Category: Federal Election 2004

A Taverner poll in today’s Sun-Herald is one of the few polls of the campaign to show Labor looking good in decisive marginal electorates. The samples are small, but the poll has the virtue of having been taken on Wednesday and Thursday evening, after the Labor campaign launch. The seats in question are the New South Wales Liberal-held marginals of Eden-Monaro, Parramatta and Dobell along with the endangered Labor seat of Greenway. The first two of these were covered by yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald and Canberra Times polls but the Sun-Herald offers contrasting results, with Labor leading 60-40 in Parramatta and 52-48 in Eden-Monaro (bearing in mind the margins of error would be in the order of 10 per cent). The disparity between the Parramatta results is a bit alarming but ACNielsen, with a sample of 1002, would have to be given the greater weight. Pooling the Eden-Monaro result with that from yesterday’s equally small sample poll in the Canberra Times suggests a very slight Liberal lead, in keeping with general expectations. It appears that Taverner’s results from Eden-Monaro and Parramatta are from samples of about 300 while the results from Dobell and Greenway, where Labor respectively leads 54-46 and 51-49, are derived from 100 voters who are being tracked throughout the campaign. It may not be much to go on but these results are the first evidence that Medicare Gold has hit its mark, as the same voters were favouring the Liberals 51-49 and 54-46 three weeks earlier. The Poll Bludger has thus been fortified in his current assessment that Labor will respectively gain and hold these seats. Also today Newspoll offers its collective survey of 12 picked marginal electorates which, in contrast to their recent aggregate polling, shows the Coalition leading 52-48. The poll, like Taverner’s (which covered three of the same seats), was conducted on Wednesday and Thursday evening.

In "late" news, The Advertiser yesterday ran a poll of 686 voters in the marginal Labor Adelaide seat of Kingston. In contrast to their polling in nearby Liberal seats, this showed Labor well ahead by 56-44 on two-party preferred. Primary vote after distribution of the 14 per cent undecided: Labor 45.5 per cent, Liberal 37, Greens 7, Family First 4.5, Democrats 3.5.

Two polls taken after the Liberal launch on Sunday and before Labor’s effort on Wednesday suggest Labor will need every bit of the bounce that Medicare Gold can offer them if they are to win two vital New South Wales seats. Parramatta is one electorate where Labor had been feeling confident, thanks in large part to the misadventures of Liberal member Ross Cameron. But today the Sydney Morning Herald carries a poll from ACNielsen that shows Cameron with no less than 49 per cent of the primary vote (in keeping with their recent pattern of remarkably high primary results for the Coalition) and a 53-47 lead on two-party preferred, despite recording "the highest recognition rating ACNielsen has recorded in an electorate this election". In fact, "of those people who know who he is, 54 per cent approve of the job he is doing". The sample is a substantial 1002, high enough for the report to feel comfortable discussing the margin of error (an all too rare feature of Australian opinion poll reporting, as discussed by an excited Terry McCrann of the Herald Sun). In the equally important seat of Eden-Monaro, a commenter at Christopher Sheil’s Back Pages reports that a poll in today’s Canberra Times has Liberal member Gary Nairn leading Labor’s Kel Watt 54-46. More bad news for Labor with Roy Morgan’s weekly phone survey, which continued to charter new territory for the organisation in finding a further increase in the Coalition’s lead, now at 52.5-47.5. Unfortunately, ACNielsen are not forthcoming with a full national poll this Saturday.

If Medicare Gold really is going to swing older voters, the one electorate where the impact should be clearest is the coastal Adelaide seat of Hindmarsh, ranked number one in the country in the table in the posting below. Today The Advertiser (print version only, it appears – thanks to reader Phil Robins for passing on the figures) carries a poll of this electorate taken a few hours (too few, perhaps) after the package was launched on Wednesday and it shows the Liberals with a very handy lead in a seat where their departing member Chris Gallus was reckoned likely to take about 3 per cent of her personal vote with her into retirement. Primary vote figures are Liberal 46 per cent, Labor 36, Greens 5 and Democrats 2, with Liberal leading 53-47 on two-party preferred.

