The Courier-Mail has results from a Queensland-only YouGov Galaxy poll of 848 respondents, conducted on Wednesday and Thursday, which shows the Coalition with a lead in the state of 51-49. This represents a 3% swing to Labor off the 2016 election result, but is an improvement for the Coalition from the 50-50 result at the last such poll in February. On the primary vote, the Coalition are up three to 38%, Labor is down one to 33%, the Greens and One Nation are both up a point to 9%, and the United Australia Party is on an anaemic 4%.
Also featured are gender breakdowns that have excited the Courier-Mail, but to my eye look rather implausible in having the Coalition primary vote six points higher among women than men. Among men, the result is 50-50, from primary votes of Coalition 35%, Labor 32%, Greens 10%, One Nation 9% and United Australia Party 6%; among women, the Coalition leads 52-48, from primary votes of Coalition 41%, Labor 34%, Greens 8%, One Nation 8% and United Australia Party 4%.
Latest calling of the horse race:
• In her column in today’s Weekend AFR, Laura Tingle says there has been “the sound of something snapping in the federal election this week”. Apparently drawing on Liberal sources in New South Wales, Tingle relates a feeling that “Tony Abbott is gone in Warringah”; that Gilmore and Reid “seem lost”, that Lindsay is no longer looking quite so flash either; that Cowper and Farrer might go independent; and that “senior cabinet ministers are panicking and drawing in resources to protect their own seats”.
• However, no such snapping noise has reached the collective ear of News Corp, whose papers today offer a flurry of bullish assessments for the Coalition. According to Sharri Markson in the Daily Telegraph, the Liberals are likely to gain Wentworth, Lindsay, Indi and Herbert; Labor-held Dobell, Solomon, Cowan, Bass and Braddon are “in contention”; and Corangamite and Gilmore are, “at this point”, likely to stay with the Liberals. Only Chisholm and Dunkley are conceded, although there is some prospect of Labor winning La Trobe, Swan and Reid, and independents winning Cowper and Warringah. However, this appears to be entirely based on an assessment related to Markson by Scott Morrison, who might well be suspected of gilding the lily.
• Dennis Shanahan in The Australian also discerns “an almost Trumpian path, difficult and unacknowledged, for Morrison to be re-elected if everything falls his way”. Prospective Labor gains in Queensland “are slipping away and giving Morrison a chance of a net gain”; there is a “likelihood” Labor will lose Solomon; “senior Liberals believe they will hold and even add to the Coalition total” in Western Australia; there is “obviously a big chance for the Coalition to win back Bass and Braddon”, and Labor even fears ousted Liberal candidate Jessica Whelan could pull off a Pauline Hanson in Lyons; while in New South Wales, “expected Labor gains may not materialise” (though it is acknowledged independents may win Cowper and Farrer). That leaves Labor heavily reliant on a brace of gains in Victoria, of which only Chisholm and Dunkley are bolted down, and where they are threatened in Macnamara by the Liberals as well as the Greens.
• The Australian also reports today that, contra Laura Tingle, “Tony Abbott’s prospects of surviving a challenge from independent candidate Zali Steggall appear to have improved, according to internal Liberal Party polling that shows him level at 50-50”.
• In the commentary accompanying the YouGov Galaxy poll, Renee Veillaris of the Courier-Mail reports that “LNP insiders believe they may lose just one seat – Flynn – but pick up Herbert”; that Labor is “retreating from key Queensland marginal seats that they believed they could win just weeks ago” (although Bill Shorten did visit Leichhardt yesterday and Petrie the day before, and Scott Morrison was in Capricornia yesterday); and that incumbency effects are likely to cancel out the advantage to Labor recorded by the poll.
• The last of these viewpoints, at least, is not restricted to News Corp, with Amy Remeikis of The Guardian assessing that Queensland is “looking like a zero-sum game for both major parties”. Labor-held Herbert and Liberal-held Leichhardt are rated as even money, and while Flynn and Brisbane are acknowledged as further possibilities for Labor, the Liberals are thought to have their nose in front in Petrie.
Further reading for today is, as ever, provided by the Seat du jour post below this one, relating to the key Queensland seat of Herbert.
