EMRS: Liberal 36, Labor 27, Greens 14 in Tasmania

The second Tasmanian state poll since the March election finds the situation largely unchanged on voting intention, although Jeremy Rockliff increases his lead as preferred premier.

The second quarterly EMRS poll since the Tasmanian state election in March is little changed on the first, which in turn showed no radical change on the election result: the Liberals are up a point to 36%, Labor is down one to 27% and the Greens are down one to 14% and the Jacqui Lambie Network (naturally the survey period preceded their recent implosion) up one to 8%. The results at the election were Liberal 36.7%, Labor 29.0%, Greens 13.9% and Jacqui Lambie Network (which ran in four of the five electorates) 6.7%. However, Jeremy Rockliff has improved his preferred premier lead over Dean Winter, which is out to 45-30 from 40-32 in the latter’s debut result in the May poll. The poll was conducted August 14 to 21 from a sample of 1000.

Polls: Essential Research and Roy Morgan (open thread)

Weaker personal ratings for Anthony Albanese, support for Peter Dutton’s call for a pause on arrivals from Gaza, and another lineball result from Roy Morgan.

The Guardian has a report on the fortnightly Essential Research poll that doesn’t include its voting intention numbers, which we will get with the publication of the full report later today. It does include the pollster’s monthly personal ratings, which have Anthony Albanese at 40% approval (down three) and 50% disapproval (up four) and Peter Dutton unchanged at 42% and 41%. The poll also finds 44% support for Peter Dutton’s call for a pause to the arrival of Palestinians from Gaza with 30% opposed, with younger respondents having a notably more liberal view than older. Only 29% rated that Australia was on the right track, compared with 52% for the wrong track. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1129.

UPDATE: The primary vote intention numbers are Labor 29% (up one), Coalition 33% (down one), Greens 13% (down one) and One Nation 7% (steady), with 6% undecided. Labor now leads 48-46 on the 2PP+ measure, after a 47-47 result last fortnight.

The weekly Roy Morgan poll has the Coalition with a two-party lead of 50.5-49.5, reversing the result from last time. The primary votes are Labor 29.5% (down one), Coalition 39.5% (up one), Greens 13% (down half) and One Nation 4% (steady). The two-party measure that uses preference flows from the 2022 election has it at 50-50, after Labor lead 51-49 last time. The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1701.

I had a paywalled piece in Crikey yesterday on the Northern Territory election, and what it likely portends for looming Queensland (quite a bit) and federal (rather less) elections.

Northern Territory election live

Live coverage of the count for the Northern Territory election.

Click here for full display of Northern Territory election results.

Tuesday evening

My read of Fannie Bay remains that the CLP are likely but not certain to achieve each of the things they need to happen to win: first, that the Greens rather than Labor makes the final count, and second, that they stay ahead of the Greens after preferences. The odds on the latter seem to be shortening: today’s additions broke 501-482 to the CLP, increasing their lead from 36 to 55. The current CLP win probability of 88% shown on my results display leans heavily on what I think might be a generous educated guess of 360 formal votes still to be added to the count. I actually only think there will be about 200 postals and 40 provisionals, which would make a reversal unlikely. Labor are 42 behind the Greens on the primary vote, which they can make up through preferences out of the 177 votes for independent Leonard May or votes yet to be counted. If there are indeed 200 postals and they behave the same way as the ones already counted, Labor will make up 23 votes.

Monday evening

The big news in today’s counting is that a fresh two-candidate count shows the CLP is a much stronger chance of winning Fannie Bay than was realised, from what would appear to be a remarkably weak flow of preferences from Labor to the Greens. The conventional view was that the seat would be won by whichever out of the Greens and Labor came second, with the preferences of the excluded candidate to ensure the other victory over the CLP. That the NTEC has chosen to jettison the original count in favour of one excluding Labor might suggest it has reason to believe it is Labor that will drop out, but that is only conjecture.

If that is indeed what happens, a count that currently has the CLP leading the Greens by 1775 votes to 1739 will become operative. This is running 534 votes behind the primary vote count, suggesting the Ludmilla booths and the postals are yet to be added, that being the total number of formal votes from these two booths. This suggests the Greens have received 714 preferences from Labor and independent Leonard May, while the CLP has received 365.

Even if every one of the 108 votes for May went to the CLP, this would suggest less than three-quarters of Labor’s votes were flowing to the Greens, which compares with around 84% under similar circumstances in Brisbane and Ryan at the 2022 federal election. If the current preference flow sustains over the votes to be added, the CLP lead will increase from 36 to 74. The Greens could make that up on absents and provisionals, but outstanding postals should to run against them.