The Poll Bludger’s Runs on the Board tally has remained stuck in a very narrow band since week two of the campaign, when the Coalition opened up a slim lead as polling trends suggested soft support for Labor in decisive Queensland marginals. There were a few occasions when potential circuit breakers looked set to prompt a substantial revision in favour of one side or the other, but each time ambiguous poll results suggested it was safer to favour the status quo.

However the early evidence suggests that Labor’s snappily branded Medicare Gold package, promising to eliminate waiting lists for the elderly, has cut through more effectively than the Coalition’s more expensive but also more diffuse bag of tricks from their launch on Sunday. Centrebet promptly slashed its odds for a Labor victory from $3.30 to $2.70, and here apologies are in order for my failure to have mentioned before now the remarkable research conducted by Andrew Leigh of the Australian National University showing betting markets to be more accurate at predicting election outcomes than opinion polls.

The Poll Bludger is no expert on demography, but thanks to the Australian Parliamentary Library’s electorate demographic rankings (of which Alan Ramsey had a fair bit to say in the Sydney Morning Herald) he doesn’t need to be. The target audience for this one is clear – older voters on lower incomes. Below are Coalition marginal seats and their proportion of voters aged 65 or over, with their ranking among the 150 House of Representatives seats in brackets (percentages calculated by Peter Brent at Mumble).

Solomon (0.1%)	5.3 (149)		Hinkler (2.3%)	13.5 (66)
Dobell (0.4%)	15.5 (29)		Moreton (2.5%)	13.4 (69)
Canning (0.4%)	9.3 (122)		Longman (2.5%)	12.9 (77)
Adelaide (0.6%)	16.9 (15)		Gippsland (2.6%)	16.3 (22)
Hindmarsh (1.1%)	20.6 (1)		Page (2.8%)	16.4 (20)
Parramatta (1.2%)	12.2 (92)		McMillan (2.9%)	12.2 (91)
Paterson (1.5%)	16.9 (14)		Bowman (3.1%)	12.1 (95)
Herbert (1.5%)	9.2 (124)		Petrie (3.5%)	15.2 (34)
Deakin (1.6%)	15.6 (27)		La Trobe (3.7%)	8.4 (129)
Eden-Monaro (1.7%)	14.3 (52)		Makin (3.8%)	10.1 (114)
Richmond (1.7%)	19.3 (4)		Kalgoorlie (4.4%)	7.8 (136)
McEwen (2.2%)	8.6 (127)		Cowper (4.8%)	18.0 (9)

The Poll Bludger knocked up a similar table for average taxable income shortly after Labor’s tax cuts for lower income earners were announced, and a cursory comparison of the two shows why Labor has chosen to make the bigger play out of the health policy, launching it later in the campaign and preceding it with Mark Latham’s declaration that the election was "a referendum on Medicare". Where one had to venture beyond 2 per cent territory to find electorates with a significant proportion of winners from Labor’s tax policy (though the family benefits may have been another matter), Medicare Gold hits hard where it matters most – Dobell, Adelaide, Hindmarsh, Paterson, Deakin and Richmond, every one a knife-edge marginal and many among those where they were looking in danger of falling short.

Of course, Labor’s best yield of all should come in seats where both target groups are in abundance, and here a clear pattern emerges – the five outstanding examples are coastal electorates outside Sydney and Melbourne, and no less than four are held by the National Party. These include Richmond, located on the New South Wales side of the Queensland border, renowned for its caravan parks and sea-change retirees, and held by junior minister Larry Anthony; its neighbours Page and Cowper, held by back-benchers Ian Causley and Luke Hartsuyker; and the Victorian seat of Gippsland, held by Science Minister Peter McGauran, a once rural conservative electorate that absorbed the depressed Labor-voting towns of Morwell and Traralgon in the redistribution. The one Liberal-held seat is also on the New South Wales north coast – Paterson, held by back-bencher Bob Baldwin (pardon the alliteration).

