Category: Federal Election Campaign 2016

Better late than never, and with apologies for last night’s technical issues, the latest Newspoll result in The Australian overnight recorded a tie on two-party preferred, a slight improvement for the Coalition after Labor’s 51-49 lead in the four previous polls. However, both major parties are down a point on the primary vote, the Coalition to 40% and Labor to 35%, with the Greens also down one to 10%. The combined 15% others vote prompts The Australian to delve into some of what constitutes it: 3% apiece for the Nick Xenophon Team and Family First, 1% each for Palmer United and One Nation. Malcolm Turnbull’s personal ratings are little changed, down one on approval to 37% and up one on disapproval to 51%, but Bill Shorten loses last fortnight’s gains with a four point drop on approval to 33% and a three-point increase in disapproval to 52%. Turnbull’s lead as preferred prime minister nudges from 45-30. The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1867.

UPDATE: Here’s BludgerTrack updated with the latest Newspoll, which hasn’t made much difference to it:

Three poll results this evening, two national, one local:

• The latest fortnightly campaign Ipsos poll for the Fairfax papers has Labor breaking out to a 51-49 lead, reversing the result from the last poll. On the primary vote, Labor is up two on the primary vote to 36%, the Coalition is down one to 42%, and the Greens are down one to 13%. Labor is credited with a 51-49 lead on respondent-allocated as well as previous election preferences, the former having been 50-50 in the previous poll. Fifty-five per cent of respondents nonetheless expect the Coalition to win, with only 22% opting for Labor. The poll interrupts a recent steadying trend in Malcolm Turnbull’s personal ratings, finding him down three on approval to 45% and up four on disapproval to 42%. However, his lead as preferred prime minister is little changed, shifting from 47-30 to 49-31. Bill Shorten is up one on both approval and disapproval, to 41% and 47%. The live interview phone poll was conducted Tuesday to Thursday from a sample of 1359.

• The weekly campaign ReachTEL poll for the Seven Network is at 50-50 after Labor shot out to a 52-48 lead last week, though primary votes suggest most of the movement is down to rounding. This poll has the Coalition on 41.5% (up 0.4%), Labor on 34.9% (down 1.6%), the Greens on 10.1% (up 0.5%) and the Nick Xenophon Team on 5.0% (up 0.7%). No personal approval ratings at this stage, but Malcolm Turnbull’s lead as preferred prime minister edges up from 54.9-45.1 to 55.6-44.4. The automated phone poll was conducted last night from a sample of 2414.

• There is also a ReachTEL result from Wyatt Roy’s seat of Longman, and this too is at 50-50, suggesting a hefty swing of 7%. Forced preference primary vote results are 42.5% for Roy, 35.9% for Labor candidate Susan Lamb, 7.4% for the Greens and 3.7% for the Nick Xenophon Team. Roy records personal ratings of 36.2% favourable, 27.9% neutral and 28.1% unfavourable. The poll was conducted last night from a sample of 836.

UPDATE: Here’s BludgerTrack updated with both sets of national results, plus the state breakdowns from Ipsos. As has been the case since mid-April, there is nothing to separate the parties on two-party preferred. There’s a fair bit of movement at the state level though, thanks to a noisy set of Ipsos breakdowns that credit the Coalition with very little support in Victoria and Western Australia. This leaves them down one in both states on the seat projection, while gaining two in Queensland and one in New South Wales (they have also lost one in the territories, because I’ve junked my poll tracking there as unreliable and plugged in the national swing instead). Ipsos’s personal ratings for Malcolm Turnbull are his weakest from the pollster to date, and they have accordingly had a sizeable impact on the leadership trend.

There should a lot of entertainment in store for poll watchers in the form of national polling over the coming days, and we’ve had a few appetisers over the night with scattered reports of privately commissioned electorate-level polling conducted by ReachTEL. Due caution must be allowed for the fact that some of the polls were conducted several weeks ago, and all were commissioned by left-of-centre concerns who might feel more inclined to publicise their poll results when they like what they show. With that in mind:

• The freshest of the batch is a poll crediting Labor with a 51-49 lead in the northern Tasmanian seat of Bass. This suggests a 5% swing against Liberal member Andrew Nikolic, who gained it with a 10.8% swing in 2013. The poll was conducted on Tuesday for GetUp! from a sample of 824.