Must sat say Jana Stewart at 12:1 on Sportsbet in Kooyong looks tempting. If she can poll second with Burnside and Oliver Yates behind her, could be in with a-chance on preferences. And Bill Shorten was in Kooyong today….
sprocket
That is a very interesting set of numbers.
Rational Leftist
In Victoria they doubled down on attacking Somalians even though it was pretty obvious that Victorian as a general rule were not impressed with the attempt to divide communities. I suspect they are crazy enough to double down on shorten even though they have lost every round so far.
victoria
Read the Chloe story in today’s Age. Insinuating but carefully constructed.
BW
The big fall away in Liberal processed postals stands out. Perhaps their alleged funding problems have hit backroom admin?
BH
I saw the age article as the start of the Liberal campaign.
spr
Yep. Noticed the same pattern. I have no idea what it might mean. Like you I jumped to a happy conclusion!
Maybe I’ve just been missing what’s going on, but during this election campaign I’ve seen few if any ads from the main parties which featured allegedly “ordinary” people (whether actors or genuinely ordinary people) making pitches or telling life stories which would supposedly support one side or the other. I haven’t for example, seen any ads from cancer sufferers talking about the impact which the ALP’s plan would have on them, which I rather would have expected. Nor, for that matter, have I seen ones with losers of franking credits. The ones I’ve seen, positive or negative, all seem only to feature politicians.
Have I just seen a misleading sample, or is that really the way this campaign is proceeding? Any views?
spocket_
One gets the impression that Clive is now funding the Liberal campaign.
@Pedant
For what it’s worth, unions have ads involving workers talking about their experiences with labour hire, insecure work etc
CLARA?
On what very little I know, I find it hard to imagine that minicities will get through the planning stage when 2 lot divisions that are fully complying with the rules can be held up in court for years.
Mount Barker SA is a recent example of one such mass urbanisation in otherwise farming land and peeps are still (rightfully IMO) rabidly borderline militant over that planning decision.
Even picking existing large towns and doing perimeter development and infill (something which already happens in some regional areas – Victoria Castlemaine comes to mind) would be immensely contentious.
We live in a world where nimbys have power and political parties are ripe and ready to jump on board their train of whinge.
pedant
The Cherish Life mob who are accusing Labor of killing babies have a nice pic of a live baby that Labor has not got round to killing yet on their material.
frednk
I wondered that and yet nothing anywhere else yet.
Tomorrow will all be happy snaps of the Lib launch but we’ll see what Monday brings.
There are bigger problems with the CLARA business case than that…
postal applications.
SA Boothby ALP 758 ALP Increase 592 Coalition 4,141 Coalition Increase 2117
I do not know how it is legal to allow political parties to handle peoples votes. Especially this many votes.
The CLARA presentation I saw had some heroic assumptions, and so laden with woke buzzwords that I thought it was primarily a real estate pitch, with the VFT a sideline
Victoria @ #781 Saturday, May 11th, 2019 – 7:38 pm
Nope. There isn’t anything even remotely “defamatory or legally dubious” about that one. Guy willing to be Dad to two kids who aren’t his own, is in fact a good story.
I strongly suspect that it might be what Michaelia Cash was alluding to in Senate Estimates last year.
If it is, then it’s bleeding obvious who the source is, and it won’t end up well for her.
I used to work with a planner that had worked on research where new infrastructure (like rail, road upgrades etc… I think his was a tram in Adelaide) is paid for by taxing the increase in property value that the infrastructure will bring.
Looked great on paper. Then someone asked ‘how will you sell a new tax’?
Politics is up the creek.
sprocket, CLARA is a real estate scheme with a fast train thrown in.
I remember watching Nick Cleary give his sales pitch to the Urban Developer’s Institute Xmas lunch the year before last and sure enough the first question he got was the obvious one. What happens if people don’t buy your half million dollar blocks of land as quickly as you expect?
Boerwar @ 10.10pm
Thanks for pointing that out, though it wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. I was thinking more of the “Joe the Plumber” type ads, or the one that the coalition used some years back with an alleged tradie. But I guess it’s a bit hard to make a sympathetic ad defending family trusts.
