BludgerTrack records a movement to the Coalition this week, but in keeping with the zeitgeist, this is more about changes in preference assumptions rather than voting intention. Specifically, I’ve decided to apply a crude 60-40 split in favour of the Coalition on One Nation preferences, as Newspoll has been doing since the start of last year.
A while back I came up with an elaborate mechanism to allocate One Nation preferences based on respondent-allocated two-party polling data, the true purpose of which was to produce a figure more favourable to the Coalition than the 50-50 split recorded in the 15 seats the party contested in 2016, which only partisan optimists (hello to you all) expect to be repeated this time. However, this has been increasingly ineffective due to the paucity of respondent-allocated results since ReachTEL’s national polling stopped around a year ago. It seemed to me that something needed to be done though, and I have been persuaded by the position of David Briggs at YouGov Galaxy that 60-40 is a conservative approximation (albeit an arbitrary one) given the preference flows at the last two state elections at which One Nation made a serious effort in lower house seats, namely Queensland (65.2% of preferences to the Liberal National Party) and Western Australia (60.6% to the Liberals).
I am not, however, convinced that the same thing should be done with the United Australia Party, as Newspoll has now started doing. The Palmer United Party had Labor last on every how-to-vote card in 2013, yet 46.3% of their voters still put Labor ahead of the Coalition. In addition to the impact of the heavily publicised preference deal, Briggs points to the fact that UAP voters in the latest Newspoll sample strongly favoured Scott Morrison over Bill Shorten on the question of trust, but this strikes me as thin gruel given the small sample size. Kevin Bonham makes the point that the Sinophobic bent of Palmer’s current campaign might be capturing a more right-wing audience than last time, which may well be so. However, he also makes the very good point that Palmer “may be taking Coalition-friendly voters from the Others pile, so the remaining Others may on balance be slightly Labor-leaning”.
All things considered, I don’t see enough reason to stop treating the UAP as part of the amorphous collection of “others” and to continue allocating its collective preferences as per the 2016 result, which was basically 50-50 – particularly not in the context of an election at which anti-government sentiment is harder than it was last time, based on all available evidence. In any case, I will not for the time being be making the effort to produce a trend measure from the UAP, whose primary vote will remain locked up in BludgerTrack’s aggregated “others” measure.
The upshot of all this is that the dial has moved 0.5% in favour of the Coalition on two-party preferred, but only 0.2% of this is due to the addition of the new polls this week from YouGov Galaxy, Newspoll and Essential Research. The Coalition has gained three on the seat projection, consisting of one each in Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia. The addition of new state data has smoothed off what hitherto seemed excessive movement in the Coalition’s favour in New South Wales, although it’s had the opposite effect in Western Australia. Labor continues to be credited with eight gains in Queensland, which seems rather a lot, but elsewhere the projections seem in line with what the major parties are expecting.
Full results can be accessed through the link below, which is permanently available on the sidebar.
And while you’re about, don’t miss the latest edition of Seat du Jour in the post below this one, covering Peter Dutton’s seat of Dickson.
ar
Assuming the banks do the ethical thing, and pass the decrease on in full.
You missed the 100% sarcasm emoji
“The problem with that approach is it ruins your ability to get anything done when in power, as you don’t have even a whiff of a mandate for any particular policy”
Indeed. I think it would be pretty sad if the only party that’s gone in with detailed policies, which result in some losers, for a number of elections lost. I’m not a fan of the small target concept.
I also agree with the point in terms of the impact on government of the small target strategy.
I guess my point was that I wouldn’t be at all surprised that the people who are polled as favouring tax increases to fund spending don’t actually support those policies when it’s time to put pencil to paper.
“You posted a comment a few days ago saying wtte that watching where the leaders are going tells you much more about the state of play than listening to what they are saying. Using this method you concluded that Labor was on track to win fairly easily.
This latest observation seems to suggest that you’re not so sure now. What are the moves of the leaders telling you now.”
Frankly I’m just frustrated. I reckon Labor will probably win with 80+ seats but I don’t think Bill has been seen in Queensland, especially FNQ, since Pepe Le Pew took his roadshow through the state. That’s pretty telling.
That said, I’ve always thought Queenslanders to be a feckless lot and estimates of a 7-10+ seat gain on bludgertrack have always been discounted by me. Pepe has probably just brought out the worst in the Queenslander Cain toads. That said, I thought a plus 2-3 seat gain was realistic last week. Not so sanguine now.
