BludgerTrack: 51.8-48.2 to Labor

Labor retains its modest yet decisive lead as three new polls record little change on two-party preferred, and two very different sets of leadership ratings largely cancel each other out.

Three new polls over the last week, from Newspoll, Ipsos and Essential Research, have made next to no difference on BludgerTrack’s reading of the two-party preferred, and none at all on the seat projection. The only change to report is movement from the major parties to the minor parties on the primary vote, with One Nation in particular bouncing back a little after a recent slump. I am not calculating a trend for the United Australia Party at this point – that will only change if I can find the time for it.

With little change in the state breakdowns, the story there continues to be consistent with both sides’ assessment of the situation everywhere except Queensland, where Labor is being credited with what seems an inordinately big swing. It should be noted that BludgerTrack is currently a lot richer in national than state-level data, which should hopefully change reasonably soon with the publication of breakdowns from Newspoll. As ever, it will be interesting to see what these numbers have to say about Queensland.

Newspoll and Ipsos both provided leadership ratings for the week, which caused both leaders to drop slightly on net approval, and resulted in no change whatsoever on preferred prime minister. However, this involved a cancelling out effect of two sets of numbers that were dramatically different from each other, after fairly dramatic bias adjustment measures were applied to Ipsos. So if you look carefully at the leadership ratings trend charts on the BludgerTrack display, the Ipsos results for preferred prime minister and Scott Morrison’s net approval show up as fairly dramatic outliers.

The normal form of Ipsos is to produce more flattering leadership approval numbers than other pollsters, particularly in relation to the Prime Minister. Scott Morrison continued to record a net favourable rating of +3% in the latest poll, but this was seven down on last time, and five worse than his previous low point. There was none of this from Newspoll though, which recorded next to no change. Similarly, it was a case of up from Ipsos and down from Newspoll for Bill Shorten’s net approval rating, with the latter carrying slightly the greater weight.

The full display is available through the link below – and, as ever, don’t miss Seat du jour, today detailing with Corangamite.

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.

872 comments on “BludgerTrack: 51.8-48.2 to Labor”

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  1. Haven’t they been ‘totally destroying’ Shorten for 6 years, including the king hit of him ‘lying’ about his Mum this week?
    Going well so far.

  2. Some odds on next Liberal leader – Frydenberg 2, Dutton 4, Porter 5, Hunt 7, Abbott 11.

    If all except Josh did lose their seats, he would be pretty confident. Maybe that’s why the Liberals are spending up very big in Kooyong compared to previous campaigns – can’t lose all of them!

    If they don’t keep Morrison on for a while I think it will be Dutton or Abbott personally.

  3. My goodness, somebody else has had the temerity (Tony Windsor in this case) to criticise Fran Kelly.
    Her comment this morning on RN Breakfast was that the election is now “neck and neck” as I noted earlier. Meanwhile, WB has given, above, a reasoned and cautious take on the progress of the election.
    Ever since Fran blurted out in 2010 that “It looks like we have won” when it seemed Abbott had got the independents on side, I have questioned her impartiality for the role she has.
    I have no difficulty with an ABC employee, in any position, being a supporter of the Libs or anybody else for that matter. What I object to is her seeming inability, at times, to keep both eyes open. The defence that she “gets stuck into” some of the LNP mob does not cut much ice with me because to balance this she lets slip, too often, where her heart lies politically.
    Defences of her position have come from some who claim that in her younger days she was an activist and a singer of some kind. This also does not cut much ice with me either.

  4. Not a great strategy from Albo to denigrate or belittle voters before an election who are concerned about thermal coal mining and export.

    Does he know which issue is No.1 with voters at the moment.

    What a dope.

  5. Zen

    He is whining about voter feedback in his electorate. No more no less.

    If it wasn’t an issue he would not be whining about it.

  6. “Scott Morrison is across detail and Bill Shorten is not.”

    It’s easy for Scott. He can just make the details up and the mainstream media mostly lets him get away with it.

  7. “Penny Wong yesterday and Albo today haven’t covered themselves in glory at all.”

    No, but election night is looking good for those two and everyone else in the Labor shadow ministry being covered in glory!

  8. Tricot

    [Ever since Fran blurted out in 2010 that “It looks like we have won” when it seemed Abbott had got the independents on side, I have questioned her impartiality for the role she has]

    Is there a link for that statement, please?

