Haven’t yet seen it myself, but I hereby present a thread for discussion of today’s great-ish debate between Treasurer Peter Costello and his Labor opposite number, Wayne Swan.
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.
Newspoll: 54-46
Lateline has announced a Newspoll result that gives some element of hope for the Coalition, with Labor’s lead narrowing to 54-46 from an implausible 58-42 last week. More to follow.
UPDATE: First report at The Australian: Labor primary vote down three points to 48 per cent, Coalition up four to 42 per cent – “its best result since Kevin Rudd took over the Labor leadership in December”. Also the narrowest two-party gap since February.
UPDATE 2: Graphic here, including attitudinal results.
WA redistributed (slight return)
The Western Australian electoral redistribution commissioners have unveiled the final boundaries for the state’s momentous one-vote one-value redistribution. A number of amendments have been made to the proposals unveiled in June, most of them in the East Metropolitan region:
• Central Kelmscott, which was originally to have been in Darling Range, will now be in Armadale so that boundaries conform with the Wungong Urban Water area. In exchange, the southern part of Armadale as originally proposed (Wungong and Mount Richon) will go to Darling Range.
• The exclusion of the part of Gosnells containing the town centre and council offices from the electorate of that name – described in the Boundaries Commission report as an “oversight” – has been corrected by having the northern boundary follow the Canning River (barring a small strip east of Albany Highway). This has involved a gain of territory from Kalamunda and a loss to Forrestfield.
• To allow greater conformity with suburban boundaries, Kalamunda takes part of Gooseberry Hill from Forrestfield and Darlington from Midland, while losing Glen Forrest to Swan Hills. Midland is compensated by taking Guildford from Belmont.
• The boundary between Swan Hills and Darling Range has been redrawn so that Mundaring and Mahogany Creek are in Swan Hills, while Mount Helena, Chidlow and The Lakes are in Darling Range.
Elsewhere:
• In Mining and Pastoral, the electorate name of Kalgoorlie will now be retained, after it was originally proposed it be changed to Goldfields. The boundaries have been adjusted to include the huge but mostly empty eastern part of the Shire of Ngaanyatjarraku, originally to have been in Pilbara. UPDATE: It seems I speak too soon – the ABC points out that the seat becomes “more marginal after taking in the small community of Warburton”. Its enrolment increases from 12,756 to 13,656, and the 900 newcomers should cut the margin to a little over 5 per cent. So the big loser from the final determination is Matt Birney.
• In South Metropolitan, tiny adjustments have been made to Riverton’s boundaries with Jandakot to the south-west and Cannington to the north-east, so that Leeming is in Jandakot and all of Riverton is in Riverton. Three adjustments have been made to the safe Labor electorates in the southern coastal corridor: there has been a minuscule swap between Fremantle and Cockburn, and a bigger but no more consequential addition of East Rockingham to Rockingham from Kwinana.
• In the South West region, the proposed district of Murray will instead be called Murray-Wellington, reviving a name that existed prior to the 2005 election. There has also been an adjustment to its boundary with Mandurah, which absorbs 671 voters at South Yunderup.
I’ll leave the calculations to Antony Green (whose margin calculations for the boundaries as originally proposed can be seen here), but my rough reckoning is that the adjustments are slightly favourable for Labor, who had done pretty well to begin with. They get a handy boost in Forrestfield (original notional margin 3.8 per cent) and Darling Range (0.5 per cent), and are harmed just slightly in Kalamunda (0.2 per cent) and Swan Hills (3.9 per cent). The Murray to Mandurah transfer is perhaps of slight benefit of the Liberals, cutting into Labor’s initial 8.2 per cent margin in Mandurah. The Liberal margin of 6.3 per cent in Murray was probably understated due to the strong personal vote of Labor’s Mick Murray (member for Collie-Wellington) in much of the affected area, and it is unlikely the seat will be keenly contested at the next election.
I also had occasion some time ago to calculate the results that the new upper house arrangements would have produced with the 2005 election figures. Most interestingly, the lower quota in South Metropolitan (which will go from five seats to six) would have delivered a seat to narrowly unsuccessful preference harvesters the Fremantle Hospital Support Group. Results from the 2005 election shown in brackets.
| ALP | LIB | NAT | GRN | FHS | |
| East Metropolitan | 3 (3) | 2 (2) | – | 1 (0) | – |
| North Metropolitan | 2 (3) | 3 (3) | – | 1 (1) | – |
| South Metropolitan | 3 (3) | 2 (2) | – | – | 1 (0) |
| South West | 3 (3) | 3 (3) | – | 0 (1) | – |
| Agricultural | 2 (1) | 3 (3) | 1 (1) | – | – |
| Mining and Pastoral | 3 (3) | 3 (2) | – | – | – |
| TOTAL | 16 (16) | 16 (15) | 1 (1) | 2 (2) | 1 (0) |
Galaxy: Labor ahead in NSW marginals
The Daily Telegraph today runs a poll from the prolific Galaxy, who have repeated their exercise of aggregating four Coalition-held marginals into one survey. This time it’s the New South Wales seats of Lindsay (2.9 per cent), Dobell (4.8 per cent), Paterson (6.3 per cent) and Robertson (6.9 per cent), where Labor is given a collective lead of 54-46 on two-party preferred. The two major parties have exchanged about 8 per cent on both primary and two-party preferred, suggesting all four seats would fall to Labor.
