A new thread is needed, but I’m way too busy right now to produce content to hang it off like I normally would. So beyond pointing out that Newspoll should be along on Sunday evening if its recent form is any guide, I can only draw your attention to other recent posts on next week’s South Australian state election, the situation in Ukraine and related international matters (courtesy of Adrian Beaumount), and a Tasmanian state poll that suggests the Gutwein government’s dominance isn’t quite what it was. Beyond that, over to you.
Katharine Murphy worked for the Turnbulls – she is hardly of the left. The Guardian is essentially Turnbull Tory, anyway (concerned about climate change and middle/upper class women’s issues, but dislikes, and is fearful of, the working class).
Oh goodness, Bludging on his favourite hobby horse again!
We get it, no election is won until all the votes are counted.
Have you anything constructive – at all – to add or are you just planning for the “I told you so line” should Labor not win?
Your contributions here are predictable and boring…….
Your prognostication about gross numbers and percentages are just that………guesswork….no better or worse than anyone else’s………………
Tricot says:
Saturday, March 12, 2022 at 11:12 am
I’m merely adding to the conversation. Perhaps you dislike it. Complain to someone who cares.
My commentary is about polls, polling, campaigns, polemics…sure beats the cricket and the weather. It is a poll bludging site.
Mavis
I am interested in how much a judge might take into account a pattern rather than a specific event in cases such as this.
Briefly and Mundo are similar posters.
Mundo thinks Labor can’t win until Albo punches Morrison in the nose.
Briefly thinks Labor can’t win.
Both need to stay deeply embedded under their doonas to feel safe.
“Your prognostication about gross numbers and percentages are just that………guesswork….no better or worse than anyone else’s………………”
They’re actually far worse than almost anyone here.
Re the UK poll linked earlier by Sprocket
The 16% ‘Others’ figure is made up of SNP 5, Green 5, Plaid 1, Reform 2, UKIP 1 and Other 1
Taken together with Lab and LDems, the centre/centre left vote is therefore 61%
I’ve had a look at the tables for interest, Labour is scoring 92%/88% of 2016 Labour Leavers/Remainers, if they could get back Remainers who’ve defected to LDems/Green they’d add another 5% to stand at 45%
Bludging:
BludgerTrack is currently showing Labor’s primary at 40.4%, the Coalition’s at a dismal 33.6%. Unless some really strange things happen with preferences, that’s historic landslide territory.
Sure, things could (and probably will) tighten closer to election day. The polls could be incorrect. Albo could be caught banging a goat. Anything could happen. But all the evidence we have at the moment suggests Labor is in track for at least a modest majority.
Does that mean the Coalition can’t come back from here? Of course not. However, they’ve got one hell of a deficit to make up in – at most – a bit over two months, with basically every recent attempt to turn around the narrative coming to nothing. I’d argue that if the 2019 upset hadn’t happened, most pundits would already be writing Scomo’s eulogy.
This isn’t 2019. It was really obvious at this point in 2019 that the government were catching up to the opposition, that Labor’s ambitious policy agenda was hurting them, that people generally just seemed to like Morrison more than Shorten, and that we were likely heading to a slim Labor victory rather than the rout suggested by the polls after Turnbull was rolled.
C@t at 9.41am
I’m totally good with you converting my rant into a ‘snappy’ tweet – the ‘snappier’ the better.
There is a conspiracy to ensure Right Wing govt in this country. It must be defeated, for the sake of the people.
Snappy tweets, FriendlyJordies etc etc are needed.
Sandman –
I agree – we are, and IMO it’s the most serious problem we face in our society and polity.
However, you go on to say:
With specific reference to various acute crises we have faced over the last couple of years.