  9. Roger

    The cynical side of me thinks Albo is firing voters up to vote Green in the Senate. Otherwise it just doesn’t make sense to me.

    Regarding the timing.

  10. Penny Wong yesterday and Albo today haven’t covered themselves in glory at all.

    I am starting to think Rex is an ABC journo.

    Has anyone seen Rex and Fran Kelly in the same room at the same time?

  11. John Reidy @ #361 Thursday, May 9th, 2019 – 1:36 pm

    This may be optimistic, but for me the best indicator for Queensland is the byelections last year. They weren’t that long ago.

    I don’t think Turnbull is going to say much before the election, sure some vague tweets, but nothing specific. Why break the habit of a lifetime and show some spine now?

    Because he has form when he doesn’t get his way. Google turnbull and dead cat…

  12. “Scott Morrison is across detail and Bill Shorten is not.”

    Poor ScoMo can’t even remember what legislation exists and what does not. And given how little of it he bothered to take into Parliament in the last year its even less impressive.

  13. Someone else back in the day suggested it was Melissa Clarke from the ABC who allegedly made the “looks like we won comment”.
    Perhaps next time Leigh Sales will be the accused.

  14. Has scomo been held to account by the travelling lap dogs, er press pack for his outrageous lie on the environmental legislation that never was?

  15. Just in time for Economic debate …. oh dear .
    ABC used ANU economists

    And The Australia Institute, which was dismissed by the government as being “Labor-aligned” have responded to the Fact Check analysis:

    The Australia Institute have always said the assumptions in our model were on the conservative side and that our research showing $77 billion dollars of the Coalition’s income tax cut goes to those earning over $180,000 was a low-ball figure.

    ABC Factcheck now confirms that:

    the Coalition’s tax measures would reduce the progressivity of Australia’s income tax system; and
    the Australia Institute’s $77 billion figure goes to those earning over $180,000 is, in fact, an underestimate and likely to be much higher – between $88 billion and $89 billion.

  16. Simon² Katich® @ #466 Thursday, May 9th, 2019 – 3:21 pm

    Penny Wong yesterday and Albo today haven’t covered themselves in glory at all.

    I am starting to think Rex is an ABC journo.

    Has anyone seen Rex and Fran Kelly in the same room at the same time?

    The ABC has by far the most professional and unbiased political commentary and reporting going at the moment.

  17. Rex just can’t come to terms with the fact that it doesn’t matter which hole the carbon comes out of. It’s the overall consumption that matters & Adani is a non issue

    Adani will never happen.. can’t even get funding for railway to move the coal

  18. Someone else back in the day suggested it was Melissa Clarke from the ABC who allegedly made the “looks like we won comment”.

    I reckon it was ABC’s Justine Clarke. The place is full of playschool journalists and reporters.

  19. The ABC has by far the most professional and unbiased political commentary and reporting going at the moment.

    ABC staff were (and still are) subject to significant and repeated pressure to rectify the impression (which came from the Liberal Party) that the ABC was left leaning. This, combined with the deliberate and substantial influx of staff from places like Newscorp and Ch7 and some very dodgy editorial work in headline choice and unnamed articles, has detrimentally changed the quality and fairness in their output.

  20. “Roger

    The cynical side of me thinks Albo is firing voters up to vote Green in the Senate. Otherwise it just doesn’t make sense to me.

    Regarding the timing.”

    Or it doesn’t make sense because perhaps you are yourself a prisoner of the group think he describes?

    If anything it shows

    1) He is very comfortable he is home and hosed in Grayndler and
    2) He is differentiating from the Greens to appeal to swinging voters who find the Greens obnoxiously self-righteous

    As if Albo would be “firing up the Green vote”. What does that even mean?

  21. I do find it interesting that a lot of the Labor folk here propose ideas for the ABC that would see the Coalition hounded out of office if they proposed them. The ABC is fine and does not need to be messed with by governments of either persuasion.

  22. I’ve been thinking on the election guessing game since Burgey gave me two guesses to record, one for the TPP “on the night” and the other as a final tally. I have decided that unless specified all guesses will be recorded as a guess for the final TPP, and that includes all guesses I have so far (apart from Burgey’s on-the-night guess). If you wish to record an “on the night” guess please let me know.

    I will attempt to find and monitor an authoritative source to monitor on the night, and record the latest TPP published before 23:59:59 Saturday, May 18, 2019, East Coast time. I’m looking for suggestions for the appropriate authority.

