The latest Galaxy poll, published in today’s News Limited tabloids, shows Labor’s lead easing imperceptibly to 56-44 from 57-43 last month. There has also been a one point exchange on the primary vote, with Labor down to 46 per cent and the Coalition up to 40 per cent.
| TWO-PARTY | PRIMARY | ||||
| ALP | LNP | ALP | LNP | ||
|
Sept 24
|
56 | 44 | 46 | 40 | |
|
Aug 27
|
57 | 43 | 47 | 39 | |
|
July 30
|
54 | 46 | 44 | 41 | |
|
July 2
|
55 | 45 | 46 | 41 | |
|
June 4
|
53 | 47 | 44 | 42 | |
|
May 14
|
57 | 43 | 49 | 39 | |
|
April 23
|
58 | 42 | 49 | 37 | |
Rob – couldn’t agree more. These government IR ads just feed the perception of ‘where there’s smoke, there’s fire’.
the ACN is out monthly so wait until next month iethe week after the next newspoll.
I agree with the Piping Shrike tax policy neither wins nor loses votes.
No Oppostion tax policy will ever be released until treasury releases its most up to date extimates ofthe budget which is only ever released AFTER the election is called
Um, Wittgenstein lived from 1889 to 1951 so I doubt he asked Copernicus anything, unless it was at a seance.
The preface to De Revolutionibus, in which the work was described as merely a hypothesis was inserted by Osiander, not by Copernicus.
Also, while Copernicus was certainly conscious of possible Church reaction, it is arguable as to how much it was ‘fear’ of the Church that lay behind his reluctance to publish. He was himself a Catholic canon; he had specifically been invited by the Pope to work on calendrical reform; he had already oultined his theory 30 years earlier in an unpublished manuscript; and he went through all proper channels to get permission to publish.
It is quite possible that a large part of Copernicus’ reluctance was driven by the realization that his system simply wasn’t accurate enough. (Coperncus, like Ptolemy, used only circles, and the problem of planetary motion can never be accurately modelled with circles.)
In regard to Wittgenstein’s question, I would say that the key issue is feeling not seeing. In a world full of friction, the idea of inertial motion is not so obvious. We are used to having to keep pushing things to keep them moving. Ergo, objects that are not being pushed must be stationary.
But this is’nt relevant here. If you want to step over to a science forum I’d be happy to discuss it 🙂
Yep – agree. These ads aren’t convincing anyone, and all they’re doing is reminding the voters about a policy they don’t like, reinforcing it ad nauseum, and wasting our money in doing so. Soft votes become firm, and firm votes become hard. You’d think they’d have realised this by now. The message it not going to get through, no matter how it is dressed up, so they’d be better off ditching all of the advertising, letting the train crash wherever, and moving on to a different track, with a completely different vehicle.
If recent events are any guide, it should also be a vehicle from which the only thing they can do is throw molotov cocktails at anything that moves.
Newspoll will be out Mon night 1 Oct.
ACN out Mon 8 Oct (maybe leaked Sun night)
Great going for me, with this poll for Labor, and Storm into NRL Grand Final. Now that the sympathy spike has disappeared, we can expect the polls to bounce back to Labor.
EXACTLY ;-D …… were there no election on the horizon, he wouldn’t give a rats about the enviroment.
Duh… correction to (103):
“If recent events are any guide, it should not be a vehicle from which the only thing they can do is throw molotov cocktails at anything that moves.”
That’ll teach me to post while I’m on the phone. Males can’t do more than one thing at a time.
Is anyone else worried that if we see a 54-46 Newspoll that Dennis Shanahan might ruin his pants expressing his partisan bile?
Adam @ #101
He quite possibly could have asked him a question. But he would have struggled to get a reply. 🙂
How about this gem form Tony Abbott.
“I thought that the most interesting result was the 38 per cent of people who thought that Kevin Rudd was superficial and lacked policy substance.”
Tony that 38% is the Libs primary vote 🙂
I live in the electorate of Cowper, Labour has reopened nominations, as their polling is telling them the seat is now marginal, Libs won the seat at the last election with a 4.7% margin, Labour want a higher profile candidate and are going to spend some serious money in the campaign, Goodbye Luke Hartsuyker National Party Member ?
Phil Robins says @95
“I suggested on this website some months ago that Grey could be a “smokyâ€, for these reasons:
1. The Liberal sitting member is retiring.
2. Until comparatively recent boundary changes, it was a traditional Labor seat.
3. The Nats are running a candidate.
Throw in the prevailing anti-Lib swing in SA and perhaps a bit of a campaign by Labor which has been missing in recent times, and anything could happen.”
