Federal election minus two days

Intelligence from Goldstein and Fowler, plus a detailed survey on the gender electoral gap and related political attitudes.

The final Ipsos poll for the Financial Review will apparently be along later today, which so far as national polling is concerned will just leave Newspoll, to be published in The Australian on Friday evening if 2019 is any guide. No doubt though there will be other polling of one kind or another coming down the chute over the next few days. For now:

• Tom Burton of the Financial Review offers reports a Redbridge poll of Goldstein conducted for Climate 200 has Liberal member Tim Wilson on 36.0% and teal independent Zoe Daniel on 26.9% with 8.4% undecided, and that 52.7% of voters for all other candidates would put Daniel ahead on preferences compared with 12.8% for Wilson and 34.5% undecided. Removing the undecided at both ends of the equation, this produces a final winning margin for Daniel of 4.6%.

• In an article that otherwise talks up the threat facing Kristina Keneally in Fowler, The Australian reports that “senior Coalition sources said they expected Ms Keneally to hold the seat”. The report also identifies seats being targeted by the major parties over the coming days, none of which should come as too much of a surprise, and talks of “confidence increasing in Coalition ranks that Scott Morrison is making inroads in outer-suburban seats”.

• The Australian National University’s Centre for Social Research and Methods have published results of a survey of 3587 respondents conducted from April 11 to 26 in a report entitled “Australians’ views on gender equity and the political parties”. Among many others things, this includes a result on voting intention showing the Coalition on 29.2% among women and 34.5% among men; Labor on 33.4% among women and 36.5% among men; the Greens on 19.8% among women and 12.2% among men; others on 9.2% among women and 14.0% among men; and 8.4% of women undecided compared with 2.8% of men.

• I had an article in Crikey yesterday considering the role of tactical voting in the campaign, which among other things notes the incentive for Labor supporters to back teal independents to ensure they come second and potentially defeat Liberals on preferences, and the conundrum they face in the Australian Capital Territory Senate race, where just enough defections will help independent David Pocock defeat Liberal incumbent Zed Seselja, but too many will result in him winning a seat at the expense of Labor’s Katy Gallagher instead.

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.

1,043 comments on “Federal election minus two days”

Comments Page 13 of 21
1 … 12 13 14 … 21

  1. Firefox @ #579 Thursday, May 19th, 2022 – 1:57 pm

    Regardless of negotiations or otherwise, the very fact that Labor supporters themselves know that the Greens have ruled out working with the Coalition and that they know that they do not need to reach 76 seats in order to gain government (see Gillard/Greens/Ind from 2010-13) totally blows their own desperate disinformation campaigns out of the water.

    And the fact that the Greens have already committed to supporting Labor in the case of a hung parliament, without any need for bargaining or deals, totally blows the Greens’ assertion that Labor and the Liberals are equally bad out of the water.

    It works both ways.

  5. hazza4257 re that poll-like object. Bet heavy pinch of salt for that, but if it is even tracking a trend, those are end-of-days numbers.

  7. “In a minority government, the Greens are going to be a fair way down the consultation list.”

    ***

    Just assume that’s correct for one second, even if the Greens weren’t involved at all and Labor did some deal with the Teals or Katter or whoever, that still completely destroys the desperate scare campaigns Labor is currently running about minority government. Labor’s lies are there for all to see.

  9. @ late riser – yep, that’s it thanks.

    @GlenO – that’s totally not how AG works. Nor is it how 538 works in calling US elections, or how anyone works.

    Calling a seat or election means AG is x% sure it will happen. I don’t know what AG’s ‘x’ value is, but it’s the same for seats as for elections.

    Lets say the count has Labor on 75 seats, liberals on 30 seats, with 46 not yet declared. Lets further say that AG is 98% sure that Labor will win every single one of those 46 seats, and that his x value is 99%. AG can’t declare any of those seats – he hasn’t met the required threshold of evidence yet. But he can call the election. Because 0.02^46 is some ridiculously tiny number.

    If the country generally is swinging Labor in the count, and WA was predicted to swing more to Labor than the rest of the country, he absolutely will count all labor WA seats including the marginal one, and the 2 marginal Lib ones as Labor seats in deciding whether to declare the election.

  10. Here comes tomorrows front page thick black letter message in the Murdoch press

    LABOR’S $7 BILLION BUDGET BLOWOUT

    “If you can’t manage money, you can’t manage the economy”

    Yada yada.