Thanks also Gorks @ 10.08 for the reference to the union ads.
Remember the Wendy ads from 1987, eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX5qnUR1UVg.
Simon yes I deal with specialists on “value capture” myself.
There’s only one form of value capture that works and that’s direct value capture. The HSR entity owns land at/around stations and it gets a commercial return. Rather like the Hong Kong metro does. It works in a couple of places but generally speaking if you want HSR to make sense then it has to make sense in terms of wider social and economic benefits.
One of the things that has never entered into the general discussion about HSR is the role it can play in obviating the cost of new roads. In simple terms, HSR moves many times more people, faster, than the equivalent motorway. And if you’re somewhere where a new intercity motorway is inevitable, like Newcastle to Sydney or Brisbane to Gold Coast, building a HSR line instead of a motorway is a no brainer.
Simon Katich @ 10.18
Oddly enough, the capturing of postal vote applications by the parties is illegal at ACT elections.
For the life of me, I don’t know why anyone would bother applying using a hardcopy form at a federal election: as I recently discovered, the online application system the AEC has put in place is first class, and you get an electronic confirmation when the application has been received, when the postal vote pack has been sent to you, and when your completed ballots have been received back by the AEC.
Fair go, Pedant; I think a warning would have been in order. 😉
Jaeger @ 10.32
Fair enough. But they do bring back memories!
Yes, memories I thought were long buried with quicklime in an unmarked grave. 😀
Interesting insight to who has what sources and where they sit on or off the fence! I’d love someone to compile a chart of where the journos sit on the political pendulum for reference, to be used when reading commentary. Anyone care to start the ball rolling? Is Laura T seen as pro ALP and is her source for the comments within the ALP?
Has anybody seen a Liberal advert where Morrison is accompanied by at least one speaking Minister?
On one advert tonight it was Morrison doing a ‘one man band’ routine.
Labor, on the other hand, has an advert with Shorten and five future Ministers speaking.
Thanks for sharing my postals analysis sprocket.
My couple comments on the Coalition postals campaign being down-they’ve clearly not run it in Longman, Lilley, and Griffith. And are obviously behind 2016 in a bunch of divisions where the ALP has run a campaign this time. There’s a still a few days left though and they’ve increased ~55K in the last four days.
Questions/comments/feedback welcome-hopefully the tables are easy to use and copy/paste easily if you want to spin your own thing as well.
Has anyone read the Age article yet about Chloe and Bill. If so what did you think?
I’ve read the Chloe thing … while the writer might have been a little miffed at the lack of direct access – I felt it was actually pretty sympathetic.
BH/Darn
I’ve read the Age article on Bill and Chloe.
I thought it was a fair overview
We never received our usual LNP postal package this time. Obviously longman is not in the mix.
Darn Snarky cos Chloe didn’t agree to a sit down interview, snide re the couple’s past history together but covered with a small dose of saccharin just in case Bill wins. Innuendo re Bills office staff
BH
The journo went over the chronology which did include the smear campaign regarding Shorten and his office staff as well as the rape allegation. Stuff that has been in the public space, and at the time both Chloe and Bill spoke of the hurt that it caused.
I read the Chloe shorten story
Seems to me that some in labor are realising journalists are not people to have as friends
Most will sell their mother for a story
They are best kept at arms length
victoria
I hadn’t read a lot of that before so I thought it had an undertone of something being hidden by them re their relationship. None of it tho is black swan. I do wonder if Cash has something from the AWU raids tho
The story in the main seems to be that the Journo couldn’t get a story.
elecster – very bad form to be trying to list journos personal views. The issue is whether they can fairly deal with issues and people from the spectrum. When the language used or opinions expressed re out of order then criticise. Otherwise you are running a line that the best journos have no personal political preferences which would be ridiculous.
Sunday Mail (Courier Mail) getting another front page up tomorrow on the YouGov Poll. have to laugh at the way they asked the question. Guess its push polling by the Murdoch Press.
LABOR’S true believers are losing faith in Bill Shorten’s tax plans with more than a quarter of ALP voters saying to prefer what Scott Morrison has to offer, according to shocking new polling.
