More coronavirus polling, more Eden-Monaro by-election wash-up

More evidence that Australians are heartily satisfied by the approaches taken by their governments in tackling COVID-19, even in Victoria, plus some concluding book-keeping from Eden-Monaro.

When too much of the above is barely enough:

• The Australian Electoral Commission has published preference flow data from the July 4 Eden-Monaro by-election, showing exactly how many of each candidate’s preferences ended up with Labor and Liberal. Of the 6.34% Nationals vote, 77.73% went to Liberal and 22.27% went to Labor, compared with an unusually polarised 87.16% and 12.84% in 2019, and 55.98% of preferences from the 5.34% Shooters Fishers and Farmers vote went to Labor and 44.02% to Liberal, after the party directed preferences to Labor on its how-to-vote cards. More on this from Kevin Bonham.

• Roy Morgan has published an SMS poll conducted in Victoria, which finds strong support for the state’s lockdown measures: 89-11 in favour of compulsory face masks, 76-24 against reopening schools and day care centres to all, 71-29 against relaxing the 5km travel restriction, 75-25 against allowing table service at pubs, restaurants and cafes, and 72-28 against lifting the curfew. The closest result to dissent was a relatively narrow 57-43 against allowing visits to immediate family members, currently allowed only for delivering care or essential services. The poll was conducted Tuesday and Wednesday from a sample of 2110.

• A Pew Research Centre survey global survey finds 94% of Australian respondents believing their country had done a good job of handling COVID-19 compared with 6% for bad, a shade behind Denmark as the best result out of 14 countries. The only two countries that failed to crack 50% positive ratings were the United States and United Kingdom, at 47% and 46% respectively. Australia’s performance on the question of whether the country was now more united than before the outbreak was more modest, at 54% for more united and 40% for more divided, compared with a 14-nation median of 46% and 48%. The United States was a serious outler at 18% for more united and 77% for more united. The Australian component was conducted by telephone from June 11 to July 25 from a sample of 1016.

• The West Australian reports that WA Liberal Party state director Sam Calabrese will not contest the preselection to fill Mathias Cormann’s Senate vacancy, after earlier being considered the front-runner. The list of prospective nominees now seems to consist of Joe Francis, a Barnett government minister who lost his seat of Jandakot in the 2017 state election landslide; Sherry Sufi, arch-conservative party policy committee chairman; and Julian Ambrose, a director at construction company BGC and the stepson of its late founder, Len Buckeridge.

• My coverage of the Northern Territory election count contains with daily updates and live results reporting here. Labor has 13 confirmed wins out of 25 and leads over the CLP in another two; the CLP with six confirmed wins and leads over Labor in one; and the Territory Alliance with a lead over CLP in another.

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.

1,001 comments on “More coronavirus polling, more Eden-Monaro by-election wash-up”

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  1. Besides which, Michael Moore isn’t predicting anything. Headlines like “Michael Moore says Donald Trump is on course to win in November” don’t reflect what he actually said.

  2. Bushfire Bill says Sunday, August 30, 2020 at 6:02 pm

    If mail-in voting in the US is anything like postal voting here – conservatively biased – then Trump’s attempt to stifle mail-in voting will only keep conservatives from voting absentee, won’t it?

    Not that I am an expert on the US voting system.

    I think I’ve heard on fivethirtyeight that mail votes generally tend to favour Democrats.

    This article suggests that prior to the pandemic and politicisation of mail in voting it made no difference:
    https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/do-republicans-or-democrats-benefit-mail-voting-it-turns-out-neither. But:

    There’s also the possibility that Republican reluctance to use mail-in ballots will be offset by Democrats’ avoidance of polling places. In a Texas primary in June, Democratic use of mail-in ballots skyrocketed. But the increase was canceled out by more Republicans voting in person, according to a preprint study by Hall and other Stanford researchers not yet published in a journal. “They’re voting by different modes,” he says. “But they’re not voting more or less.”

  3. Danama Papers says Sunday, August 30, 2020 at 1:49 pm

    Either the leader of the Labour Party is doing something right, or the Tories are doing something drastically wrong (my money is on the later – bigly):

    Having someone electable as leader certainly doesn’t do any harm. For all Corbyn’s ideological purity, he was probably going to scare away more voters than he attracted.

