Of swings and misses

The Coalition’s parliamentary majority looks secure, as the polling industry starts facing up to what went wrong.

The latest – or some of it at least:

• It is now reckoned beyond doubt that the Liberals have held on in Chisholm, thereby guaranteeing a parliamentary majority of at least 76 seats out of 151. As related in the latest update in my late counting post, I think it more likely than not that they will supplement that with Macquarie and Bass, and wouldn’t write them off quite yet in Cowan. You are encouraged to use that thread to discuss the progress of the count, and to enjoy the reguarly updated results reporting facility while you’re about it.

• If you only read one thing about the collective failure of the opinion polls, make it Kevin Bonham’s comprehensive account. If you only read two, or don’t have quite that much time on your hands, a brief piece by Professor Brian Schmidt in The Guardian is worth a look.

• The three major polling companies have each acknowledged the issue in one way or another, far the most searching example of which is a piece in The Guardian by Peter Lewis of Essential Research. A statement released yesterday by Ipsos at least concedes there may be a problem with over-sampling of the politically engaged, but Monday’s offering by David Briggs of YouGov Galaxy in The Australian was defensive to a fault.

• Note the guest post below this one from Adrian Beaumont on tomorrow’s European Union elections in Britain.

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.

1,724 comments on “Of swings and misses”

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  1. @Simon² Katich®

    Scomo knows that as well, I don’t think the government will go coal crazy. However they are going to do pretty much nothing on climate change.

  2. I curse the person who first thought it a great idea to condemn every single political discussion, debate or contest to be viewed through the lens of which side of the room a bunch of stuffy Frenchmen chose to sit a couple of centuries ago.

  3. Deliberately causing major economic disruption is going to do wonders for any smooth transition

    Heating the planet with fossil fuels is “deliberately causing major economic disruption”. The disruption is not something you have a choice over. If you want a smooth transition the first step is to acknowledge what you’re dealing with. Either you believe the science or you don’t.

  4. Windhover,

    Mine might be a particular and temporary situation, but I bet there are many, many more single worker households on the other side of the home ownership divide. These households habe most of the family wealth in the home, but also some shares on top. Not extremely wealthy, but affected by the policy, unlike the extremely wealthy.

    I also reckon a lot of them live in the outer suburbs of Sydney, Brisbane and that large frozen, windswept city in the south east of the country.

  5. “Meanwhile the extreme rabid left antisemitic part of the party is destroying its credibility.”

    The “extreme left antisemitic part” is apparently antisemitic because they criticise Likudniks when they swat Palestinians for votes.

    On the other hand the “extreme right antisemitic part” has a much longer history which mainly consists of criticising Jews for not jumping into ovens quickly enough.

  6. Another wasted 10 yrs of climate change coming up

    It’s great to see that once again the Greens have reached their 100% renewable target.
    100% of nothing and another 10 yrs of fighting to keep everyone interested.

    It truly is a sad australia,but you greens keep up the good fight.
    Fucking hopeless.

  7. Mr Denmore@MrDenmore
    55m55 minutes ago

    Sitting in the Qantas lounge trying to find a corner not polluted by the demented post-election crowing of the Sky After Dark gargoyles who appear to have now colonised the daylight hours. What a special sort of hell.

  8. Another wasted 10 yrs of climate change coming up

    Mr Money, for that you can firstly thank the internal Labor treachery that tore down the Gillard-Milne-Indy Govt and with it the Clean Energy Package legislation.. and secondly the incompetent and indecisive messaging of Bill Shorten and the dolt.

  9. Clare Oneil

    Personal
    Born 12.9.1980, Melbourne, Australia
    Partner
    Qualifications and occupation before entering Federal Parliament
    B.A(Hons) (Monash)
    LL.B(Hons) (Monash)
    M.PP (Harvard)
    Deans Scholar
    Fulbright Scholar
    Intern, Global Corporate Client Group, New York Stock Exchange 2007
    Policy Adviser, Office of the Commonwealth Treasurer 2008
    Engagement Manager, McKinsey and Company 2009-13
    Business Adviser, Marngarr Aboriginal Resource Centre 2011
    Local government service
    Councillor, City of Greater Dandenong from 2003 to 2005
    Mayor, City of Greater Dandenong, 2004

  10. Scomo knows that as well, I don’t think the government will go coal crazy. However they are going to do pretty much nothing on climate change.

    Morrison has more confidence than a rutting goat. With the backing of 80% of the media and the need to keep the far right in line he is more than capable of some stratospheric stupidity.

  11. It truly is a sad australia,but you greens keep up the good fight.
    Fucking hopeless.

    The “inconvenient truth” is that this is the only climate policy that is actually consistent with scientific evidence.

