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. I think he will have revenge. If, as reputed, he killed a cat because he got jilted, what would he do to someone that destroyed a life long dream and humiliated him in front of the whole country? He may not do it openly though. Perhaps a lucky member of the media gets a red hot anonomous tip…

    Would be consistent with his ‘ticker’ to notice he probably doesn’t need to do anything, and to pay out after the election. His son Alex seemed to be up to something with his inane centrist persona popping up on twitter, but if the Turnbulls are going to build a dynasty and new centrist sharp Liberal party, smarter to wait until the old liberal party kills itself. If not this election, then the one after.

  2. Maybe a narrow Hewson victory in 1993 would have saved us from Howard. Hewson proves as popular as Campbell Newman did 20 years later, an economic Thatcherite but not a paleoconservative, he does less damage to the nation’s soul than Howard. Labor back in 1996 or 1999, Kim Beasley PM, Republic in 2001…

    On the other hand, a narrow Liberal victory in 1961 gave us 11 more years of stultifying Coalition rule.

    You can never predict the remote consequences of events…

  3. hasnt the usa used thier position to fuck the world…………now there upset china wants to the same more hunanely without bombs .

  4. Bushfire Bill says:
    Thursday, May 9, 2019 at 9:31 pm
    I think it’s a bit of a myth that the Libs are broke. The number of commercials they are running is proof enough that they have benefactors with deep pockets.

    Quit your whinging and step into the 21st Century BB… Netflix. Zero Ads.

    I hate ads from both parties. Lame black and white “gotcha” grabs set for an audience with and average IQ of 70… What a colossal waste of money. Save your money and buy Aussie made T-shirts for volunteers maybe?? 😉

  5. Australia’s economy is still sputtering along, but there are enough warning signs to ask if this is an election a politician really wants to win.

    Enough people have been suffering under the ‘good’ economy of Morrison that this isn’t really a ‘good’ to ‘bad’ shift. For many it will be ‘we have been telling you this sucks since 2008.’

  6. Steve777
    says:
    Thursday, May 9, 2019 at 10:43 pm
    Maybe a narrow Hewson victory in 1993 would have saved us from Howard. Hewson proves as popular as Campbell Newman did 20 years later, an economic Thatcherite but not a paleoconservative, he does less damage to the nation’s soul than Howard. Labor back in 1996 or 1999, Kim Beasley PM, Republic in 2001…
    _________________________________
    Interesting. PM Hewson, not being a conservative like Howard, fails to defuse Pauline’s One Nation leading Queensland to elect a ON government that then secedes from the Commonwealth.

  7. Late Riser

    Things must be grim up north, aye, grim. Polly Toynbee in The Guardian, with maybe a lesson at the end for certain Australian politicians.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/09/british-populist-boris-johnson-prime-minister

    This week I was in Middlesbrough, surveying Labour’s local election wreckage. The party now controls not one Tees Valley council, losing Middlesbrough, Redcar, Stockton, Hartlepool and Darlington. “We all got beaten,” said one of the surviving Labour councillors, grimacing at the pain of it. The regional mayor is Tory, and in Middlesbrough the new mayor is a multimillionaire hedge-funding property developer, standing as an independent.

    The council was won by independents, because, say distraught Labour campaigners, any party label was death for candidates. Brexit was important, but the anti-politics feeling was stronger, and anti-Corbynism took its toll among Labour voters, too. “One old chap came into the Labour office – our office! – to ask us how to stand as an independent. We had to explain politely we were Labour, and not that keen. He put out a leaflet listing his hobbies, but not much else.” He won because the label “independent” was all it took.

    As both main parties stagger under the impact of Brexit, with both failing miserably to cope with it, the old two-and-a-bit party system looks fragile. With or without electoral reform, real politics will reassert itself, as rag-tag oppositionists taking power in councils discover the seriousness of their political calling. Once forced to confront the tough choices, trade-offs and compromises of this essential and honourable profession, newcomers will have to learn the hard way: populism may get you into office – but then what?