  5. If mail-in votes didn’t favour the Democrats before, they will now. Republican voters, who are nothing if not credulous, have been told their votes will be stolen if they vote by mail anywhere other than Florida.

  6. Yesterday I attended a wedding where many guests were happy clappers. The COVID situation and WA’s hard border were the dominant topic of conversation throughout the afternoon/evening.

    McGowans stance is extremely popular, and it surprised me that even the happy clappers blamed ScoMo for the Palmer legal challenge to the hard border.

    There is going to be one hell of an unhinging if Palmer succeeds in his challenge, and ScoMo is going to be the target.

  11. C@tmomma says Sunday, August 30, 2020 at 6:34 pm

    Right click on the image.
    Click on Copy image address.
    Paste here.
    Make sure it begins with https//: and ends with .jpg or .png or .gif

    You mean like this (I thought this didn’t work):

  15. It’s pretty unlikely that Palmer is going to win given the fact findings made in the Federal Court which are virtually unchallengeable in the High Court hearing

    Plus you’ve got one Western Australian High Court judge in Edelman J and a close friend of AG Porter and a born Western Australian now resident of Victoria in Justice Gordon.

    I can’t imagine any of the southern state judges are much for Palmer and that leaves the Qld resident chief justice and Justice Keane.

  17. shellbell says Sunday, August 30, 2020 at 6:51 pm

    It’s pretty unlikely that Palmer is going to win given the fact findings made in the Federal Court which are virtually unchallengeable in the High Court hearing

    Plus you’ve got one Western Australian High Court judge in Edelman J and a close friend of AG Porter and a born Western Australian now resident of Victoria in Justice Gordon.

    I can’t imagine any of the southern state judges are much for Palmer and that leaves the Qld resident chief justice and Justice Keane.

    Porter didn’t seem very supportive of the WA Government on this issue.

    I don’t know if it’s because of my own bias or Nine’s clickbaiting, but most of the articles on watoday.com.au seem to favour Palmer.

  19. I’m pretty sure High Court Judges don’t care who they are friends with or which state they come from – it is the law that matters.

  20. If anyone is running a US Election Sweep, put me down for a Trump win.

    Should he loose, he’ll trigger a civil war on his way out. Saturday evenings events in the US are very concerning.

  22. I agree Buce, the HC don’t care about anything but the law,
    (normally).

    But Shellbell Is right the Federal CRT findings means the S92 freedom of intercourse between the States issue will play second fiddle to medically Informed political decisions to lockdown that, as found by the fc, were reasonably based.

  23. grimace says:
    Sunday, August 30, 2020 at 7:18 pm

    There is already civil war, since his extremist white power thugs came in in the last 24 hours.

  26. Fightback!

    After a Republican National Convention week in which President Trump and his allies sought to brand Joseph R. Biden Jr. as radically anti-law enforcement, the Democratic nominee took implicit aim at that characterization in his own remarks on Saturday as he swiped at Mr. Trump’s calls for “law and order” and ripped the president’s record as commander in chief.

    Mr. Biden’s comments came at a virtual gathering of the National Guard Association of the United States, a group he addressed while speaking against a backdrop of American flags, with a flag pin affixed to his suit lapel.

    Civil and military relations have been “tested lately,” Mr. Biden argued, alluding to Mr. Trump’s efforts earlier this summer to use federal law enforcement to “dominate” demonstrators protesting police brutality amid a national outcry over racial injustice. Republicans in recent days have seized on renewed unrest in American cities to argue falsely that Mr. Biden wants to defund the police, an approach he opposes.

    “I promise you, as president, I’ll never put you in the middle of politics, or personal vendettas,” Mr. Biden said. “I’ll never use the military as a prop or as a private militia to violate rights of fellow citizens. That’s not law and order. You don’t deserve that.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/us/politics/biden-trump-crime.html

  27. Palmer Report
    @PalmerReport

    Michael Moore says Trump will win in 2020. He also said Romney would win in 2012. He always says the Republican will win, so he can brag when he’s right half the time.

    Meanwhile, Moore’s overt fatalism discourages people from bothering to vote. He’s a self serving piece of shit.