No 1 is a valid point, though without local knowledge it is hard to assess how much personal vote Wakelin has built up. Not all long-serving members have a big personal vote. No 2 is not a valid point. The boundary changes have made Grey much harder for Labor and the seat’s former history doesn’t change that. No 3 is only a valid point if the Nats are preferencing Labor (unlikely) or if you have some evidence their preferences will leak. Given the odd Labor-Nat coalition situation in SA I suppose that is possible, but not likely. Yes there appears to be a big swing on in SA, but I doubt much of it is reaching the Yorke and Eyre peninsulas, two of the most conservative areas in Australia. Labor’s candidate is a Whyalla social worker, which shows they have gone for the obvious rather than the daring – farmers are not likely to switch to a Whyalla social worker when the Lib candidate comes from a leading Eyre Peninsula farming family.
Now it emerges that the Rudd heart surgery ‘leak’ did come from the Liberals after all…
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22470356-2,00.html
Flegg says they have no cash to contest the Brisbane Central by-election due to Beattie’s retirement. Of course Labor has a huge TPP, so they would be wasting money anyway. Flegg says the money the Coalition has to fight the ALP is limited and “The ALP financial position in Queensland is quite extraordinary.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/09/24/2041028.htm?site=elections/federal/2007
So are we now going to start hearing how poor the Coalition is, and that they have to be elected back in so they get some money? If they are cash strapped, it will mean we will only have a 33 day campaign as they won’t be able to afford a long drawn out battle. Until then the Coalition will be using government money on Work Choices, environment and superannuation ads.
Dario @111
I think it was Kevin’s heart valve that is where the leak was coming from.
Great Galaxy numbers..The end is near for the Coalition.
I predict an election date of November 24
The Dirty Gillard:
……..”The problem with this official history is that her working career does not start until she is 26. The closest we come in her official history to filling in the missing link is her maiden speech, on November 11, 1998, when she made this passionate aside:
“While experience in the student movement inspired those on the other side of the house to dedicate themselves to the destruction of unionism, it inspired us to work with and for unions … Our youthful anger may now be tempered by experience, but the same beliefs in fairness and the same fire remain.”
What exactly is she talking about, or rather, not talking about? Between 1984 and 1986 she worked full-time for Socialist Forum, a group that formed after another schism in the Communist Party of Australia, with the aim of advancing the socialist agenda in Australia. She served as a member of Socialist Forum’s management committee until 1993, well into her career as a lawyer.”……
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/playing-a-pantomime-of-prudence/2007/09/23/1190486132033.html
Looks like John Howard may take the great gamble of going beyond November 3rd.
He’s leaving it awfully late to go on Nov 3rd.
If he wants a long campaign he will need to go late November and then risks annoying people by getting close to Christmas.
If interest rates do go up then it’ll get a whole lot worse.
It’s still close to 50-50 they will.
If the markets settle down and nothing much happens then the RBA
may be obliged to go.
In any case they may judge that it won’t actually affect the election result as it already looks lost by the Coalition.
The crippling thing for John Howard is that stubborn primary.
It’s stuck around 40%. He absolutely has to lift that to 45-46% to be in with a chance. There’s simply no sign of that.
The renewable target announcement, which is so late in coming, was trumped by the Gore support for Kevin Rudd.
Interestingly the market has shrugged off the announcement. The hot rock companies, which will benefit enormously from the 15%, have scarcely moved. Looks like the market too does not expect a Coalition victory.
John Howard’s begging retiring MPs not to go is not a good look either.
Surely they need new blood.
Now it is revealed that the heart surgery info was leaked by a Lib and the self-defeating gay smear was leaked by their own, they will lose even more support.
Well, the Coalition is stuck with John Howard. No time for a change now.
His legacy looks like going down in a messy heap.
The country really does need a change and that is being re-confirmed every day.
heres Tony Abbott’s take on the latest poll, hmmm wonder what he’s smoking.
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,22470623-5003402,00.html
Judy I doubt if Tony Abbott has ever smoked a joint in his life. He might need one on election night to cheer him up.
Nafe is part of Howard’s supposedly non existent smear team.
Well the smear team is obviously non-existant because it’s off the record. Anything off the record, in essence, doesn’t exist.