  12. To their credit, no G-operator has yet denied their main political project is the destruction of Labor.

    They will not lie about the plain truth. They should be applauded.

  13. FYI.

    It’s common knowledge in Australia that almost any word or phrase can be improved by abbreviating it and adding -o to the end. Service stations become “servos”, bottle shops become “bottlos”, Scott Morrison becomes “ScoMo”. That’s turning out to be a slight problem for the likely next leader of the federal Labor party, Anthony Albanese, who is universally known as Albo.

    Y’see, the Twitter account @albo is not actually Anthony Albanese. It’s a porn account.

    More specifically, it’s a NSFW art account (you’ve been warned, do not visit at work), run by a talented Italian artist who’s currently open for commissions, if anyone would like a custom pornographic cartoon.

    Unfortunately for Albo (the Australian politician), his enthusiastic supporters don’t seem to be checking who owns the account before tweeting their support. Hence a powerful recent outflow of support for @albo, courtesy of Australians.

  14. Watermelon says:
    Thursday, May 23, 2019 at 3:31 pm
    It truly is a sad australia,but you greens keep up the good fight.
    Fucking hopeless.
    The “inconvenient truth” is that this is the only climate policy that is actually consistent with scientific evidence.

    This is a political fabrication.

  15. @Mavis Davis

    I think government sometimes will be able to make deals with the Center Alliance and Lambie, sometimes not. For instance; the Center Alliance wont support the repeal of the Medevac Bill.

  16. Mr Denmore does seem to spend a disproportionate time in the Qantas lounge.

    Perhaps just second to Bob Katter in the Chairman’s lounge.

  17. Watermelon @ #1415 Thursday, May 23rd, 2019 – 3:31 pm

    It truly is a sad australia,but you greens keep up the good fight.
    Fucking hopeless.

    The “inconvenient truth” is that this is the only climate policy that is actually consistent with scientific evidence.

    That’s not the point.
    Driving a convoy 3,000 km to yell at people is not the way to win friends and influence people.
    You want to change things? Then help, don’t hinder, the people who want to help you.

  18. slackboy72 @ #1421 Thursday, May 23rd, 2019 – 3:36 pm

    Driving a convoy 3,000 km to yell at people is not the way to win friends and influence people.

    No that part is fine. The problem is save it until after the goddamn election campaign!

    And the lesser problem is that if your nonviolent protesters are getting run over and having their hands mangled in gates by pissed-off locals, you ensure the politically-motivated violence of the other side is front and center for everyone to see.

  19. @GreenAwakening
    8h8 hours ago

    US expands use of antibiotics on food crops—ignores health concerns about increasing antibiotic resistance in humans—pharmaceuticals used to fight bacteria on orange, grapefruit trees—streptomycin, oxytetracycline—used to treat syphilis, tuberculosis, UTIs

    ZOLFO SPRINGS, Fla. — A pernicious disease is eating away at Roy Petteway’s orange trees. The bacterial infection, transmitted by a tiny winged insect from China, has evaded all efforts to contain it, decimating Florida’s citrus industry and forcing scores of growers out of business.

    In a last-ditch attempt to slow the infection, Mr. Petteway revved up his industrial sprayer one recent afternoon and doused the trees with a novel pesticide: antibiotics used to treat syphilis, tuberculosis, urinary tract infections and a number of other illnesses in humans.

    Since 2016, the Environmental Protection Agency has allowed Florida citrus farmers to use the drugs, streptomycin and oxytetracycline, on an emergency basis, but the agency is now significantly expanding their permitted use across 764,000 acres in California, Texas and other citrus-producing states. The agency approved the expanded use despite strenuous objections from the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which warn that the heavy use of antimicrobial drugs in agriculture could spur germs to mutate so they become resistant to the drugs, threatening the lives of millions of people.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/health/antibiotics-oranges-florida.html

  20. “On educating the masses. Labor did that.”

    Great!

    “Renewables went from Wind Turbine Syndrome with Hockey to being embraced by Sinodinos”

    Oh. The masses are a single LNP senator, who probably believed in it anyway.

  21. Tristo

    Sinodinos and others in the Liberal Party who have similar views, I reckon are going to have a tough fight against those who don’t, who have been emboldened by the election result.

    I don’t doubt it but they have no grounds to be emboldened. I’m going to keep repeating it til the cows come home – it was the lowest coalition primary vote in history. If they think they can rest on a single laurel then all it will take to wipe them out is Labor getting its act together to a minimal degree and/or Clive Palmer not pissing $60m down the drain. Or the ACTU and GetUp accepting that it’d have been better to donate their advertising budget to Labor instead of running their own useless campaigns. In which case I might have actually seen some ALP ads at some point during the campaign.