    And for completeness, these are the guesses I have so far, including the tie-breaker time stamp.

    ON THE NIGHT TPP
    ALP / LNP
    52.7 / 47.3 Burgey, May-08 17:42

    FINAL TPP
    ALP / LNP
    55 / 45 antonbruckner11, Mar-01 15:37
    53 / 47 booleanbach, Feb-21 12:37
    52.2 / 47.8 Burgey, May-08 17:42
    52.6 / 47.4 Frednk, May-08 18:20
    51.5 / 48.5 Late Riser, Dec-08 17:45
    52.7 / 47.3 martini henry, May-09 10:08
    52.5 / 47.5 Mavis Smith, Dec-08 17:24
    51 / 49 Rex Douglas, Feb-19 18:02
    54 / 46 Roger, May-09 09:53
    55 / 45 steve davis, Mar-01 15:34
    51 / 49 Wayne, Feb-20 00:03
    55 / 45 Work To Rule, Mar-01 19:51

  23. henry @ #470 Thursday, May 9th, 2019 – 3:22 pm

    Someone else back in the day suggested it was Melissa Clarke from the ABC who allegedly made the “looks like we won comment”.
    Perhaps next time Leigh Sales will be the accused.

    Contemporaneous comments made here in 2010 when Clarke did her cheer-leading for the tories.

    Repeat. Posted just after clarke did her carryon and on subsequent ABC Radio segments-

    dedalus
    Posted Sunday, August 8, 2010 at 5:34 pm | Permalink

    Was it my eyes deceiving me or was that Melissa Clarke from ABC24 at the Libs launch grinning and clapping?


    dedalus
    Posted Sunday, August 8, 2010 at 6:02 pm | Permalink

    Just sent this to abcnew24:
    ABC Recipient: Audience & Consumer Affairs
    Subject: bias reporting Julia Gillard’s seniors policy launch

    I would like to complain in the strongest possible terms about the reprehensible and unsulting manner in which your commentator Mellisa Clarke reported on the launch of Julia Gillard’s senior policy launch yesterday, 7 august 2010.

    She demonstrated blatantly obvious bias against the political party respresented by Ms Gillard, in both her words, tone of and satirical facial expressions.

    I would like it confirmed, as I saw it with my own eyes, that Miss Clarke was present at the Liberal Party’s campaign launch, where there is clear video evidence of Miss Clarke grinning enthusiatically and clapping in support of the speeches by executives of the Liberal Party.

    Your news coverage in recent times has become completely skewed and the professionalism of the ABC which I once knew is now very hard to see.

    Thank you.


    feeney
    Posted Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 8:09 pm | Permalink

    I very rarely listen to or watch the ABC (have not done so for quite a time) but driving home this afternoon, I tuned into News Radio and heard Scott Morrison being interviewed – if it could be described that way – by a Melissa Clarke? It was appalling.

    It was a suck up, dishwater interview, just asking almost pre-determined questions of him, and he never shut up, no interruption for clarification. The questions were clearly from the coailition talking points, and the interview was conducted thus.

    Does anyone know of this Melissa Clarke? She sounds like a right wing nutter, and I was frankly embarrassed.


    Rod Hagen
    Posted Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 8:33 pm | Permalink

    tuned into News Radio and heard Scott Morrison being interviewed – if it could be described that way – by a Melissa Clarke

    Ah! Melissa Clarke! Isn’t she wonderful! Her accidental comment that “we aren’t doing so well – I mean the coalition isn’t doing very well” on News24 with respect to the count at one stage, was one of the great giveaways of the ABC position in the course of the election campaign.

    Still, at least she makes it pretty obvious that any pretence at balance or impartiality isn’t necessary if you want to keep your job with the current ABC administration in place!


    Rod Hagen
    Posted Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 8:33 pm | Permalink

    tuned into News Radio and heard Scott Morrison being interviewed – if it could be described that way – by a Melissa Clarke

    Ah! Melissa Clarke! Isn’t she wonderful! Her accidental comment that “we aren’t doing so well – I mean the coalition isn’t doing very well” on News24 with respect to the count at one stage, was one of the great giveaways of the ABC position in the course of the election campaign.

    Still, at least she makes it pretty obvious that any pretense at balance or impartiality isn’t necessary if you want to keep your job with the current ABC administration in place!

    People will believe what they want.

