Two things

Some rare insights into how preferences behave in unusual circumstances courtesy of the Johnston by-election, and yet more data on issue salience, this time from JWS Research.

Two things:

• At Antony Green’s prompting, the Northern Territory Electoral Commission has published breakdowns of the various candidates’ preferences flows at Saturday’s Johnston by-election, providing measures of the impact of highly unusual preferencing behaviour by the Greens and the Country Labor Party — remembering that the Northern Territory prohibits dissemination of how-to-vote cards is the immediate vicinity of polling booths. Having done the unthinkable and put Labor last, the Greens’ preferences split 56.9-43.1 between Labor and the Territory Alliance, compared with my own rule of thumb that Labor gets 80% of Greens preferences when they are so directed and 75% when no recommendation is made. Note that this is the Territory Alliance rather than the Country Liberal Party, and that Labor’s flow would presumably have been somewhat stronger had it been otherwise. The CLP no less unusually put Labor second, and their preferences went 52.9-47.1 in favour of the Territory Alliance.

• JWS Research has released its latest quarterly True Issues report, confirming the impression of other similar polling that the salience of the environment and climate chnage spiked over summer. Respondents were separately asked to name three issues off the tops of their heads and to pick the five most important issues out of a list of twenty, with confusingly different results – environment reigned supreme in the first case, but in the second it trailed cost of living (which ranked low when unprompted) and health (second in both cases). Perhaps the most revealing point is that environment increased in the prompted question from 33% a year ago to 42%, while immigration and border security fell from 36% to 25%. The federal government was reckoned to be performing well by 28% of respondents, down two since the November survey, and poorly by 35%, up two. The survey was conducted online from a sample of 1000 from February 20-24.

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.

1,654 comments on “Two things”

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  1. As we all suspected, Morrison is running government as if his most important goal is to keep us all in the dark. Watching Estimates questions is like watching the slow grinding down of a stone monument, while Cormann keeps trying to turn the machine off.

    His most important goal is staying PM. In that way he’s very much like Trump, wanting to hold onto power at any cost.

    What amuses me is the claque of Bludgers who fulminate every day about Labor, clearly oblivious to the damage the actual government is doing to the country.

  3. Remember how Morrison warned the public servants to do what they are told? Now they’re all appropriately cowed (and politicised), and especially the AFP.

    Brett Mason
    @BrettMasonNews

    Labor believes 258 questions were taken on notice at #SenateEstimates yesterday… #auspol
    @SBSNews

  7. Victoria

    Yep you will see reality eventually.

    Today Pod Saves America Obama era political operatives were saying the same thing.

    Robert Reich from the Bill Clinton era has also outlined why the corporate or establishment Democrats are in denial.

    I take their analysis over that of Republicans.

    Edit: The math is the math.

  8. The attorney general Christian Porter said the laws used to detain people at airports and other entry points could also be used to stop people elsewhere, as the government attempts to keep a lid on the coronavirus spread in Australia.

    “It’s very likely that these laws will get used on a larger scale,” Porter told ABC radio RN on Tuesday morning.

    “And it’s very likely that Australians will encounter practices and instructions and circumstances that they have not had to encounter before.”

    It’s all based on laws from 2015, which replaced the old 100-year-old Biosecurity Act, but the powers have not yet been used on a large scale.

    That looks likely to change, with the government looking at all measures, including the declaration of “human health zones” which could require screening for anyone looking to enter or leave a declared area.

    Depending on how the spread of the virus occurs, mass gatherings could also be cancelled.

  9. Guytaur

    How about you take the analysis in front if your own eyes?

    Why you so steadfastly want Sanders to be the nominee doesn’t make it so.

  10. So, with the approval of DFAT (read, fellow Pentecostal Morrison), Maggie Court was in July last year appointed the Honourary Consul for Burundi in Australia, a country known for persecuting gays, torture, sexual violence, summary executions, whose president (Pierre Nkurunziza) did not attend the ceremony for fear of being arrested by a warrant issued by International Criminal Court.

  11. @cporterwa

    “These laws were designed precisely with the type of pandemic in mind that we are now facing. They’re very important laws. They will be, in some instances, strange and foreign, to many Australians.”

    Mr Porter often sounds very “strange and foreign” to me, too, but not in a nice way.