  8. Then there was Murdoch in Victoria with the headline that Kennett had been returned

    Labor won the subsequent by-election for Kennett’s seat caused by Kennett resigning from the parliament following his defeat

  9. private health is a scam every 2 dollars spent = 1 dollar spent on a public system……private is crap it allows poor people to die it makes for absurd costs and most importantly it encourages a system that allows the wrong people to be docs cause there motivation is money not helping.

  10. WWP

    I got a strange call tonight, left a voicemail, all about voting for the party that would put your rents up less, and I thought it was probably an illegal LNP add, but I wasn’t sure, and it didn’t say, and certainly didn’t have a ‘authorised by’ at the end.

    Snap!

    At the start of the message I was left it said it was authorised by F. Calabrese, Liberal Party Perth and then some guy called Damien Collins from REIWA went through his spiel.

  11. Steve777 @ #774 Thursday, May 9th, 2019 – 10:16 pm

    “I’ve been wondering why Malcolm Turnbull HASN’T let a few skeletons out of the closet about the Liberal Party before the election?”

    Maybe:
    1. It would reflect badly on him. He was a senior Minister for Abbott then titular leader.
    2. None of the business establishment would talk to him again.

    More 2 than 1. 🙂

  12. Labor needs to tackle this ‘Death Tax’ rubbish being promulgated by One Nation and several desperate libs. I just did a google trend search for ‘Labor’ and the third most related term was ‘labor death tax’…

  13. I see Chris Uhlman still making a goose of himself

    Just his raw abilities and how high he rose in the media raises serious questions about the quality of people going into media.

  14. Keating started the whole modern ‘last minute scare’ campaign that both parties have used since. Ironically, it was Keating who first raised the prospect of a GST on the floor of parliament (1983 I believe?) and then, 10 years later, put the wind up all and sundry about the consequences…

    Likewise, Keating, as treasurer, actually put into place policy which put fairness into place by avoiding double-taxation on dividends, via franking credits.

    However, the wheels fell right off the ethical bandwagon when Shorten decided to scare sick grannies with a million printed “Medicare” style cards with blatant lies and robocall hundreds of thousands to tell them the LNP was privatising medicare… with no skerrick of evidence.

  15. Rocket Rocket, and over in the antipodes I question how independent “The Independents” are, if they’re already sharing advertising. We’ll see.

  16. WWP Uhlman’s special reporting on energy on the ABC was absolutely awful.
    Although not directly attributable to bias, its a product of the creep to the right within ABC management culture.

  17. When it comes to taking power at unfortunate economic moments, it would be hard to go past the Scullin government in 1929, who won government days before the Wall Street crash which heralded the Great Depression. Furthermore, the reason the election was happening in 1929 at all was because it was called early after the Bruce government was defeated on the floor of the house by one vote – a margin which would have been reversed had Indi not been handed to Labor at the 1928 election when the sitting Country Party member forgot to nominate.

  18. Ex PM Howard will be a “special guest” of the Seniors Minister and current Member for Hasluck, Ken Wyatt at a seniors forum on Tuesday 14/5/2019 in Wattle Grove at 11am. The forum will “focus” on the “retirees tax”.

    A previous post suggested Howard would be in WA over the weekend. This suggests to me that the next Member for Hasluck is likely to be James Martin and if the desiccated coconut is spending several days in WA they must be real concerned about other seats.

    I could be wrong, perhaps Howards high moral standards won’t allow him to be at the same venue as Fauxmo so he decided to sneak of to the opposite side of the country.

  19. Tom if you look at the twitter thread I link just above started by Uhlman, you’ll see Turnbull has commented on that, basically saying Uhlman is wrong.

  20. “Becoming prime minister just when the economy falls apart is like being put in the driver’s seat of the bus just before it goes off a cliff.”

    Vic, can see you point politically, but if the economy is about to turn to crap then i REALLY want the ALP to be in Govt. They will handle it better than the no plan, no clue Coalition.

    The telling thing is the “rosy” assumptions in the coalitions budget. If they are going to frame a budget like that, with what, on evidence, may be coming, we really do not want them with their hands on the controls.

    And on a positive note. Did a couple of hours calls for the ALP into Pearce tonight. Lots of volunteers optimistic and tails up. 🙂 No one thinks its in the bag, but the Libs have a fight on their hands that i reckon we are going to win. Also, got quite a few “already voted”.

