First things first:
• I had a piece in Crikey yesterday looking at how-to-vote cards, preference deals and the media coverage attendant to them. It considers a claim by Greg Sheridan of The Australian that any teal independent victories will be owed to ovine fealty to how-to-vote cards on the part of Labor and Greens voters; Labor’s decision to put the United Australia Party ahead of the Greens in central Queensland seats, in sharp contrast to its treatment of the party everywhere else; and One Nation’s tokenistic direction of preferences against the Liberals in five seats, without endangering Pauline Hanson’s second placement on the Liberal National Party Senate ticket in Queensland. Had I held back a day, I might have been able to note the latest full-page United Australia Party advertisements proclaiming &8220;Labor are preferencing the Liberal Party”.
• Andrew Tillett of the Financial Review reports the Liberals are boosting resources in the Labor-held seat of McEwen in outer Melbourne. However, Labor sources say they expect to retain the Victorian seats that have become the source of media chatter over the past week, the others being Corangamite and Dunkley, as “national concerns over cost of living and antipathy towards Mr Morrison” are registering as strongly here as anywhere else.
• The Australian reports the Liberals are newly concerned that the normally safe Brisbane seat of Ryan will be lost to Labor. There has also been increasing talk that the Greens could prove competitive in both Ryan and neighbouring Brisbane, together with Labor-held Griffith immediately to the south.
• Alice Workman of The Australian reports “independent polling conducted over the phone, towards the end of April” shows Liberal candidate Jenny Ware on a low enough primary vote to put her in danger of losing Hughes to independent Georgia Steele. Liberal sources are quoted saying Ware is “on the nose with locals after being picked by Scott Morrison to run, against the wishes of rank-and-file branch members”. Assuredly not in contention is the seat’s incumbent, Craig Kelly, notwithstanding United Australia Party advertising proclaiming him the “next Prime Minister of Australia”.
• The Age/Herald today reports that this week’s Resolve Strategic poll showed 32% rated the Coalition as best to manage the Solomon Islands issue compared with 29% for Labor.
Now, by popular demand, a post probing into this site’s popular BludgerTrack poll aggregate, for which a permanent link can be found on the sidebar. This presently suggests Labor holds a lead of 54.0-46.0 on two-party preferred, which I don’t think anyone seriously expects to be actual result at the election. It does, however, show a narrowing trend commencing slightly before the onset of the campaign period, though not sufficient to suggest any chance of the Coalition closing the gap. Given the record low support for the major parties, the Coalition can at least hope that parity on two-party preferred need not be required to at least hold on to minority government – and also for another pollster failure like that in 2019 (the likelihood of which is considered in a post by Mark the Ballot).
BludgerTrack is one of a number of endeavours around the place that seek to plot a signal through the noise of federal opinion polling, together with one on the Wikipedia federal election page maintained by a user called Canley; Twitter user @Gergyl’s regular posts aggregating trends both short-range and long-range; and semi-regular blog posts from the aforementioned Mark the Ballot. That’s aside from the sites Armarium Interreta and Buckleys and None which, together with Professor Simon Jackman’s betting odds model, are tracking the horse race in other ways.
BludgerTrack and its close relatives, each of which produce very similar results, use LOESS (locally estimated scatterplot smoothing) functions to trace a path through the data points that keeps the distance between the path and the points at an appropriate level. The degree of tolerance for this difference is set by a smoothing parameter, which produces something resembling a straight line if set too high, and zooms all over the place in response to each individual poll result if set too low. The industry standard for determining the Goldilocks point is called the Akaike information criterion, which I use (thanks to a library available for the R statistics package) without really understanding its mathematical intricacies.
The data points themselves consist of every opinion poll of voting intention published since July 2019 by YouGov/Newspoll, Essential Research, Roy Morgan, Resolve Strategic and, just recently, Ipsos, which are weighted according to their perceived accuracy and adjusted to smooth out the peculiarities of each series. My methods here are quite a bit less presumptuous than they were before the pollster failure of 2019, when I imagined there was value in calibrating pollsters’ historic performances. I now assume that YouGov/Newspoll, the only pollster with any track record to speak of since 2019, is essentially free of bias, and calculate other pollsters’ biases based on the extent to which they deviate from a trend measure of it. These are halved so the peculiarities of each pollster have at least some weight in the overall result, rather than it being totally centred around Newspoll. The biggest change made is to Resolve Strategic’s Labor vote, which is increased by over two points. All other adjustments amount to less than one point.