I would disagree that the crises you nominate are the main causes of this widespread anomie – in fact to a certain extent these crises may have reversed it a little as people band together (well for the fires and floods, perhaps not for covid) as local communities to face these crises, rediscovering connection with others and realizing their shared values. I would suggest that the root of much of our anomie is the ongoing work over a few decades of a number of what might be described as neo-liberal and social media trends:
– towards insecure work, the ‘precariat’ where unions are demonized and people pay to get themselves internships in the hope of maybe getting a job as an independent contractor with no job security;
– prioritizing individual wealth accumulation above society/community, particularly through real estate and stock portfolios, and talking endlessly about them;
– social-media exacerbated status displays that superficially create community, but is largely just ‘my (pretend) life is better than yours’, only provoking anxiety and depression amongst people who have it constantly reinforced that their lives are inadequate;
– social-media algorithms explicitly creating bubbles of distorted information that encourages delusional/misinformed thought and action and promotes alienation from broader society and diversity of opinion.
– the internet in general allowing escapism, delusion and outrage priority over facts and reality.
We’ve been destroying our own society, community, polity for decades, seemingly on purpose, and Morrison and co are not the cause but the symptoms.
Rexxy,
You are an absolute disgrace.
Can anyone help me with a link to where Bandt apparently said he’d be happy for the Libs to hold Govt if the Greens took votes from Labor.
Thanks in advance.
Greensborough Growler says:
Saturday, March 12, 2022 at 11:19 am
Briefly and Mundo are similar posters.
Mundo thinks Labor can’t win until Albo punches Morrison in the nose.
Briefly thinks Labor can’t win.
Both need to stay deeply embedded under their doonas to feel safe.
This is incorrect. I’m making some observations about the polls in the context of the 2019 results and the longer history of Australian federal elections.
The polls published at the moment are absolutely misleading. They suggest that Labor has a 55/45 lead. This is wrong. Labor have a PV of around 39% or so, imputed on the basis of partial sample data. This would be a substantial improvement on 2019, when the PV hit 33%. But it still not likely to be enough for a win, given the array of Lib-held seats that Labor have to take from the LRP, and considering the voting disability with which Labor struggles in QLD, where the PV last time was in the mid 20s.
I’m old enough to recall the wins by Gough, Hawke and Rudd. I know Labor can win. But I think the climb is very steep. Their best result was around 53.7% or so, as I recall.
We are certainly not sitting at 55/45 right now. This number should be disregarded. That would be the best result since WW2, when the UAP/Liberals had basically ceased to exist and Labor was in power while the country was at war.
Politics is so often about make believe. I’m interested in disabusing the make-believers. What’s not to like!
Re: the Voice v Green contest
I think it was Drongo who raised the 14% vote for the Greens in Goldstein yesterday?
For the Greens vote to collapse in those kinds of seats the assumption has to be that Greens voters in Liberal held or safe seats are people who would otherwise vote Liberal were the Liberal party to have good environmental policies. The argument would be that now, when offered a candidate that fits that mould, they will prefer a liberal environmentalist over a leftist environmentalist.
But I would have thought that the direction of preferences would give us a sign if that were the case. If all those blue/green voters are doing is registering their protest against the Liberal party and they still prefer liberal values over leftist values, then the preference flow from Greens voters in those seats should be different from the flows in other more left-leaning seats, surely? That is, because they’re at heart such Tories that while they might vote Green they couldn’t then hold their noses and preference Labor.
Goldstein doesn’t bear that out. After preferences, the Labor 2PP rose 13%, the Libs 5% (give or take on both accounts). This tends to suggest that Greens preferences washed out in roughly the same way as elsewhere per the commonly referred to ratio 80:20. It seems to me that this means that roughly 80% of Greens voters in Goldstein have such progressive values that they will continue to support the leftist-environment candidate over the liberal-environment.
I’m not saying with certainty there won’t be a drop off of Greens votes in favour of Voice candidates, but I’m also not sure that such a fall will be precipitous.
I think another fascinating variable will be how both the Greens and Voice candidates distribute preferences on their HTVs. I would imagine that, given the respective policies they’re taking to the election, they’d have to swap 1st preferences in most instances and I can’t see why both wouldn’t be putting Labor 3rd on currently announced policies. That said, preference deals are a funny old thing.