End of Saturday night

Whereas the CLP’s last win in 2012 was the result of an unanticipated backlash against Labor in the bush, this time was the reverse, with Labor getting savaged in the city and the towns while the bush hardly swung at all. The result is that four out of the five members Labor looks sure of returning are of Indigenous background, the exception being former leader Natasha Fyles in Nightcliff (which the ABC isn’t giving away due to the outside chance of a Greens boilover).

Labor was heavily defeated in the four Darwin and Palmerston seats it held on single-digit margins, which increases to five if you include Blain, where Labor-turned-independent member Mark Turner did well but not well enough. The swing was particularly forceful in northern Darwin, where Labor appears to have lost three of the four seats that delivered them their biggest margins in 2020 — most spectacularly in the case of Wanguri, vacated by former deputy leader Nicole Manison, on a swing to the CLP of 27.4%.

The Greens had their best performance yet at a Northern Territory election, and are a strong chance of gaining their first ever seat in Fannie Bay. Their candidate leads Labor incumbent Brent Potter by 1106 votes to 1038, a gap he needs to close with around 1000 outstanding postals, absents and declarations — which were collectively around 5% stronger for Labor in 2020 than the vote types counted so far — together with preferences from an independent who is currently on 128 votes. The Greens also outpolled Labor in the two Alice Springs seats and are, as noted, an outside chance in Nightcliff, depending on the unknown factor of preferences from a progressive independent who polled 19.0%.

Of the three independents who were elected in 2020, two were re-elected (Yingiya Mark Guyula in Mulka and Robyn Lambley in Araluen), while a third (Kezia Purick in Goyder) retired and failed to convince voters to back her favoured successor. My results system says they will be joined by Justine Davis in the northern Darwin seat of Johnston, though I personally advise caution. Davis leads Labor incumbent and leadership aspirant Joel Bowden by 1080 votes to 918 and will chase down the CLP candidate if she can stay there. That will be matter of preferences from the 297 Greens votes plus around 1000 outstanding votes, mostly absents and postals, on which independents tend not to do well, giving Bowden an outside chance.

There are three seats that my system isn’t calling for the CLP yet, despite leaning heavily in that direction. These are Casuarina and Sanderson, which forcefully participated in the northern Darwin tidal wave — and, conversely, Barkly, which covers Tennant Creek and surrounding remote territory, which the CLP have struggled to retain after winning by five votes in 2020. Assuming they pan out as expected, the CLP will match its last win in 2012 by winning 16 seats out of 25, while Labor will have a bedrock of five seats to which they still have a chance of adding Fannie Bay and Johnston. We can expect to see some outstanding early votes and the first batches of postals added to the count tomorrow.

Live commentary

11.39pm. The NTEC has put out a circular noting that counting has finished for the night.

11.33pm. My system is now calling Johnston for independent Justine Davis, because it no longer rates Labor a possibility of reducing her to third. I would note though that Antony Green pointed out that absent votes are notoriously bad for independents, and I wouldn’t discount the possibility that my system doesn’t have this properly priced in.

11.30pm. I’ve now got the Greens in the lead in Fannie Bay, after fixing an issue that was causing it to split preferences 50-50 and thus give it to the CLP. My projection of the three-party count is now CLP 40.1%, Greens 30.2% and Labor 29.7%, in a scenario where whichever out of Labor and the Greens drops out will deliver the seat to the other on their preferences. Obviously this is close enough that it could very much go either way.

9.54pm. I hadn’t noted the strength of the Greens’ performance in Nightcliff, where they could finish second depending on the unknown of how the independent’s preferences flow. They could theoretically win from there if enough CLP voters ignore the party’s how-to-vote card and put Labor last, but my feeling is that this is unlikely.

9.00pm. I’m now calling five seat for Labor, now including a fairly remarkable win in the more-often-than-not conservative seat of Daly, and they’re at least a chance in four others. One of those would be at the expense of a potential independent, and the other of the Greens. So Labor’s best case scenario of nine would mean a cross bench of two, and its worst case of five would mean a cross bench of four. The range of possibilities for the CLP is a bare majority of 13 to 16.

8.49pm. I’ve now got Labor rather than the Greens making the final count and winning Fannie Bay, but there’s absolutely nothing in this. It’s one of three seats where I’ve got the Greens in the hunt to reach the final count (though the only one where they’re a chance of winning), something they have never done in an NT election before.

Continue reading “Northern Territory election live”

Northern Territory election minus two days

A sedate campaign and a dearth of polling leave outside observers none the wiser about the likely result of Saturday’s Northern Territory election.

Two days to go until what is technically election day in the Northern Territory, though as the comprehensive data published by the Northern Territory Electoral Commission illustrates, the die has already largely been cast: 60,839 votes have already been cast or (in the case of postal votes) issued, which compares with a grand total of 105,833 votes cast at the last election in 2020. Nothing of obvious consequence has happened over the period of the campaign, and to my knowledge there has been neither published polling nor any useful intelligence on where the parties believe they stand.