  28. Palmer Report
    @PalmerReport

    Michael Moore says Trump will win in 2020. He also said Romney would win in 2012. He always says the Republican will win, so he can brag when he’s right half the time.

    Meanwhile, Moore’s overt fatalism discourages people from bothering to vote. He’s a self serving piece of shit.

    I hold no brief for Michael Moore, but this is almost the 180 degree opposite of what he actually said.

  30. William Bowe @ #978 Sunday, August 30th, 2020 – 7:50 pm

    Palmer Report
    @PalmerReport

    Michael Moore says Trump will win in 2020. He also said Romney would win in 2012. He always says the Republican will win, so he can brag when he’s right half the time.

    Meanwhile, Moore’s overt fatalism discourages people from bothering to vote. He’s a self serving piece of shit.

    I hold no brief for Michael Moore, but this is almost the 180 degree opposite of what he actually said.

    Maybe. How about, a differentially-nuanced opinion? 🙂

  31. The entire point of Moore’s post, and his motivation for selectively citing poll results, was to encourage his followers to mobilise and to vote. Compare and contrast his thesis from 2016: “Donald J. Trump is going to win in November”.

  32. Clive Palmer and litigation…

    Palmer has frequently been involved in legal cases relating to his businesses, and once listed litigation as one of his hobbies in Who’s Who. He at times has been involved in complex cases, and journalist Hedley Thomas has written that Palmer’s “lawyers take legal steps, presumably on his instructions, that prolong litigation and rack up costs for the other side” which can result in his opponents being unable to continue their case due to a lack of resources. Palmer has argued that the litigation he is involved in is justified as it rights wrongs.[47]

    In August 2019 Palmer reached a settlement in the Queensland Nickel case, understood to total $110m, agreeing to repay the federal government for the entitlements it has already paid, “all other outstanding employee entitlements, and a full recovery for the majority of unsecured creditors”. A small number of debt claims against Palmer’s flagship company, Mineralogy, remain in dispute and before the courts. Palmer claimed that the settlement of the debts had left him “vindicated”. “Today’s settlement confirms the actions against me were nothing more than a witch-hunt designed to smear my good reputation”, Palmer said.[48]

    In September 2019, Palmer threatened to sue internet comedian Jordan Shanks for $500,000 for defamation relating to a YouTube video posted before the May 2019 election. The video created by Shanks called Palmer a “dense Humpty Dumpty” and a profane nickname that included “Fatty”. Shanks responded that he had not defamed Palmer and being required to prove his claims in court would not help Palmer.[49][50]

    In March 2020, Palmer appeared in Brisbane Magistrates Court to answer four charges of fraud and other dishonesty, brought by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). The charges alleged improper transfers of money totalling several million dollars shortly before the 2013 general election, as fraud and dishonest use of Palmer’s position as a company director (of Mineralogy) regarding funding of the Palmer United Party. Palmer denied that the charges relate to the collapse of Queensland Nickel, commenting: “It’s just a fabricated charge which will be dismissed pretty easily which is what we do with ASIC charges which are political in nature.” The case was adjourned until 28 August, with Palmer still claiming that the charges were “nonsense”. Each offence carries a potential prison sentence of up to five years and, for the fraud charges, up to 12 years.[51][52][53]

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Palmer

  33. Re Michael Moore

    Having seen several of Moore’s recent media appearances, he is definitely in the ‘it’s not over, every vote counts, don’t be complacent’ camp.

    It is a threat he is issuing, Trump wins if you progressives drop the ball

  34. Denis Atkins on Newspoll..

    ‘Probably a Newspoll – probably the same or within margin of error. We live in a rally round the flag world just now …’

    But as Denis is no longer trousering the grubby Murdoch shilling, what would he know?

  36. I think we can all agree that Mark Zuckerburg should take facebook and jump in the bin with it:

    Sacha Baron Cohen
    @SachaBaronCohen

    Ignoring repeated warnings that Facebook users were organizing to slaughter peaceful protesters is not an “operational mistake.” It is complicity in murder. #StopHateForProfit

    Facebook made an “operational mistake” this week in failing to remove a page that encouraged armed Americans to take to the streets of Kenosha, Wisc., CEO Mark Zuckerberg said.

