Category: Victorian Politics

GhostWhoVotes reports a Galaxy poll has it at 50-50 in Victoria, the best result for the Coalition of the campaign. More to follow.

UPDATE: The Herald-Sun has a report which tells us the primary votes are 36 per cent for Labor (the same as in the 500 sample poll Galaxy reportedly conducted for the Victorian Association of Forest Industries), the Coalition on 44 per cent (two points higher) and the Greens on 14 per cent (two points lower). Other findings are that John Brumby leads Ted Baillieu as preferred premier 52-35; Brumby is more trusted to keep his promises 42-34; and Brumby is rated to have conducted the better campaign 46-31. I’m not quite sure what to make of this, but only 18 per cent say if Labor is re-elected it will be because they deserve to be against 54 per cent who say it will be because they deserve to lose, whereas the figures are more positive for the Coalition: 30 per cent say if they win it will be because they deserved it, against 54 per cent who say it would be because Labor deserved to lose. Possibly it’s a reflection of the fact that more of the respondents who landed on Coalition’s side of the two-party divide got there via primary votes rather than preferences.

UPDATE 2: All polls from the campaign period:

	Sample/Dates (Nov)	ALP 2PP	ALP	LNP	GRN
Galaxy	(800/23-24)	50	36	44	14
JWS Research	(9218/20-22)	50.1	35	39	19
Galaxy	(500/17-18)	51	36	42	16
Morgan	(943/16-18)	52.5	39	41.5	15.5
Nielsen	(1000/10-11)	52	38	40	16
Newspoll	(1000/9-11)	51	37	44	14
2006 ELECTION		54.4	43.1	39.6	10.0

UPDATE 3: Other happenings:

• The Herald-Sun, The Age and The Australian have all backed Labor in their election eve editorials. Have to wait and see for the paywalled Financial Review, but taking the Sunday papers into account, it’s otherwise been an editorial clean sweep for Labor.

• John Ferguson of the Herald-Sun rates Mt Waverley, Gembrook, Forest Hill, Mitcham, Frankston, Prahran and Bentleigh “in real danger of falling”, Melbourne “could fall to the Greens” and “speculation abounds of Bendigo West falling”, but Seymour is “tipped to stay with Labor”. However, “Labor may not hold on to Footscray – a result that would surprise many”.

• Paul Austin of The Age notes the parallels between the current election and 1999: a Premier perceived as arrogant, a 2 to 3 per cent swing at the previous election, an opposition needing 13 seats to win, a feeling that this is a few more than even optimistic projections could deliver, and the latent possibily that a rural backlash could nonetheless make it happen.

• The Herald-Sun has asked various pundits for opinions on who will and should win. Derryn Hinch reckons it too close to call, but Neil Mitchell, Steve Price, Peter van Onselen, Barrie Cassidy, Ross Fitzgerald, Jill Singer and Nick Economou are all willing to punt for Labor. Hinch and Price think the Liberals should win, van Onselen, Fitzgerald, Singer and Economou think Labor, and Mitchell and Cassidy won’t say.

• Tim Colebatch of The Age reviews the situation in the upper house, rating the Greens “almost certain” to hold the balance of power with a representation of five seats.

• The Greens’ number two candidate for the upper house region of Eastern Victoria, Cheryl Wragg, has been disendorsed by her party after repeated public criticisms of the party’s policy to close the Hazelwood power station within four years. Wragg will still be listed in the Greens group on the ballot paper, but will henceforth be running as an independent.

• The Greens have ceased distributing a flyer it was circulating in the electorate of Melbourne which claimed Labor “accepts donations from developers, alcohol gambling and tobacco” after a complaint to the Victorian Electoral Commission. Melbourne candidate Brian Walters has accepted the claim in relation to tobacco was wrong, blaming the error on the volunteer researcher.

• Royce Millar of The Age reports that in response to his beat-up on Tuesday about party databases, Ted Baillieu has said he would make available information kept on constituents “to the maximum extent reasonable” and provide reasons for any refusal, while John Brumby declined to give such an undertaking.