    Edit: With Dutton and Porter in charge of separating people from their community, what could possibly go wrong? 😡

  12. lizzie:

    It’s amusing because their fulminations here don’t actually do anything other than show themselves to be wilfully obtuse. Don’t they realise that their outrage would be far more satisfying if Labor were actually the govt making the actual decisions?

  14. Now Bernie is imitating Trump’s treatment of the media.

    Ryan Lizza@RyanLizza
    ·
    1h
    Bernie would not allow a Washington Post reporter to ask him a question at a press conference today. Of the many norm-breaking Trump behaviors that have been adopted by other politicians/campaigns, treatment of the press is probably the most imitated. And it’s not just Bernie.

  15. City of Casey to get 100 new poker machines in one hotel as operators target outer fringe demographic

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-03/city-of-casey-decision-on-new-pokies/12018258

    Pokies clubs are targeting stressed and tired commuters living on Melbourne’s ever-expanding urban fringe, according to experts.
    ::::
    “The growth of poker machine pubs and clubs in Melbourne, and in most other Australian cities, is in the outer suburbs because those populations are very attractive to pokie operators,” said Charles Livingston of Monash University.

    So far this year, punters in Casey, in Melbourne’s south-east, have lost $80 million on the pokies, topped only by the City of Brimbank in Melbourne’s west with losses of $83 million.

  16. guytaur

    To be fair that article from The Hill you quoted earlier is from February 21st .. there have been a few developments since then

    Sanders chances on the 538 model have dropped markedly in the last couple of days although there is one factor in his favour for tomorrow – full details on the Democratic Primary thread

    _________________________________________________________

    In other news there are rumours that Buttigieg & Klobuchar will both appear on stage at the Biden rally in Dallas tonight for their official endorsements

  17. The numbers arent definitive, but according to the outbreak in Italy, 8 percent are in intensive care apparently. This is a very high number.
    No developed country has the facilities in place to deal with such an influx.

  18. Bellwether:

    [‘To be honest I would have been more shocked to discover that Sir John Kerr wasn’t a groper.’]

    Just imagine if Ms. Reid had lodged a formal complaint at the time of the alleged groping: Gough may not have been dismissed – not that she would’ve been believed in those days.

  19. Ray

    Sanders is leading in Texas and California.

    He was leading in North Carolina. That may have changed.

    Best case scenario for Biden he cannot get in front of Sanders.

  20. Guytaur

    You do realise that both Klobuchar and Buttigieg are endorsing Biden now that they have dropped out. The game is changing in front of your eyes.

  21. Pegasus

    According to the ABC, the ‘old’ Casey Council had refused the permit, but that will no longer be upheld. I don’t think that appeals to VCAT will prevent them. Deliberate introduction of a social harm.

  25. Tanya Plibersek raising her profile

    Plibersek’s popular front digs in for the long haul

    https://www.smh.com.au/national/plibersek-s-popular-front-digs-in-for-the-long-haul-20200302-p54669.html

    Several Labor MPs told this column that Plibersek has recently begun to appear more regularly at backbench meetings, some of which she would rarely have attended personally before. Those, we have confirmed, include the education and women’s committees. (Plibersek has long attended the social policy caucus, of which she is the chairwoman.)
    :::
    Also noticed is her renewed outreach to Labor backbenchers.
    :::
    And is there a greater example of the Labor Left stalwart’s attempt at image makeover than her Australia Day speech in which she proposed schoolchildren learn the same pledge recited by new citizens? Plibersek, for the record, has even hired a new speechwriter: Melbourne University Press-published author Shaun Crowe.

    Even those close to Labor leader Anthony Albanese raised eyebrows late last month when Plibersek decided to embark on a “national listening tour” of 100 businesses, ostensibly because of her role as training spokeswoman.

    Many of those who spoke to this column mused of her slow shift away from inner-city issues. Others, however, said Plibersek had just “gotten over the election loss” and was working as hard as any frontbencher should be.

  26. Thanks BK for the Dawn Patrol.

    For anybody who may be interesting in reading the “Sydney Morning Herald” as printed.

    Goto https://www.smh.com.au/
    and scroll down the page to (among other headings)
    “Todays Paper”
    and you will be presented with

    Login using your “Google identity and you will be popped back to the top of the page. Scroll down again to and click on “Todays Paper” et voila.