  13. Labor should be upfront in it’s costings in slashing the billions wasted on out-sourcing and consultants. 😡

  14. Across the ditch where the Labour and Greens parties get along (and the leader of the Greens is actually the climate change minister) they have produced a plan that will reduce emissions by 35% by 2035.
    This is more in line with the LNP’s target (26-28% by 2030) than Australian Labor (43% by 2030) or the Australian Greens (75% by 2030 and net zero by 2035). The reality of hard policy and carbon budgets is very different to what our politicians are promising pre-election. It’s easy to wave around a target in a campaign, but delivering will be incredibly difficult. FWIW, I hope the Greens get the chance to participate in developing policy that will deliver on their very ambitious targets.
    https://reneweconomy.com.au/new-zealand-sets-stepping-stone-carbon-budgets-on-road-to-net-zero/

  17. I agree with what GlenO just posted, it is going to take a long time to call the election.
    I expect Labor to win a majority, but I do not expect it to be massive and there will be close seats that cannot be called quickly. Postals seem to favour the Coalition and there will be seats where the Liberals will hope for a comeback.
    Then there will be the seats with independents that may have wrong 2CP being counted on the night. So there might be a lot of suspicion that a independent will unseat a coalition member but until the 2cp is corrected the seat will be in doubt. There is even a seat like Canberra which might see the greens get second and the seat not be given away on the night.
    Scott from Adelaide

  18. I think Chalmers could have successfully sold the repeal of the stage 3 tax cuts as budget repair in response to the cost of Covid.

    Labor should have abstained on the stage 3 tax cut vote, leaving them room to responsibly act at this particular point in time.

  19. @ The lorax – objection, relevance?

    New Zealand is not Australia.

    New Zealand’s emissions are from agriculture. Ours are from coal electricity.

    Coal electricity emissions can be easily and quickly reduced at low, no or negative cost to society.

    Agriculture emissions are tricky.

    New Zealand’s emissions will plummet when lab grown meat and milk destroy their main industries.

  20. PREDICTION: Election not called on the night because of the quantity of outstanding pre-polls and postals but A. Green says Labor is predicted to win a majority in its own right.

  22. Interesting movement in Sportsbet odds. Labor has steadily blown out from 1.25 to 1.52 in the “next government” market from Tuesday morning to Wed. night, but has not moved at all today, still 1.52. But individual seat odds have either not moved, or in quite a few cases have improved for Labor or Independent.

    Sportsbet still sees 5 clear Labor gains, namely Boothby, Chisolm, Pearce, Reid & Swan. Zoe Daniel is a strong favourite to win Goldstein. So those results would take us to Labor minority government.

    There is no seat where the LNP is favoured to win from Labor or the crossbench. Gilmore is the only one where the LNP is anywhere close.

    There are a further 8 LNP seats where Labor is narrow favourite or there is no clear favourite: Bass, Braddon, Brisbane, Bennelong, Longman, Robertson, Ryan & Wentworth (Ind. vs Lib.)

    Finally, there are 6 LNP seats where they are only narrow favourites-all of these are versus Independents. These seats are Curtin, Hughes, Kooyong, Mackellar, North Sydney, and Nicholls (only Nats seat in danger).

    Of course betting odds are not predictive, but I think this list of seats to watch aligns pretty well with the current national 2PP polls and the individual seat polls, so it’s a reasonable guide. Most likely result is the Libs losing about 10 seats in total, let’s say 7-9 to the ALP and 1-3 to Independents. So a majority Labor government, with a seat tally in the high 70’s or maybe low 80’s tops.

    I think the 2 critical seats to watch when first results come in are Chisolm and Reid. Labor really needs to be winning these! If they aren’t, I’ll be starting to worry. If Chisolm and Reid are looking good, next to look at are Bass, Braddon, Bennelong, Brisbane, Gilmore, Longman, Robertson & Ryan. If Labor are winning as few as 3 of these, it’s very likely it’s game over, it will be an ALP majority government.

    I don’t think teal wins from Liberal will determine who forms government, but teal wins from Liberal (or the lack of them) will have a huge impact on future Liberal marketing tactics, and indeed on who gets to control the Liberal brand, which will continue to be a very desirable piece of political real estate to own. Is Liberal just the brand of bigots and elderly conservatives, or the brand of the socially liberal, environmentally conscious affluent middle-class?

