BludgerTrack: 52.9-47.1 to Labor

Despite Labor’s strong headline figure in this week’s Newspoll, the BludgerTrack poll aggregate records a move in favour of the Coalition, while also correcting a recent downturn in Bill Shorten’s personal ratings.

Last week, the BludgerTrack poll aggregate disappointed Coalition fans by failing to respond much to the morale-boosting poll result the had received from Ipsos. Now it’s Labor supporters’ turn, with a shift to the Coalition recorded despite Labor’s strong two-party result from Newspoll. This reasons for this are that a) BludgerTrack goes off the primary vote, and the numbers provided by Newspoll were scarcely different from those that produced a two-party result of 53-47 a fortnight ago, suggesting that much of that two-point shift came down to rounding, b) numbers added this week for Essential Research and Roy Morgan were both soft for Labor, and c) the very strong results Labor was recording at the time of the leadership spill have now entirely washed out of the system. All of which adds up to a solid move to the Coalition on two-party that brings with it four seats on the seat projection, numbering one each in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia.

Newspoll and Essential Research both provided numbers for leadership ratings this week, and they collectively find the Tony Abbott dead cat continuing to bounce, to the extent that he’s nearly back to where he was at his previous all-time low after the budget. A surprisingly sharp deterioration in Bill Shorten’s numbers has also moderated with the addition of the new numbers, returning him to a more familiar position just below parity. The new figures also knock some of the edge off Abbott’s recovery on preferred prime minister. Full details as always on the sidebar.

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.

2,662 comments on “BludgerTrack: 52.9-47.1 to Labor”

Comments Page 15 of 54
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  1. sohar:

    He actually gets stuck into Abbott into the article. Like Savva yesterday, he notes that there’s 8 weeks until the budget with no sign of improvement in communication with voters.

  2. It’s funny, I used to think that the Liberal party base was middle to upper class professionals and business people.

    Basically, this ‘base’ was for small government, economic responsibility, pro business and thus anti union.

    It recognised that some people needed (and deserved) the support of government for the greater good of social cohesion, and its approach to decision making was cautious but paid heed to the voice of the experts.

    Apparently, however, this view is wrong (or perhaps out dated)- the Liberal party ‘base’ is in fact the Tea Party types, who trash science, don’t believe in society, and are (in their actions if not their words) both sexist and racist. Their idea of conservatism is not (as the term applies) that of treasuring institutions and traditions because they have stood the test of time, but of winding things back to a Golden Age when the status of White Men went unchallenged.

    If we give our society – or even one of our major parties – over to people who think like that, we’re all the poorer.

    Please, any PBer who identifies themselves as a Hamer Liberal or even a Menzies one, join your local Liberal branch as soon as possible and do everything you can to stamp out the crazies. You owe it to Australia.

  5. rhwombat@679

    VALE SIR TERRY PRATCHETT. I AM TERRY/VIMES/DEATH. AND SO IS MY WIFE.

    Death is one of my favourite of Pratchett’s characters, and a lot of fans are amusingly implying that Pratchett is talking to Death as this character now. I like the distinct way Death talks in his books.

  6. zoomster:

    Evidence is suggesting Barnett’s gov is having all kinds of trouble running a state economy. Perhaps they should stick to fundraisers.

  8. [ confessions
    Posted Friday, March 13, 2015 at 10:00 am | Permalink

    Barry Cassidy:

    Tony Abbott doesn’t have a way with words. Words have their way with him. ]

    Doesn’t seem all that long ago many in the MSM were piling praise on abbott for his *way with words* ?

    Look at the extract of abbott’s budget reply as LOTO in 2012 below, its a stunning prescient critique on his own government.

    You just can’t make this up –

    [ THE job, Madam Deputy Speaker, of every member of this parliament is to help shape a better Australia.

    It’s to listen carefully to the Australian people, respect the hard-won dollars they pay in tax, do our honest best to make people’s lives easier not harder, and honour the commitments we make to those who vote for us.

    The fundamental problem with this budget is that it deliberately, coldly, calculatedly plays the class war card.

    It’s an ignoble piece of work from an unworthy Prime Minister that will offend the intelligence of the Australian people.

    Government should protect the vulnerable not to create more clients of the state but to foster more self-reliant citizens.

    Madam Deputy Speaker, from an economic perspective, the worst aspect of this year’s budget is that there is no plan for economic growth; nothing whatsoever to promote investment or employment.

    The Coalition has a plan for economic growth;

    It would help to ensure that we keep strong manufacturing, vibrant agriculture, growing knowledge-based industries and a resilient services sector

    The next Coalition government will fund infrastructure in accordance with a rational national plan based on published cost-benefit analyses.

    Madam Deputy Speaker, there is little wrong with our country that a change of government wouldn’t improve.

    Every day, with every fibre of my being, I would be striving to help Australians be their best selves.

    Because by a government’s actions will its values be judged.

    Before this government dies of shame, it should find a leader who isn’t fatally compromised by the need to defend the indefensible.

    Then this parliament can once more be a proper contest of ideas between those who see bigger government and those who see empowered citizens as the best guarantee of our nation’s future.

    With each broken promise, with each peremptory change, with each tawdry revelation, with each embarrassing explanation, the credibility of this government and the standing of this parliament is diminished.

    But a shrunken government diminishes us all; that’s why our country needs a change.

    I want to reassure the people of Australia that it does not have to be like this; we are a great people let down by bad government that will pass.