• The Advertiser reports troubling numbers for the Liberals from South Australia in further polling conducted for GetUp! Christopher Pyne is credited with 41% of the primary vote in his seat of Sturt, compared with 21% for Nick Xenophon Team candidate Matthew Wright and 20% for Labor’s Matt Loader and 8% for the Greens. In Mayo, Liberal member Jamie Briggs is at 40%, against 23.5% for Rebekha Sharkie of the Nick Xenophon Team, 18% for Labor and 10% for the Greens. Either seat would be under threat from NXT on those numbers, provided their candidates were able to get ahead of Labor. The scale of the threat would also depend on whether the remainders include an undecided component, as is usually the case in ReachTEL’s electorate polling. If so, distributing the undecided would push the Liberal primary vote up high enough that they would most likely make it over the line, although only just. The Sturt poll was conducted on May 22 from a sample of 762, and the Mayo poll was on May 16 from a sample of 681.

• The West Australian reports a poll of the Perth seat of Cowan credited Labor’s Anne Aly with a 51-49 lead over Liberal member Luke Simkins, whose 7.5% margin has been pared back to 4.0% in the redistribution. The implied swing of 5% is actually at the low end of the Labor’s recent form in polling from Western Australia. However, this poll is showing its age a little, having been conducted on May 10 for the United Voice union from a sample of 731. The West’s report also relates that the Liberals’ internal pollsters, Crosby-Textor, have recorded a 6% swing to Labor in the new seat of Burt, which has a notional Liberal margin of 4.9%.

Essential Research and Roy Morgan have both reported over the past few days, in accordance with their usual weekly and fortnightly schedules, giving BludgerTrack a completed weekly cycle’s worth of polling results to play with. The results indicate no real change on last week, with the recent ReachTEL, Essential and Morgan results exciting the aggregate neither collectively or individually. ReachTEL and Essential in particular recorded less week-on-week movement than their headline figures might suggest. The seat projection has ticked a point in favour of Labor, the gain coming off Tasmania in response to a fairly radical result in the Morgan breakdown this week. The only new data on leadership ratings since last week is from Essential Research, and it’s strengthened the impression that Malcolm Turnbull’s polling plunge has levelled off at a net value of zero, while slightly blunting Bill Shorten’s recent trend upswing.

Polls:

• Today’s Essential Research records an unusual two-point shift to the Coalition on the fortnightly rolling aggregate, reversing its 51-49 deficit from recent polling. On the primary vote, the Coalition is steady on 41%, Labor is down two to 35%, the Greens are steady on 9%, and the Nick Xenophon Team is up one to 4%. A monthly reading of leadership ratings finds Malcolm Turnbull up one on approval to 41% and down three on disapproval to 39%, Bill Shorten respectively steady on 34% and up one to 44%, and Turnbull leading 40-27 as preferred prime minister, down from 43-28. The poll finds a reasonable level of awareness about politics and the election, at least from their own sample, in that 77% corrected identified it as being held in July, 50% knew it would be for all seats in both houses, and 64% were able to identify Scott Morrison as Treasurer. This week’s component of the online survey involved 1007 respondents, polled from Thursday to Sunday.

• The latest fortnightly result from Roy Morgan has the Coalition up a point to 37.5%, Labor down half to 32.5%, the Greens down 2.5% to 13% and the Nick Xenophon Team steady at 5%, and otherwise remains remarkable for the size of the non-major party vote. The headline respondent-allocated two-party measure has Labor leading 51-49, down from 52.5 last time, but the shift on previous election preferences is more modest, from 52-48 to 51.5-48.5. The poll release also informs us that the Nick Xenophon Team was recorded at 26.5% in South Australia, ahead of Labor on 25%, with the Liberals on 31%. The poll was conducted over the past two weekends from a sample of 3099.

• Roy Morgan has a poll, sort of, from the Victorian seat of Indi, which Sophie Mirabella seeks to recover for the Liberals following her defeat by independent Cathy McGowan in 2013. However, the result is compiled from the entirety of its face-to-face surveying in the electorate since the 2013 election, and the voting intention result relates only to the generic question on party-based voting intention, so its finding that the Coalition has a 51-49 lead over “independent” is unlikely to mean very much. In recognition of this, the Morgan release mostly focuses on most important issue results.

Preselections:

• Labor has preselected Malarndirri McCarthy, member for Arnhem in the Northern Territory department from 2005 until her unexpected defeat in 2012, to replace Nova Peris as its Northern Territory Senate candidate. McCarthy prevailed from a field of five indigenous women, including Ursula Raymond, former chief-of-staff to Peris; Denise Bowden, chief executive of the Yothu Yindi Foundation; and Cathryn Tilmouth, a former ministerial adviser. Amos Aikman of The Australian reports McCarthy and Raymond respectively had backing from the Left and the Right. McCarthy has lived in Sydney since 2012, where she has worked for NITV and SBS, and her membership of the party had lapsed.

• The New South Wales Liberal Party has finally resolved the order of its Senate ticket, putting hard Right incumbent Connie Fierravanti-Wells at number four and centre Right newcomer Hollie Hughes to the unlikely prospect of number six, number five being reserved for the Nationals. The top three positions have gone to Marise Payne, Fiona Nash of the Nationals, and Arthur Sinodinos. Retired major-general Jim Molan, who was heavily involved in the government’s efforts against unauthorised boat arrivals, could only manage seventh place. The decision was made at a meeting of the state executive held after objections were raised about an earlier process of “faxed ballot” sent through by email.

Prognostications:

• Troy Bramston of The Australian reports Labor sources saying the party has “all but given up hope” of David Feeney retaining Batman from Alex Bhathal of the Greens, and that Anthony Albanese is under serious pressure in Grayndler. Labor is “almost certain” Tanya Plibsersek will be returned in Sydney, and “quietly confident” about Peter Khalil retaining the inner northern Melbourne seat of Wills, which would be threatened if the Liberals directed preferences against Labor. However, it is noted that polling young inner-city voters is difficult, invoking Labor internal polling before the New South Wales state election which wrongly pointed to Labor wins over the Greens in Newtown and Balmain.

• James Massola of Fairfax reports the seats of greatest concern to Coalition strategists are Barton, Dobell, Lindsay, Robertson, Eden-Monaro and Macarthur in New South Wales, Dunkley and La Trobe in Victoria, Petrie and Capricornia in Queensland, Lyons in Tasmania, and Solomon in the Northern Territory. However, they remain hopeful of picking up the Melbourne seats of Bruce and Chisholm, both of which are set to be vacated by sitting Labor members. Labor strategists are said to be keen to add to their list of potential gains Hasluck and Burt in Western Australia, Hindmarsh in South Australia, Banks, Paterson and Page in New South Wales, Braddon in Tasmania, and Bonner in Queensland. Cowan in Western Australia is curiously absent from either list, and it’s unclear if the Liberals weren’t counting Paterson on the basis that it’s a notionally Labor seat after the redistribution, as indeed are Barton and Dobell.

Miscellany:

• The latest campaign car crash victim is Chris Jermyn, the Liberal candidate for the highly marginal Labor-held seat of McEwen on Melbourne’s northern outskirts. Jermyn and some supporters gatecrashed Bill Shorten’s visit to a health centre in Sunbury, but Jermyn evidently hadn’t reckoned on being asked basic questions about health policy by a News Corp journalist at the event, which he proved unable to answer. Jermyn refused to answer questions posed to him as he left the event, saying: “This is why I hate journalists.” The seat is held for Labor by Rob Mitchell on a margin of 0.2%.

• Former Australian Idol host James Mathison is running against Tony Abbott in Warringah. Mathison’s pitch seems to be that Abbott’s deep conservatism leaves younger social liberals in the electorate with no one to vote for.

UPDATE (Roy Morgan): The latest fortnightly result from Roy Morgan has the Coalition up a point to 37.5%, Labor down half to 32.5%, the Greens down 2.5% to 13% and the Nick Xenophon Team steady at 5%, and otherwise remains remarkable for the size of the non-major party vote. The headline respondent-allocated two-party measure has Labor leading 51-49, down from 52.5 last time, but the shift on previous election preferences is more modest, from 52-48 to 51.5-48.5. The poll release also informs us that the Nick Xenophon Team was recorded at 26.5% in South Australia, ahead of Labor on 25%, with the Liberals on 31%. The poll was conducted over the past two weekends from a sample of 3099.

The Australian today brings us state breakdowns aggregated from the last four Newspoll surveys going back to the start of April, pointing to two-party swings of around 3% in New South Wales and Victoria, 6% in Queensland and 7% in Western Australia, but no swing at all in South Australia – albeit that the picture there is almost certainly confused by a Nick Xenophon Team-fuelled 34% for “others”. I have taken the opportunity to put together one of my occasional detailed state breakdowns inclusive of the Newspoll numbers, together with the various other published and unpublished state-level polling available to me. The key point of interest so far as the primary vote is concerned is the others vote in South Australia, which is a little more modest than Newspoll at 22.8%, but has risen quite dramatically since the start of the year. For charts to go with the following tables, see here.