    If the Libs campaign launch Sunday is a farce and doesn’t go well they are burnt toast..

  21. Reckon Turnbull will keep quiet if Blowhard is obviously going down in flames but if close he may be tempted to give a little nudge. As I reckon Blowhard has been out of puff for the last week or so and steadily getting worse, we won’t be hearing from Fizzer in any big way.

  22. It appears Labor advertising is very targeted.

    Lots of ALP ads on SKY Racing and other sport channels. I suspect they looked to certain demographics and their viewing habits and went for those instead of the blanket stuff from the Libs and Palmer.

  23. CC – Turnbull knows he doesn’t have to say anything. The libs are going down. Why put his fingerprints on it? Let Morrison own this one

  24. Just Quietly @ #829 Thursday, May 9th, 2019 – 11:10 pm

    Reckon Turnbull will keep quiet if Blowhard is obviously going down in flames but if close he may be tempted to give a little nudge. As I reckon Blowhard has been out of puff for the last week or so and steadily getting worse, we won’t be hearing from Fizzer in any big way.

    That feels about right. Turnbull might just prefer to pointedly and innocently note that, unlike Morrison, he never lost an election as PM and that he had been rebuilding the coalition TPP when he was dumped, rather than be seen with muddy hands that match a solid hand print on Morrison’s back. The former victory might be sweeter and longer lasting, not to mention less risky and frankly lazier.

  25. Imacca

    I would put to you that the Right Wing ideology that austerity delivers confidence is the reason you never want the parties of the right in government in times of economic crisis

    Read Stiglitz (as but one but with the reputation he correctly has)

    We have seen the First Global Oil Crisis of 1973, the Stock Exchange Crash of 1974 (Whitlam), the Stock Exchange Crash of 1987 then the Savings & Loans fiasco of the late 1980’s/early 1990’s (Hawke) then sub prime lending and the GFC of 2008 (Rudd)

    We had the Costello beat up of the IMF Crisis in SE Asia but that IMF intervention did not impact Australia, only the Nations floating their currencies (and banks were left to fail by IMF direction because they had not revalued their securities post the S&L fall out collapsing property prices)

    I well recall a certain former pm lamenting (more than once!) “Why is it the bloody Tories are never in government when these crises happen”

    The same pm who picked up the abject mess of Fraser (and, to be fair, his dysfunctional treasurer, Howard)

    As I have put Shorten and his team will confront the same challenges Hawke and his team addressed from 1983

    As with Hawke, Shorten is skilled at walking both sides of the street (Capital and labour)

  26. Has that enormous Muppet Uhlmann called the election yet? Last time he did in the second last week from memory. Reckon this one might be less close but any movement from the Oracle ?

  27. Observer

    Wasn’t in Victoria for 1999, but have got The Age front cover from day after 1996 state election

    Kennett takes Coalition past 2000

    Kept it ‘just in case’ ! It is a good one for reflecting on after winning any election.

  28. Third friken time in 8 days I have received a pamphlet asking me to vote for Trent Zimmerman. Could North Sydney be up for grabs (highly doubt it… but THREE times?!?)

  29. Observer

    I have a theory that when people feel Australia is ‘shaky’ economically, more of them vote or preference Labor. Maybe some feel if things go bad for them personally they will be helped more by a Labor government. The Liberals were very confident in both 1990 and 1993 – in 1993 their ad highlighting high unemployment at 11% with people in the ‘cross-hairs’ probably just scared people.

    If there are rough economic seas ahead, far better to have Labor ditching some excess ‘ballast’ overboard by closing these various tax rorts and loopholes.

  30. I suspect Mr Turnbull wants to see a civil war in the Liberal Party with the hardliners defeated, rather than creating a situation in which the hardliners can avoid responsibility for the damage they have done to the party by seeking to blame Turnbull “treachery” for the loss, if they lose. (Of course they’ve tried that line already, in Wentworth, but it was a pretty feeble basis, not coming back to campaign. Deliberate damage would be a quantum jump up from that.)

  31. Pedant

    You may be right. His memoirs are apparently due out soon -but now seems unlikely they will be out before the election. I think Dutton, Abbott and Morrison will feature prominently!

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