Right now, even with an apparent narrowing trend I’d say labor is looking at a starting point of 72 seats following the AEC redistributions. Then, state by state we are looking at the following (being moderately pessimistic. I still believe that Labor is still just ahead of these pessimistic tea leaves):
Queensland: 0 (zero net movements)
NSW: Labor +3
Victoria (allowing for the theoretical gain of 3 seats to start with): another +2
Tasmania: -1
South Australia: 0
WA: +2
NT: -1
Leaving Labor with 77 seats.
While that laughable Fisher “report” is getting publicly torn to shreds, the UK parliament has declared a climate emergency
What’s ScoMo’s response to that, media?
“* Assuming the banks do the ethical thing, and pass the decrease on in full.”
They don’t and they won’t.
Taking a week’s leave to person a pre-polling booth for Labor. I am told Pearce is absolutely 50-50. Pre-election seat poll had Libs in front by 4% I think. We’ll see how it goes.
Given some on this blog drone on endlessly about how Labor isn’t doing enough and others about how they should be promising nothing, it looks like damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Andrew Earlwood
From before the election campaign started, I have imagined 77 seats to Labor. Just scrapping over line.
Of course, things can change between now and election. So I might revise my thinking. Lol!
Hey! I said that last week after Karvelas took to Butler.
Grog copying me again?
Confessions says:
Thursday, May 2, 2019 at 7:22 am
Anyone thought that was their point!
https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/climate-change-link-to-global-droughts-goes-back-a-century-study-finds-20190501-p51j2n.html
Interesting material – not up to the standard of “what’s the good oil on the fifth race at Flemington” – but mildly interesting.
A dried-out arm of Lake Eildon in north-eastern Victoria during Easter this year.
A suggestion to global warming deniers. Arrange to be cremated upon your demise. This will obviate the chances of post-mortem ritual exhumation by your grand whatevers as they seek to hang you in chains to delight the crows and ravens of the fields.
Nearly time for my weekly couple of hours of day release.
Over and out. 😲
Simon² Katich® @ #155 Thursday, May 2nd, 2019 – 10:57 am
It’s the fairy dust, SK. It’s powerful stuff. 😀
From the AEC website this morningAEC
✔
About 375,000 people have cast a pre-poll vote after three days of early voting, running at approx 125,000 votes per day so far. This compares to a total of 225,000 votes at the same stage of the 2016 federal election.
Way out west, good work on the pre-polling. I’ve taken leave as well.
Would love to get Pearce but just can’t see it happening. Hopefully I’m wrong. What’s your sense of the other WA marginals?
meher baba says:
Thursday, May 2, 2019 at 7:34 am
Meher,
He’s 57 and has lived in Australia since he was 7.
We basically made and so we should own him.
In this case it is clearly trying to dump our problem on somebody else.
So…Skynooze have a “debate” in Brisbane on Friday. Any info on whether or not anyone has agreed to another “debate” as yet? NPC or ABC??
3.6% actually. So call it about a 3% swing. If uniform, that would put the national result somewhere between 52-48 and 53-47 (to Labor, in both instances).
You can’t just deny you said something, when there’s cold, hard evidence that you did!
Emily Baker
✔
@emlybkr
· 1h
Question time begins with a question on Lyons Liberal candidate Jessica Whelan’s comments about Islam (which she denies making). The Premier says it’s a matter for the Liberal Party, but says he’s been clear in standing for diversity, tolerance, multiculturalism #politas
Emily Baker
✔
@emlybkr
Premier Will Hodgman says there’s “no doubt” if Ms Whelan made those comments she should be disendorsed. #politas #AusVotes2019
10:24 AM – May 2, 2019
Barney @10.58, that was my thought too. As soon as I heard “sitting on his yought” while crying poor, my immediate reaction was they (the ABC) are just taking the piss.
Darn from earlier
I managed to read that Niki Savva article. Currently in a meeting – will try it again. Reasonably sensible – which of course meant many instant crazy comments (which I could also see surprisingly as not always the case).
When any writer in The Australian makes the slightest criticism of anything Liberal/National the comments section goes right off! Much more vicious than anything on PB and the vitriol is directed more at the writer than Labor!
After being energised by Bill last night, I am now enervated by Andrew Earlwood’s last post.
@Martin, I have no insight into other marginals in WA.
@ar, sorry, I round like Newspoll 🙂
Big A Adrian @ #165 Thursday, May 2nd, 2019 – 11:13 am
Or, they can’t see the wood for the trees through the mote in their own privileged eyes.
ABC Online leading with this, not the climate change costings crap
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-02/darkest-day-in-liberals-federal-election-campaign/11065580
I fell asleep last night (as is my wont) listening to the BBC Overseas Service, via ABC News Radio.