  23. Rex: “Labor should have”

    Why is it that the team that has one seat in the lower house after 30 years of trying think people should follow their advice?

  24. “And the fact that the Greens have already committed to supporting Labor in the case of a hung parliament, without any need for bargaining or deals, totally blows the Greens’ assertion that Labor and the Liberals are equally bad out of the water.”

    ***

    We all know that the Coalition are even worse than Labor. We all know that the Labor Right love being told by Greens that the Coaliton are worse. It doesn’t matter how many times we repeat it, they still drone on with this same old tired shtick. This doesn’t blow anything out of the water, it just shows up Labor for what they are.

    Does being told that you’re supporting the lesser of two evils really make you feel all that great, anyway, especially when there are genuinely decent alternatives? I suspect not.

  25. Voice Endeavour @ #603 Thursday, May 19th, 2022 – 2:16 pm

    @GlenO – that’s totally not how AG works. Nor is it how 538 works in calling US elections, or how anyone works.

    Calling a seat or election means AG is x% sure it will happen. I don’t know what AG’s ‘x’ value is, but it’s the same for seats as for elections.

    AG certainly factors a lot of things into his calls. But what you don’t seem to be hearing is that AG doesn’t just go “well, the opinion polls say it…”. He’s not going to assume that, because opinion polls are saying Labor will get a substantial swing to them in WA, that therefore it’s safe to call the election. It’s entirely possible for there to be a 10% swing to Labor, and Labor have a net loss of one seat, because there’s insufficient data about *where* the swing is.

    Note that my prediction for when he’ll call it is 8:35pm. That’s based on the assumption that he won’t be ready to call enough seats prior to the WA and NT numbers coming in, and a little after that, but once he has some proper WA data, for all of their seats, he’ll be ready.

    He doesn’t need a huge amount of data from WA to be ready, because he uses booth swings as part of his algorithm for predicting final results. And once there are booths coming in from enough electorates that are likely to be Labor gains, he’ll call it.

    But he won’t do it using opinion polls. Again, look at 2019 to see why.

  26. I have just redone the calculation on Labor’s costing.
    It represents a huge 0.3% increase on budgeted expenditure for 2022/3.
    “LABOR COST BLOWOUT” will on lots of Murdoch front pages on the strength of this.
    Note that Labor did not match the $3.3b saving claimed by the government in its costings.

  27. Every time I check in the latest Firefox post is attacking Labor again.

    Fox, I thought you were arguing that the Greens are NOT all about attacking Labor and are actually an effective force for overcoming the far right. This campaign and your work here with it are not a great advertisement for that.

  29. The Lorax @ #608 Thursday, May 19th, 2022 – 2:19 pm

    Across the ditch where the Labour and Greens parties get along (and the leader of the Greens is actually the climate change minister) they have produced a plan that will reduce emissions by 35% by 2035.
    This is more in line with the LNP’s target (26-28% by 2030) than Australian Labor (43% by 2030) or the Australian Greens (75% by 2030 and net zero by 2035). The reality of hard policy and carbon budgets is very different to what our politicians are promising pre-election. It’s easy to wave around a target in a campaign, but delivering will be incredibly difficult. FWIW, I hope the Greens get the chance to participate in developing policy that will deliver on their very ambitious targets.
    https://reneweconomy.com.au/new-zealand-sets-stepping-stone-carbon-budgets-on-road-to-net-zero/

    New Zealand’s emissions per capita are about 45% of Australia’s emissions per capita. That means they’re *starting* at a 55% lower point. And then a 35% cut by 2035 would be a reduction to less than 30% of Australia’s current per capita emissions.

  30. Put me down for 2120. I have no idea really but that is the time I expect to get home from htv in the coldest and bleakest part of Eden Monaro and would like to see the announcement.

  32. The Nationals Matt Canavan has spat the dummy about Youtube banning a National Party account.

    “YouTube and its American partner company have been accused of interfering in the Australian federal election after they suspended an account used by the National party for campaigning when they tried to run an ad criticising Labor’s climate policies in the Hunter Valley.

    The Nationals had planned to run the ad in the Hunter Valley where they say Labor’s policies put coal mining jobs at risk when they received the suspension notice. Nationals figures told The Daily Telegraph that they believed Google was suppressing factual information on the eve of an election and trying to shut down a debate about a policy they say will have enormous ramifications across the Hunter Valley”.

    https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/federal-election/nationals-accuse-google-of-election-2022-interference-with-ad-ban/news-story/adbdc0bbd0090a604ecdef0e46f5e8a7

    Shame on you social media people lol.

