguments upon the defence of Labor and Green policies against Coalition attacks, and an assault upon Coalition policies and record in government. If you are Labor or Green and have a problem with the other’s position, very well … but why would you think now is the best time to air it in terms of achieving the greater good? That is, if you really do think it is the greater good.

  34. rhw
    Thank you.

    In our extended family we have a specialist, a cousin who died because of the malpractice of a drunken doctor, and several individuals who are still alive because of medical interventions of one sort or another. In my case six operations on my hands have kept them fairly functional, for which I am hugely grateful. I can’t tickle the ivories any more but much worse was in the offing. There have been short post op periods when I could not tie my shoelaces – and that makes you think!
    On the whole the system has kept a significant number of people in our family alive and well and functioning for much longer than would otherwise have been the case.
    Having watched the tortuous progress of our specialist to get there, I wonder why anyone would ever bother to become a specialist. They are practically robbed of their youth and young adulthood.

  35. “Firefox

    I didn’t know that about Canberra. I does look like a pretty city. And I guess you have a dry climate there or has climate change messed with things?”

    Well it is much more humid where I live now than in Canberra, but you’d expect that since I’m near the ocean in a subtropical climate, whereas Canberra has an inland/bush temperate climate. It’s quite unique among the capital cities in that regard since it’s the only one which is a considerable distance from the coast. It does get extremely hot and dry in Canberra during summer.

  36. A few Ladbrokes seat odds:

    Warringah
    Coalition 1.75; Independent 2

    Bass
    Labor 1.9; Coalition 1.8

    Dickson
    Labor 1.57; Coalition 2.5

    Braddon
    Labor 1.4; Coalition 2.75
    Is Morrison only rolling out the pork barrel for Bass and not for Braddon?

    Lindsay
    Labor 1.7; Coalition 2.05

  37. “Anyone who is going to vote “1 Labor, 2 Greens” or “1 Greens, 2 Labor”, and also urge others to do the same, will get no argument from me. I suggest anyone else interested in seeing this Coalition Government replaced with a Labor one adopt the same attitude, and focus their arguments upon the defence of Labor and Green policies against Coalition attacks, and an assault upon Coalition policies and record in government. If you are Labor or Green and have a problem with the other’s position, very well … but why would you think now is the best time to air it in terms of achieving the greater good? That is, if you really do think it is the greater good.”

    I shall be voting 1 Greens, followed by a couple of left wing minors like Animal Justice, then Labor. The Coalition and the far right minors are always last on my ballots.

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