Throughout the night as I tossed and turned I’d catch a scrap of interview or a snippet of program, before dozing off again.
Listening to these bits and pieces of BBC output made me realize why I can’t stand Leigh Sales: she is permanently cranky and snappy, especially with Labor interviewees.
This is what’s called “asking the hard questions”, and it is said to be Sales’ job. But should it be?
If the technique of hammering at people and rudely interrupting them over trivial gotchas doesn’t advance the tide of Human Knowledge, but only pisses off the viewers, why bother with it? We are none the wiser at the conclusion of the interview than we were at the start. Sure, we’ve witnessed someone being verbally roughed up, hounded, and sometimes outright insulted right there and then on live TV, but are we any better equipped to deal with the issue at hand for it?
The BBC is a far larger and thus more diverse organization than the ABC. It has more stories to tell, and reporters almost everywhere in the world to tell them. And perhaps their Overseas Service is the Beeb on its best behaviour, too.
But the quality and simple human courtesy of their interviewers – on foreign or domestic news subjects – is so stratospherically far above the churlish snappery that passes for “interviewing” on the ABC, especially from the ABC’s “gun” interviewers like Sales. That, and the BBC delivers information too. You don’t feel like you should be shouting at the screen, or pitching the radio into the pool after listening or viewing the BBC.
We know Sales can at least play nice. Give her a has-been muso, a clapped-out visiting entertainer on a farewell tour Downunder, or a theatrical type spruiking their latest show, and Sales can pull on the denins, go all goggle-eyed and act as girlish as the best of them. Or give her Malcolm Turnbull to chat to (but he’s a special case).
But give her almost anyone else and we see Sales turn into the female equivalent of Mr Hyde, an automatonic monster, dredged up from the sewers and back alleys of inner city Ultimo with a grudge and a list of questions to fling at her hapless guest. It’s rotten interviewing – vicious and unpleasant – and its lousy time management: so many precious minutes wasted on going the gotcha.
The ABC being much smaller than the BBC, it’s harder for ABC on-air presenters to be buffered from the hurly-burly of political interference and the hard-edged jostling of minister’s minders. There just aren’t enough layers of management, and isn’t sufficient depth of talent to protect fearless interviewers. So we get fearful ones or, much much worse, those already partisan, safe in their jobs because they know what is expected of them and willingly comply with direction.
In short the ABC is a small-time antipodean outfit, too easily corrupted and threatened, and embarrassingly short of talent. What genuine talent they manage to develop often flees the scene for greener pastures (you’ll all have your own list of favourite ex-ABC treasures) leaving only the diehards and smalltime hacks to toe the Tory line with rotely chanted “hard questions”.
Whether Leigh Sales was unusually grumpy last night because Bill Shorten had jilted her at the altar of debate, I don’t know, but her interview with him on that occasion was a shocker.
This morning we shouldn’t be celebrating Shorten avoiding Sales’ thinly disguised verbal booby traps, but more we should be discussing his policy, its good and bad points.
However, Sales went for the tiredest, most obvious gotcha of all – “Where’s the money coming from?” – shrilly thrown across the table at Shorten, and easily batted away. But as to policy? No need to discuss that at all (or know anything about it, for that matter) if you can kill it in its tracks with a curly one or two on “costings”. Policy? From last night? The answer is “N.F.I.” – the usual sad and uninformative outcome of a Sales inquisition.
The Liberals are phone banking mobile numbers. Wife just got a called. I think she is now on the “no hope” list. Concerns, lack of action on climate change, denigration of minorities.
Phoner claimed to be a volunteer; where do they find volunteers? Hillsong church?
Can I just say, I don’t like Extremist Muslims, just like I don’t like Extremist Christians, or Extremist Buddhists, or any sort of Extremist. Our society is the poorer for all of them!
I was blessed to get text from UAP this morning.
C@t
Of course goes without saying.
BB
I wonder if the difference is the way the BBC is funded.
I feel better now having voted.
Managed 1 to 16 below the line before terminal stupor exhausted me.
Kay Jay
Had to go out and just got back. Thanks for that information. I’ll give it a shot.
meher baba says:
Thursday, May 2, 2019 at 9:14 am
Can you open a new coal mine without there being a cost?
Can you build a new power station without there being a cost?
Brian Fisher is the fossil fuel industry’s go-to consultant. The industry has paid for much of Fisher’s so-called ‘research’.
https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/brian-fisher-modelling-whats-the-story/
For those hoping/wishing/calling for a candidate to be disendorsed. Be careful what you wish for. Look what happened to the disendorsed candidate called Pauline Hanson !