Each pollster gets a weighting based partly on how much bias adjustment they’re being loaded up with, but mostly on my subjective impression of how accurate they’re likely to be, together with consideration of how frequently they report. The latter ensures the aggregate doesn’t get overwhelmed by the more prolific polling series. The most heavily weighted pollster at the moment is actually Ipsos, which is a (presumably) high-quality pollster that has so far produced only two polls released several weeks about. However, the mainstay of the series, Newspoll, is not far behind – a Resolve Strategic poll is worth about half a Newspoll, and an Essential Research (the most prolific series over the current term) and a Roy Morgan (which has a dubious track record) are worth about a quarter each.
Where BludgerTrack goes deeper than its rivals is in providing state breakdowns (together with leadership ratings). This is done using trend measures of each state’s deviation from the national results, which are then combined with the national trends (excepting Tasmania, for which next to no state-level data is published). Unfortunately, only Ipsos offers complete state data for each poll, as the others don’t care to have their small sub-samples held up to scrutiny their margins of error can’t bear. Essential Research comes close, but it smooths results for the smaller states by publishing three-poll rolling averages. Newspoll has always dealt with the issue by publishing state-level aggregates on a quarterly basis, which are a big deal for BludgerTrack when they come along (it would be nice to see one soon). Resolve Strategic only goes as deep as Queensland, and Roy Morgan’s are not used as they only provide two-party preferred at state level, whereas BludgerTrack works off primary votes.
Thanks to Murdoch and the LNP:
‘Australia slid from 25 to 39 out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) World Press Freedom Index for 2022, ranking below close neighbours New Zealand in 11th place and Timor-Leste at number 17.
“Ultra-concentration of media ownership, combined with growing official pressure, endanger public-interest journalism” in Australia, RSF said.’
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-04/australia-falls-down-world-press-freedom-index-2022/101036252
William Bowe
Really appreciate the insights.
BK
Thanks again as always
The Coalition don’t deserve to have any seats, all said. They are an abominably bad Government. They play favourites with their largesse. They can’t run the economy. They have no answers whatsoever on the environment. They are relentlessly dishonest, ideological, corrupt, incompetent, devious, opportunist, reckless, divisive, prejudiced, treacherous and stupid. They are their good points.
Very luckily for the country, Labor are willing to serve in the face of some very serious challenges.
Jacqui Lambie on Radio National this morning – very anti Morrison, caustic really about him, says he’s done nothing for the homeless and renters in Tasmania. She thinks Albanese has real momentum now, which Shorten didn’t have 3 years ago.
I would assume her lower house candidates in Bass and Braddon and Lyons will preference Labor.
An industry insider who does large props for big construction items told me that they now put proposed project costs in as valid for 24 hours. It used to be weeks. And even months in some cases.
Rnm1953 says:
Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 8:23 am
“A story floating around about Fryingturd if you’ve missed it”
Has any of the MSM picked up on this story or is it/he untouchable?
Thank you to WB and BK.
bug1, I think you have it right. Starlink (for now) requires ground stations. It goes dish/starlink satellite/ground station/internet. It’s just that that link between dish and ground station has a maximum range of about 900km. But that’s based upon a certain distance above the earth. If Starlink wants to use higher-orbit satellites, and they do do that, the distance is extended. I’m not sure if any of the newer satellite-satellite versions are deployed yet. But the fact is, they probably wouldn’t tell anyone if they were, while they test them.
It basically means that even if Russia cuts the comms in the area they control, they’re not going to be able to disable starlink, unless the entire country was occupied, and even then, not for about 900km from any country that can house a ground station. That’s most of the country.
Bludging says:
Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 9:27 am
The Coalition don’t deserve to have any seats, all said
_______________
Perhaps you could move a motion at Conference that when in government Labor ban all other political parties?
Expat Follower
This is my strong gut feeling about how this election will play out, and has been since January.
Caveats:
I am suffering from #2019PTSD, so I will only believe it when Antony Green calls the result.
The low primary vote for the two majors definitely adds a lot of uncertainty in predicting the 2PP result.
Bludging: if only the Libs and Nats were reduced to a rump of 40 seats or less, won’t happen though in reality. A Labor government of even the smallest majority is good enough for me, I’ll take it.
And the scenario for the Liberals if Morrison loses the election and Frydenberg lost Kooyong? Dutton as Opposition Leader. Or I guess they’d try and get Josh back into parliament another way, try and trigger a byelection in a safe Liberal Melbourne seat some months later perhaps
liar loans = subprime mortgages ?