    The page clearly violated Facebook (FB)’s rules against violent militias, Zuckerberg acknowledged in a video posted Friday to his Facebook profile, and that “a bunch of people” had even reported the page prior to the killing of two protesters, Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber.
    Just last week, Facebook announced it would crack down on militia organizations that advocated for violence or spoke about the potential for violence. But in its first week of implementation, the policy’s lack of enforcement led to the spread of violent messages on the platform directly linked to the events in Kenosha, where protests erupted after the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

    https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/28/tech/zuckerberg-kenosha-page/index.html

  38. Bucephalus @ #987 Sunday, August 30th, 2020 – 8:21 pm

    I trust Facebook is shutting down all the looters, rioters and burners being organised by BLM. No?

    There is zero proof of that. In fact, there is proof that Boogaloo Boys, who happen to be White Anarchists, are the ones who are organising those things and just wantonly destroying businesses by smashing their windows with hammers. Then running away quickly before anyone can catch them. Though some have been caught and demasked (they are usually wearing full face coverings and some keep their bike helmets on so as to make a quick getaway on their motorbikes, which they usually have stashed around the corner from the protests).

    Guess who was underneath the mask? A white guy with no connection to BLM but a connection to the Boogaloo movement.

  39. shellbell:

    Sunday, August 30, 2020 at 6:51 pm

    [‘Plus you’ve got one Western Australian High Court judge in Edelman J and a close friend of AG Porter and a born Western Australian now resident of Victoria in Justice Gordon.

    I can’t imagine any of the southern state judges are much for Palmer and that leaves the Qld resident chief justice and Justice Keane.’]

    You’re surely taking the piss.

  40. Bushfire Bill @ #948 Sunday, August 30th, 2020 – 6:02 pm

    He got it right in 2016, will he be right in 2020?

    If mail-in voting in the US is anything like postal voting here – conservatively biased – then Trump’s attempt to stifle mail-in voting will only keep conservatives from voting absentee, won’t it?

    Not that I am an expert on the US voting system.

    FYI
    https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bidens-supporters-appear-way-more-likely-to-vote-by-mail-than-trumps-that-could-make-for-a-weird-election-night/

  42. Bushfire Bill @ #948 Sunday, August 30th, 2020 – 6:02 pm

    He got it right in 2016, will he be right in 2020?

    If mail-in voting in the US is anything like postal voting here – conservatively biased – then Trump’s attempt to stifle mail-in voting will only keep conservatives from voting absentee, won’t it?

    Not that I am an expert on the US voting system.

  44. C@tmomma says:
    Sunday, August 30, 2020 at 8:46 pm

    “I’m not a hoarder.”

    You’re a fantatist. You’re telling me that the CHAZ was created by Trump supporters. That all the rioting, burning and looting is by Trump supporters?

    FFS get a grip on reality.

  45. C@t,

    I’m sure you’ve noticed, but for the record…

    Lars likes to smarmily insinuate mental health problems in others, under the cover of a concern troll.

    Welcome to Poll Bludger, 2020.

  46. Why USA mail in voters may be against Trump.
    eg. Republican electorates have numerous voting locations with heaps of staff. Wait time to vote 10 minutes.
    Democrat Districts old equipment, few staff few locations wait time up to 7 hours. If you are not through the door at closing time you don’t get to vote even if you have been in line for hours waiting.
    Trump would probably remove mail machines in electorates not favorable to him.

  47. You’re a fantatist. You’re telling me that the CHAZ was created by Trump supporters. That all the rioting, burning and looting is by Trump supporters?

    C@t didn’t say “all”. She mentioned an incident.

    I think it’s more likely that some very clever people from a third party organization have infiltrated both sides and are egging them on against each other.

    That, and shooting an unarmed man 7 times in the back, as well as suffocating another man who was begging for his life.

    After two hundred years of slavery, poverty, lynchings, extra-judicial murder by police, discrimination and a thousand other forms of bastardry perpetrated upon them by white supremacists, you’d think black people in America would learn both who was Boss, and the meaning of the phrase “respect for authority”, wouldn’t you?

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