I though Sales’ interview of Shorten was tough, hard hitting but fair; and he performed excellently under pressure. As long as she goes just as hard at Morrison I will be happy. The franking credits story was a joke though.
Victoria @ #175 Thursday, May 2nd, 2019 – 11:21 am
I am not so sure. Extremist Christians seem to be tolerated a lot more than Extremist anything else.
Jeremy Corbyn
Verified account
Labour has just forced the UK Parliament to declare a #ClimateEmergency.
Real politics comes from the ground up, and that’s what today has shown.
An emergency does not have to be a catastrophe – we now need a Green Industrial Revolution that will reprogramme our economy.
Labor the same in the UK regarding CC.
poroti @ #181 Thursday, May 2nd, 2019 – 11:31 am
So you think they shouldn’t be disendorsed?
@Andrew_Earlwood
Your prediction is similar to my low end estimate of Labor winning 78 seats. Although I expect the Coalition to lose more than 5-6 seats, these extra seats they will lose will be to centrist and center-right Independents. I can see them doing well, since some have considerable funding, along with possibly being seen as a ‘safe’ option for those voters who don’t like the current government, however are fearful of Labor’s negative gearing and franking dividend reform proposals.
AE
Leaving Labor with 77 seats.
_______________________
That would be a disaster for Shorten. A terrible government, 2 coups, 3 leaders.
In a similar situation Abbott got 90 seats and a 53.50 2PP.
That’s what happens when you put up an unlikeable factional warlord for leadership. Albo would have got over 90 and probably a 54.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/01/declare-formal-climate-emergency-before-its-too-late-corbyn-warns
C@tmomma
Meh, voters will take care of them. Just noting that a non disendorsed Poorlene would by now be a “Who?”.
Darn @ #72 Thursday, May 2nd, 2019 – 11:26 am
Chrome – when using Developer Mode Extensions such as Anti-Paywall and Bypass Paywalls – when Chrome opens there will be a little pop-up which you will click as indicated.
Works very well. 😻
@nath
Not if Anthony Albanese was proposing negative gearing and franking dividend reform changes. I suspect that is depressing the Labor vote a fair bit at the moment. However I don’t believe it will affect the vote for “Liberal” Independents who generally aren’t support those proposals. In fact in those seats where high profile candidates are running, Labor’s proposed policies might increase their vote.
Tristo
says:
Thursday, May 2, 2019 at 11:40 am
@nath
Not if Anthony Albanese was proposing negative gearing and franking dividend reform changes. I suspect that is depressing the Labor vote a fair bit. However I don’t believe it will affect the vote for “Liberal” Independents who generally aren’t support those proposals.
________________________________________
That’s an interesting point and an argument for why they should have introduced them during their first term rather than announce them before the election. A change of government election should all be about maximising your seats and vote for the long haul.
I expect Labor to win around 80 Seats (Because polling done by media is giving Labor a tight race routine).
I think comments by nationals saying young ppl are a problem.
“For those hoping/wishing/calling for a candidate to be disendorsed. Be careful what you wish for. Look what happened to the disendorsed candidate called Pauline Hanson !”
Best we can hope for is that it creates a bit of confusion on the day with Liberal voters that may impact negativley.
ALP limping over line would be a disaster for them in this current situation against a completely incompetent far-right incumbent.
It would also augur for a one-term government completely impotent thanks to a hostile senate to be followed by an even more conservative Coalition-led regime.
nath
“A change of government election should all be about maximising your seats and vote for the long haul.”
Did you advise Abbott re “no funding cuts” mantra that bit him spectacularly on the bottom?
My prediction REMAINS 52-48 (ish) 2PP
Labor: 82-84
Coalition: 63-61
Cross-bench: 6
Not seeing how the Coalition primary is going to make this close, because I don’t think the preference flows are going to be as reliable or predictable as the polling is expecting.
The idea that you introduce a significant reform ONCE in Government is a colossal misuse of public trust. See Gillard on carbon price and Abbott on… well, the entire 2014-15 Budget.
Zoidlord
I believe Labor will win about 80 seats on election day, since a few Coalition MP’s are definitely goners Peter Dutton, Tony Abbott, George Christensen, possibly Michael Sukkar, Greg Hunt, Andrew Hastie and Kevin Andrews. In Victoria I feel the Liberals are going to be annihilated by both Labor, Independents (Mallee and Kooyong) and maybe the Greens (Higgins and maybe Kooyong).
Also I think the Coalition is under serious threat in NSW seats beyond the Great Dividing Range. If the rumors I heard are true and New England will be close. I imagine how the Coalition are travelling in Parkes, Farrer, Riverina, Calare and maybe even Hume.