Richard, what’s the source for Howard begging retiring MPs not to go? There have been suggestions that some last-minute retirements are in the pipe.
Well Nafe we are all breathless in anticipation to find out.
No doubt people screwed over by Work Choices, worrying about the next interest rise or generally concerned about the environment are absoutly desperate to find out what Julia was doing in 1984.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22470356-2,00.html
So Glen… after several days of trying to convince everyone that it was LABOR who started the smear, we find it was a LIBERAL party member that provided the information.
Well? You seem to have gone all quiet again!
Smear, hate, lies and fear… it’s the only thing this government stands for.
“I thought that the most interesting result was the 38 per cent of people who thought that Kevin Rudd was superficial and lacked policy substance,” said Tony Abbott.
Well, Tony, that means that 62% of people don’t think that Rudd is superficial and lacks policy substance. I’ll go with that.
Adam @ 120,
I saw the story earlier today on The Australian. Seems now that they have pulled it and have replaced it with different stories. I can’t find reference to it on Google news summary either. Perhaps the Libs censor has pulled this story as it doesn’t look good? 😉 …..
Adam,
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/please-dont-go-pm/2007/09/23/1190486137494.html
Adam, I believe you’ll find this story will help:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/09/23/1190486137494.html
One question about these numbers – does anyone know what the undecided percentage is? I wonder if it is going up or down over time?
Presumably Howard delays hoping they will claw back a few votes first and pick up more in the campaign. But if the electorate perceives they have stopped governing anyway and are already in campaign mode, then there may not be much change left to extract in the campaign. I say this assuming that people who have already decided to vote Labor are only going to be annoyed by the delay, hence the coalition won’t make any inroads on that 46% primary vote number. But the longer they wait, I suspect the smaller the pool of voters left to convince.
The talk has been going on so long now that I think a fairly high percentage have already made up their minds. Hence delaying will risk a backlash. i.e. much worse defeat.
So – does anyone know the undecided %, and how it has been tracking?
Reports that Howard is trying to get some retiring Libs to re-consider their decisions are in the papers this morning. This supports the recent discussion on blogs that the Libs are adopting a ‘firewall’ approach to the election. This indicates they think the election is probably lost to them and they want to protect as many of their own seats so they don’t finish with just an AFL team in parliament after the election. The Galaxy figures after last week’s supposed ‘good ‘ week for the government must have Howard badly rattled.
Dario that is a rank and file member who is a health worker…you cant blame this on the Liberals we didnt tell him to leak it he did it himself…as if the Libs would spike their own story…that shmuck should have his membership torn up and booted out far as im concerned…
Re
The fruit never falls too far from the tree 😉
When I made my comments about Grey above, I hadn’t seen this:
“The fight to retain Mr Wakelin, who holds his giant outback seat by a 13.9 per cent margin, is an indication of the concern within the Coalition. It is the second safest Liberal seat in the state but the party’s internal polling showed it would lose it to Labor unless Mr Wakelin reversed his decision to retire. The South Australian Liberal Party’s state executive had been scheduled to hold an emergency meeting last night to reinstate Mr Wakelin. But the meeting was called off yesterday afternoon when Mr Wakelin, who had been talked into staying, changed his mind again and said he was going.”
Gosh. I retract my comments above. It seems Grey is at serious risk, in which case the Libs really are looking at a wipeout of historic proportions.
Socrates,
7% uncommitted or refused to answer in the latest survey.
http://www.enrol.com.au/mumblestuff/pdfs/galaxy20070923.pdf
[Dario that is a rank and file member who is a health worker…you cant blame this on the Liberals we didnt tell him to leak it he did it himself…as if the Libs would spike their own story…that shmuck should have his membership torn up and booted out far as im concerned…]
Sounds like what a lot of ALP supporters have been saying about the odd out of line union members. I hope you are equally forgiving of the ALP in relation to those unionists Glen!
The heart leak was probably from Dr. Bruce Flegg, he has no connection to the Liberal Party. 😉
Fagin,
Thanks, to me that is pretty interesting – less than 10% undecided and a margin bigger than that. So if the Libs on 40% picked up all 7% undecideds in a campaign (almost impossible) they would have 47% total and still lose.
129 Glen Says: September 24th, 2007 at 11:58 am
say what??!? Didn’t you spend the last three days trying to blame this one on the ALP?
Who said he wasn’t ASKED to find out information like that? Eh? That sounds like exactly the kind of thing a dirt/smear unit would do.