There are a number of seats here currently assessed by the Poll Bludger as wins for the Coalition where a rethink will be in order if the next polls show a substantial bounce to Labor. If last week’s pattern is followed, Morgan will today release a phone poll conducted Wednesday and Thursday, with an ACNielsen poll taken from Tuesday to Thursday to follow tomorrow. But regardless of what these polls show, it would be prudent to bear in mind the precedents of 1980 and 1993 when scare campaigns in the last week over Bill Hayden’s "wealth tax" and John Hewson’s GST helped secure one last term for the Fraser and Keating governments.

Four new campaign updates for the ever-burgeoning House of Representatives guide. Once again, the action begins in the electorate of …

Wentworth (NSW, Liberal 7.9%): The Greens announced that the order of their preference recommendation would be Labor’s David Patch, followed by independent Peter King, and then Malcolm Turnbull. The importance of Greens preference allocations is often over-rated, since their voters overwhelmingly favour Labor over the Coalition regardless of what the card says. However, the party’s formal preference might influence Greens voters who were less clear on who they preferred out of Labor and Peter King. King obviously thought so, as he unsuccessfully courted the Greens with a series of environmental policy announcements he was in no danger of ever having to act upon. King now faces a greater struggle to achieve his aim of overhauling Labor and then securing victory over Turnbull with their preferences. On Tuesday, The Australian reported that "recent internal ALP polling" had Turnbull on 30 per cent, Patch on 27 per cent and King on 25 per cent. For Patch and King, these are identical results to those in an ACNielsen poll last week, but Turnbull is 4 per cent lower. Both suggest the split of King’s preferences will decide the outcome between Turnbull and Patch.

Fairfax (Qld, Liberal 9.5%): For the second time in less than a week, Labor candidate Ivan Molloy has been at the centre for a firestorm that knocked Labor "off-message" in an important phase in the campaign. On Tuesday the Courier Mail published a photo taken in the Philippines in 1983 that showed Molloy bearing a sub-machine gun and standing next to a similarly equipped local whom the Mail claimed to be a member of the Moro National Liberation Front, a Marxist rebel group with roots in the same soil as the troublesome Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Molloy seems to have conducted legitimate and indeed quite remarkable academic research through his penetration of this organisation, but it appears he sensed the subtleties of the matter were doomed to be lost and gave his party a questionable assurance that he had had no dealings with extremist Muslim organisations. The controversy prompted Mark Latham’s most embarrassing gaffe of the campaign when he confused his candidate with similarly named serial killer Ivan Milat, but most would have been impressed by his sure-footed recovery.

Greenway (NSW, Labor 3.2%): An article by Paul Sheehan in the Sydney Morning Herald on Monday took Labor candidate Ed Husic to task for his near-total media silence, specifically his persistent refusal to speak to either Sheehan or to the The Bulletin for an article it ran on Greenway earlier in the campaign. Sheehan contrasts this with the highly fancied Liberal candidate, Louise Markus, who promptly agreed to an hour-long interview as would be expected of a candidate who was taking her campaign seriously. Husic’s reticence is unusual given his background as PR flack for state-owned Integral Energy, but Sheehan reports that the real story behind his preselection was his background in "the Labor right faction which dominates the Communications Electrial and Plumbing Union", with whom Sheehan has had a troubled relationship.

Riverina (NSW, Nationals 19.9%): Nationals member Kay Hull has twice caused the Coalition embarrassment in the part fortnight. On Tuesday Hull said she would cross the floor to vote down the sale of Telstra if the numbers were such that her vote would prove decisive. Hull was one of a number of National Party MPs who publicly agonised over the party’s decision to fall in behind the Liberals on the Telstra sale legislation that came before the House last year and she eventually abstained from the vote after moving an amendment to have the matter put to a referendum, which failed to get a seconder. Last week Hull suggested that those who could afford to do so should be made to pay fees to send their children to public schools.