  34. Scott @ #611 Thursday, May 19th, 2022 – 2:20 pm

    I agree with what GlenO just posted, it is going to take a long time to call the election.

    That’s not what I said. I said that he won’t call it until he has WA numbers to work with, unless there’s a noticeably bigger swing than all of the polls are predicting.

    It means 8pm is unlikely, but 9pm is plausible. I wouldn’t at all call that “a long time”.

  36. Re Labor ‘blow out’ in deficit. Easily handled. Just say it is already ‘paid for’ and there is in fact a reduction as Labor won’t, unlike Morrison, waste taxpayers and blow $X Billion on things like YZ . So many YZs to choose from.

  38. “Every time I check in the latest Firefox post is attacking Labor again.”

    ***

    Labor are a huge part of the problem. The Greens and I make no apologies for holding Labor accountable and “keeping the bastards honest” – someone has to.

  40. @Voice Endeavour

    Yes it’s true NZ is blessed with ample hydro (and to a lesser extent geothermal) resources for electricity generation. Coal-fired power stations could be closed in Australia but we really have to address the storage and transmission pieces of the puzzle that have been largely ignored thus far, so I don’t think it will be as easy or benign as you assume. We have a live trial in South Australia where carbon intensity of electricity varies wildly, and is still usually 2-4x that of New Zealand.
    https://app.electricitymap.org/map

    BTW, only around one-third of Australia’s emissions are from electricity generation…

    Energy production is the largest contributor to Australia’s carbon emissions. This is followed by transport, agriculture, and industrial processes. Specifically:

    – energy (burning fossil fuels to produce electricity) contributed 33.6 per cent of the total emissions
    – stationary energy (including manufacturing, mining, residential and commercial fuel use) 20.4 per cent
    – transport 17.6 per cent
    – agriculture 14.6 per cent
    – fugitive emissions 10.0 per cent
    – industrial processes 6.2 per cent
    – waste 2.7 per cent.

    https://www.csiro.au/en/research/environmental-impacts/climate-change/climate-change-qa/sources-of-ghg-gases

  41. PM who wasted $55 billion on imaginary subs criticises Labor for putting an extra $52 billion into productive expenditures.

  44. meher baba says:
    Thursday, May 19, 2022 at 11:23 am
    —
    Re postal vote discount;

    I’ve been thinking about this and prepoll votes. It’s complicated by two factors:

    1. 2019 polls were shown to be wrong by a significant margin on 2PP.

    2. The number of prepoll and postal votes are increasing, thereby reducing any previous biases towards the LNP as the sample becomes more representative of the whole voting population.

    3. I suspect the demographic mix of prepoll and postal votes are changing as well, further reducing the LNP bias. Twenty to thirty years ago prepoll voting was dominated by a wealthier demographic who could afford to be travelling on polling day. Nowadays it’s ordinary mums and dads who want to get voting out of the way so they don’t have to vote on their busy Saturday.

    I may try something like looking at the ratios between prepoll/postal and on the day votes over the last say 6 federal elections to see if there are any trends.

  46. Sandman at 2:40 pm
    I would wait for other reports on that. The Daily Telegraph is down there with the Daily Mail when it comes to ‘quality’ political coverage..

  47. PaulTusays:
    Thursday, May 19, 2022 at 2:12 pm
    Pauline Hanson has tested +be for Covid-19. She is unvaccinated!!

    Yes she is unvaccinated and proud of it !!. Hope she recovers well and does not t suffer of course but there is an irony in this story.

  49. Firefox wrote:
    Labor are a huge part of the problem. The Greens and I make no apologies for holding Labor accountable and “keeping the bastards honest” – someone has to.

    I write:
    The reality is the Greens need to take votes from Labor to win seats; hence this dynamic. All it is doing at this exact moment, though, is harming the progressive cause. The Labor VS Greens battles are in a handful of seats. In the rest of country, like most areas familiar to this bogan, it is Labor and Greens versus a torrent of RWNJ horror. We rarely trade cheap shots at each other here. In fact, we even work together here and there. There is a lot worse. Some perspective here would be great. Surely none of us want to wake up Sunday to Scotty from Marketing.

Comments Page 13 of 21
1 … 12 13 14 … 21

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *