BludgerTrack: 54.7-45.3 to Coalition

The Poll Bludger’s federal poll aggregate has recorded little change since the previous result a week ago. Also featured: preselection argybargy, changes to electoral legislation, a new Chief Minister for the Northern Territory, and a by-election result.

In recognition of the quickening tempo as the federal election draws nearer (let’s continue to presume it will indeed be on September 14), my mid-week update to the BludgerTrack 2013 poll aggregate will henceforth get its own thread. This means that in the normal course of things there will be three more-or-less evenly spaced federal politics post a week: one hanging off the main poll release on Sunday or Monday, the regular “Seat of the Week” on Friday or Saturday, and the BludgerTrack update in between.

The latest update throws the latest results from Nielsen and Essential Research into the mix, producing little change after the slight recovery for Labor last week. However, the state relativities have changed slightly with the addition of data from Nielsen, one of only two pollsters which provides state breakdowns with any consistency. The swing recorded for New South Wales is now higher than for Victoria, as most commentary suggests it should be. As noted in the previous post, the weekly Morgan result is being excluded from the calculation for the time being until there is enough data from its new “multi-mode” methodology to allow for a credible bias measure to be determined with reference to the overall polling trend.

Other news:

• Four nominees have emerged for the Labor preselection in the Sydney seat of Barton, to be vacated upon the retirement of former Attorney-General Robert McClelland. They do not include former NSW Premier Morris Iemma, who may have had his factional association with Eddie Obeid to consider, together with the extreme difficulty any Labor candidate will face defending the seat. Paul Osborne of The Australian reports the contest is effectively between Shane O’Brien, Rockdale mayor and NSW Public Service Association assisant secretary; Kirsten Andrews, “former state and federal ministerial adviser”; and Steve McMahon, former Hurstville mayor who “made a name for himself when he sold the mayoral car to build a children’s playground”. O’Brien is “widely seen as the frontrunner”; Another nominee, state upper house MP and former Rockdale mayor Shaoquett Moselmane, withdrew his nomination after two days, choosing instead to make headlines with a parliamentary attack on Israel. Murray Trembath of the St George & Sutherland Shire Leader earlier reported that Moselmane’s run was thought to be “a lever to seek a more secure position on Labor’s upper house ticket for the next election”. The Liberals have endorsed Nick Varvaris, accountant and mayor of Kogarah.

• A day after the Financial Review reported he had received assistance from Eddie Obeid as he sought to enter parliament in 1999, independent state MP Richard Torbay has dropped a bombshell by announcing his withdrawal as Nationals candidate for Tony Windsor’s seat of New England. The Nationals’ state chairman, Niall Blair, confirmed Torbay was asked to stand aside after the party received unspecified information “of which we were not previously aware”. Barnaby Joyce has expressed interest in the past in using the seat for a long-desired move to the lower house, and there were immediate suggestions he might take Torbay’s place.

Troy Bramston of The Australian reports Tim Watts, Telstra executive and former adviser to Communications Minister Stephen Conroy and former Victorian Premier John Brumby, is the front-runner to succeed Nicola Roxon as Labor candidate for the safe western Melbourne seat of Gellibrand.

• With John Forrest bowing out at as member at the next election, the Nationals preselection for Mallee has attracted 10 candidates. Those named in an ABC report are Horsham farmer Russell McKenzie, former Victorian Farmers Federation president Andrew Broad, Buloke Shire mayor Reid Mather and Swan Hill deputy mayor Greg Cruickshank. Liberal party sources quoted by Terry Sim of the Weekly Times said the Liberals were “unlikely to field a candidate”. Labor has endorsed Lydia Senior, chief executive of the Lower Murray Medicare Local.

Megan Gorrey of the Campbelltown Macarthur Advertiser reports Laurie Ferguson effortlessly saw off a preselection challenge from Damian Ogden, by a margin of 132 to 11.

• Legislation which completed its passage through federal parliament earlier in the month has raised the bar for prospective election candidates by increasing nomination deposits (from $500 to $1000 for the House of Representatives and $1000 to $2000 for the Senate) and requiring of independent candidates more supporting signatures on nomination forms.

Top End corner:

• The Northern Territory had a change of Chief Minister last week, with Adam Giles emerging as the first indigenous leader of an Australian government. Terry Mills, whom Giles ousted as leader just seven months after he led the Country Liberal Party to victory at the polls, was informed of his ill fortune by text message while on government business in Japan.

The present leadership crisis began a fortnight ago when deputy leader Robyn Lambley stood aside for Giles with a view to healing a long-standing rift, only for Giles to up the ante by indicating he would move to replace Mills as leader unless further conditions were met. In this he had hoped for support from Alison Anderson, the most senior of the CLP’s complement of indigenous MPs, but she instead publicly blasted Giles for refusal to accept the deputy leadership and threatened to take her “bush coalition” of four MPs (the cohesiveness of which is disputed) to the cross-benches or even into coalition with Labor. The turmoil coincided with the period of a Newspoll survey for the Northern Territory News targeting 437 respondents in the CLP-held seats of Sanderson, Blain and Brennan, which showed a 22% against the CLP on the primary vote and 14% on two-party preferred. Mills’s personal ratings were at 26% approval and 67% disapproval, compared with 39% and 38% for Opposition Leader Delia Lawrie (whom Mills nonetheless led 38-37 as preferred Chief Minister).

The situation was transformed the following week when Anderson and the bush MPs were persuaded to put the previous week’s acrimony behind them and throw their support behind Giles, with Anderson telling Amos Aikman of The Australian the decision was made to forestall a rival challenger she declined to identify. The victory for the Giles camp was confirmed when his key supporter, Fong Lim MP and former federal Solomon MP David Tollner, was installed as deputy leader and Treasurer. Mills meanwhile is widely expected to head for the exit in fairly short order, promising to initiate a challenging by-election in his seat of Blain.

• All of which nicely leads into my belated results summary for last month’s Wanguri by-election, which delivered a bloody nose for the CLP and a morale-boosting result for Labor, which had suffered a 7.7% swing in the seat when Paul Henderson contested it as Chief Minister at the election on August 25.

WANGURI BY-ELECTION, NORTHERN TERRITORY
February 16, 2013

				Votes 	% 	Swing 	2PP 	%	Swing
Nicole Manison (ALP) 		2,428 	65.2% 	+8.2% 	2,585 	69.4%	+12.4%
Rhianna Harker (CLP)		1,059 	28.4% 	-14.6% 	1,139 	30.6%	-12.4%
Peter Rudge (Independent) 	237 	6.4% 			

Formal 				3,724 	96.4% 	-1.6% 		
Informal 			86 	3.6% 	+1.6% 		
Enrolment/Turnout 		4,984 	77.5% 	-11.6%

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

6,394 comments on “BludgerTrack: 54.7-45.3 to Coalition”

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  1. Right.

    So Rudd didn’t stand yesterday because he’s a man of his word and acted on principle, but today he says he won’t ever ever be leader again, even if he’s drafted, and we’re not to believe that, because….why?

  2. [Mumble – like the Journalists, and betting agencies will keep changing their minds.]
    Mumble has been very consistent. He has said that Labor’s best chance is Rudd.

  3. [Give it up Shows. Who is going to tell her?]
    Me, you, the bloke down the street, the milk man.

    Absolutely everyone will be telling her to go, before she actually goes.

  4. After how the Greens acted over the Malaysia plans, I would not vote for them if they were the only candidates on the form.

  5. If he had won yesterday, Gillard would have been finished. There was no second place, just one space at the top of the spire.

  6. Isn’t this meant to be finished?

    I would have thought Poll Bludger would be a Comment Desert until after the election.

  7. Deblonnay,

    The swing suggested in Victoria by the polls would mean that none of Corio, Ballarat, Bendigo, Jagajaga, or Holt will go, and I’m not aware of them ever showing such a swing. I appreciate there is a lot of effort required to get Labor over the line, but I don’t know what you are trying to achieve with this hysteria you base on pure speculation.

    Whether it being Toorak Toff or alias or Shows On using the polls to justify their position, without regard to what they say (TT reckons a 20% swing in SA *eyeroll*). I doubt UMR even polls seats as safe as Corio for there even be something for him to panic about.

  8. [showy, you really have to try harder to get into my PM GORN’s Hall of Shame. You are too lite weight]
    And you are a man who thinks he is a dolphin.

    I should’ve emailed William asking him to ban you a long time ago.

  9. Isn’t this meant to be finished?

    I would have thought Poll Bludger would be a Comment Desert until after the election.

    Are you kidding? If we can’t find any enemies, we’ll just invent them!

  10. As TP as admirably shown, Ruddstoration never dies, it just keeps on rolling

    And as to crap that Labor has to lose power to improve, this ridiculous argument gets rolled out whenever an incumbent is struggling, and they never do anything when they lose, other then occupy the opposition benches.

    Wasn’t a loss in 2007 supposed to help the liberal party improve? Gee, that was an astounding success.

  11. Bugler:

    deblonnay is on record as saying women in politics should exist just to wheel the tea trolley, and shouldn’t aspire to leadership positions because Australians just won’t vote for a party led by a woman.

    I’m sure that his disappointment on Marles stems from the fact that all of the Cabinet resignations today came from men, and that this is just another example of Gillard as a women destroying the joint.

  12. [Shows

    For you to be right means PMJG will have lost an election to Abbott.]
    Yes, if Gillard is ALP leader at the next election she will lose to Tony Abbott.

  13. Just tipped Adelaide based on bookie/punter theory…they’re not all that omniscient these days are they?…just other mugs who think they know something

  14. Maybe the Newspoll will not be as bad as I have thought. All the media shouting is over and all the public seem to know is a few Ministers have resigned. Of those only a few they recognise.

  15. Andrew:

    We can run companies, be partners in law firms, be heads of govt departments, be Mayors, even be GG. But gawd help us if we happen to successfully challenge a man for the Labor leadership. Not once, but 3 times!

  16. Add mumble to the list

    TP…of course…of course they’ll all jump for him after how badly he’s burnt those who backed him.
    Memory goes back to GHW Bush and the Kurds and shiites….biggest betrayal since

  17. Andrew Elder of fire tonight

    [Having been elected as Prime Minister in 2007, Kevin Rudd would wake up most mornings and see that News Limited broadcast media outlets would bag one or more of his policies, whereupon he would dither and eventually drop that policy. When he dropped his government’s policy to address climate change in the face of News Ltd hostility, people began to wonder what, if anything, he would stand up for – and he was pushed out of his job.

    If he had been re-elected by the ALP, he would have done that again. He would have cringed beneath the cosh of News Ltd again, and again, and again. No amount of smarm or negotiation by Rudd or anyone else will or can overcome this.

    News Ltd really want Tony Abbott as Prime Minister. Abbott wrote for News Ltd as a student, he wrote for them as an adult before entering Parliament, and in his memoirs Peter Costello affected surprise when Abbott would set aside actual governing and shadow cabinet work in order to write for News Ltd. Costello has known Abbott for decades and worked with him over many years in the Howard government, but to affect surprise at this relationship diminishes Costello. Abbott was a News Ltd man before he married and became a birth-father; he was a News Ltd man before he was a Liberal, let alone an MP. News Ltd is second only in importance to Roman Catholicism in understanding who Tony Abbott is and what Tony Abbott means.
    ]

    http://andrewelder.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/a-thousand-deaths.html

  18. Newspoll will be shitful this time if they crack 40 TPP they’ll be doing well…BUT…having lanced the boil only way is up…we had the magnoplasm theory…plenty of time for healing but not too much more

  19. [confessions, its not just that a woman is in charge. It is that she took the job from a man. That is forbidden]

    your as bad as Gillard playing the gender card when the chips are down. is just so happens the individidual who took over has performed poorly in the job. not a gender issue at all but bad judgement, communication, political performance poor etc.

  20. Confessions,

    Well, sometimes its difficult to interpret Deblonnay, though I certainly wasn’t impressed by those comments.

    It would be nice if some commenters could at least be consistant. If you want to talk polls, well then you have to deal with the whole thing, like most polls showing a swing to Labor in WA, a point alias ignored when it wasn’t convenient to him/her, or the swings not being as bad as claimed. Bemused was waxing lyrical about how horrible a loss it would be to see Anna Burke lose her seat, well, a swing of less than 5% simply won’t do that. I just don’t get it, its wrong to claim these things, it isn’t informative and it doesn’t help prevent such an outcome even if it were likely to occur.

    The best was Toorak Toffs confident prediction that there would be a swing in excess of 14% in SA though. No one else seems to have called him on it. In fact some were breathlessly agreeing with him… and that’s not mentioning the “it’ll be like NSW/Qld!!!!1!!1!2” crowd. First of all, the federal Parliament doesn’t use OPV, so its virtually impossible to begin with, and secondly the polls don’t show it and they never have.

  21. JV,

    [Yes, of course. He’s a warrior for the AWU ALP]

    It is very difficult to see if you’re taking the piss or not sometimes.

  22. Andrew.. I think you’re quite wrong on the gender question. In your mind’s eye, replay the whole 2010 ouster scenario, but with a male insurgent doing the job on Rudd instead of Gillard. I think you’ll find the thing will play out in your mind very much as it has, in fact, played out.

  23. Seriously Labor needs to figure out a new way to elect leaders.

    Yes caucus should have a big say, but so should state and territory Labor MPs.

    And even SIMPLY members of affiliated unions.

    I don’t mean delegates. I just mean if you are a rank and file member of an affiliated union you should be able to have a vote in a Labor leadership ballot. That should comprise say 30% of the vote.

    that would be a decent way to encourage increased union membership.

    but of course the union hack leaders won’t go for that because it would be giving the rank and file too much power!

  24. [When he dropped his government’s policy to address climate change in the face of News Ltd hostility, people began to wonder what, if anything, he would stand up for – and he was pushed out of his job.]
    OH FFS MORONS!

    JULIA GILLARD recommended that he drop the CPRS!!!!

    Are we all complete amnesiacs when it comes to anything Julia Gillard does?

    And YES I accept that Rudd made the final decision

    And YES I accept that Rudd has admitted it was his mistake.

    But for us to pretend that Gillard wasn’t telling him to drop the CPRS is nonsense!

  25. @ShowsOn/6285

    If we did that, then issues like NSW will hurt labor more.

    This is why Gillard is still leader because from Victoria.

    Center of Australia, better than Tony Abbott coming from NSW.

  26. Not much point in having policies when you know that, thanks to the previous incumbent, you’re not going to have anything to spend.

  27. ShowsOn
    Revisionism is the keynote on PB. It’s a bit like a theme for a restaurant or bar. “Ooh, I know, let’s go to the ‘Revisionist’ tonight! I hear it’s awfully consistent.”

  28. Bugler:

    I think deblonnay’s comments about women in politics have been the least equivocal and difficult to understand.

  29. [If we did that, then issues like NSW will hurt labor more.

    This is why Gillard is still leader because from Victoria.

    Center of Australia, better than Tony Abbott coming from NSW.]
    This makes no sense.

    How would opening up the leadership to rank and file union and ALP members make the leader less representative?

  30. JV,

    As a user of irony myself, I know better than to assume people are always serious 😛

    Shows On,

    I believe rank and file elections have been used before, to varying effect. I hear it was very successful in a regional NSW seat, but Kilsyth in Victoria, not so much. Doing that with leaders may be similarly mixed in its success. Successes of that include in Britain, where Miliband is doing wonders, but the Australian experiments haven’t turned out so well.

  31. Henry, it’s not that hard. People are looking for a steady hand on the tiller – not all this self defenestrating reform bullshit.

    The first object is to win enough seats to form government. Just because you personally believe a fully costed set of policies with supporting bills should be laid out doesn’t make you right. Even the WA ALP only put one policy in for costing at the recent WA election. Early policy releases don’t help oppositions. How’s Beazley’s Roll Back of the GST working for you?

  32. [OH FFS MORONS!

    JULIA GILLARD recommended that he drop the CPRS!!!!]

    So for the failings of the Gillard government you blame Julia Gillard.

    For the failings of the Rudd government you blame… Julia Gillard.

    I guess that’s consistent in a way.

  33. The Murdochs..father and son… will soon be sipping champagne in The Lodge in Canberra (nicely renovated too by Gillard for Tony !)

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