• The Herald-Sun reports Nationals leader Peter Ryan is seeking to emulate Anna Bligh and Tony Abbott with “a 30-hour, 30-town blitz to finish off the campaign”.

• Those who fancy the Coalition’s chances can get $4.65 from Flemington Sportsbet, $4.50 from Centrebet and Sportingbet and $4.25 from Sportsbet.

Roy Morgan hasn’t let itself be put off by the flak it copped with last week’s small-sample poll results from the four inner-city Labor-versus-Greens contests, repeating the exercise with only a slightly larger sample of 327 respondents. Taken together they show Labor leading the Greens 53-47, which is seven points better for Labor than last week’s poll. All told this points to a 3 per cent swing to the Greens compared with 2006, which if uniform would just tip Labor out in Melbourne, but leave them safe in Richmond, Brunswick and Northcote. This is indeed borne out by the seat-by-seat breakdowns, which have it at 50-50 in Melbourne, 57-43 in Richmond, 52-48 in Brunswick and 52.5-47.5 in Northcote. The margin of error on the combined result is approaching 5.5 per cent.

UPDATE: Now Morgan offers a spiffy video display of “worm”-style Reactor responses to various election ads. It finds Coalition voters were far more positive about their own side’s advertising than were Labor’s, but that Labor appeared to offer both the most (attacking Liberal spending plans) and least (the famous Baillieu Knight Frank ad) effective attack ads. Labor also did pretty well among independents and Greens with a humanised John Brumby’s fireside chat on the economy. Labor’s “meerkat” and the Liberals’ “are we there yet” attack ads failed to impress Greens and independents in roughly equal measure, but the Liberals did better with their “mouldy fruit” ad. The Greens ad, once it began laying on the hard sell, found Labor voters responding barely less positively than to ads from their own side, while Coalition and independent voters headed south.

The Herald-Sun reports an automated phone poll by JWS Research, such as the one it conducted a week before the federal election, shows the Liberals “on track to win Mount Waverley, Forest Hill, Mitcham, South Barwon, Mordialloc and Burwood” and the Greens “likely to gain Brunswick”. The Labor-versus-Greens contests of Melbourne and Richmond and the Labor-versus Liberal contest of Prahran too close to call. On the worst of these scenarios for Labor they would hold a bare majority of 45 seats out of 88; on the best, that would go up to 48. I will review how well the JWS Research federal poll performed when I get time.

UPDATE: Full results from JWS Research:

		ALP 2PP
	Sample	2006	POLL
Brunswick (vs GRN)	300	54.6	47
Richmond (vs GRN)	285	53.6	51
Melbourne (vs GRN)	222	52	49
Ballarat East	345	56.7	54
Ballarat West	339	56.6	59
Bentleigh	351	56.4	57
Bendigo East	420	55.4	54
Ripon	288	54.4	53
Burwood	373	53.8	43
Prahran	269	53.6	50
Mordialloc	325	53.6	42
Frankston	324	53.3	54
South Barwon	384	52.3	44
Mitcham	376	52	48
Forest Hill	357	50.8	47
Gembrook	349	50.7	52
Mt Waverley	372	50.4	44
Ferntree Gully	283	49.9	36
Kilsyth	318	49.6	47
Hastings	296	49.0	42
Narracan	350	47.3	40
Bayswater	324	47.1	44
Box Hill	380	44.7	40
Gippsland East (IND vs NAT)	580	58.5 (IND)	43 (IND)

UPDATE 2: From Roy Morgan: “Labor surge in Inner City Melbourne Means ALP Set to Retain Four Inner City Seats. Full results available tomorrow from a special telephone Morgan Poll of the key inner Melbourne Seats of Brunswick, Melbourne, Northcote & Richmond.”

UPDATE 3: John Scales of JWS Research writes:

To confirm/explain a couple of questions for your readers:

• Yes, we do weight by age and gender according to ABS stats, they are the first questions asked after the introduction and eligibility question.