While Labor has on offer a big tax-and-spend agenda — with tax cuts this year but reaping in $154 billion from negative gearing, franking credits and other reforms, the Prime Minister’s offer of no new taxes has won approval from more than one-on-four Labor supporters.
An exclusive YouGov-Galaxy poll for The Sunday Mail found that 59 per cent of Queensland voters preferred the Coalition’s tax plan to Labor’s proposal, while just 26 per cent backed Mr Shorten’s tax offering.
A whopping 91 per cent of Liberal voters backed Mr Morrison’s plan, which includes tax breaks of up to $1080 from July this year, with major changes to all but eliminate bracket creep over the next six years.
But, it also found that 27 per cent of Labor voters found the Coalition’s tax plan more appealing.
The 848 voters surveyed on May 8 and 9 were asked if they preferred Mr Shorten’s plan to increase taxes to provide more funding for government services, or Mr Morrison saying there would be no new taxes because the money was “better off in your pocket”.
https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/queensland-government/scomos-tax-plans-woos-the-true-believers/news-story/b890c94d26d9c4889ac95395327db835
William B – Bludgertrack has LNP jumping significantly for last week in NSW, Vic and Qld and dropping similar levels in WA and SA. That doesn’t seem to add up to LNP up 0.1% nationally??
BH
Shorten being a Melburnian, could be why none of this information is new to me.
If you look at BludgerTrack over the past few months, all that has happened is that the disturbance created by toppling Turnbull has dissipated. Its been a steady decline of roughly 0.1 percentage point per week.
BludgerTrack now sits at 51.9 for Labor. Factoring in the trend, that puts Labor at 51.8 on election day.
In order to believe that the Liberals can win from here, you have to start coming up with reasons why the pollsters (collectively) have made a substantial error in favour of Labor. Yes there are last week swings, but a swing of that magnitude?
That’s why the betting odds are where they are. All the Murdoch bile and all the negative ads have had whatever effect they are going to have. People are voting early and tuning out.
Now if you take BludgerTrack as written in stone then the previous two 51/49 Newspolls were well within MoE. In fact a 50/50 would not have been astonishing. Nor would a 53 or even 54. Given where BludgerTrack now is (51.9) its fair to conclude that 52/48 is the most probable result this Sunday. And 51 is slightly more probably than 53. The real question here is whether Newspoll is still truly a random sample or whether its being smoothed. It does rather look like the latter.
So I’m not surprised that a bunch of people here are now going for 52. If there really has been a trend to Labor in the past week then that makes 53 more probable than 51, all else being equal.
Its also entirely possible to see 50/50. Again, within the MoE. It would just be a shame because of the way it would get spun. By the same token, there’s going to be a lot of Liberals disappointed with 51 and a whole lot who are going to be having a heart attack if they see 52.
I’d love to see 53 and I think there’s a real chance of seeing it, especially if the vibe is correct. But I’m not going to bet on it because I don’t want to jinx it.
I can’t understand what Steve said earlier, when referencing polls. The polls say Labor is going to clearly and decisively win.
Again the only way the Liberals can win now, is not a late swing (there’s simply too big a margin) but if there is something seriously and systematically wrong with the polling. Well, why? you tell me.
I can think of several reasons why the polls are actually a little biased towards the Liberals at this point in time. They got it wrong in by-elections. They got it wrong in Victoria. There are more younger voters. There are optimistic assumptions about preferences. A surprise landslide is not impossible.
Spence I’m taking the state by state results with a grain of salt.
Wow… lol …
The Murdocracy is REALLY grasping at straws …
What frickin plan is Morrison OFFERING?
Morrison is doubling down on status quo.
Well… status quo+tax cuts.
victoria
Yes, that’s it as we don’t see the stories repeated in such detail here.
If people are backing the Coalition why is all the money going on Labor?
BH
These stories were canvassed prior to last election.
The defamatory story on Shorten that is currently on hold by the media, has not been hinted to in the article.
I mean betting markets aren’t the entire ball-game.
They’re not backing the Coalition, they were push-polled – even if you dig deeper, it gets murkier.
IF true – more people are voting for
Labor despite not preferring their tax plan and a LOT who prefer the Tories still aren’t voting for them.