Perth’s Sunday Times has modestly sampled polls from the state’s three most marginal seats, conducted on Wednesday by YouGov Galaxy. These record well-inside-the-error-margin leads for three incumbents, two Liberal and one Labor:
Pearce (Liberal 3.6%): Christian Porter is credited with a lead of 51-49, from primary votes of Liberal 40% (45.4% at the 2016 election), Labor 35% (34.3%), Greens 11% (11.0%), One Nation 5% and the United Australia Party 2%. Compared with a Newspoll earlier in the campaign (which was presumably functionally identical to this one in its methods), the Liberals are steady, Labor are down one, the Greens are up three, One Nation is down one – and the United Australia Party is down fully six points. The sample for this poll was 525 (as was the Newspoll, give or take).
Swan (Liberal 3.6%): Steve Irons is likewise credited with a 51-49 lead, as he fights off a challenge from Labor’s Hannah Beazley. Primary votes are Liberal 44% (48.2% in 2016), Labor 37% (33.0%), Greens 11% (15.0%), United Australia Party 4% and One Nation 1%. Sample: 504.
Cowan (Labor 0.7%): Another 51-49 lead for an incumbent, this time Labor’s Anne Aly. The primary votes are Labor 41% (41.7% in 2016), Liberal 40% (42.2%), Greens 6% (7.6%), and United Australia Party and One Nation 4% each. Sample: 506.
Both the Palmer and Hanson parties are at notably modest levels of support, such that controversies about preferences allocation are less likely to arise. The two-party results, in any case, are all what you would reasonably expect from the primary votes.
Also today, the Sun-Herald reports a poll conducted by Lonergan Research for GetUp! has Zali Steggall leading Tony Abbott 56-44 in Warringah. The only detail offered on the primary vote is that Tony Abbott is on 38%. The poll was conducted on May 1 from a sample of 805, and may be the same poll that was discussed in yesterday’s post.
Further reading on Poll Bludger:
• Adrian Beaumont has a new post on Britain’s local government elections and national elections in Spain.
• Tasmania’s quaint yearly upper house periodical elections were held yesterday, in which a Labor incumbent defended a Hobart seat with a substantial swing, a Liberal incumbent retained a seat in the state’s north without one, and another looks likely to remain independent.
• Apropos the immediate subject of this post, today’s Seat du jour instalment covers the seat of Pearce.
I am feeling optimistic re the next polls put me down for 53/47 to ALP for each. however stay alert we need more lerts
@guytaur
I can certainly see a Shorten Labor government implement ‘truth in media laws’ and an expansion of 18c of the Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975. This is going to be even more likely after the Christchurch Terrorist attack.
Re the next Newspoll: there are too many moving parts to this campaign to make it easy to predict where it will go. On the one hand, Shorten performed really well this last week, and was starting to look positively Prime Ministerial. On the other hand, I reckon the Coalition finally started to get some traction with its attacks on Labor’s policies. The forced withdrawal of a number of candidates is a factor of which the impact is hard to predict.
And then there is the looming figure of Palmer and the question of where his preferences will end up going. Of course nobody can have any certainty about this and, on that basis, I reckon William is totally right to question Newspoll’s decision to assume that they will flow more strongly to the Coalition. However, I also think it would be reasonable for Laborites to consider the possibility that UAP preferences could flow more heavily towards the Coalition to represent a significant risk for their party’s chances.
What we do know is that, if it doesn’t move a bit closer to a reliable 51-49 or, worse still for the Coalition heads towards 52-48 or beyond, their prospects will become very bleak indeed.
Interestingly, the betting markets seem to be predicting that things aren’t going to get any better for the Coalition before election day. It’s always difficult to assess the extent to which there is very much smart money going into these markets, which makes me rather sceptical towards them. Still, the lengthening odds for a ScoMo victory do seem indicate that a group of people who follow the contest closely enough to want to risk their money on it consider that it is more or less done and dusted.
I reckon everything hinges on the extent of the impact of the Coalition’s negativity towards Labor’s tax package and, to a lesser extent, its climate change policies. I have to say that, if you measure his performance against the model established by PJK in 1993 in his relentless attack on the GST, ScoMo doesn’t seem to me to have gone in quite as hard as he might have done. Maybe he has access to internal party polling that suggests that he isn’t going to win whatever he’s going to do. Maybe some of that internal polling is surreptitiously informing the betting markets.
It is usual during a campaign for political parties to periodically drop tidbits of internal polling information to the press gallery. Labor has done a bit of this, but the Coalition less so. This is possibly not a good sign.
So, in conclusion, I’ll go with 52-48. But I’m not overly confident.
Meanwhile, Scotty has moved his Stunt-a-Thon ™ to Dobell, looking to shore up the inflatable bubble vote
Didn’t realise the Coalition policy speech still DOESN’T have a venue.
Wow!
@meher baba
For me the only poll that matters is the one on election day, so I am predicting a Labor two party preferred vote of 51-52%. That would mean a small Labor majority, with an outside chance of a hung parliament. Also I feel there is going to be a size-able cross-bench after the election.
LR – my guesses:
Tonight’s NewsPoll 51:49. There seems to be a 3-5 day lag, and the disendorsment shit had yet to hit the GRASPer fan earlier this week, so I think Mordor can keep it’s talon on the scales until next week. Next week’s NewsPoll will be unable to maintain discipline, so it may blow out to 52:48 (ie 54:46 national real term)
Essential 52:48, rising to 53:47 in a week’s time.
Welcome aboard the good ship ADV 53-46
guytaur says:
Sunday, May 5, 2019 at 11:01 am
I’m scared of nothing here.
I’m just amazed at your fixation of something that definitely won’t happen in the short term and yet you use it in saying how you think things will change after the election.
Personally I think a period of good, stable Government will contribute much more in this area than your fantasy. 🙂
Briefly
I am not ignoring.
You may not have noticed it. Candidates that are embracing that extremism are dropping like flies.
That includes a Labor candidate under attack from the right for his comments that they would defend if it was one of their own.
guytaur says:
Sunday, May 5, 2019 at 10:56 am
Briefly
Also it’s good to remember that Australia and Canada do generally have far more in common than Australia and the US.
Governing is difficult. If it was easy Socialist Alliance would have got a go at running a council by now
True, winning is very difficult. Since 1929, Labor have won from Opposition just 4 times. We may fall short again this time. If we do, it will be in no small part due to the incessant campaign against Labor by the Lib-kin.
Putting you in prison, Boerwar, would not be a proportionate response to your anti-Green trolling.
I think we already use imprisonment far too much. The only thing that prison is good for is to physically separate dangerous people from the community. Prison should be limited to those offenders who pose such a high risk to public safety that community-based behavioural and clinical and risk management supports are not sufficient to keep the public safe from that person’s pathologies.
Clearly you are not in that category.
The damage that you do is minimal. Only a handful of Greens supporters read your troll posts, and the suffering is limited to boredom more than anything else. I doubt that anybody is developing depression, anxiety, or suicidality after reading your five thousandth post about the Greens.
“max says:
Sunday, May 5, 2019 at 11:05 am
Fantasy poll – 58-42….now that would stir things up”
Now, in your fantasy, who would that be between?
Lab v LNP? Lab v Greens?
We have won from Opposition just 4 times in 90 years. Since the rise of the Lib-Kin late in the 20th century, next to nothing has been achieved in Australia. The Left is institutionally divided and the Right are marching.
Terrific.
Nicholas @ #211 Sunday, May 5th, 2019 – 11:16 am
🙂
Shorter TFF: the Coalition is truly fucked but I would rather not think about it.
Morning all. A belated thanks to BK for his roundup. Like others I thought Shorten had a good week last week and look forward to what Newspoll might hold. I have found the relative absence of national polling so far in such a crucial election contest quite odd to say the least.
I have endured too many of the coalition’s attack adds on TV recently. They really are shameless distortions of the truth. Complaining about Labor’s debt built up in the GFC whilst they have doubled it when times were good. Not forgetting the zero real wage growth and cuts to services.
It was unfortunate Labor messed up in the first week (Shorten on the tax changes and Plibersek saying a broken promise to raise school funding was akin to a cut). But since then Labor has been competent, while a divided, incompetent and probably outright corrupt government clings desperately to power. And finally, Labor has faced reality on climate change, allowing it to point out the coalition cannot. I will say Newspoll 52/48 to Labor. Anything better for the coalition is an indictment of the sanity of the Australian people.
Newspoll shouldnt have made up preference flows. Lost credibility IMO. Might turn out they are right but pollsters job is not to make guesses.
poroti
says:
Sunday, May 5, 2019 at 9:51 am
C@t
The definition of “troll’ they use will mean nath gets a tick of approval,
______________________
you think I’m a troll?
Howdy Boer….good to see you bludging
Apparently Anastasia P will be reading a letter from Hawkie.
I’m betting there won’t be a dry seat in the room after that.
KK is such a damn star.
I am coming to the view that Greg Jennet is an idiot
sprocket_ @ #368 Sunday, May 5th, 2019 – 11:13 am
Another ScuMo clone emerges from the spawning chamber. The old one was recycled as an offering to Kipfler, the Potato God at the crossroads at midnight. That’s why Igor FrydieWelt had to front up to Insiders this morning.
And apparently former PMs PJK, KR and JG will be seated together, and acknowledged together
Tristo
Yes. Mr Shorten gave me real hope on this one snubbing Murdoch.
