Happy trails: episode three

The Coalition continues to profess confidence about its prospects, but Scott Morrison’s recent campaign movements suggest a campaign on the defensive.

While Coalition sources are still making semi-confident noises in their briefings to the press gallery, Scott Morrison seems to have spent most of past week-and-a-bit sandbagging second-tier seats rather than carving out a pathway to victory, while Bill Shorten has remained on the offensive. In the first three weeks of the campaign, Morrison spent roughly as much time in Labor as in Coalition-held electorates, but going back to last weekend, the only prime ministerial visit that seemed in any way targeted at a Labor-held seat was in the New South Wales Central Coast seat of Dobell last Sunday – and that might equally have been pitched at its marginal Liberal-held neighbour, Robertson.

Morrison’s efforts yesterday were devoted to the Melbourne seat of Deakin, which the Liberals believed they had nailed down in more optimistic times earlier in the campaign. Similarly, Friday brought him to Capricornia, one of a number of regional Queensland seats the Coalition was supposedly feeling relaxed about due to the Adani issue. The visit was to Rockhampton, but the announcement of a new CQUniversity mines and manufacturing school equally applied to Gladstone, located in the similarly placed neighbouring seat of Flynn.

Morrison has also spent a lot of time on seats where the Liberals are under pressure from independents. Tuesday was spent straddling the Murray, where Cathy McGowan’s support group hopes to bequeath Indi to Helen Haines on the Victorian side, and Albury mayor Kevin Mack is taking on Liberal member Sussan Ley in the New South Wales seat of Farrer. On Thursday he went to Cowper, which it is feared the Nationals will lose to Rob Oakeshott.

Most remarkably, Morrison also spent the entirety of a trip to Melbourne last Friday in Kooyong, where he made pronouncements on themes not normally considered staples of the Liberal campaign, namely recycling and protection of threatened species (insert Josh Frydenberg joke). The danger there is that the seat will lose the blue-ribbon seat to ex-Liberal independent Oliver Yates. Still more striking is the fact that Bill Shorten felt the seat worth a visit yesterday, if only to be photographed with puppies at Guide Dogs Victoria.

You can find my accounting of the leaders’ movements in spreadsheet form here.

In other news, the last Sunday newspapers of the campaign are typically the first to bring editorial endorsements, although both the Fairfax titles have squibbed it today, as has Perth’s Sunday Times. The four News Corp papers that have taken a stand have all gone as you would expect. The online headline in the Sunday Telegraph says it is “time to end the worst period of political instability and cynicism since federation” – which you should do, naturally, by returning the government. Granted that this makes more sense if you read the whole thing, though very few will of course. In Victoria, the Coalition gets the endorsement of the Sunday Herald Sun, as it did before the state election in November, for all the good it did them. The Brisbane Sunday Mail’s effort is headlined “Australians can’t afford a reckless pursuit of utopia”; the Adelaide Sunday Mail says it’s “time for a steady hand”, i.e. not Bill Shorten’s.

Also today: the latest episode of Seat du jour, tackling the Perth seat of Hasluck.

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.

1,277 comments on “Happy trails: episode three”

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  1. So Labor remains in front heading into the final week. A good position to be in. Would love to know what’s happening on a more micro level. I guess we won’t know until Saturday. Even with State polling, that won’t tell a clear story, as I imagine the sample sizes will be small.

    William, is State based polling generally a more accurate picture than national polling?

  4. Labor remains poised to win government next weekend with Bill Shorten receiving a boost to his personal ratings despite a further lift in popular support for the Coalition.

    An exclusive Newspoll conducted for The Australian shows the race to next Saturday’s poll remains tightly contested with the Coalition lifting its primary vote a point to 39 per cent going into the final week of the campaign.

    But it has not been enough to shift the two party preferred vote with Labor still leading on 51/49 per cent after also lifting its core support a point to 37 per cent.

    The results follow the release of Labor’s policy costings last Friday which the Coalition believed would be the weak link in Mr Shorten’s campaign.

    They also are likely to reflect the impassioned public response from the Opposition leader to newspaper reports last week suggesting he had been selective when citing his late mother’s career achievements

    While the headline numbers are largely unchanged from last week’s poll, Mr Shorten’s personal ratings received a boost.

    He has now closed the gap on Scott Morrison to seven points in the contest over who would make the better prime minister lifting three points to 38 per cent while Mr Morrison dropped back a point to 45 per cent.

    The number of undecided voters was 17 per cent.
    The Labor leader’s net approval ratings have also improved, delivering him the best result in four years.

    The number of voters disapproving of Mr Shorten dropped four points to 49 per cent which is the first time this number has dropped below 50 per cent since 2016.

    His approval ratings also jumped three points to 39 per cent producing a net negative approval rating of minus 10 which is the best result for the Opposition leader since March 2015.

    Mr Morrison’s approval ratings remained largely unchanged with an equal number of people satisfied and dissatisfied with his performance.

    The Newspoll survey of 1644 voters nationally across capital cities and the regions was conducted between May 9 and May 11.

    The maximum sampling error is plus or minus 2.4 percentage points.

  5. While the headline numbers are largely unchanged from last week’s poll, Mr Shorten’s personal ratings received a boost.

