Term three, day three

Anthony Albanese emerges the clear favourite to assume the Labor leadership, as the emergence of the party’s internal pollling belies the notion that it had any clearer an idea of what awaited it than the rest of us.

Some notable links and developments, as the Coalition inches closer towards a parliamentary majority in the latest counting:

• A few bugs remain to be ironed out, but I now have an regularly updated election results reporting facility in business that provides, among other things, booth results and swings in a far more accessible format than anything else on the market. If you would like to discuss the facility or the progress of the count in general, you are encouraged to do so on the late counting thread.

Samantha Maiden at The New Daily has obtained the full gamut of tracking polling conducted for Labor throughout the campaign, which is something I can never recall being made public before. The overall swing shown at the end of the campaign is of 1.5% to Labor, just like the published polls were saying. The polling was conducted by YouGov Galaxy, as indeed was much of the published polling during the campaign, this being the organisation responsible for Newspoll and the polls commissioned by the News Corp tabloids.

• Nathan Ruser of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute has produced fabulously revealing maps showing the distribution of two-party swings.

• Ladbrokes (no doubt among others) has a book open on the Labor leadership, which, with the withdrawal of Tanya Plibersek, has Anthony Albanese a clear favourite on $1.28, Jim Chalmers on $3.00, Chris Bowen on $5.50 and Tony Burke on $10.

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.

1,092 comments on “Term three, day three”

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  1. The big problem for Morrison will be the deficit. We were/are/going to be in surplus, right? He’d better goddamn deliver that. But if he does, in a deteriorating economy, he will have to make big cuts. Labor might win the next election but it will be because of big tectonic shifts like that. The rest of the game-playing to tiny audiences won’t matter.

  2. What Labor has to do is wave through every nasty piece of shit that was in the Abbott 2014 and subsequent budgets and then say to Australian people…” we respect that you have given the Liberal/National Party a mandate to implement their policies in full. We do not agree with these policies but as it is YOUR will we will pass them in good faith.
    1.We will allow the Liberals to implement their policy of a $14 Medicare co-payment. We do not agree with this policy and we will seek a mandate from you to repeal it at the next election.
    2..We will allow the Liberals to implement their policy of no Unemployment benenfit for 6 months for people under 30. We do not agree with this policy and we will seek a mandate from you to repeal it at the next election.
    and so and so on.

    Now, in all seriousness I feel it will be only when the people who voted the Lib/Nats into office get to feel the pain of what the actual policies of the Coalition are will they change. At the moment I get the feeling the voters think the senate that will stop the right wing agenda so who they put in the reps is irrelevent.

  3. Diog – you may be right. But the biggest problem about all the labor “handouts” is that people don’t trust politicians to deliver their promises. They only trust the politicians when they tell people they will be “losers”. Then they know the politicians intend to delivered. That’s why its nuts to punish some voters (before an election) to benefit many. You will only shift the votes of the losers.

  4. There are two ways of looking at Chisholm for on one hand the boundaries made it a Liberal lending marginal that probably would have returned Julia Banks by a fair margin regardless of the wider election result due to Chisholm usually favoring incumbents however for all the difficulties faced by the LNP since the rolling of Turnbull it is hard to believe the ALP fell short despite the difficult boundaries.

  5. sonar @ #902 Tuesday, May 21st, 2019 – 8:54 pm

    What Labor has to do is wave through every nasty piece of shit that was in the Abbott 2014 and subsequent budgets and then say to Australian people…” we respect that you have given the Liberal/National Party a mandate to implement their policies in full. We do not agree with these policies but as it is YOUR will we will pass them in good faith.
    1.We will allow the Liberals to implement their policy of a $14 Medicare co-payment. We do not agree with this policy and we will seek a mandate from you to repeal it at the next election.
    2..We will allow the Liberals to implement their policy of no Unemployment benenfit for 6 months for people under 30. We do not agree with this policy and we will seek a mandate from you to repeal it at the next election.
    and so and so on.

    Now, in all seriousness I feel it will be only when the people who voted the Lib/Nats into office get to feel the pain of what the actual policies of the Coalition are will they change. At the moment I get the feeling the voters think the senate that will stop the right wing agenda so who they put in the reps is irrelevent.