  22. briefly @ #1416 Thursday, May 23rd, 2019 – 3:32 pm

    To their credit, no G-operator has yet denied their main political project is the destruction of Labor.

    They will not lie about the plain truth. They should be applauded.

    The last decade has inarguably been one of total incompetence and destruction of the Labor brand …by Labor itself.

    Think about it – from Rudds psychological collapse as PM – to the internal treachery that tore down a progressive alliance which established real action on climate change – to arrogantly persisting with a leadership team of hopeless communicators in Shorten and Bowen for 6 long years – to losing the unlosable election to the most inept Govt of our times.

    Albo has a mammoth job in restoring credibility to this once political juggernaut.

  23. Don’t worry Rex I know exactly who’s at fault ,and it’s not Bill

    This has Dirty Dicks fingers prints all over it.
    Probably thinks his Shit Don’t Stick.

  24. “Watermelon says:
    Thursday, May 23, 2019 at 3:31 pm

    The “inconvenient truth” is that this is the only climate policy that is actually consistent with scientific evidence.”

    You’re almost certainly right. How does a party get elected going into an election with it?

    Can’t implement it from opposition

  25. Rational Left

    I’m told that the Left/Right hating is more a State thing than a federal thing. The reason why I was told was that I once had a Left MP and a Right MP do a visit together and expressed my surprise at how well they were getting on!

  26. FWIW, during the election I heard a couple of anti-Adani radio ads, focusing on the possibility of contaminated water hurting farmers in the region.

    It’s a good line, I think if the Greens/Greens-aligned people are going to oppose coal mining in central QLD they should try saying more stuff like that rather than “coal is dead”.

  27. booleanbach @ #1301 Thursday, May 23rd, 2019 – 1:46 pm

    Election campaigns are no longer about who has the better policies (to our detriment in my opinion), but who has the better presentation. Everything is relative and the party with the shiny, glossy, catchy look & feel with (of course) some fear of the other thrown in, is the one the public will go for.
    As Indigenous and now Progressive Australians are wont to say: “Poor fella my country”

    This is very much where I am now too.

    On the basis that voters don’t vote because of what they Think (they mostly don’t), but that they vote on what they Feel (they feel a lot), the conclusion is that Labor was not felt to be fit to govern.

    Yes, Virginia, it’s the economy stupid. And it was. It was a very economic campaign. But, but, the people felt, feel, and will feel that the economy is better in the hands of the Cons and that the Cons are the superior economic managers. We know they aren’t .This can easily be shown to be incorrect by many measures. But the data are one thing. Getting it into a gut feeling is another slow repeated process, of which the Cons have been experts, aided and abetted by a lazy and / or prejudiced MSM.

    So when the Cons go to the election with a supposed relatively ‘blank page’ (actually a policy platform written in invisible ink which needs lemon juice squeezed over it to bring up the text), they presented a feeling of stability and status quo – better economic managers with a faux surplus.

    Labor otoh presented itself, off a base of presumed lesser competence, with a raft of proposals all of which were designed to improve the economy, but which required a depth of thought and understanding which never rose above ingrained belief that they are the poorer managers and any change would therefore only be making things worse.

    Not addressing this was the weakness of the campaign, and predated the start of the campaign. It should at the very latest been a hard hitting effort that started when the complex policies were being rolled out. They did the ‘think about this’ part, but never got over the inculcated feelings.

    There is an urgent need for Labor to debunk the economic myth, and it will take all and every day of the next three years to hammer it home. And when thing go arse up, as they are about to, of course the Cons will blame factors beyond their control, and Labor.

    Labor, this is your task. This tape will self destruct in 5 seconds.

  28. Rex Douglas
    says:
    Thursday, May 23, 2019 at 3:44 pm
    briefly @ #1416 Thursday, May 23rd, 2019 – 3:32 pm
    To their credit, no G-operator has yet denied their main political project is the destruction of Labor.
    They will not lie about the plain truth. They should be applauded.
    The last decade has inarguably been one of total incompetence and destruction of the Labor brand …by Labor itself.
    Think about it – from Rudds psychological collapse as PM – to the internal treachery that tore down a progressive alliance which established real action on climate change – to arrogantly persisting with a leadership team of hopeless communicators in Shorten and Bowen for 6 long years – to losing the unlosable election to the most inept Govt of our times.
    Albo has a mammoth job in restoring credibility to this once political juggernaut.
    ___________________________
    You could go back further. The embarrassment that was Latham, the non-entity that was Crean, the Beazley waffle. Crean and Beazley were both good people, I have met both of them but they were ineffective. The failure of leadership after Keating has been spectacular. Albo can do it though. He could have taken over in 2013 but…

  29. @Tommy

    The Coalition got a lower primary vote in 1998 (39.5%) than at this election. Labor on the other hand got (33.71%) which was just above what it got in 2013 (33.38%).