Elsewhere, Paul Bongiorno gave figures from an Ipsos Mackay poll on the two parties’ tax policies on yesterday’s Meet the Press. The figures were highly alarming for the Coalition: 12 per cent said they were more likely to back the Coalition following their tax policy against 11 per cent less likely, compared with 22 per cent and 8 per cent for Labor’s policy.
• Apologies for last night’s service interruption, which was caused by my own laziness/miscalculations. I have received more than enough in donations that I should not have allowed it to happen.
Galaxy Lilley poll
Of all the seats in Queensland to poll, why in God’s name would you pick Lilley? That’s a question that can only be answered by Brisbane’s Sunday Mail newspaper, which commissioned Galaxy to survey the electorate held by Labor treasury spokesman Wayne Swan on a margin of 5.4 per cent. It shows Swan leading the Liberal candidate 59 per cent to 32 per cent, compared with 48.9 per cent and 41.2 per cent in 2004. No sample size is provided, which is rather poor form.
D-day minus 27
• There is a strong possibility this site will suffer a service interruption today. Rest assured that it shouldn’t last too long.
• Samantha Maiden of The Australian tells us that Crosby Textor polling for the Liberals has “detected a lift in the Coalition’s primary vote”. On the other hand, Lenore Taylor of the Financial Review hears the Liberals ”might overstate, or even fabricate, the results of ‘internal’ polling to try to influence what Crosby Textor calls ‘win expectations’ and to buoy the mood of the troops”. Nonetheless, the paper’s Marcus Priest lists Queensland marginals which Liberal polling shows to be in trouble: Forde, Leichhardt, Flynn, Moreton, Ryan, Bonner and Blair. Lenore Taylor reports that the Coalition is playing for a best-case scenario in which it hangs on by limiting the damage to two seats in Queensland (presumably Bonner and Moreton) and zero in Western Australia.
• Paul McLoughlin has been replaced as Liberal candidate for Calwell by Dianne Livett, the candidate from 2004. According to Gerard McManus of the Herald-Sun, McLoughlin was “asked to quit” after he sent a heavy-handed email to suburban journalists. The Age tells it somewhat differently: “party sources” said McLoughlin had “irritated the party” by stepping down for “personal reasons”, having become “fed up with the campaign”. In other candidate substitution news, solicitor Mike Bathersby has replaced rough-and-ready union type Shane Guley as the Labor candidate for Maranoa.
• The Australian Electoral Commission informs us that there are 13,645,073 Australians eligible to vote at the November 24 election. According to Labor, this represents an increase of 77,000 in the three days between the election announcement and the close of rolls. Labor says this compares with 157,000 from the equivalent period in 2004 (which was then a week longer), pointing to a gap of 80,000 voters not on the roll who would have been if the government hadn’t fiddled the rules. However, the Australian Electoral Commission’s vigorous advertising campaign would have partly alleviated the damage.
• A snappy overview of the psephoblogosphere from Rachel Hills in the Sunday Age, which introduces comments regulars TofK and Julie to the ordinary man on the street.
Patterson: 56-44 in Eden-Monaro
A poll of 400 voters in Eden-Monaro, conducted by Patterson Market Research (of Westpoll fame) and published in the Canberra Times, shows Liberal member Gary Nairn (“I can’t particularly comment on whether those words were said or not because I wasn’t there, however clearly I would not agree with any comments that would compare the work of Australian soldiers with those in Nazi Germany”) to be headed for the drubbing he so richly deserves. Decorated war veteran Mike Kelly leads the gutless Nairn 56-44 on two-party preferred, and by 48 per cent to 41 per cent on the primary vote.
ACNielsen online poll: 56-44
ACNielsen has published the second in its presumably monthly series of online polls, taken from a representative sample of volunteers who provide the company with market research data in exchange for prizes and gifts. The poll shows Labor’s two-party leading narrowing to 56-44 from 58-42 a month ago. Labor’s primary vote is down from 50 per cent to 47 per cent and the Coalition’s is up from 37 per cent to 41 per cent.