In USA tradies were selling their gear outside food stores in 2006-7, while we were offered remortgage at 0% for year 1.
I hope it never repeats here, but I’m not confident. And of course if it does, it will be “Labor’s fault”.
Interesting that marktheballot on herding. Good reason for progressive types to keep up the campaigning. To me, things seem pretty positive at the moment but no one i know in the ALP is taking this for granted.
Quietly confident that Albo will do ok on Q&A tonight. And, even with the odd stumbles if they occur it still shows that he will actually turn up and face real people in public. Journos will be able to draw a the obvious comparison betweixt he and the Liar from Shire on that..
”
• Alice Workman of The Australian reports “independent polling conducted over the phone, towards the end of April” shows Liberal candidate Jenny Ware on a low enough primary vote to put her in danger of losing Hughes to independent Georgia Steele. Liberal sources are quoted saying Ware is “on the nose with locals after being picked by Scott Morrison to run, against the wishes of rank-and-file branch members”. Assuredly not in contention is the seat’s incumbent, Craig Kelly, notwithstanding United Australia Party advertising proclaiming him the “next Prime Minister of Australia”.
”
I did not see any posters or Corflutes of Jenny Ware in the Liverpool council area of Hughes electorate.
I saw a few Corflutes of Georgia Steele with her photo and no message in particular. I saw Green Corflutes saying that that they will achieve 100% renewables energy by 2030.
Several small media groups such as the auspol bulletin broke a story yesterday afternoon that linked a very, very senior member of the LNP cabinet to an incident involving a a former staffer who received the mystery 500k settlement. Is there a particular reason the major news organisation are holding back on it?
Holdenhillbilly says:
Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 8:42 am
“Defence Minister Peter Dutton will announce plans to develop unmanned submarines and upgraded missiles to counteract China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific.
The Defence Force and defence tech company Anduril Australia will co-fund a $2 billion venture to produce three Extra Large Autonomous Undersea Vehicles over the next three years. The government also previously announced a $2 billion investment to purchase Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles.”
Imagine, a major defence procurement announcement in the middle of an election. But then, it’s just an announcement after all isn’t it.
I won’t be at all surprised there is a big thumping despite the fact the media (and therefore public have been told) that Albo isn’t well known or charismatic and here’s why:
We are living in a world of extremes … for many it is no longer a case of middle ground. Tribalism and big swings of energy jump behind ideas and people in waves. People make decisive moves, often without a great deal of consideration.
This has become something that the media has had trouble dealing with. The bigger parties also have had trouble dealing with how many have just made up their minds regardless of any sane argument to the contrary or bribery. c.f. WA and SA elections, pile-ons against journalists or celebs
Alternative scenario;
NAT and LNP get more seats than LIB (outside QLD)
A renegotiated Coalition agreement decides the leader and deputy of the Coalition will be NAT and LNP.
They will allow LIB to remain in the Coalition.
Sane Libs resign from the conservative Liberal Party and form a Liberal Liberal Party with the Teals.
Reboot complete
Itza
That was my visceral reaction on reading Savva’s article: On what basis does she think that Scott Morrison should win this election in a canter?
What is the auspol bulletin?
I’d imagine a reason might be potential defamation suits.
The fact that Russia is still fighting for a city in Ukraine 50km from the Russian border, sided by a sea that they control, two and a half months into an invasion, should give some indication of how badly it is going for them.
My understanding is that Musk is providing satellite link kits, probably the new mobile version.
Youtube of SA 4WD setup, 16 min.
Pi @ #120 Thursday, May 5th, 2022 – 9:35 am
And it’s only going to get worse. No matter how many Russian flags they raise in small, insignificant in the scheme of things. towns, where they have installed Ukrainian collaborators who order Russian to be spoken and Rubles to be the currency.
What is done can be undone.
Marko says:
Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 9:23 am
@Bludging
How could they lose 18 to teals?
I think the total number of sitting and new Not-Labor/Not-A-Lib Independent Lite blue-clad candidates is about 25 – could be slightly more – and of these about 20 are first-time candidates running in Lib-held seats. Hopefully most of them will win if Labor do not. The Reactionaries do not deserve to hold any seats. They are a terrible failure….a really terrible failure.
bug1 @ #117 Thursday, May 5th, 2022 – 9:33 am
It’s kind of what I’m seeing on the horizon. Though I see Liberal Democrats and Clive’s Party also being part of the mix. PHON will fold in once Pauline hangs up her bottle of red hair dye. The Anti Vaxxers will devolve into ‘Freedumb Fighters’ and they, too, will be absorbed ultimately.