Welcome to the belated second installment in our six-part series looking at the state Senate contests, today’s subject being Victoria. As a service to bewildered Victorian voters, what follows is a guide to how your preferences will trickle down to the serious contenders (very generous interpretation here) if you vote above the line. This irons out the meaningless subtleties within the various party tickets and focuses on where the preferences will land where they matter. The DLP and Christian Democrats for example have placed most Coalition candidates ahead of most Labor candidates, but what matters is that Labor’s Jacinta Collins is ahead of Liberal Judith Troeth as these two will be fighting it out for one of the last two places. Also, Labor have submitted a complicated ticket that appears designed to obscure the fact that Family First have done astonishingly well out of them.

Coalition: DLP; Christian Democratic; Family First; Liberals for Forests; Democrats; Greens; Labor; Socialist Alliance; One Nation.

Labor: Liberals for Forests; Family First; DLP; Christian Democratic; Greens; Democrats; Socialist Alliance; Liberal; One Nation.

Greens: Socialist Alliance; Democrats; Labor; DLP; Liberals for Forests; Liberal; Family First; Christian Democratic; One Nation.

Democrats: Family First; Liberals for Forests; Greens; half-Liberal, half-Labor; Socialist Alliance; DLP; Christian Democratic; One Nation.

Family First: Christian Democratic; DLP; Liberals for Forests; Labor; Democrats; Liberal; One Nation; Socialist Alliance; Greens.

One Nation: Christian Democratic; Family First; Liberals for Forests; Liberal; DLP; Labor; Democrats; Socialist Alliance; Greens.

DLP: Family First; Christian Democratic; Labor; Liberal; Liberals for Forests; One Nation; Greens; Democrats; Socialist Alliance.

Liberals for Forests: Family First; DLP; Democrats; Labor; Liberal; Greens; Christian Democratic; One Nation; Socialist Alliance.

Christian Democratic: Family First; DLP; Labor; Liberal; Liberals for Forests; One Nation; Labor; Socialist Alliance; Democrats; Greens.

Socialist Alliance: Greens; Labor; Democrats; Liberals for Forests; Liberal; DLP; Family First; CDP; One Nation.

After Labor and the Coalition win their inevitable two seats, there will most likely be a tight contest between Liberal, Labor and Greens candidates for the final two positions along with either Family First or the Democrats. In the contest between the latter two, the group tickets suggest Family First will finish ahead and then absorb Democrats preferences and not the other way round.

Beyond that, the deck is stacked in favour of Labor and Family First and against the Liberals and the Greens. If either of the latter two are to win one of the last two seats up for grabs, they will have to do so with something very close to a full quota on the primary vote – 43 per cent for a third Liberal seat, or 14.3 per cent for the Greens’ David Risstrom. The usual successful scenario for the Greens involves their candidate overtaking the Democrats and then absorbing their preferences, allowing them to defeat the third place-holder on Labor’s ticket. But this time the Democrats are preferencing Family First, as are both the major parties. If Risstrom needs preferences to achieve a quota he can only get them from Labor and the Democrats, and then only if Family First are eliminated before him. The Coalition was able to win in 2001 with a modest 39.5 per cent of the primary vote in 2001 with the help of preferences from One Nation (who polled 2.4 per cent) and the DLP (2.2 per cent). Since neither can be relied upon this time, they will struggle to retain the third seat.

Family First’s challenge is to finish on top of the minor party pile, and then overtake either major party and absorb their surplus over the second quota. If they succeed, they will most likely to do at the expense of the Coalition leaving Labor and the Greens competing for the other seat. If they fall short, a full complement of preferences from the "Christian coalition" will then flow on to Jacinta Collins and deliver her a third Labor seat, with the other place going to either Liberal or the Greens.