    I didn’t vote for Labor to turn vindictively on its own constituency like that. And what happens when Labor is in office. It will have NO revenue stream and have to include a huge number of nasties.

    But don’t worry, the Libs are going to go into the red without any help from Labor.

  6. breifly:

    The Gs dislike the term. I couldn’t give a rats about that.

    I like many of your posts, but I abhor your terminology (“your idiotic private terminology”, I would call it…)

    I may not be alone in that

  7. https://www.pollbludger.net/2019/05/21/term-three-day-three/comment-page-18/#comment-3184843

    The DLP were in the centre between the ALP and the Coalition, having taken votes off the ALP (and sent most of them to the Coalition) and were exposed as being too close to the Coalition by the Whitlam Government. The Democrats were similarly in the centre, similarly dying in that political death strip.

    The Greens are to the left of the ALP, further away from the Coalition than the ALP, and direct preferences to the ALP. They are not in the political death strip in the centre.

  8. Mexicanbeemer @ #904 Tuesday, May 21st, 2019 – 8:55 pm

    There are two ways of looking at Chisholm for on one hand the boundaries made it a Liberal lending marginal that probably would have returned Julia Banks by a fair margin regardless of the wider election result due to Chisholm usually favoring incumbents however for all the difficulties faced by the LNP since the rolling of Turnbull it is hard to believe the ALP fell short despite the difficult boundaries.

    Maybe Labor came so close to the Libs in the 2016 election because of the Lib’s changes to superannuation and that offered Labor false hope and caused them to fall into the same trap

  9. What Labor has to do is wave through every nasty piece of shit

    What gets successfully legislated is very difficult to undo.

    Labor can’t hope to undo all the stuff that the Libs would want to push through and work on their own positive agenda when they next get an opportunity to govern.

    Be very careful what you wave through.

  10. @antonbruckner11…..”I didn’t vote for Labor to turn vindictively on its own constituency like that. And what happens when Labor is in office. It will have NO revenue stream and have to include a huge number of nasties.”….

    Since 2013 the Australian electorate has rejected the policies of the ALP. It rejected them again in an even more decisive manner on the weekend.
    How is it being vindictive to say to the Australian people you made a choice in policy direction. We do not agree but have to respect the mandate you have given over 3 elections. ?If you want a change of policy direction then you have to elect us as a govt. I don’t see it as vindictive at all.

  11. Gladys Liu officially wins Chisholm by more than 1000 votes, what a fail for Labor to only gain 2 seats in Victoria

    And let’s also remember those 2 seats were notionally Labor from redistribution.

  12. antonbruckner11

    Going into 2016, Chisholm had been held by the ALP’s Anna Burke, and she probably would have held the seat it if she hadn’t retired, also the seat use to stretch down to ALP lending Oakleigh which was replaced by LNP lending Glen Waverley during the last redistribution.

  13. Australia has by and large been governed by centre/centre-right administrations since Federation…

    Even if we only count the Liberal Party they’ve been in power 40.37% of the time but only been in existence since 1944. This equates to approx. 47 of its 76 year history that they’ve been in government.

    Labor have been in power for 31.60% of the time but has been in existence since 1901. This equates to approx. 37 years of its 118 year history.

    If you add the non-Labor administrations of various ilks like the Nationalists/UAP/Country Party/Commonwealth Liberals/Free-Trade and Protectionists then it’s approx. 80 out of 118 years that Labor has been out of power.

    Labor should and do have to take credit for many positive reforms once it gets into government (as seen with Hawke and Keating with Medicare/Floating the Dollar) but let’s face it non-Labor administrations are generally the party of government in this country- at least Federally.

  14. sonar @ #910 Tuesday, May 21st, 2019 – 9:03 pm

    @antonbruckner11…..”I didn’t vote for Labor to turn vindictively on its own constituency like that. And what happens when Labor is in office. It will have NO revenue stream and have to include a huge number of nasties.”….

    Since 2013 the Australian electorate has rejected the policies of the ALP. It rejected them again in an even more decisive manner on the weekend.
    How is it being vindictive to say to the Australian people you made a choice in policy direction. We do not agree but have to respect the mangate you have given over 3 elections. ?If you want a change of policy direction then you have to elect us as a govt. I don’t see it as vindictive at all.