• We only accept data for respondents who have completed the entire survey, drop outs are not included.

• We did include mobiles where that was the only number available at the address.

• We also surveyed DNCR registered numbers and when I have time I would like to publish an analysis of the results and profiles for landlines v mobiles and DNCR v not.

• We surveyed in all 88 seats State-wide and final sample in each seat was targeted weighted to the same proportion, so boost sample seats contribute the same proportionately as non boost seats to the overall State-wide results.

• It’s ironic that people still complain about low sample sizes where I have surveyed 300+ in 24 seats on top of a State-wide representative poll – this is exponentially more useful and reliable than relying on low sample, grouped seat swings in other published polls. We funded this poll ourselves and yes, it gives us publicity but the information is out there for the public interest too so I believe that’s a fair trade. If people would like to make financial contribution, I would be happy to survey larger samples on a seat by seat basis. I also believe there are other Labor seats in play further up the pendulum, such as Seymour, Carrum, Bendigo West, Bellarine, Macedon and Geelong, but without financial support, there are limits to what I can do.

• Let’s also be very clear that this poll, just like my poll the weekend before the Federal election, is not a prediction. It is a poll of voting intention at the time – people are asked how they would vote if the election were held ‘today’ – and I will no more claim “I was right” if Saturday’s results are the same as this poll than I will accept out of hand criticism of this poll or the Federal poll if it is different to Saturday’s result. In the Federal election, the numbers changed in the last week and I would expect the same to happen here.

Hold the front page! In a heavy-hitting exclusive headlined “Revealed: How the ALP keeps secret files on voters”, the intrepid sleuths at The Age have blown the lid off the political scandal of the decade. Labor, it turns out, has “secretly recorded the personal details of tens of thousands of Victorians – including sensitive health and financial information – in a database being accessed by campaign workers ahead of this Saturday’s state election”. Contained within this database are “profiles of constituents based on its communications with MPs, attendance at rallies, membership of groups, letters to newspapers and through polling and surveys”. Perhaps a moment of quiet reflection might be in order at this point, so that we can fully contemplate the debt of gratitude we owe The Age for its heroic vigilance on our behalf.

Small problem though. As the article eventually gets round to acknowledging, observers of electoral politics have known all about Labor’s Electrac database and its Coalition equivalent, Feedback, for years. All the way back in 2003, Peter van Onselen and Wayne Errington published an academic paper which The Age’s breathless efforts have failed to displace as the definitive work on the subject. Shorter accounts by van Onselen and/or Errington were published in Online Opinion and Democratic Audit in 2004. More recently, in a column in The Australian, van Onselen reviewed the practice in light of the parties’ dissemination of postal vote applications to aid their information-gathering.

The Age’s front page report tells us that its investigations have “revealed how Labor is building profiles of constituents based on its communications with MPs, attendance at rallies, membership of groups, letters to newspapers and through polling and surveys … The system allows searches based variously on people’s names, addresses and their stances on issues such as gay rights and the environment.” Personally, when I encounter the word “revealed”, I await to be told something I didn’t already know. But the only substantial difference between the previous quote and the following from van Onselen and Errington is that it focuses on Labor’s database rather than the Coalition’s:

Constituents are tagged based on information gathered through contact with the electorate office, local newspaper coverage (letters to the editor provide good information about issues of interest to particular voters), doorknocking and telephone canvassing. Feedback provides specific tags for voting information (to identify swinging voters, strong or weak party identification), issues of concern, any history of party donation, ethnic identity, and alternative contact details.

None of this is to deny that the specific material The Age has accessed from Labor’s database is highly newsworthy in its right. However, the paper is blowing its own trumpet far too loud when it asserts that “little has been known until now about how the software is used”. Similarly, The Age is quite right to argue, as van Onselen, Errington and many others have done in the past, that the major parties’ collusion in quarantining their activities from privacy legislation is of very serious concern. But these concerns existed last week, last month and last year. What ultimately stands out from The Age’s exposé is its appearance four days out from a state election, in terms that would give the casual reader cause to specifically impute the practice to one party rather than the other.