    Mowing time again. Good morning all. 🥀🥀🥀🥀

  27. Victoria

    You are so wrong it’s not funny.

    Bloomberg cannot be the nominee.

    Sanders cannot be beaten.

    California and Texas have made sure of that.
    All a brokered convention can argue is to go with Biden.

    That’s how out of touch you are.

  28. Puffytmd @ #1 Tuesday, March 3rd, 2020 – 4:49 am

    When green growth is seen in the burnt areas will the alarm over AGW start to fade in voters’ minds?

    No – there is significant regrowth occurring now, spurred on by the recent rains. What most people are thinking is that this means we may be under threat again sooner rather than later. Normally, after such a big fire event you would expect to be safe for another 5 – 7 years. This looks like no longer being true 🙁

  30. Victoria

    Nah the joke is on you. On a psephology blog denying voting and polling results.

    Edit: Do yourself a favour. Go listen to Jon Favreau on Pod Save America. Look at Steve Kornacki’s tweet timeline for Biden’s best case.

  31. Greensborough Growler @ #6 Tuesday, March 3rd, 2020 – 7:10 am

    Concern for the Environment has become like Concern for World Peace.

    Everyone is for it. But, that is about as deep as it goes.

    Oh, FFS. Try not to be such an ass. If you don’t believe the polling, try getting out and actually speaking to people.

  32. Which McKenzie somehow signed on April the 4th. 😆

    This is the part of the sports grant evidence Labor will be pursuing today:

    At 12.35pm on 11 April Bridget McKenzie’s office sent another spreadsheet to the PMO with a different allocation of funds. One project had been removed and nine new projects were added.
    At 12.43pm on 11 April, Bridget McKenzie sent the revised final approval brief to Sport Australia with the same spreadsheet which was attached to the 12.35pm email to the PMO
    The government went into caretaker mode at 8.30am on 11 April.

    The Guardian blog

  34. guytaur @ #77 Tuesday, March 3rd, 2020 – 6:35 am

    Victoria

    You are so wrong it’s not funny.

    Bloomberg cannot be the nominee.

    Sanders cannot be beaten.

    California and Texas have made sure of that.
    All a brokered convention can argue is to go with Biden.

    That’s how out of touch you are.

    So much certainty in a very uncertain world. 😆

  36. lizzie:

    [‘It had to be a full-on penetration then, anyway. Definitions have undergone a sea-change lately.’]

    Thanks. I was unaware of that, but should have been.

  42. Bloomberg can be the nominee, and Sanders absolutely can be beaten.

    FWIW I think Bloomberg will come under increasing pressure to drop out, as his ongoing candidacy simply aids Bernie.

  44. Confessions @ #83 Tuesday, March 3rd, 2020 – 9:39 am

    Bill Ruthhart@BillRuthhart
    ·
    6h
    Illinois U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth endorses former Vice President Joe Biden for president: “Joe actually delivers.” Her move comes hours after fellow veteran Pete Buttigieg dropped out of the race: https://chicagotribune.com/election-2020/ct-tammy-duckworth-endorses-joe-biden-20200302-isdb7jeywfa2lcvbbeqkmibmdq-story.html

    Veterans for Biden should go down well.

    Now, when and where did Bernie Sanders serve again? He’s old enough to have. 🙂

  46. guytaur:

    [‘All a brokered convention can argue is to go with Biden.’]

    Which is what will happen. That you’ve stuck with Bernie for a long time is to your credit but the US is centre-Right. A self-described Democratic Socialist will not be elected as president – at least in the foreseeable future.

  48. Wow some amazing contortions to avoid the cruel hard reality of maths.

    Barney.

    Millions have already voted in California and Texas.

  49. Confessions @ 9.04am
    “What amuses me is the claque of Bludgers who fulminate every day about Labor, clearly oblivious to the damage the actual government is doing to the country.”
    Amuses = frustrating and disheartening
    Oblivious = blind
    PB is similar to a regular drinker in a pub, gets up, leaving half a beer, doesn’t come back for a month, enters the pub, the half a beer is still on the bar and the drinker resumes the conversation from the previous month.

  50. C@t

    I thought Fran Kelly made a silly comment on RN first thing this morning. She said it was an important day in America, being Tuesday. Which of course it isn’t – yet.

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