From the Daily Record
‘Russian state TV launches stinging attack on Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine invasion’
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/russian-state-tv-launches-stinging-26441095
Asha says:
Saturday, March 12, 2022 at 11:24 am
That’s in line with my thinking and some of the observations of the old hands in Labor. A PV at 41% is consistent with a 2PP vote of around 53/47 rather than 55/45. If the PV gap is closed by 2 or 3 points (shifts from from Labor to the LRP) to 39/35 or 38/36, the LRP will probably win.
@Asha – that’s the point isn’t it? In 2019 the warning signs were all there. We just refused to see them. It wasn’t a grand conspiracy of the elites – Labor ran too hard on reform, had an actively unpopular leader against a neutral new PM seen to have clean hands …
I’ve felt for the last 6-8 months something similar is going on, but reversed. Labor is in a strong position and due to 2019 PTSD many refuse to see it.
@Blud – if Labor’s PV is 40% it’s winning easily. This isn’t 2004 anymore. Labor came VERY close in 2016 to winning the 2PP with a sub-35 PV.
https://twitter.com/mumbletwits/status/1417266447986827264
Peter Brent
@mumbletwits
Mate Labor can’t win with 35 per cent primary vote – even when the other side gets only 38 per cent and preferences from voters for minor parties and independents put Labor on around 52 per cent after preferences – mate Labor can’t win with 35 per cent.
https://twitter.com/mumbletwits/status/1427783747638755331
Woah, we’re back with “it needs a 4 in front of it.” This is sooo the decade before last. 🙂
Actually, history (ie 2019 election data) suggests that a primary vote of ~37.2%, provided all the gain came from the Coalition would, assuming net uniform, have given Labor 76 seats.
Bludging @ #114 Saturday, March 12th, 2022 – 11:33 am
William’s famed BludgerTrack says that his current best estimate of Labor primary is 40.4% and Coalition 33.6%, based on sound statistical analysis.. You continually disagree with this, saying Labor is 39%.
Where do you get your figure from? Out of thin air?
Rewi @ #115 Saturday, March 12th, 2022 – 11:38 am
Goldstein has suburbs such as Bentleigh which would be diverse as far a voting preference is concerned. It’s a broad church.
Doesn’t it ever?
The article ends with the journalist musing:
To concede that things need improving in future involves conceding they are faulty today.
To concede they are faulty today involves conceding someone has been at fault.
To concede someone has been at fault is to risk that someone being seen as yourself.
Hence no fault is conceded, and nothing ever gets done.
Morrison gets to continue riding in on his white charger, with the ADF and a general or two in tow, to claim bragging rights every time there is a disaster.
He couldn’t even go on leave when he caught COVID. He had to big-note himself by “soldiering on” at the office, governing here, speaking to international leaders there, lying about the aid dramatically Galaxied to Ukraine somewhere else, implying it was guns and ammo (when it was medicine and nappies).
There was no time for floods. Never mind, he’d turn up at the last minute to declare an emergency and praise Aussie mateship and the Can-Do spirit. The poor bastards who’d been sitting on their own tin roofs for a week would love him for it.
He wanted to be the centre of attention, and so he didn’t have Joyce sworn in as Acting PM. He also knew Joyce would probably cock it up anyway.
No worries, he’d just bullshit his way out of it, like he’s bullshitted his way out of everything in his life. Until even that doesn’t work anymore.
Then he gets sacked. It’s a pattern, youse know.
Ask whether he was sorry for his inaction, he said said he was sorry for the victims, so not “Sorry” sorry. Flying in a helicopter, sporting a funny hat, a fresh set of moleskins, an open collar, and a pair of yellow suede workboots so new the laces were still tied together, he chickened out of meeting the people, and met some bigwig local businessman instead, “in private”. Then he turned up at said local businessman’s factory in another silly hat to unconvincingly look interested.