  30. PatriciaKarvelas@PatsKarvelas
    4m4 minutes ago

    On @abcnews TV at 4pm #afternoonbriefing my exclusive interview with @Tony_Burke on #auspol2019 PLUS @sallymcmanus joins me to talk about the union movements contribution

  31. ‘It’s an opportunity for the Greens to campaign on actually establishing new clean energy industry jobs in the short to medium term for those coal mining regions.’

    Forget it, the only opportunity the Greens take up with gusto is attacking Labor. The very party that can do anything about clean energy.

    The sooner green- voters realise the Greens are anti-environment stop voting for them the the better the environment will be.

  32. Tristo

    I didn’t know that about 98 – it isn’t available on the AEC website so I guess I made an assumption! Thanks 🙂

  33. The Greens are a front organization for the likes of Rhinehardt, Palmer and Adani.
    This explains why Dirty Dick and Bastard Bandt attack Labor instead of the Coalition.

  34. Barney in Saigon @ #1394 Thursday, May 23rd, 2019 – 3:08 pm

    Watermelon says:
    Thursday, May 23, 2019 at 3:02 pm

    How would this be a good thing if it lead to shortages as we transitioned away from them?

    But it seems you would be happy if all such activities stopped now irrespective of the consequences.

    There’s nothing happy about any of this: there are bad consequences from stopping fossil fuel use, and worse consequences from not stopping fossil fuel use. Either you take the science seriously or you don’t.

    Right.

    Deliberately causing major economic disruption is going to do wonders for any smooth transition¿

    Ha, you still believe in a ‘smooth transition’, paleface. I have a slightly used bridge that you may be interested in.

  35. The first massive new dam project to go in should be called the Di Natale Dam.
    The second massive new dam project to go in should be called the Bandt Dam.

  36. Tristo,

    Tommy is referring to an article in which Malcom Farr cited figures that didn’t include complete booth tallies or the 1.5million odd postal votes that in the process of being counted.

    The Liberal vote was 3,293,099, a 0.91 per cent fall from the 2016 level. It’s barely moved over two years, and certainly was not a flood of support.

    https://www.news.com.au/national/federal-election/raw-voting-figures-reveal-the-real-losers-in-saturdays-shock-election/news-story/8401c6ad677fae3ca6af0bd9a6ce161d

  37. Tommy @ #1425 Thursday, May 23rd, 2019 – 3:42 pm

    Tristo

    Sinodinos and others in the Liberal Party who have similar views, I reckon are going to have a tough fight against those who don’t, who have been emboldened by the election result.

    I don’t doubt it but they have no grounds to be emboldened. I’m going to keep repeating it til the cows come home – it was the lowest coalition primary vote in history. If they think they can rest on a single laurel then all it will take to wipe them out is Labor getting its act together to a minimal degree and/or Clive Palmer not pissing $60m down the drain. Or the ACTU and GetUp accepting that it’d have been better to donate their advertising budget to Labor instead of running their own useless campaigns. In which case I might have actually seen some ALP ads at some point during the campaign.

    Also worth noting that the combined Labor/Green vote exceeded the LNP vote.

    Progressives outnumber conservatives. What a pity that the ALP and the Greens cannot get along, as shown by the more rabid contributors on this blog, the B brothers.


  38. Greens Deputy Leader and spokesperson for climate change and energy Adam Bandt MP today warned Labor against fast tracking Adani. Not only will this put lives at risk by making climate change worse, but Labor would be putting at risk inner-city seats in Brisbane and Melbourne.

    Adam Bandt long ago used all his political capital. Ya it’s a pity but the Greens put a lot of effort into making it happen; they and Clive won.

  39. Driving a convoy 3,000 km to yell at people is not the way to win friends and influence people.
    You want to change things? Then help, don’t hinder, the people who want to help you.

    I’m not defending the convoy, just saying that any policy that permits new fossil fuel projects is inconsistent with IPCC science. I know that means nothing to the Australian electorate. Liberal democracy will be the planet’s doom.

  40. Progressives outnumber conservatives.

    in the senate? LH Primary votes (including Coalition, UAP and PHON as conservative – ALP and Green as Progressive)
    Conserv 48
    Progressive 44
    With 8 ‘others’.

    Considering big players in “Others” are CDP, Katter, Anning, SFF (2% total in those 4) the conservatives are over the line.

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