The Northern Territory News gauged the opinions of two local academics on Tuesday: Rolf Gerritsen predicted the CLP would pick up “five or six seats”, which would respectively get them into minority or majority government, whereas Nathan Franklin tipped Labor to lose only one or two out of their existing 15 seats out of 25. For what it’s worth, my feeling has long been that the situation looks similar to Queensland, where Labor appears headed for defeat after two decades of dominance amid a high pitch of concern about crime.

For much more detail, my guide to the Northern Territory election offers an overview and an in-depth look at all 25 seats. I am hard at work preparing my live results feature for Saturday night and beyond, which will as usual feature projections, probabilities and map displays of the results as they are reported.

US presidential election minus 11 weeks

Polling from the US settles into an equilibrium suggesting an impossibly close race.

After the extraordinarly upheavals of last month, forecasts and polling aggregates suggest the US presidential election campaign has been in a holding pattern for over a fortnight, in which Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump on the national popular vote by an amount that makes it anyone’s guess as to who should be favoured for the Electoral College. Nate Silver’s model has Harris’s poll lead at 47.0% to 44.5% (Robert F. Kennedy, who is reportedly on the cusp of dropping out and endorsing Trump, is now down to 4.2%), converting to a 53.7% chance of a Harris victory compared with 45.9% for Trump (the balance being “no majority”). At state level, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada are essentially rated dead heats, which would make Pennsylvania the decider. The Economist’s forecast is slightly narrower on win probability, at 51% for Harris and 48% for Trump, but is in all respects remarkably similar to Silver’s. Adrian Beaumont has more at The Conversation.

Midweek miscellany: Morgan poll, party turmoil and preselections latest (open thread)

Roy Morgan continues to record a close race, Freshwater Strategy poll finds support for a crackdown on gambling ads, and a Nationals internal poll offers insights on a key race in Western Australia.

The weekly Roy Morgan poll has Labor with a two-party lead of 50.5-49.5, after a 50-50 result last time, from primary votes of Labor 30.5% (up one), Coalition 38.5% (up half), Greens 13.5% (down half) and One Nation 4% (down one). The pollster’s previous election preferences measure of two-party preferred has Labor’s lead unchanged at 51-49. The poll was conducted last Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1698. Also of note on the polling front are further figures from the weekend’s Freshwater Strategy poll showing 50% support for a blanket ban on sports betting advertising, with 29% opposed. It also found 70% support for the actual government policy of a limit of two ads per hour up to 10pm with 16% opposed, the former figure presumably including many who feels it does not go far enough.

Federal preselection news:

• Labor’s national executive has taken over the party’s federal preselection process in Victoria at the behest of Anthony Albanese, invoking the disruption caused by the redistribution and its abolition of the Labor-held seat of Higgins. Among other things, this seems likely to ensure the Socialist Left-backed Basem Abdo succeeds the retiring Maria Vamvakinou in Calwell, which had been the source of some discontent in local branches. There are also reports that the federal branch of the Liberal Party is preparing to take over the affairs of its New South Wales branch after the sacking of state director Richard Shields in the wake of the council elections fiasco.

• Both the Liberals and the Nationals have candidates in place for the new seat of Bullwinkel on Perth’s eastern fringe, with army veteran and former journalist Matt Moran winning a Liberal preselection vote on the weekend ahead of Holly Ludeman, veterinarian and activist against a ban on live sheep exports, and lawyer Jonathan Crabtree. Former state party leader Mia Davies has been confirmed as the Nationals candidate. The West Australian today reports that a poll of 800 respondents in the electorate showing the Nationals polling well clear of the Liberals, although the more remarkable fact of the poll is that it has Labor leading 52-48, suggesting next to no swing from 2022. The primary votes quoted are Labor 22%, Nationals 20%, Liberal 12%, Greens 10% and independents 10%, with 23% undecided.

• Matthew Denholm of The Australian reports five candidates for Liberal preselection in the north-western Tasmanian seat of Braddon, to be vacated at the election with the retirement of Gavin Pearce. The two identified as front-runners are Belle Binder, a “young entrepreneur who has pioneered an innovative farm labour scheme”, and Latrobe deputy mayor Vonette Mead, with speculation the latter will withdraw amid strong backing for Binder from senior party figures. The report notes Senator Anne Urquhart and state MP Anita Dow have been identified as potential Labor candidates, but that the seat will only be reckoned an attractive prospect for Labor if federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek “sides with local industries in imminent decisions over a mine tailings dam at Rosebery and salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour”.