Then he went and mopped floors… in Queensland. In another silly hat. Brilliant!
So much for Lismore.
Hey, it’s a safe seat anyway. They’d vote for a reasonably intelligent billy goat up there, as long as it was wearing an Akubra. They voted for Kevin Hogan after all, didn’t they?
jt1983 @ #118 Saturday, March 12th, 2022 – 11:42 am
I agree. All available evidence at the moment points to a Coalition collapse.
Briefly,
Incorrect.
You make the same observation every single day.
You think every one else is a gold fish just like you. Your commentary is dreary and boring. Your grasp of mathematics is confused and your comprehension of modern politics is somewhat antiquated. You see your mission in life is to depress us all with the meaningless yabbering you post.
With you it’s not a matter of keeping a lid on expectations, its concreting the lid shut, mounting the jar on a gigantic slingshot and then firing the the jar and it’s contents in to the sun.
I know others will be disappointed with this eulogising hagiography of your contribution. But, that’s just how I roll.
south @ #57 Saturday, March 12th, 2022 – 10:07 am
I could not have said it better.
And also noted, apart from the initial Age report not a whiff of the Luba Grigorovitch one for one stink in Victoria.
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/luba-grigorovitch-departs-for-political-career-leaving-a-brawl-behind-20220224-p59z8q.html
Has the horse bolted?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-12/covid-outbreak-prompts-china-to-lock-down-city/100905110
Hey Bludgers
How about several of us use ABC Feedback to ask when they last invited Paul Bongiorno / Jordan Shanks (other appropriate names?) to Insiders?
“William’s famed BludgerTrack says that his current best estimate of Labor primary is 40.4% and Coalition 33.6%, based on sound statistical analysis.”
Me, i’ll roll with that for now, campaign hard to elect and ALP govt, and see how things go at the election. 🙂
Bit disturbing some of the news from the Ukraine. City of Dnipro starting to get more mentions which given its location is a worry. 🙁
Me starting to think that the Ukrainians might look at withdrawal of a lot of whatever forces they have in the east of Ukraine if the Russians look like getting their act together around and out of Kharkiv. They have done pretty well so far as against the Russians being surprisingly inept?? Strange days indeed.
Historical primary vote comparisons have to be looked in the context of how much bigger the minor party/independent share is these days.
When Labor got nearly 43% of the primary vote in 1975, they were thrashed in one of the biggest routs seen in an Australian Federal election. They won office in a landslide in 2007 with 44% of the primary vote. In 2016, they came within a few seats of regaining government with a primary of just under 35%.
A high primary vote is important, obviously. But its far from the be-all and end-all in a full preferential system. Ultimately, it’s all about getting greater than 50% of the TPP in at least 50% of seats.
JT:
Yep, I agree.
Insiders has the pompous windbag Stan Grant on tomorrow – will be a challenge to watch
Rewi,
I believe that Zoe Daniels in Goldstein is not distributing preferences.
The issue facing the Greens is they are seen as an old Party that achieves nothing. They are a one trick pony and the pony is ready for the knackery. The Teals have policies on climate change, women’s equality and integrity. But, they are also financially conservative.
Now, the usual rejoinder is that the Greens have better and more expansive policies in all these areas too. However, it’s pretty clear that grins are all you see on voters faces when such claims are made. No one believes them.
sprocket_says: Saturday, March 12, 2022 at 12:04 pm
Insiders has the pompous windbag Stan Grant on tomorrow – will be a challenge to watch
……………………………………………………………………………………..
‘Well and truly past its use-by date’: Q&A suffers rock-bottom ratings
ABC panel show Q&A has suffered its lowest ratings in the programs history, with only 175,000 tuning in for Thursday night’s show.
It comes after host Stan Grant kicked out an audience member the week before, when an audience member voiced support for Russia and Vladimir Putin.
Co-creator and Editor of TV BlackBox, Robert McKnight, was scathing in his assessment of how the show has changed.