    I voted Labor because I expect MY PARTY to protect me and my interests, not worry about what Liberal voters did. If it doesn’t, I won’t vote for it.

  15. Gary Sparrow @ #914 Tuesday, May 21st, 2019 – 9:07 pm

    Australia has by and large been governed by centre/centre-right administrations since Federation…

    Even if we only count the Liberal Party they’ve been in power 40.37% of the time but only been in existence since 1944. This equates to approx. 47 of its 76 year history that they’ve been in government.

    Labor have been in power for 31.60% of the time but has been in existence since 1901. This equates to approx. 37 years of its 118 year history.

    If you add the non-Labor administrations of various ilks like the Nationalists/UAP/Country Party/Commonwealth Liberals/Free-Trade and Protectionists then it’s approx. 80 out of 118 years that Labor has been out of power.

    Labor should and do have to take credit for many positive reforms once it gets into government (as seen with Hawke and Keating with Medicare/Floating the Dollar) but let’s face it non-Labor administrations are generally the party of government in this country- at least Federally.

    And I think it’s going to get worse. The last great event that knitted society together was WWII. Each year we become more diverse and selfish and unequal. The trend, I’m afraid is all downhill.

  16. What Labor has to do is wave through every nasty piece of shit that was in the Abbott 2014 and subsequent budgets and then say to Australian people…” we respect that you have given the Liberal/National Party a mandate to implement their policies in full. We do not agree with these policies but as it is YOUR will we will pass them in good faith.

    Right. And what happens if Labor does indeed end up serving this and the next parliamentary term in opposition? All that shit ‘waved through’ is effectively entrenched in legislation, all but impossible to undo, most especially because the caravan will have moved on.

    And then there’s a newly minted Labor govt trying to legislate its own policy commitments while simultaneously trying to wind back stuff from two parliaments ago. It isn’t going to happen, which means all the regressive policy shit ScoMo’s mob will happily inflict on the poor and the marginalised ends up becoming entrenched in law.

    I’m sorry, but I have real problems with that.

  17. Given the epic failure of opinion polling at this election, it’s difficult to know how to interpret the regular polls over the next 3 years – or why there’s any point in Newspoll/Essential continuing to conduct them. I guess trends up and down and at a regional level may point to something, but no one can have much confidence that the headline PVs and 2PPs at any time are in any way predictive of the actual mood of the electorate.

    Interpretation of the next Federal election campaign will also feel like flying blind. In this last campaign we all got caught up in the minutiae of events like debate performances, gaffes, explosion of pre-poll numbers, the Telecrap and Shorten’s mum, Hawkie’s passing – and collectively spent days or weeks or months obsessing over how these individual events were shaping the outcome. And all for naught – unbeknownst to us, below the surface, the election was unfolding in a completely different way to what our conventional wisdom was telling us. Individually posters would make dogmatic announcements about what they “knew” was happening – Dutton is definitely gorrrn; Labor to win 91 seats; the polls are concealing a big swing to Labor. I was as guilty of completely misreading the situation as anyone else.

    It makes me wonder how to live through the next campaign though. This last experience suggests that essentially we’ll have no friggin idea of what’s happening based on the polls, or the election campaign, and that it will only be at around 7 PM on some evening in 2022 that we’ll know whether we’ve finally got rid of the coalition. It’s a bit scary really.

  18. briefly says:
    Tuesday, May 21, 2019 at 8:43 pm

    …”The Labor plurality has been ebbing away for about 25 years. When Bob Hawke won in 1983, it was about 46%.”…

    Almost precisely 25 years after Hawke’s first victory, Labor won an election at 43.5% primary.
    In that same election, your leftie mates the “liblings” got about 7%
    Where does that leave your “ebbing plurality”?

    Sorry mate, I am as pissed off and hurt by what has occurred as anyone.
    But it ain’t the end of the world.
    Unfortunately, in the mean time, this country is about to get a very short sharp lesson in just how completely shit a government can be.
    I expect buyers remorse to set in roughly the middle of next week.