• Thomas Kelsall of InDaily reports Zane Basic, factional conservative former staffer to federal MP Nicolle Flint and current staffer to Queensland MP Bert van Manen, has won Liberal preselection to take on independent Rebekha Sharkie in Mayo. Basic won a party ballot ahead of Adelaide councillor Henry Davis.

• The Greens have endorsed Remah Naji, social worker and organiser of Justice for Palestine, as its candidate for the Brisbane seat of Moreton>. It remains unclear if Labor member Graham Perrett will seek re-election or make way for state secretary Julie-Ann Campbell, which would resolve an issue faced by the state branch in meeting its affirmative action quota.

New South Wales: Resolve Strategic poll, Hornsby and Epping by-elections, Liberal council candidates fiasco

Good news for the Liberals from a New South Wales state poll, amid very bad news for its council elections campaign.

The bi-monthly Resolve Strategic poll of state voting intention in New South Wales, produced from a combined sample of 1000 from its last two national polls, is a remarkably weak set of numbers for Labor, showing them on 30% of the primary vote – down two points on the last poll and seven on the 2023 election. The Coalition is up three on both to 38%, with the Greens 12%, up by one on the last poll and at least two on the election result. The pollster does not provide two-party preferred, but I would very roughly estimate 51-49 to the Coalition based on these primary votes. Chris Minns leads Mark Speakman 38-13, unchanged from last time.

I would normally be skeptical about such a result for a first-term government with no obvious reason to be listing so badly, and suspect that the Sydney Morning Herald might feel the same way, as its report leads with a finding that 56% support the government’s proposal to prevent “no grounds” evictions with 23% opposed. However, the only other state poll this year from a pollster other than Resolve Strategic, a RedBridge Group poll conducted from two waves in February and May, likewise suggested a close result on two-party preferred, though with substantially higher primary votes for the major parties (especially Labor).

Clarity could perhaps be provided by two looming by-elections should Labor choose to contest them, on which I have no information. These are for the seats of Hornsby and Epping, which are respectively being vacated by the erstwhile leader and deputy leader of the Liberal Party, Dominic Perrottet and Matt Kean. The date for both has been set at October 19, the same date as the Australian Capital Territory’s election and a week before Queensland’s. A Liberal preselection for Epping on Saturday was won by Monica Tudehope, daughter of Damien Tudehope, who held the seat from 2015 to 2019 and is now the leader of the Liberals in the Legislative Council. Monica Tudehope is a former policy director to Perrottet and unsuccessful contestant for last year’s preselection to fill the Senate vacancy created by the retirement of Marise Payne, which was won by Dave Sharma. Tricia Rivera of The Australian reports Tudehope was an easy first-round winner in the party ballot with 89 out of 115 votes.

The Liberal candidate in Hornsby will be Corrs Chambers Westgarth lawyer James Wallace, who won a preselection vote a fortnight ago after receiving forceful endorsement from Matt Kean and equally vehement opposition from many at the conservative end of the party. The latter included Tony Abbott, who endorsed Hornsby deputy mayor Michael Hutchence and accused Kean, newly appointed chair of the Climate Change Authority, of having “left the parliament to take a job with the Labor party”. Linda Silmalis of the Daily Telegraph reports Wallace won in the first round of a preselection ballot with 123 votes to 36 for Hutchence and 28 for a third candidate.

The other big electoral news out of the state is the Liberal Party’s failures to meet last week’s noon Wednesday nominations deadline for the September 14 council elections, estimated to have involved around 140 candidates across 18 council areas. Ben Raue at the Tally Room analyses the implications, finding the blunder has excluded the Liberals from at least 50 winnable seats across 16 councils. A request from the Liberal Party for an extension has been denied by acting Electoral Commissioner Matthew Phillips, who “was not satisfied that it is possible to lawfully extend the nomination period in line with the request and, even if it were, it would not be appropriate to do so given the very significant ramifications it would have for the conduct of the elections”. The party now says it will pursue action in the Supreme Court. The blunder resulted in the party’s state executive sacking Richard Shields as its state director on Friday, with Sky News reporting the party “had to scramble to get an interim acting state director in place so that the Epping by-election preselection could take place on Saturday”.

Freshwater Strategy: 51-49 to Coalition (open thread)

The monthly Freshwater Strategy poll finds improved personal ratings for Anthony Albanese with no dividend on voting intention.

The latest monthly Freshwater Strategy poll from the Financial Review has the Coalition maintaining the 51-49 two-party lead it opened in the previous poll, from primary votes of Labor 32% (up one), Coalition 41% (up one) and Greens 12% (down one). Anthony Albanese is up a point on approval to 35% and down three on disapproval to 45%, while Peter Dutton is up a point on each to 37% and 40%. Albanese’s lead on preferred prime minister narrows from 45-39 to 45-41. The poll was conducted Friday to Sunday from a sample of 1061.

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