“If it was an animal you would put it down,” he told Tom Elliott on 3AW Drive.
“It’s well and truly past its used by date.”
https://www.3aw.com.au/well-and-truly-past-its-use-by-date-qa-suffers-rock-bottom-ratings/?presentid=webnews&ocid=msedgntp
Morrison managed to frame the last election around “the Bill we can’t afford”, assisted by a disjointed Labor offering centred around tax policy, with Bowen boasting about how much money it would raise. Climate campaigning was centred around the Beetaloo basin(WTF?) when everyone knows the libs would back any fossil fuel development more, so it didn’t work in the limited no of seats dependent on fossil fuel extraction, and dismayed the rest.
No-one goes to the barricades for tax policy except those who going to lose something(or fear as much) providing fertile ground for Palmer’s fear campaign. And the at that time unknown Daggy dag fell over the line. It was seen as a great victory because he was expected to lose.
By now even the most disengaged can see that Morrison is a liability in a crisis, the only time he leads is when he is the first to flee. Which is why national security has no longer given and will never again give him joy as a topic. Desperation is a big turn off as well, the fear is palpable. And there’s no time left to recover his position, or for a replacement to do so, despite wishes of the media for continuing LNP rule or at least the appearance of a horserace to drive some clicks. Or personality contests as the central element of politics. Eff that, policy is the real differentiation.
Prime-ministerial whisperer @murpharoo laments that Albanese won’t open up to her, that he’s a blank slate. What? He’s been in public political life for 40 years, an MP and a senior minister as well as manager of government business. Plenty of material there. And now he’s laying out policy positions in presentations in preparation for government.Leave photo ops, Jen and the girls, hairwashing and blinding yourself with a welder to those who have nothing else but personality cults to sell. Next week she’ll be back to fantasising about a potentially honest Scott Morrison possibly acting on climate emergency. And a hung parliament. And therefore an unchastened LNP wrecking away, whether in government or opposition.
But it aint gonna happen
Grant is getting a lot of airtime on the ABC. They might be auditioning him for 7.30.
That would kill the programme once and for all.
The problem with political shows on ABC is that debates are absurd when equal time is given to people pushing factually and statistically false narratives.
sprocket_,
I got a trick for you. Stop watching insiders. I’ve come to see it more as another form of propaganda download than anything coming close to news or information.
Journalistic opinions aren’t really worth watching, unless they would actually state their real opinion, not just their professional ones.
south @ #137 Saturday, March 12th, 2022 – 12:16 pm
Yes, the show is redundant given the ‘insiders’ are compromising themselves in order to remain on the drip.
Rewi
Voices don’t do preferences.
“Grant is getting a lot of airtime on the ABC. They might be auditioning him for 7.30. ”
He is patronizing and pompous. I find his manner annoying an off-putting.
However, i think Amy Remekis is also on Insiders tomorrow, and i would endure much for the sake of hearing her take on things. 🙂
Sigh!
ABC radio today had NSW SES on, en-route to another PCR test, and they talked of agency and partners, I guess never pass on an opportunity to socialise the losses and privatise …
I just saw some of ABC’s The Drum for this Thu, so instead of the Fibs/ Nats investing in prevention[, such as telling developer and landowners, one lets cows graze on flood plains, not build house there], it seems they want to go for rescue and recovery through more khaki (Frontier Wars though I guess technically we’re talking colonial militia, Boer War, Gallipoli, Singapore, Vietnam, post Australia Act(s) of 1986, if perhaps not Desert Storm, GWOT …, come to mind, even photo-ops, https://apple.news/Ar8zGF4JfSGm6LNGIE04NqQ)?
Not even hope for a plan.
Oh dear …
Fervently hoping the 2022 Federal Election will bring on more social/ direct and far less liberal democracy.