The Poll Bludger made a special effort to think this through by himself without drawing upon the efforts of other commentators. With that effort out of the way, he now calls your attention to what others think. Malcolm Mackerras: "In Victoria, my assessment is that the 1998 result will be repeated exactly. In 1998, each of the Labor and Coalition tickets secured three places". Charles Richardson at Crikey (no link): a number of scenarios are "possible", "but they point to the most probably winners being 2 Labor, 1 Liberal, 1 National Party, 1 Green and 1 Family First". A more equivocal assessment is offered by Antony Green.

Antony Green has dropped a line to advise caution in my assumption that Liberal preferences will overwhelmingly favour the Greens over Labor in Melbourne purely on account of the how-to-vote card. As Green points out (and as the Poll Bludger should know because he lives there), the Liberals struggle to find volunteers to attend to the booths in this inner-city electorate, so most Liberal voters will indeed have to make up their own minds. It could be that many will have noted the words of wisdom of much-loved conservative commentator Andrew Bolt of the Herald Sun.

This difficulty is normally associated with minor parties, who would love to be able use a disciplined flow of preferences as a bargaining chip but lack the organisational strength to get how-to-vote cards into voters’ hands at the booths. As has been frequently remarked, this kind of problem will not necessarily apply to Family First, which has arrived on the scene with a pre-existing support base in the Pentecostal churches that brought it into being. On Friday, Family First announced that it would, as expected, recommend preferences to the Coalition in almost all of the seats in which it is fielding candidates. This could well deliver a substantial number of swinging votes to the Coalition.

The Poll Bludger went delving into the results from the only other election Family First has contested, the February 2002 state election in South Australia, searching for evidence to support this theory. He was a little disappointed to discover that most of the party’s candidates were eliminated in the earlier rounds of the count so their two-party preference could not be easily assessed, but one electorate that fit the mould was the northern Adelaide seat of Wright. The Family First candidate made it to the final round with 2105 votes of which 1541 were primary and 564 were preferences, mostly from the Democrats. These 2105 votes went on to favour the Liberal candidate to the tune of 62-38, despite being diluted by Democrats votes that would mostly have favoured Labor. However, it should also be noted that Family First preferences appeared to favour Labor in the electorate of Elizabeth – the Poll Bludger would be intrigued to know if their preference recommendation differed here.

UPDATE: Quentin Black, who fell 530 votes short of winning the seat of Hartley for Labor at the state election (which would have given Labor a parliamentary majority), writes in to note that Family First received 918 votes in the seat which split 80/20 in the Liberals’ favour. For what it’s worth, a 50-50 split would have made it line-ball. But as reader Peter Fuller points out, the party has spread its resources thinly in terms of the lower house for the coming election by fielding 106 candidates, whereas it "cherry-picked" seats at the state election – including Hartley, which is home to the Paradise Assemblies of God Church. He also notes a fairly obvious point I had missed in relation to Elizabeth, that it was a "straightforward case of donkey voting".

Tomorrow’s Newspoll has Labor maintaining most of its surprise lead from last week, now leading 52-48. Roy Morgan’s face-to-face poll released today had the parties evenly split on two-party preferred. Morgan has suffered enough from the Poll Bludger in one week so he will make no comment on their headline "Hung Parliament Looks Likely". The poll is a big improvement for the Coalition on last week’s comparable face-to-face poll, where they trailed 53-47, but in the ballpark of Friday’s phone poll where they led 51.5-48.5.

Better news for Labor today with The West Australian’s Westpoll running 200-sample surveys of Stirling (Labor 40 per cent; Liberal 37 per cent), Hasluck (Liberal 40 per cent; Labor 37 per cent; Greens 10 per cent) and Kalgoorlie (Liberal 42 per cent; Labor 32 per cent; independent Graeme Campbell 10 per cent). No further breakdown was given; the undecided are presumably not distributed. On these figures Labor would hold on to Stirling and Hasluck, currently assessed by the Poll Bludger and many others as seats they will lose, while they could be philosophical about the tall order confronting them after the death of candidate Kevin Richards in Kalgoorlie, held by Liberal Barry Haase with a margin of 4.3 per cent.