  19. I voted Labor because I expect MY PARTY to protect me and my interests, not worry about what Liberal voters did.

    Aside from that, it’s also a strategically bad move for them to just wave everything through. Some of those things will be tax cuts for big business and the wealthy.

    If Labor went to unroll those later, that would actually be a “tax hike”, and they would be savaged for it.

    They need to do exactly what the Liberals would do if the situation were reversed. Obstruct everything. The only thing Labor needs to accept from the Libs are lessons in how to win elections by fighting dirty.

  20. According to the AEC, the ALP won the Box Hill booths with pro-ALP swings.

    Box Hill 57.89% +3.7% swing
    Box Hill Central 58.82% +6.47% swing
    Box Hill South 57.05% +3.36% swing

  21. What gets successfully legislated is very difficult to undo.

    Correct, it would not only be bad on the merits, it would also be bad strategically.

    For an Opposition, the best thing to happen to unpopular Government policies is for them to hang around, on the books but unlegislated, ponging the joint up until even the unengaged notice the smell. That’s what happened with Abbott’s unloved Budget measures.

  22. Rational Leftist
    says:
    Tuesday, May 21, 2019 at 9:10 pm
    Now the Chinese community is also at fault lol
    ______________________________
    I know. And people saying that Box Hill voted liberal when the Box Hill booths all swung to the ALP and are at around 57 ALP 2PP!!!!!!! It was probably the area around Mount Waverly that got the Liberals slightly over the line. But all the booths in this electorate are within the 40-60 range pretty much.

  23. @antonbruckner11……….I don’t disagree with you.
    My point is that with a senate the Australian people believe will keep the right wing fuckwittery of the Libs in check they will vote in droves for them……and the result is so many progressive programs will never see the light of day. Action on climate change…..never going to happen.
    THe election on Saturday has made me think that perhaps the Australian people need to see and feel the harsh reality of their decion making.

  24. Not Sure @ #922 Tuesday, May 21st, 2019 – 9:12 pm

    briefly says:
    Tuesday, May 21, 2019 at 8:43 pm

    …”The Labor plurality has been ebbing away for about 25 years. When Bob Hawke won in 1983, it was about 46%.”…

    Almost precisely 25 years after Hawke’s first victory, Labor won an election at 43.5% primary.
    In that same election, your leftie mates the “liblings” got about 7%
    Where does that leave your “ebbing plurality”?

    Sorry mate, I am as pissed off and hurt by what has occurred as anyone.
    But it ain’t the end of the world.
    Unfortunately, in the mean time, this country is about to get a very short sharp lesson in just how completely shit a government can be.
    I expect buyers remorse to set in roughly the middle of next week.

    I expect that right now the punters are waiting for Morrison to unveil how he intends to ensure that “everyone who has a go gets a go”. The punters will be waiting, and waiting, and waiting … Won’t they be surprised when they find out their lives are even shittier.

  25. fletch:

    WTF is a lib-kin or a lib-lib?!

    There’s a whole lot these words, unfortunately: “libling” and “negging” are the worst. and there’s “lib-lab-same-same” too, argumentum per jargonasium, as one might say (my apologies to the Latinists and Grecians in our midst)

  26. How can you hope to put out a generalised poll figure into the mix when it is quite obvious that Australia has split into tribes not specifically measurable by age cohorts?

  27. Mexicanbeemer
    says:
    Tuesday, May 21, 2019 at 9:22 pm
    Nath
    For Box Hill they are pretty strong wins compared to the usual 50/50 to 55/45 TPP result.
    ______________________________________
    There’s been so much development in Box Hill in the past decade that perhaps a younger/apartment living demographic is important there. People who consider the Chinese community as a homogenous political entity are completely deluded. In past decades there were fairly strong links to ethnicity and voting but the Melbourne Chinese community is not like that.

  28. You’re right about box hill. It was the gaining of very highly liberal voting Glen Waverley and losing Oakleigh that kept that seat blue. 2016 lines would have seen Chisholm and Deakin fall…

  29. Here’s a thought which will infuriated some. Maybe Labor has to give up a couple of reps seats to the Greens. These are going to be your middle class seats where people like the environment but don’t really care about the economic part.