    He has now closed the gap on Scott Morrison to seven points in the contest over who would make the better prime minister lifting three points to 38 per cent while Mr Morrison dropped back a point to 45 per cent.

    https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/poll-race-remains-tightly-contested/news-story/b25b6514e8c972a740fa2a979e862265

  7. Surprised Newspoll didn’t tick up a point at least to 52-48, but I guess if you run preferences from UAP at 2013 levels and not this mythical 60-40 to the LNP you probably do get 52-48 ALP.

    I’m more inclined to believe the campaign. Morrison campaigning in only lib seats, including some very safe ones, and a general sense of desperation about everything they do.

  8. There has never been a first home owners grant or subsidy or concession that has been a good idea.

    Just distorts the market.

  11. Paul Murray says there will be further reporting in tomorrow’s Oz that shows an improvement in the Liberal vote in specific seats.

  17. The 7 points PPM difference is interesting given the work referenced here on PB some time ago that PM incumbency is worth about 16 points of difference.

  22. Given Palmer’s United Australia Party is running candidates in every electorate and One Nation is not. One Nation’s vote will be considerably less than 4% and the UAP’s higher than 4% come election day. Also I predict that One Nation, The UAP and Fraser Anning’s Conservative Nationals will be in competition for a Senate seat in Queensland.

  24. I know I’m a biased left wing true believer … but this Newspoll is ridiculous. The combatants are chalk and cheese. Total BS … surely?

  25. SKY: Primaries Green unchanged at 9, ON down one to 4, no other info given.
    ____
    Explains the Libs’ PV 1 % increase

  26. “I’m more inclined to believe the campaign.”

    Agree, but you need to consider ALL the info make a judgement.

    Any word on Ipsos and Essential?

    Polling? I’ll wait to see how BludgerTrack moves once William has had time to digest things. 🙂

    Still, not unhappy on these numbers.

  27. The issues with Meninga’s brother were well known, as were Meninga’s efforts at trying to support his brother. It was ‘He ain’t heavy he’s my brother stuff.’ and, if anything, people thought the better of Mal for his efforts.

    Meninga got tongue-tied in the interview and realized that a life of artificial blather was not for him.
    So he walked away from it.
    I watched the interview live.

  30. If you apply the 60% for PHON and PUP – it makes for ALP 2PP of 50.5%

    Starting to smell like Keating in 1993 !!

  31. “I know I’m a biased left wing true believer … but this Newspoll is ridiculous. The combatants are chalk and cheese. Total BS … surely?”

    Nah, it’s just Straya.

  32. Georgina Downer says the Lib PV shows the signs are good for the Liberals, esp in seats like Mayo.

    Methinks if she wanted to appeal to broad Mayo voters she’d have stayed the hell away from Sky After Dark!

  33. Methinks if she wanted to appeal to broad Mayo voters she’d have stayed the hell away from Sky After Dark!
    ____
    Sky After Dark is the only outfit that would WANT the loser on!

  34. Some observations from Kevin Bonham

    #Newspoll Better PM Morrison “leads” 45-38. BPM skews massively to incumbent. This one is actually a weak lead by historic standards given the 2PP, which is unusual. #

    #Shorten netsat -10 (39-49) his best since March 2015. #Newspoll

  37. 51-49

    But those primaries:

    LNP 39 (still below 40, and 3.5% below 2016)
    ALP 37 (2+ on 2016)
    Greens 9
    ON 4
    UAP 4
    Others 7(?)

    I call shenanigans on that 2PP. Smells like close to 53-47 and certainly over 52-48 to Labor.

    Geez. Murray and his 3 failed LNP amigos are polishing this turd as hard as possible.

    Shenanigans for Murray saying this is only a 2 seat majority to Labor.

    Shenanigans to ScoMo ‘turning this around’. This is exactly what the aggregate of polls have been saying for 2.5 years.

    Shenanigans to Giles saying that Solomon is an almost certain LNP gain: Darwin folk most be stoned if they haven’t worked out that most of the Gunner government’s problems have the omnishambles of the Giles government as the root cause.

    Despite Pepe’s best efforts to stink up progressive politics in Queensland I reckon this looks like a 15 seat+ gain by labor. Maybe doing back 1-2 seats that might buck the trend: but I doubt it.

  38. Murray and Kroger wishing and hoping that appalling Julia Banks doesn’t get up in Flinders.

    #antiwomen

  39. I just can’t understand why the polls are not shifting despite the positive launch, the fallout from the DT shit, the campaigning trails and the feedback from the commentariat.

  40. “If you apply the 60% for PHON and PUP –”

    Honestly………i would want to hear a William or KB opinion on the validity of that 60% pref allocation.

  43. An interesting result. Labor still wins. One week to see if NewsPoll still good or if it has been trashed also.

  44. @Confessions

    I predict Julia Banks will poll less than either Greg Hunt and Josh Sinclair, her preferences will likely elect Josh Sinclair.

  46. A sample size of 1644 for the national figure.

    Interesting to see the breakdown of respondent numbers for each individual seats.

    I would assume different samples for National and individual seat polling ?

  47. sprocket
    Shorten netsat -10 (39-49) his best since March 2015

    Mirrors Abbott’s improving netsat as LOTO as his victory loomed in 2013

  48. Kroger says that most of those who have pre-polled have voted illegally. 😮

    Based on the fact that when he turned up to vote he was asked whether he was eligible to vote today.

    WTF??!!

  49. Gecko – all the polls are similar: ALP ahead 51-49 or 52-48.

    You are delusional if you think most people think like you.

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