I don’t really understand the smoothing effects of aggregation..however this looks like a beautiful smooth glide path to victory for Labor.
https://www.buckleysandnone.com
I heard Morrison rambling on to Sabra Lane on ABC radio on the way to work. She did challenge him on several issues: inflation, budget-inflation link, Solomons and ICAC.
Morrison droned on in reply. Lane could barely get a word in edgeways. He wouldn’t admit anything, but it was not impressive.
Douglas and Milko @ #118 Thursday, May 5th, 2022 – 9:34 am
Because her allegiance is to party, not person.
When is the sainted Dan Andrews going to legalize marijuana and end this waste of resources:
The criminalisation of cannabis is a scourge on society that must be addressed, with or without recreational legalisation. The report reveals that cannabis use and possession charges represent 41% of all minor drug offence charges in Victoria. Between 2007 and 2017, Victorian magistrates’ courts dealt with 23,340 minor drug offences that only involved cannabis. From 2017 to 2018, Victorian police made 9,760 cannabis-related arrests, 90% of which were for simple possession and consumption.
https://www.cannabiz.com.au/labors-last-minute-intervention-in-victorias-cannabis-inquiry-only-delays-the-inevitable/
ltep @ #120 Thursday, May 5th, 2022 – 9:34 am
Just the minister playing happy families with the hired help.No harm in that says MSM.
Roy Morgan for the South Australia election predicted a 2PP for the Liberals of 39.5% and it ended up being 39.7%. Better result than all the other pollsters.
https://twitter.com/SimonEarleLabor/status/1521994877063806976
That was my visceral reaction on reading Savva’s article: On what basis does she think that Scott Morrison should win this election in a canter?
I think she was referring in the context of an imagined alternate timeline where Shorten had won in 2019.
She is suggesting Shorten would have been a disastrous one term government and that Morrison should have won big in 2021
nath says:
Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 9:30 am
Bludging says:
Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 9:27 am
The Coalition don’t deserve to have any seats, all said
_______________
Perhaps you could move a motion at Conference that when in government Labor ban all other political parties?
The only Stalinists and Maoists I know these days are in the Greens. They are in favour of the suspension of the usual political processes in order to carry out the destruction of the modern economy and the society on which its built.
I think the voters will wreak their anger on the Coalition, who really are absolutely terrible at governing. They have wasted everything, not least their time in power…time, the most precious of thing of all, has been frittered away by the most indolent and inattentive government we’ve ever seen.
Briefly – its medication time! Nurse Ratched is looking for you!
There is nothing new in a political party running candidates that live distant from an electorate and ‘run dead’, spending the bare minimum in that electorate, in order to have some presence to garner upper house votes. Major parties do it all the time, albeit more often in State elections I suspect.
Frydenberg has questions to answer about former Liberal party staffer Rachel Millar receiving $500,000 payout from the taxpayer?
Are any journalists going to ask Frydenberg why she got this payment?
Bludging says:
The only Stalinists and Maoists I know these days are in the Greens.
_________________
You know all 5 of them?
”
Boris Johnson has lost the Tories’ respect – so why has he not lost their support, wonders Rafael Behr.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/04/boris-johnson-conservative-party-local-elections
”
Because English people want to be like, all fun and no responsibility even when one is in his/her 50s. Another reason they support him is that like him they want to face no consequences for their actions. 🙂
I’m a bit puzzled by the almost total lack of campaign activity, relative to previous elections, in my electorate of Greenway. It’s ALP held by just 2.8%, and there has been pretty strong population growth in the Liberal supporting northern end of the electorate, so you’d think the Liberals would see this seat as an opportunity. I did get one phone call from the ALP member’s campaign team, but there has been almost zero campaign material in my letter box (a couple from the ALP, one from the Libs re postal voting). There are only a handful of ALP corflutes up, and I’ve seen just one single lonely Lib corflute. Zero presence of any party workers at shopping centres or railway stations canvassing for votes. Why is this?
Maybe internal polling shows Greenway is an easy ALP hold, so don’t waste resources on it?
Maybe the local Libs are pissed off with head office and aren’t trying? At the Blacktown council elections last year the Libs didn’t run official candidates, but ran as fake “independents”, apparently due to internal party problems.
Maybe the very late imposition of a Lib candidate by Morrison/Perrottet has derailed their campaign? Their candidate is a gent from the Indian community with no local profile I’m aware of.