The Teals, or people like them are likely to be in at the foundation of the replacement for the Liberal party. Allies of necessity in ridding ourselves of the current incarnation, but impeccably credentialled to appeal to a very wealthy demographic who will never vote Labor.
The Greens have stagnated but they still command 10% of the vote, many of whom do preference Labor – and are trying to signal to them to move their ar$es on climate change as a first order issue, that social democracy, and survival, is now impossible without.
I’m so sick of the Labor Green war and I’m sure I’m not alone. Priorities. The current government is the enemy of all.
zoomster
Didn’t Kerryn Phelps do an about-turn on preferences when she ran in the Wentworth by election ? .. I reckon some of the Teals will
And never forget that Murphy was front and centre in the Press Gallery cheer squad that gave Abbott the biggest free ride of any Opposition leader in my lifetime.
And then jumped off as quick as she could when the Turnbull ship hove into view.
Credibility: zero.
subgeometer at 12.14pm
“No-one goes to the barricades for tax policy except those who going to lose something(or fear as much) providing fertile ground for Palmer’s fear campaign.”
I think you’ve hit an important 2019 nail on the head. I bet Bowen thought he was demonstrating Labor’s economic competence (he was, BTW) by describing how the changes would help the budget. What the ALP brains trust didn’t realise is that the Right (+ media enablers) immediately pivoted to ‘Labor will tax you to death!’ In other words, Labor can’t win.
The electorally uninspiring profile of tax policy is also exemplified by the 1998 election. Howard was almost a one-term PM, his Coalition scraped back in with less than 49% 2PP. If tax policy was that uninspiring for the Coalition, what chance did Labor ever stand?
BTW, if I had a time machine (handy device) I’d go back and get Kim Beazley to make one change to his campaign. When asked if Howard was returned, would he combine with Senate cross-benchers to block GST, he said WTTE ‘The only way to prevent a GST is to vote Labor.’ True, but didn’t cut it.
Emerging from my time machine, I would tell him to do what Keating did in 1993: make it into a high stakes gamble for the electorate. Keating said (WTTE): ‘As far as one election can be about a single policy, I want this election to be a referendum on the GST…If the Coalition are elected, we will not oppose the GST in the Senate.’
In other words, voters, you’d better be confident in (feral abacus) Hewson, because if you vote him in, you’ll get whatever he gives you.
I wish Beazley had taken this route and focused on whether you could trust Howard not to take money out of your pocket…
preferences for the Teals in safe Lib seats are irrelevant…..they will either come second with a high PV and surf home on Labor and green prefs, or they come third or lower in which case the Libs win the seat easily
BW,
If the Libs appoint a woman now, you’ll know they have completely given up. Whomever she is will have been selected to provide a footnote in history and to take the blame for the rout that will be inflicted upon the Party.
——————————
The MSM will give any such change a credibility it doesn’t deserve. They may caveat their analysis, but it will change the tone and substance of current media output and offer a reset of sorts – IMO, probably a small, not insignificant, net positive.
If you want a government that broadly reflects your values, Vote 1 Labor
If you want a government that destroys your values, Vote 1 Liberal.
If you want confused and sordid horse trading, Vote 1 UAP, One Nation, Shooters and Fishers, Greens, Katter Party, Teals, Lambie, etc ad nauseam.
Murphy’s article reminds us that journos with regular columns have to come up regularly with pieces and to be credible they can’t be same-same.
She has been laying into the LNP BS for some time now. Her limp effort at a critical examination of Albanese is telling. I reckon we can criticise but give some slack to one of the better journos in the MSM regardless of her centrist or centre right or whatever bias.
SK
If the Liberals appoint Karen Andrews as Prime Minister it will show us all that the Liberals are fair dinkum about women’s issues and that we don’t need quotas for women to get to the top.
One third of the tiny* Teal agenda is knocked off on the spot.
*Equity for women, climate action that equates to only a few per cent higher than Labor’s by 2030, and a federal ICAC are a thin policy gruel when you are looking at running a trillion dollar plus economy.