Despite the Lazarus remarks in the media (because the Govt vote went back to its usual disasterous level) the last month of polls seem to put 55/45 as a solid floor not a roof and, those recent 57-59 of the more ‘accepted’ polls would be giving Howard cold sweats. It is still possible then for Rudd to ‘win’ the campaign and add a touch more to his vote. The birds have gone silent, an ominous quiet, women have taken their kids into the cellar, the sky darkened – an indomitable storm of change is coming. But Scarecrow is still in the paddock trying to scare the horses. Take cover John.
24/9/07
Galaxy 56/44
21/9/07
Morgan 56.5/43.5
18/9/07
Newspoll 55/45
14/9/07
Morgan
59/41
10/9/07
AC Neilsen
59/41
7/9/07
Morgan 60/40
4/9/07
Newspoll 59/41
27/8/07
Galaxy 57/43
Glen,
There were reports last week that the “Health Professional” had spoken to a member of the parliamentary Liberal Party regarding this matter. A number of Libs were questioned and they all denied any knowledge. George Brandis was overseas and not asked.
Glen 129
“Dario that is a rank and file member who is a health worker…you cant blame this on the Liberals we didnt tell him to leak it he did it himself…as if the Libs would spike their own story…that shmuck should have his membership torn up and booted out far as im concerned…”
So Glen, since revealing priveleged private medical records is (to my knowledge) illegal under the Federal Privacy Act, and also a breach of the AMA’s code of ethics, I take it you would have no objection to this person beign investigated by the AFP and, if sufficient evidence emerged, charged?
As a South Australian with families in the electorate of Grey I still find it hard to believe that a conservative party would not win this seat. The only possible explanation I can think of is the re-population in recent times of places such as Port Augusta and Whyalla due to the mining boom. Also, the expansion of Roxby Downs could have an impact, but many of the new residents there are sons/daughters of farmers chasing the big money (who can blame them!). The pastoralists that live in these areas would rather die than vote Labor to be perfectly honest.
Sky News has just reported on the Noon broadcast that the report on the pulp mill that Turnbull has been waiting for WILL be back in his hands TODAY. He is quoted in the interview as saying “after I have had time to read it and digest it, I will make my decision.”
If, as I noted over the weekend, the election is called for a 33 day campaign that means if it isn’t called today, the earliest will be next Monday. That presumably gives Turnbull the full week to read the material and get his decision out. Btw, Rudd is in Hobart today too so is already placed in Tasmania should the press ask him about this today.
I’ve been playing with Antony Green’s election calculator.
There’s something interesting and perhaps unexpected going on – labor seems to be getting its swing in the right states.
If you use the latest aggregated Newspoll, the national figure for 3 months was 56-44.
This would result in 96 seats for Labor and 52 for the Coallition.
However, if you enter the individual state figures into his calculator (and assume that Labor would pick up 3 seats between Tas and NT) then the result is 104 seats for Labor and 44 for the Coallition.
That’s a difference of 8 seats in Labor’s favour.
Significantly, despite the spin of The Australian, Labor is really doing well in Queensland, poised to pick up 11 seats according to that Newspoll.
So why do we all think that Labor will struggle to get the seats in the right places? And why isn’t the betting market reflecting this?
# 138 Greensborough Growler Says:
September 24th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
And I wonder who, specifically, in the liberal party, he was finally put in touch with. Who actually suggested which specific course of action he should take.
Caught red handed.
[Dario that is a rank and file member who is a health worker…you cant blame this on the Liberals]
Why not Glen? The govt seems perfectly willing to blame the ALP for anything bad that is happening to do with the unions…
Dario 147
Yes it is a curious double standard on the government depiction of unions. When unions criticise governmetn policy that reduced workers rights they are a ruthless, well-organised conspiracy, yet whenever they are left to manage a system they are a disorganised rabble. Hmm, which are they?
I don’t believe the ‘heart operation’ smear was approved by anyone high up in the liberal party… it was blatantly obvious that it wasn’t going to do Rudd any harm. Howard and co are far too smart to think that it would do anything but backfire on them.
I like to call Howard many things, but stupid isn’t one of them. I think this was leaked by someone low-down in the hierarchy who has got a walnut for a politics brain.
For what it’s worth, the news regarding Howard’s attempt to talk the sitting member for Grey out of retirement has had an effect on the betting market this morning.
The ALP win probability has jumped from 8.4% to 13%.
It (Grey) will be an interesting one to watch over the next few days.