The first editorials are in: the Sunday Herald-Sun backs Labor, while the Sunday Age wimps out. Other than that, we have a fair bit of micro-polling going on:

• Stephen McMahon of the Herald-Sun reports a 500-sample Galaxy poll commissioned by the Victorian Association of Forest Industries shows Labor with a two-party lead of 51-49, from primary votes of 36 per cent for Labor, 42 per cent for the Coalition and 16 per cent for the Greens. The margin of error is approaching 4.5 per cent.

• The Sunday Herald-Sun has conducted a dubious “survey of 200 people across the electorates of Mitcham, Mt Waverley, Melbourne and Bendigo”. We aren’t given any details on the methodology, but the fact that 20.5 per cent were rated “yet to make up their minds” makes clear the poll was uninformed by expertise of any kind. Of the rest, 45 per cent backed the Coalition (compared with 43.5 per cent across the four seats in 2006), 34 per cent Labor (36.5 per cent) and 22.5 per cent Greens (13.5 per cent). Even if the poll were conducted properly, the margin of error would be approaching 8 per cent.

• John Ferguson of the Herald-Sun quotes a senior Labor source identfying the significance of the “f— you vote”, voicing fears that wavering late deciders might collectively “decide the Government’s had enough time”. Ferguson’s report also tells us that “Labor does not expect the two Ballarat seats to be in play but senior Liberals have indicated that seats such as Yan Yean might swing sharply”. Bendigo East is rated “in real danger of falling”, with “questions also over Bendigo West”. It is also suggested the Nationals might be a show to unseat independent Craig Ingram in Gippsland East, but they might again lose Mildura to an independent after having recovered it from one in 2006.

• James Campbell of the Sunday Herald-Sun reports on findings from focus group research conducted by John Scales, formerly of Morgan and Crosby Textor. This suggests Labor has done well out of its television advertising, particularly the “blank slate” attacks on Ted Baillieu and ads designed to “humanise” John Brumby. The “boot camp” policy is said to have gone down well, but Myki, the desalination plant and Labor’s performance federally all loom as negatives. John Brumby was found to be more popular among swinging voters than his party. Michael Bachelard of The Age reports both parties are believed to have spent an “average” amount on television advertising of “perhaps $3 million to $4 million each”. Labor has favoured humourous negative ads over the traditional “formula of grainy black, white and red colouring and a gravelly voice-over”, as it feared being seen as “bullying”.

• The Age reports the Coalition has threatened to sue the ALP for defamation unless it drops a television accusing Ted Baillieu of benefiting financially from the sale of schools under the Kennett government. The latest version of the ads, which recycle an attack waged during the 2006 campaign, further link Baillieu’s real estate firm to the sale of the Preston and Northcote Community Hospital, despite the fact that he was no longer a director by that point. The Age notes Baillieu “remained indirectly linked to Knight Frank through a shareholder and alternate director of holding company DBF Holdings, which in turn was a shareholder of Knight Frank”.

Morgan has produced another poll on the Victorian state election, and this one’s a lot more credible than the last – a statewide phone survey conducted from a sample of 943 over the past three nights, with a margin of error of a bit over 3 per cent. Despite nervous talk emanating from the Labor camp, the poll gives them a comfortable two-party lead of 52.5-47.5, from primary votes of 39 per cent for Labor, 41.5 per cent for the Coalition and 15.5 per cent for the Greens. I gather the poll consists of the inner-city results from Tuesday topped up with a further 667 responses from elsewhere, with the former presumably weighted downwards to reflect the fact that they only account for 4.5 per cent of statewide enrolment. However, I’m not entirely sure what to make of Gary Morgan’s accompanying spiel in which he says the headline two-party figure is “slightly ‘misleading’ as it includes a very high ALP Two-party preferred vote (72.5%) cf. L-NP (27.5%) in the marginal Inner Melbourne seats of Richmond, Northcote, Brunswick and Melbourne”. It isn’t clear to me why the predictable weakness of the Liberals in this area would contribute to a “misleading” total any more than would Labor’s corresponding weakness in rural areas and wealthier parts of the city. The poll also has John Brumby leading Ted Baillieu as preferred premier 47.5 per cent to 35.5 per cent, although Baillieu has better personal ratings: Brumby is on 38 per cent approval and 43 per cent disapproval, while Baillieu’s approval and disapproval are both 40 per cent.

