There is now a guide to the Northern Territory election on August 24, featuring as always an overview page and individual electorate pages. The latter tell you everything you could reasonably wish to know about the 25 seats, featuring post-redistribution calculations of primary and two-party preferred results, results charts and tables, and navigable boundary maps.
There are two polls relevant to the election from this year in the public domain – not counting a RedBridge Group poll that showed Labor heading for a drubbing last November, which might be thought out of date since it preceded the leadership change from Natasha Fyles to Eva Lawler a month later. A Freshwater Strategy poll of 1000 respondents that appeared in May, conducted for Australian Energy Producers NT, was less bad for Labor, showing a CLP two-party lead of 54-46. Primary votes were 39% for the CLP, 29% for Labor, 22% for independents and 9% for the Greens, which likely flatters the non-major parties given the limited number of candidates voters will have to choose from in practice. The accompanying report in the Northern Territory News said Labor insiders were “buoyed by the party’s improved fortunes” under its new leaders.
A month later came a uComms poll for the NT Environment Centre, likewise with no field work period disclosed (UPDATE: Kevin Bonham relates in comments it was “between March and April”), targeting 1100 voters in Darwin and Palmerston only. This suggested both major parties were on about 36% of the primary vote, which in turn suggests a two-party preferred of around 52-48 in favour of Labor. By my reckoning, this points to a 5% swing to the CLP when compared with the Darwin and Palmerston results from 2020, which if uniform would cost them three seats and nearly a fourth. Antony Green’s reckoning of the territory-wide two-party preferred from 2020 (which must somehow reckon with the CLP’s failure to field a candidate in the seat of Mulka) was 53.3-46.7 to Labor.
The NT News article of June 26 states the uComms poll was conducted “between March and April” which does not prevent it from calling the poll “new polling” or declaring that the poll marks a “turnaround” from the “last round of polling in May”.
My article re this election here https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/07/northern-territory-election-2024.html
The 2020 2PP, which is based on actual 2PP counts as best I can tell from https://antonygreen.com.au/northern-territory-election-analysis-of-results/, excludes Mulka.
This is a pretty weak write up in my opinion William. It over glamorised labor’s polling by attempting to dismiss other poor polling results by stating that it was prior to the change of leadership.
By glamourising the leaders of each party, it is a populist approach to politics that doesn’t reflect how the government’s management of the NT or the oppositions proposals are being reflected in polling results.
It also seems odd to take the tack to glamourise the parties leaders and then NOT explain that the previous ALP chief minister was forced to resign in disgrace for insider trading(not declaring an interest) TWICE! I’m sure political parties reversed you haven’t missed taking that shot before.
You can do what you want as it is your site but this is ‘D-‘ commentary imo.
You could try reading my actual election guide as linked to in the post, if you can take a break from saying “glamourise” every five seconds.
https://www.pollbludger.net/nt2024/Overview.htm
Fyles resigned because she was unpopular in the electorate. The change in mood for Labor since Eva Lawler became CM is marked, in Darwin at least. I believe CLP will win but it will be closer than it would have been 6-9 months ago, as shown by the polls. Which funnily enough are more accurate than a random twitter nutjob.
I have been doorknocked 4 times in the last month, more than I ever have in any election up here. There is a noticeable uptick in CLP choosing non-white males as candidates, particularly in the strongly Labor-held Darwin northern suburbs. The issue of crime and gangs of youths is a key part of the campaign, for CLP in particular. The word crime is mentioned in just about every candidates flyers. No solutions are offered. Pining for the carefree days of old is a bit of a CLP theme as well as declining economic opportunity.
In a nutshell, economics and race. As ever.
IN the NT it is always about race. he anti-crime diatribe is just a way of hiding what people are really taking about.
Fyles stupidly forgot to declare an interest in mining shares. In what world does an ALP leader have shares in a mining company?
Amazingly dispatching Fyles has led to a resurgence in the ALP vote. Who knew?
*I knew Natasha when she was a kid. She had political ambition in her tweens. Stuffing her career so badly would have caused her great pain. Amateur hour mistake. I’m still in shock.
Anyone who thinks that street crime is not having a real-life detrimental impact on tens of thousands of Territorians is completely wrong. The majority of sufferers are Indigenous people. But very large numbers of non-Indigenous people are also directly impacted. The issue is big enough to have a direct and significant economic impact in the tourism industry.
Dutton does not need Trump’s playbook here. He is a natural in this space.
The current crisis has many causes but a major direct cause was Abbott and Giles taking hundreds of millions out of remote community funding. Inexorably this led to large numbers of people heading to regional towns like the Alice. Formal education levels are abysmal. Health is often poor. Job readiness is often completely missing. Traditional social constraints over children and youth have been badly eroded. The elders have little or no standing on somebody else’s country.
Alcohol and other drugs are freely available. There isn’t just zero respect for non-Indigenous institutions and values. There is open contempt and resistance.
Australian Indigenous policies over two and a half centuries are a stuttering iteration of disperse, concentrate, disperse, concentrate. The response to this concentration in places like Alice Springs will inevitably be attempts at dispersal. Just make the problem go away from here.
This pattern itself leads to failure of the next policy response.
For the nonce, Jacinta Prices’ last policy suggestion to the Centralian shambles was ‘boarding school’. We have yet to address at all effectively the utter human wreckage created by the last great wave of boarding institutions.
And, for those who think that the referendum failed because of Albanese, Dutton is not shy this time around. He has already put his kibosh on truth telling by way of Makarrata. No reason given. He has not even bothered his head about the vital necessity of asking for the details before he says, ‘No!’
Get it?
Boerwar! I am not disagreeing with you. I’m not sure why you think I am.
Racism drove and drives the policies that drives the problem which in turn leads to the policies and around it goes.
two and a half centuries of systemic abuse (some would call it genocide) lead to this. And it was and remains racist.
When the good bergers say “Let’s clean up crime” they mean let’s kick the black kids into the gutter. They don’t mean let’s spend the bucket loads of cash that need to be spent to help them.
My gut feeling is that it’ll probably go down to a minority government, hard to say run by CLP or Labor, but the mood for voting for Independents seems to be fairly high (according to the Freshwater Strategy poll anyway).
The fallout of last year’s Voice referendum will probably be a factor in the Indigenous vote, and I doubt the CLP is popular in their communities for their role in it, but Labor is going for a 3rd term with its 3rd leader and is in power federally and that’s usually a difficult ask. If the Independent vote is indeed over 20% then that could flip seats and Labor only needs to lose 2 to lose majority government.
Good thing no-one’s saying street crime isn’t having a real-life detrimental impact on Territorians then isn’t it. Heaven forbid if they were.
The amount of barbed wire around Alice Springs when I was there a few weeks ago was very sad.
Mehreen Faruqi was in town to improve the Greens’ lot.
That well known third world entity, “the territory”, is displaying its third world features in “textbook fashion”.
The “heroic” national leader will figure prominently, mounted on the historical “paternalistic racial steed” together with the notional “territory” leader and followed by the posse of suitably platooned media, armed with the latest weapons while displaying the “sniff of victory”.
The “lack of equality”, rampant throughout “the territory” together with the “use of substances” will be camouflaged behind the banner of self righteous indignation and the catchcry “well fix the bloody place”.
And so it goes.
Complete failure of democracy in the NT elections: majority of territorians oppose fracking, both major parties endorse it.
Early reports from pre-polls & remote mobiles are Bush good for Labor Darwin & Palmerston not so.
Barkly definitely in play as a Labor pickup.