  24. Some numbers to chuck around that you wont find in the Murdoch rags

    The Australia Institute have always said the assumptions in our model were on the conservative side and that our research showing $77 billion of the Coalition’s income tax cut goes to those earning over $180,000 was a low-ball figure.

    ABC Factcheck now confirms that:

    the Coalition’s tax measures would reduce the progressivity of Australia’s income tax system; and
    the Australia Institute’s $77 billion figure goes to those earning over $180,000 is, in fact, an underestimate and likely to be much higher – between $88 billion and $89 billion.

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2019/may/09/federal-election-2019-shorten-morrison-labor-coalition-politics-live

  25. Simon² Katich®

    Add to that the temptation to “audition” for those yummy $300k + jobs over at the Rupertarium.

  26. Partisans are naturally never happy with ABC political coverage.

    Slackers like to use the word ‘partisan’ whenever they are losing an argument.

    Never been a member of any political party. Or a union. Always worked in private business. Voted for the ALP, Greens, Independents and on very rare occasions the Liberal Party (although that was a while ago).

    if there is a partisan in this conversation… it aint me.

  27. Voted today, on the senate paper I numbered the labor candidates 1-6, then 7-12 under the Greens. The rest were all tin-foil nutters (including LNP).

  28. Rex Douglas says:
    Thursday, May 9, 2019 at 3:35 pm
    Partisans are naturally never happy with ABC political coverage.

    —————————–

    I don’t know who Tony Koch is , but he is apparently Turning on Murdoch and his cronies

  29. Scott @ #493 Thursday, May 9th, 2019 – 3:45 pm

    Rex Douglas says:
    Thursday, May 9, 2019 at 3:35 pm
    Partisans are naturally never happy with ABC political coverage.

    —————————–

    I don’t know who Tony Koch is , but he is apparently Turning on Murdoch and his cronies

    What took him 30 years for the penny to drop ?

  30. dave says:
    Thursday, May 9, 2019 at 3:47 pm

    What took him 30 years for the penny to drop ?

    ——————

    Dont know,all of a sudden they are coming out of the woodwork

  31. @ Peter S
    Clermont is a small town in central Queensland. It may surprise you but there are a few people living in other parts of this large state. To take the actions of a minority of the residents in one small town and use it to judge the character of the millions of people who live in the state is (not to put too fine a point on it) the most inbred performance of utter ignorance and stupidity I have seen for a very long time.
    #######
    Give it up Peter
    This is the state that harbours One Nation, Aust conservatives, Clive Palmer, the majority of FRNJ libs in their party, a state that doesn’t have daylight savings because it “fades the curtains”. A state that destroys half its own tourism industry for a quick buck. Give me a break! The state harbours more of the most racist and bigoted of people across the the nation than anywhere else. Of course that doesn’t mean they all are, but facts are facts Peter, just look up the election results.

  32. The ABC is far from fine.

    I don’t claim ‘bias’ per se – although I have no doubt that the constant mendacious campaign by the coalition to assert that the ABC is a hotbed of lefty radicalism has had its desired effect, both on the organization itself, but also on discounting the ABC’s output by significant sections of the community – but I have no doubt that the quality of ABC journalism is lower than it has ever been. For me it seems very rarely to be worth the effort to consume their output these days (with a very small number of exceptions, such as Media Watch) because they so very rarely have anything actually newsworthy or enlightening to broadcast.

    Science – meh, dumb it down, don’t bother doing it in-house; foreign affairs – funding pressures have significantly impacted the ABC’s ability to do on-the-ground reporting; detailed investigations or more than surface-deep interviews – scrap Lateline which was really the only platform apart from 4C for hosting this kind of stuff. Instead we have more repeats of crap British TV shows, mediocre at best Aussie drama in limited dribs and drabs, and hesitancy on anything actually current affairs that might set the conservative side of politics off.

    The ABC is a pale shadow of what it was a few decades ago.

  33. Can I just say, that much to Ven’s chagrin, I door knocked for Albo last weekend for about four hours on the mean streets of Balmain, and I can report that the number of people who mentioned Adani, out of the more than 100 people I spoke with, was:

    Nada.
    Niente.
    Nil.
    Zilch.
    Zip.
    Zero.
    Not a one.

  34. The problem with Mr Koch’s analysis is that the ridiculousness of the Murdoch press is not a new thing that has just happened in the past couple of years.

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