Four fun facts:

• Roy Morgan has exposed itself to ridicule by not only publishing a phone poll of the four Labor-versus-Greens seats from a sample of just 276, but also purporting that meaningful conclusions can be drawn from the seat-by-seat breakdowns (“Greens set to win Inner Melbourne seats of Richmond & Northcote; Vote in Brunswick & Melbourne ‘too close to call’”). The best that can be done with the poll is to combine the results and compare them with the 2006 election, which shows the Greens up 17 points on the primary vote, Labor down 16 points and the Liberals up three, with a two-party swing to the Greens of 8 per cent – and even then a margin of error approaching 6 per cent must be taken into account. For what very little it’s worth, a uniform 8 per cent swing would deliver the Greens Melbourne, Richmond and Brunswick, but not quite Northcote. We aren’t told how preferences were allocated, but clearly it wasn’t on the basis of the last election – the Greens’ preference share has gone from 74 per cent to 41 per cent.

• SportingBet has the Liberals short-priced favourites to take Mount Waverley, Gembrook and Forest Hill, narrower favourites in Mitcham, South Barwon and Mordialloc, and even stevens in Frankston and Prahran. A little surprisingly, Labor are short-priced favourites to retain all seats reckoned to be under threat from the Greens. Taken together, this points to Labor winning a reasonably comfortable victory with between 49 and 51 seats out of 88.

• Antony Green’s upper house calculators are now open for business. Antony’s own experiments with various plausible scenarios have raised at least the possibility of boilovers in Eastern Victoria, where Family First, the Democratic Labor Party or (most likely) the Country Alliance might be a show, and Northern Metropolitan, where independent carers’ advocates have drawn first spot on the ballot paper and done well out of preferences.

• The Victorian Electoral Commission has upheld a complaint against Democratic Labor Party material purporting to provide instructions on how to vote “Labor for Northern Victoria”, but in doing so has ruled that the Australian Labor Party too is forbidden from identifying themselves simply as “Labor” on how-to-vote material.

The Poll Bludger’s Victorian election guide is now open for business, sort of – profiles are available for all Labor-held seats, but only the two most marginal Coalition seats have been completed at this stage. The others will be mopped up over the coming days. Also:

• The Geelong Advertiser has surveyed 245 voters in South Barwon, but we aren’t told how the poll was conducted. Labor’s Michael Crutchfield, who holds the seat on a margin of 2.3 per cent, was found to be trailing Liberal candidate Andrew Katos 32 per cent to 48 per cent, with the Greens on 10 per cent.

• Newspoll and Nielsen have both published further results from the polls which appeared in The Australian and The Age on Saturday. Newspoll finds health rated a very important issue by 86 per cent of respondents, compared with 67 per cent during the 1992 campaign and 79 per cent in 2006, with education roughly steady on 73 per cent, law and order up from 57 per cent in 2002 to 68 per cent and public transport up from 54 per cent to 64 per cent. For some reason, water planning is down from 87 per cent in 2006 to 65 per cent, and environment from 68 per cent to 49 per cent. Labor has a 10 point lead as best party to handle education, but the Coalition leads by 10 points on public transport, eight points on law and order and six points on the economy – although the latter hasn’t translated to the leaders, with 50 per cent rating John Brumby better to handle the economy against 39 per cent for Ted Baillieu. The two leaders were fairly evenly matched on a range of personal attributes, but Baillieu performed better as trustworthy (nine points ahead) and arrogant (eight points behind), while Brumby had a 19 point lead as experienced. Full results can be viewed courtesy of GhostWhoVotes. Nielsen inquired about the growth rate of Melbourne, which 50 per cent deemed “too fast” and 43 per cent “about right”, with effectively zero opting for “too slow”. There was a striking uniformity in these responses among Labor, Coalition and Greens supporters. Respondents were fairly evenly divided as to whether Labor (27 per cent) or the Coalition (29 per cent) were better to handle growth, with 14 per cent opting for the Greens.