No matter what the reason, the seeming complete lack of a Liberal campaign in Greenway bodes well for the ALPs prospects here.
Socrates @ #126 Thursday, May 5th, 2022 – 9:42 am
Lord, he was born a Ramblin’ Man 🙂
https://youtu.be/LUXRjfHoVl4
I’m getting a distinct feeling that Savva’s not enamoured of
Morrison, their relationship appearing to take a dive around the time Turnbull was turfed. In any event, she’s very good value.
_____________________________________
It does happen but it’s still fairly rare for, say, the US Supreme Court or the High Court of Australia to overturn a decision of their predecessors, let alone in doing so, be highly critical of the legal reasoning for the original decision.
But Alito has done just that, based it seems on his contention that in the US Constitution, there’s no implied right to privacy. If this line of reasoning were to be applied here, the implicit right of political communication could get the chop, as could other decisions based on implied rather than express rights, the latter of which are indeed very sparse – five.*
The ultra-conservatives on the bench of the SCOTUS have certainly opened a can or worms, made all the worse by the fact that in their confirmation proceedings, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh & Coney Barrett said under oath that their religious beliefs would not affect their legal reasoning. They lied big time and in doing so, have brought the US Supreme Court into disrepute.
* [‘The Constitution defines and protects express rights in relation to freedom of religion, discrimination between the States, the right of Australian citizens to trial by jury, free trade among the States and the acquisition of property.’]
‘Pi says:
Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 9:35 am
The fact that Russia is still fighting for a city in Ukraine 50km from the Russian border, sided by a sea that they control, two and a half months into an invasion, should give some indication of how badly it is going for them.’
————————————————
It is not black and white.
1. Most of the city of Mariupol, popn before Putin’s War 450,000 is controlled by Russia.
2. Holdouts who have an extensive tunnel complex under the steelworks are holding will probably hold out for as long as their food holds out. They are well-stocked. In the interim the Russians are shrinking the perimeter and keeping the defenders’ heads down with heavy artillery, missiles, ship and air strikes and tank fire. The ONLY reason the Russians have to rush the end of Mariupol and take disproportionate casualties in so doing is for propaganda purposes. I believe, but am not sure, that at least some of Russia’s Mariupol units may have been redeployed elsewhere.
2. The Russians have gained a land border to the Crimea.
3. The Russians are no longer engaged in pell mell retreats.
4. The Russians are making small advances in the south-east theatre.
5. The Russians are now playing to their strengths instead of to their weaknesses. This includes the extensive use of heavy artillery.
6. The Russians have captured and are holding extensive areas of Ukraine. They are working to consolidate those gains through setting up political structures.
My view is that pointing to Mariupol as an indicator of how badly or how well Russia is going is probably not wise. It is a one-sided siege. Further, Mariupol is a single data point and probably reflects less than 1% of the total current military effort on both sides in this war.
nathsays:
Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 9:30 am
Bludging says:
Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 9:27 am
The Coalition don’t deserve to have any seats, all said
_______________
Perhaps you could move a motion at Conference that when in government Labor ban all other political parties?
______
Ha! That’s funny.
Lars Von Trier @ Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 9:51 am
“Briefly – its medication time! Nurse Ratched is looking for you!”
I cry foul.
I think Savva was saying that had Morrison and the LNP actually handled COVID well, that they would have won in a canter (like McGowan in WA did)
@C@T
What about Catherine Renshaw? Is her campaign running dead?
—
Sorry, don’t know. Haven’t seen hers around. In fact, I saw a truck driving around with Kylie’s placards as electronic boards on all sides. Really bright for 8:30am! (it said the carbon emissions were offset)
So long as the Libs are chucked out!
Despite some prospect of an over turn we have not been phoned, door knocked, or even pamphleteered. Is this a sign that Zed has it in the bag?
Pi @ #131 Thursday, May 5th, 2022 – 9:46 am
Brothers from another mother. 😆
Lars Von Trier says:
Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 9:51 am
Briefly – its medication time! Nurse Ratched is looking for you!
It’s my ardent hope that the Blue Jumpers, the Reactionaries, be smashed. We’re into the second half now. They haven’t kicked a single goal so far. Labor have rushed a few behinds, putting the coalition on the scoreboard, but have kicked 12 straight so far. They are very well ahead. Spectators are starting to leave, so futile is the effort from the pathetic crew that are seeking re-election. The ground will be emptied well before the last term expires. The Blues are fumbling everything. Their play has collapsed. They will get the thumping of a life time.