Good news and bad news for both sides this evening courtesy of the latest ReachTEL polls for the Seven Network, which have Labor opening up a 52-48 lead on two-party preferred nationally, but trailing 54-46 in the fairly crucial Liberal-held Victorian marginal of Corangamite. The national poll has the Coalition down 1.5% to 41.1%, Labor down 0.1% to 36.5%, the Greens down 0.3% to 9.6% and the Nick Xenophon Team back up to 4.3% after an anomalous drop from 4.2% to 2.7% last time. This gives Labor a two-party lead of 52-48 after three successive results of 50-50. It should be noted that this was achieved from a heavy flow of respondent-allocated preferences to Labor: using preference flows from 2013, and folding the Nick Xenophon Team into a generic “others” category, the result would be around 50.6-49.4. Malcolm Turnbull’s personal ratings are stable: combined very good and good is up 0.8% to 29.4%, combined poor plus very poor is up 1.7% to 36.8%. Bill Shorten’s improving trend continues, with very good plus good up 1.2% to 29.1% and poor plus very poor down 1.5% to 36.9%. Preferred prime minister continues a slow narrowing trend, now at 54.9-45.1 in favour of Turnbull compared with 55.6-44.4 last time. The automated phone poll was conducted last night from a sample of 2700.

The Corangamite poll is quite a different matter, with Liberal member Sarah Henderson credited with 54-46 lead on two-party preferred, and 48.3% of the primary vote when a forced preference question for the 7.7% undecided is included with the result. Both numbers are exactly identical to the result in 2013, when she unseated Labor’s Darren Cheeseman with a 4.2% swing. The primary votes also record Labor losing ground to the Greens, with Labor on 27.1% and the Greens on 15.0%, compared with 32.0% and 11.9% at the election. This poll was also conducted last night, from a sample of 770.

I’ve finally gotten around to updating BludgerTrack with the leadership ratings from Monday’s Newspoll, so the finalised weekly reading of that can be found at the bottom of the post. As well as that, a small number of campaign news snippets to relate:

• The Coalition parties in New South Wales are still yet to resolve the order of their Senate ticket, which is proving problematic with respect to the balance between the Liberals and the Nationals, and competing Liberal factions. Liberal incumbents needing to be accommodated are Connie Fierravanti-Wells, Marise Payne and Arthur Sinodinos, and they are joined by Nationals Senators Fiona Nash and John Williams of the Nationals, for whom inter-party arrangements appear to have secured the second and fifth spot respectively. However, the Centre Right faction of the Liberal Party is also very keen to find a place for newcomer Hollie Hughes, who won top position for the half-Senate ticket at a preselection vote in March, before agreeing to a swap with second-placed Fierravanti-Wells, a member of the hard Right. With a full ticket now required for a double dissolution, Hughes and Fierravanti-Wells are battling for fourth place, with the loser set to be relegated to sixth, with first and third set to go to Payne and Sinodinos. Joe Aston of the Financial Review today reports that Hughes is likely to miss out, with both Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison pushing for Fierravanti-Wells, despite Morrison’s factional alignment with Hughes. However, Sarah Martin of The Australian reported earlier this week that the situation was up in the air because moderates were split between competing desires to honour their alliance with the Centre Right by favouring Hughes, or support the leadership by favouring Fierravanti-Wells. The matter is being determined through a ballot of the party’s state executive conducted by email, the result of which is expected at any tick of the clock.

• The Northern Territory News reports that two candidates have formally declared for the preselection to replace Nova Peris as Labor’s Senate candidate in the Northern Territory: Malarndirri McCarthy, a former ABC journalist and member of the Northern Territory parliament from 2005 to 2012, and Kon Vatksalis, president of the Northern Territory Leukaemia Foundation and a member of the territory parliament from 2001 to 2014. Also considering there options are Marion Scrymgour, a former Deputy Chief Minister and member from 2001 and 2012, and Ursula Raymond, Peris’s chief-of-staff. Fleur Anderson of the Financial Review noted that Scrymgour was “regarded as an unpredictable candidate” because she had sat as an independent for a period in 2009 following a disagreement over government policy concerning remote communities. Katskalis presumably starts from a disadvantage in that all other candidates are indigenous women. The matter will be determined by the party’s chief executive.

• After lingering rather too long on its starting odds of $1.35 for Labor and $3 for the Greens, Sportsbet is now offering $1.50 on the Greens and $2.50 on Labor in David Feeney’s seat of Batman.

The addition of Newspoll and yesterday’s Essential Research result to BludgerTrack leave nothing between the two parties to the first decimal place. Observers of BludgerTrack’s form will know that actually translates into a small Coalition majority on the seat projection, which has the Coalition up one on the seat projection in New South Wales and down one in Queensland. I haven’t updated it with Newspoll’s leadership ratings yet, but will get around to doing so tomorrow. I haven’t yet covered the Essential Research result, which was once again unchanged in having Labor leading 51-49 on two-party preferred. On the primary vote, both parties were down a point – the Coalition to 41%, Labor to 37% – while the Greens and Nick Xenophon Team steady on 9% and 3%.