• The Peter Mickelburough of the Herald-Sun reports Labor polling shows voters resisting the Liberals “because they view Mr Baillieu as lacking leadership, having a weak and negative personality, being out of touch with real people and being ‘part of the boys’ club’”. I’m not sure what the paper means when it refers to “the latest betting, exclusively for the Herald Sun”, but it apparently shows “the Coalition could pick up six seats or more in Melbourne, while the Greens are hot favourites with bookies to win the inner seats of Melbourne and Brunswick” (this was before the Liberal preference arrangements were announced). That would leave Labor with a small majority of 47 seats out of 88.

• James Massola of The Australian reports the Greens candidate for Melbourne, Brian Walters, claims to have seen polling for Melbourne, Richmond and Brunswick which puts his party’s primary vote in the forties, giving them a good shot of winning each even without Liberal preferences. However, we are not told on whose behalf the poll was conducted.

• Many a column inch has been spent on the Liberals’ bombshell preference announcement, further enhancing the campaign’s status as the most Greens-centric in mainland Australian history. Liberal sources quoted by Patricia Karvelas and Milanda Rout of The Australian describe the decision as “suicidal”, and say they are “convinced it will condemn them to another four years in opposition”. One source quoted in the article said the decision was largely motivated by “rising anger among grassroots members” about the existing practice of favouring the Greens over Labor, and the need for the party to retain said members “to do basic tasks such as man polling booths”. Writing in The Age, Paul Strangio of Monash University emphasised the Nationals’ bearing on the decision, in light of the recently formalised coalition arrangement between the two parties.

• As John Brumby prepares to officially launch Labor’s campaign in Bendigo today, Stuart Rintoul of The Australian writes of a “fierce bidding war” for the city’s electorates of Bendigo East and Bendigo West. Labor and the Liberals have respectively promised $528 million and $630 million for a new hospital, while Labor “has also pledged $91m for four new junior secondary schools (a $19m blowout on 2006 estimates), and has spent big on highway and rail infrastructure”.

• Labor has also targeted Geelong with a $165 million health plan that will fund a new $85 million hospital in Grovedale, which is of particular interest to the electorate of South Barwon. The remainder of the money will fund an expansion of Geelong Hospital.

• Antony Green weighs up the upper house preference tickets, and offers a projected outcome in which Labor and the Democratic Labor Party each lose a seat and Liberal and the Nationals each gain one, with the Greens retaining three seats and the balance of power.

• With the closure of nominations and ballot paper draws having transpired at the end of last week, Antony Green also surveys the field and finds an increase in the number of lower house candidates from 459 in 2006 to 502, driven by the entry of the Democratic Labor Party (36 candidates after having only contested the upper house in 2006), the Country Alliance (29 candidates) and the Sex Party (17 candidates), and a near doubling in the number of independents from 33 to 75.

• In late candidate announcement news, the Liberals have endorsed Cindy McLeish as their candidate for the regional seat of Seymour, which Ben Hardman holds for Labor on a margin of 6.7 per cent. Their original candidate, Mike Laker, withdrew a week into the campaign for “personal reasons”, which few doubt revolve around a talk radio caller’s claim that Laker had told him that the government was planning to house 50 Somali families in the electorate and provide them with free cars. McLeish ran against Laker in the original preselection vote, but lost by 45 votes to 12. She was reportedly backed in the original ballot by local electorate chairman Mike Dalmau and upper house MP Donna Petrovich, and Laker has declared himself “frustrated” by the lack of support the two had been giving to his campaign.