The Courier-Mail today brings the Coalition one of its most encouraging poll results in a while, crediting them with leads on federal voting intention in Queensland of 54-46 on two-party preferred, and 46% to 33% on the primary vote. This compares with 57.0-43.0 at the 2013 election, and primary votes of Coalition 45.7% and Labor 29.8%. The only seats a uniform swing of 3% would net for Labor would be the Rockhampton region seat of Capricornia (margin 0.8%), which Labor has only lost three times since 1961, and the northern Brisbane seat of Petrie (0.5%). The poll was conducted Tuesday and Wednesday evening from a sample of 1176.
Also from Galaxy, the Daily Telegraph has electorate-level polling showing the Liberals leading 54-46 in Lindsay and by unspecified amounts in Gilmore and Reid, with 50-50 results from Banks and Dobell and a 51-49 lead for Labor in Macarthur, the scene of last night’s leaders forum. More precise figures on that will be available at some point, hopefully soon. The polls were automated phone surveys of around 500 respondents per electorate.
I’m aware at least one other big set of regional polling that will be with us this evening, so stay tuned for that one. Other news:
• The small sample of attendees at last night’s leaders forum came down 42-29 in favour of Bill Shorten over Malcolm Turnbull.
• Family First Senator Bob Day’s constitutional challenge against Senate election reforms got short shrift from the High Court in yesterday’s judgement, which said in reference to the plaintiff’s submission: “None of the above arguments has any merit and each can be dealt with briefly.”
• The government has maintained its recently developed interest in South Australia with a visit to the state yesterday by the Prime Minister, in which he committed to funding half of an $85 million rail project connecting Flinders University to the central business district, with a scheduled completion in late 2018. This helpfully runs through the electorate of Boothby, to be vacated at the election by Liberal member Andrew Southcott.
• Labor and Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie have attacked the federal and Tasmanian state governments over $22 million in grants from the Tasmanian Jobs and Investment Fund that were announced this week. Most of the money had been freed up by the demise of a proposed tourism visitors centre at the Cadbury’s factory in the northern Hobart suburb of Claremont, in Wilkie’s seat of Denison, but the bulk of the new projects were in the three marginal Liberal seats in the state’s north. The Hobart Mercury reports that $6.29 million has gone to Lyons, $5.55 million to Bass and $3.59 million to Braddon, compared with $3.6 million in Denison and $2.91 million in Labor-held Franklin.
• Some anonymous public-spirited individuals have put together an outstanding interactive data visualisation site through which you can explore disclosures of political donations.
I’ve been getting a lot of Labor ads in my Facebook feed, but I liked a fair few Labor pages and people. It made me wonder whether they target some of the ads to those who may have liked Liberal pages
Most of the comments are either positive or a mixture of random realistic comments that you might expect from a random group or a Labor preferring group. However the comments on one of the sponsored posts were almost uniformly hostile, and poorly informed or spreading misinformation. It struck me as very strange
Facebook does target adverts, sponsored links and other pages according to their analysis of your fb activity. I get links for so many dog and animal sites it is impossible to look at them all. And if I ‘like’ another sort of page, say woodcrafts, i will get suggestions for more in that category.
Shiftaling
Is that you, or your facebook shadow, posting here? Prove you are the real you!
Eurovision is on peeps
Slack
The red, white & blue flashing is putting me off.
Russia was a mistake. It’s nothing but trash.
Crabb seems to have totally drunk the cool aid –
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-15/malcolm-turnbull-book-stop-at-nothing-first-look-annabel-crabb/7408626
Turnbull’s father was a successful pub broker. He left Malcolm $1.7m in the early 80’s.
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The vast majority of economists are power brokers or ideological enforcers. The profession does not behave in an academically rigorous manner.
Dami was robbed…
[Those results are good news for Malcolm Turnbull because researchers have discovered voter predictions about elections tend to be a more accurate guide to the result than asking who they will vote for.]
It depends on a number of feelings, if you think X is going to win, you are on the fence otherwise, you might well stick with / vote for X at the last minute. Like changing your answer in Maths when you know a lot of the class have a different answer.
I know there are a number of smart fellows about who hate the idea of momentum, and if you’ve done any physics I can see confusing the ‘trend to date’ with momentum is very silly indeed, trends don’t have momentum. But I’m wondering if Malcolm has gravity and where the ground is? So many otherwise intelligent people welcomed Malcolm so generously, they were prepared to ignore two years of Abbott history and any contribution from the public like of Malcolm to envisage a magnificent progressive but economically responsible leader of vast impressiveness.
People are generally slow to admit they were wrong, so very very very wrong, but with Malcolm they have been peeling off, slowly but consistently for months. The budget is now behind him, maybe he has hit the floor, maybe he hasn’t.
Manto
Where did the posts go?
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It’s like the Marie Celeste.
William opened a New Thread on the previous page.
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2016/05/15/reachtel-tasmanian-electorate-polling/#comments
Agree with Evan, no great mood for change like 2007 or 2013 but reminds me of last state Vic election, focussed putting people first campaign won out.
Speaking of voting (tenuous I know) Eurovision changed voting system this year. Dami for Australia got almost double the jury votes of #2 but lost the audience vote. What bullshit
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