I think it might be part of the desperation. The Murdoch business model of fear and division doesn’t work in Canada.
One of the unity tickets for Rudd and Gillard would be this.
Don’t write crap!
Murdoch is a cancer on democracy.
“briefly says:
Sunday, May 5, 2019 at 11:18 am
We have won from Opposition just 4 times in 90 years. Since the rise of the Lib-Kin late in the 20th century, next to nothing has been achieved in Australia. The Left is institutionally divided and the Right are marching.
Terrific.”
So you don’t think Gillard or Rudd (spit!) achieved anything??
Tristo says:
Sunday, May 5, 2019 at 11:12 am
How would any of this impacted on Christchurch?
sprocket_
says:
Sunday, May 5, 2019 at 11:23 am
And apparently former PMs PJK, KR and JG will be seated together, and acknowledged together
_____________________________________
Will Shorten introduce KR and JG as his victims?
sprocket:
Sky News talking heads have said JG and KR will walk into the venue side by side.
Socrates, Labor May fall across the line on the strength of the climate-change vote and cost-of-living reactions.
But one thing is already clear. The Lib-kin will vote with all the Lib-clones to defeat Labor’s climate policies.
Really, as long as the Lib-kin play in the Lib sandpit, this is an election that can not resolve things. It is a preface to more dysfunction. In this sense, the Libs will win either way.
J34………….the point with Tingle, is I think she may have got the vibe wrong…………She says she senses she has not picked up a “time for change” thing, a view to which she is entitled. However, the journos often get hammered for living in the CPG bubble and I sought to put her view against the one touted by the STs here in Perth which suggests that even Liberal supports sense a change is coming – with a Shorten win – and to the extent that voters basically have better sense than many journos, the locals may be on the money. I notice someone said Speers senses a change………………..not that he is any better informed than Tingle I would suppose.
The reality is that were it not for the guesses, Labor would be solidly on 52-53 based on their primary vote.
We’ll see in under two weeks whether it was a wise move.
Not having watched Sky News for some years now, I am surprised at the tone of their commentary. Speers, Gilbert and the woman are talking as if Labor has this election all sewn up.
nath
Nah, just that the Coalition will not class you as one.
Looks like an arsehole to me.
PaulTu says:
Sunday, May 5, 2019 at 11:24 am
“briefly says:
Sunday, May 5, 2019 at 11:18 am
We have won from Opposition just 4 times in 90 years. Since the rise of the Lib-Kin late in the 20th century, next to nothing has been achieved in Australia. The Left is institutionally divided and the Right are marching.
Terrific.”
So you don’t think Gillard or Rudd (spit!) achieved anything??
Remarkably little of their accomplishments have endured even 5 years of Lib rule. This is mostly attributable to institutionalised division in the traditional Labor-positive plurality.
poroti
says:
Sunday, May 5, 2019 at 11:26 am
nath
Nah, just that the Coalition will not class you as one.
______________________
Well I should hope not. They paid me good money for my anti-Shorten campaign.
I wonder if Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull will walk in together at Scotty’s launch next week ( location TBD)
Will anyone introduce nath as rational?
sprocket_ @ #222 Sunday, May 5th, 2019 – 11:22 am
That took you a while, but better late than never.
rhwombat
I thought that plastic bubble was the Liberal policy solution for housing affordability?
I take people’s point on the dubious manipulation of previous Newspolls. There is obviously a lot of media smoke being blown for ScumMo at present. Some people are spinning for him as though their jobs depend on it…
sprocket_ @ #239 Sunday, May 5th, 2019 – 9:29 am
Jim Chalmers said that is one thing we won’t ever see. 😀
Wow!
Lyne Fomiatti
@LyneFomiatti
Good decision…
Labor puts end of cashless welfare card on the table
https://thewest.com.au/politics/federal-politics/labor-puts-end-of-cashless-welfare-card-on-the-table-ng-b881082060z?utm_campaign=share-icons&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&tid=1556922187298
nath would NEVER be considered a social media troll by the Liberal Party! 😆
nath
They are paying you money ? What fools, everyone knows you’d do it for nothing as a labour of love. 🙂
Labor does in my opinion fess, have this election in the bag.
I sensed a disturbance in the force, shall we say, last week when the bullshit and lies from scomo and the Murdochracy reached peak insanity.
It was their last shot in the locker, they gave it everything.
Labor kept their nerve, steadied and are forging ahead.
Scomos Latham moment resonated, negatively, a lot more than people realise.
A lot of women I know were repelled by that, imo that’s a tipping point.
looks like someone is giving Rudd a wedgie.
If I were the coalition nath, I’d be demanding a refund for a wasted investment.