The Australian has also been treating us to a series of supplementary results from the weekend Newspoll over the past few days that echo the further questions posed by Essential Research this week, to wit:

• The latest in Essential’s occasional series on leadership attributes finds Malcolm Turnbull deteriorating between five and seven points over the past three weeks on “out of touch”, “arrogant” and “understands the problems facing Australia”, without suffering much change with respect to capacities such as “intelligent” and “good in a crisis” (although “hard-working” is down five). Bill Shorten’s numbers are little changed, leaving him rated lower than Turnbull on most attributes, with the singular exception of being out of touch with ordinary people, which is the largest point of difference between the two. Similarly, The Australian today has Turnbull ahead on a series of measures, but with Shorten leading on “cares for people” and “in touch with voters”, while Turnbull has lost all but two points of a ten-point lead on “understands the major issues” from February.

• There has been a whole bunch of “best party to handle” results in the past few days. Amid an overall predictable set of results, Essential Research finds Labor increasing leads from 4% to 11% on health, 6% to 13% on protecting local jobs and industries, and 4% to 10% on housing affordability, the latter of which has only recently emerged as an area of Labor advantage. The Seven Network last night had further results from Friday’s ReachTEL poll showing the Coalition favoured 55-45 on economic management, Labor favoured 61-39 on health. Newspoll framed the questions in terms of the leaders rather than the parties, and had Malcolm Turnbull favoured 55-29 over Bill Shorten on the economy, 48-25 on asylum seekers and 43-38 on the cost of living, 46-33 on tax reform, 50-27 on interest rates and 42-38 on unemployment, while Shorten led 47-40 on health, 47-41 on education and 41-36 on climate change.

• When it asked if respondents expected Labor to keep or change the government’s asylum seeker policies, Essential Research found 28% opting for keep, 38% for change, and 34% for don’t know.

• As recorded in the chart below, the three betting agencies have been consistent in offering odds on the Coalition to form government that imply a probability of between 70% and 80%, although the one most immediately responsive to the actions of punters, Betfair, seems to have recorded a bit of a dip over the past few days.

• In further horse race news, Phillip Coorey of the Financial Review reports Labor is having trouble landing the swing where it needs it, with Labor margins that were cut fine in western Sydney over the past two elections set to blow out again. Coorey had earlier reported one Liberal strategist saying the election was “genuinely close, but at this stage, the retention of the government is more likely”, while a Labor counterpart concedes they were behind, but concluded: “We haven’t put our cue in the rack.”

Local matters:

• Labor is scrambling for a new Senate candidate in the Northern Territory after Nova Peris today confirmed she would not be seeking re-election, with widespread reports she is to take up the position of senior adviser for indigenous and multicultural affairs with the Australian Football League. Trish Crossin, whom Julia Gillard forced out of the seat to make way for Peris at the 2013 election, told ABC Radio yesterday that Peris had presented Labor with a “selfish distraction”, and called on Gillard to admit she made a mistake. There are as yet no indications as to who Labor might preselect to replace her.

• Both major parties have now lost their first choice candidates for the seat of Fremantle, after Sherry Sufi resigned as Liberal candidate, after local newspaper the Fremantle Herald reported he had been recorded in 2013 doing an unflattering and profanity-laden impersonation of his then boss, state Mount Lawley MP Michael Sutherland. There had been news reports in the preceding days about articles Sufi had written in opposition to same-sex marriage and an apology to the stolen generations, which had actually been in the public domain for some time, and rather technical allegations he had provided an inaccurate account of his employment record on his candidate nomination form. The Liberals have rushed to endorse previously unsuccessful preselection candidate Pierette Kelly, an electorate officer to Senator Chris Back.

• Pauline Hanson’s prospects for a Senate seat is the topic of the hour, having been canvassed by me in Crikey last week, Jamie Walker in The Australian on Saturday and a Courier-Mail front page yesterday. Antony Green told ABC Radio’s World Today program yesterday had “some realistic chance”. Kevin Bonham is a little more skeptical, but doesn’t rule it out.

• Phillip Hudson of The Australian reported on Monday that Labor is seeking to exploit talk of a preference deal between the Liberals and the Greens in Victoria to shore up working class support in two low-income regional seats: Bass in northern Tasmania, and Dawson in northern Queensland.

• Matthew Denholm of The Australian reports that Jacqui Lambie is advocating that her voters give their second preference to the Nick Xenophon Team, and put Labor ahead of the Liberals.