    That frees them up to go back toward a focus on jobs. It seems putting environment over jobs is a bit of a turn off for the tradie brigade. Doing the opposite is a turn off for the doctors wives. Which has the most votes?

  30. antonbruckner11 @ #907 Tuesday, May 21st, 2019 – 9:07 pm

    sonar @ #910 Tuesday, May 21st, 2019 – 9:03 pm

    @antonbruckner11…..”I didn’t vote for Labor to turn vindictively on its own constituency like that. And what happens when Labor is in office. It will have NO revenue stream and have to include a huge number of nasties.”….

    Since 2013 the Australian electorate has rejected the policies of the ALP. It rejected them again in an even more decisive manner on the weekend.
    How is it being vindictive to say to the Australian people you made a choice in policy direction. We do not agree but have to respect the mangate you have given over 3 elections. ?If you want a change of policy direction then you have to elect us as a govt. I don’t see it as vindictive at all.

    I voted Labor because I expect MY PARTY to protect me and my interests, not worry about what Liberal voters did. If it doesn’t, I won’t vote for it.

    The problem with that argument is that it is the formerly Liberal voters that are voting for the Labor Party now:

    https://www.smh.com.au/federal-election-2019/the-left-right-identity-fault-line-cracks-through-the-quinoa-curtain-20190520-p51p9o.html

    This is a very good article to study if you want to understand what just happened.

    Basically, people who don’t necessarily represent me are voting to protect me and mine. Which I think is very kind of them.

    This is where the ALP has to be nuanced. Realise that they can push the envelope a little bit, not a lot, and people won’t mind and will vote against their own interests for the greater good.

    Where the problem lies is in convincing the selfish Upper Middle Bogans who work in Mining and associated industries, that Labor has a plan for them to, as long as they also understand that they have to give a little bit, not a lot, too.

  31. “Silmaj says:
    Tuesday, May 21, 2019 at 9:30 pm
    Perhaps the pollers will reveal the amount of hang ups they get. Some with gusto.”

    Maybe they were putting the people who told them to F-off down as Labor voters?

  32. I linked this earlier today

    Scott Bland
    @PoliticoScott
    The telephone poll is dying. The industry is rushing to implement new methods. And there is a huge election approaching (link: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/20/pollsters-trump-reelection-race-1335087) politico.com/story/2019/05/… via
    @POLITICO_Steve

    Pollsters rush to patch fraying methods for Trump’s reelection race
    Professional pollsters say the old way of conducting surveys is fading fast, but new methods might not be trusted and ready for next year.
    politico.com

  33. Alpha Zero
    says:
    Tuesday, May 21, 2019 at 9:28 pm
    You’re right about box hill. It was the gaining of very highly liberal voting Glen Waverley and losing Oakleigh that kept that seat blue. 2016 lines would have seen Chisholm and Deakin fall…
    ____________________________________

    It was the Pre Poll voting that got the Libs over the line, particularly in the Mount Waverley area:

    Mount Waverley PPVC
    9,436 votes
    5,386 lib votes
    57.08 2pp.

  34. Blobbit @ #932 Tuesday, May 21st, 2019 – 9:29 pm

    Here’s a thought which will infuriated some. Maybe Labor has to give up a couple of reps seats to the Greens. These are going to be your middle class seats where people like the environment but don’t really care about the economic part.

    That frees them up to go back toward a focus on jobs. It seems putting environment over jobs is a bit of a turn off for the tradie brigade. Doing the opposite is a turn off for the doctors wives. Which has the most votes?

    No! No! No! No! No! Read the article I just linked to. Labor needs to go where Ged has boldly gone and then some. Next time go after the Inner City Liberal seats. The Greens didn’t get any more HOR seats this election so make sure they don’t next election too. Let the party formerly known as the Liberal Party become a Trumpian Christian Conservative party and watch them as THEY become the ones boxed in.

  35. Maybe the pollsters need to go to local train stations, shopping centres and local sporting events to find their sample and for electorates with 100k+ residents, are 500 sample sizes large enough when most booths are inexcess of 1000 voters and A.G would never call a seat on the first 500 votes counted.

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