    There is a better way. ]

    http://www.heraldsun.com.au/archive/old-news-pages/opposition-leader-tony-abbotts-budget-in-reply-speech/story-fn8melax-1226352452875

  9. Benson in the DT sounds a bit depressed today.

    He has joined the “people of Australia are stupid” club for ignoring what their Liberal Party leaders are telling them. He starts by saying Turnbull is the government’s only good communicator but then goes on about people living in a fools paradise over the economy (naturally the fault of Labor and the Greens). Only when the inevitable economic disaster strikes will people appreciate what wonderful people are the Liberals etc etc.

    http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/welcome-to-the-dumb-luck-club/story-fni0cwl5-1227260300432

  11. Getting seriously annoyed by the ‘boycott Halal products’ thing, which seems to be heating up on facebook.

    I hope that those objecting to halal certified foods are also objecting to organic certification, RSPCA approval, vegetarianism, labels stating a product is gluten/lactose/peanut free, diet products, etc etc – all of which provide dietary information for consumers.

    Ironically, if they got their way, consumers would still being buying halal foods, they just wouldn’t know they were.

  13. Pat Dodson:
    [Tony Abbott’s worldview – which belongs in a time capsule of Australian political culture before Mabo ]

    http://www.theage.com.au/comment/tony-abbotts-lifestyle-comments-highlight-the-lack-of-policy-in-aboriginal-affairs-20150312-141u4s.html

    But what annoys me, again, is that Abbott is praised by Dodson for
    [his genuine engagement and experience in Aboriginal Australia]

    It can’t be genuine when he doesn’t defend their connection to country. I think the visits are stunts, just like his fire-fighting.

  15. guytaur

    [This could be interesting. Hopefully we will see the price of internet plans come down as a result.]

    Increasing concentration in an industry leads to lower prices? Might be the occasional good deal to start with but long term it’s got to be a negative.

  16. [sohar
    Posted Friday, March 13, 2015 at 10:18 am | PERMALINK
    Tony in trouble with the Irish now. I saw it yesterday and thought it was a joke impersonator, but apparently real. Amazing!
    http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/asia-pacific/abbott-criticised-for-patronising-patrick-s-day-video-1.2136634 ]

    Abbott certainly knows how to alienate people:

    [The prime minister, who has previously referred to climate change as “crap”, jokes in the video that “this is the one day of the year when it’s good to be green. As you can see I’ve got my green tie on for the occasion.”

    Mr Abbott goes on to say of the foundation of Australia that: “It’s been said of us that the English made the laws, the Scots made the money and the Irish made the songs”.]

  17. Abbott is praised by some people over Aborginal issues, using words like “genuine engagement”.

    The reality is that the man has a Ph D in telling people what they want to hear.

    He is then capable of moving on to the next meeting and saying something different to a different audience.

    A word that springs to mind is fraud.

    It’s been quoted many times but abbott admitted as much to kerry O’brien all those years ago: you should not believe everything I say.

  18. citizen

    I suppose he won’t be attending any Irish gatherings because he might be tempted to over-indulge, being a grogmonster.

  20. AJM

    TPG is notorious for its poor customer support so it can produce the cheapest plans. That was the basis of my comment.

    Generally of course you are exactly right on competition. Its just now TPG will be big enough to get better deals at the wholesale level in access to wholesale.services.

  21. guytaur

    I’ve been a customer of TPG for over a decade, both in Sydney and Perth. I’ve never had any problems with their customer service, or even their service.

    DISCLOSURE: I’m also a shareholder

  31. My internet service provider was swallowed up by another ISP who was swallowed up by TPG. I still use the old service number so I imagine TPG will still direct their iiNet customers to the iiNet service numbers.

    I stick with my old old ISP because I don’t want to change email

  32. rossmcg @ 717

    [The reality is that the man has a Ph D in telling people what they want to hear.

    He is then capable of moving on to the next meeting and saying something different to a different audience.]

    This is totally spot on, except I doubt he would have had the discipline to convert a natural talent into something that requires the agile and intense thinking to get a PhD. This kind of nonsense behaviour should have been sussed out while he was Opposition leader, but the Abbott brand of schmoozing was applied to the members of the press as well.

    The big problem for Abbott and the Liberals is that you cannot hide inconsistent conduct and words like this when you are PM. And if Abbott has a great ability to engage the people he chooses to engage on a one-to-one basis, he has an equally terrible ability to deal with conflicts, especially of his own making, when it becomes unravelled.

    The Mark Riley interview from 2011 is a classic case in point.

    First there is his general pick-up from an unhappy serviceman who has watched his comrade killed and is (understandably) venting aggressively against the organisation that sent his comrade to die. Abbott sees an opportunity to attack the Government and does so.

    Then he goes to Afghanistan and discovers that slamming the Government also means slamming his natural conservative brothers, the top brass. So after a briefing from them about the reality of fighting a war against a guerrilla opponent he empathises with a ‘shit happens’ comment.

    Goes down well there, in that place and to those people. Back in Australia though it sounds quite different. In fact, it sounds indifferent to the suffering and fears of Australians about their sons being killed in action. So when he is put on the spot by Mark Riley (despite a forewarning about the interview content) he is unprepared and falls back on the only thing that is natural to him in a moment of dire frustration – violence or the threat of violence.

    Now Abbott only looks as though he is about to punch out Riley. He has just sufficient self-control to stop himself from doing knowing it would not be a good look for an Opposition leader. But he cannot find any words to deal with the situation for over 20 seconds. This is a very serious warning for Australians that he is not temperamentally fit to be PM. But the schmoozed multitudes of press gallery denizens ignore it – even Mark Riley is schmoozed back into the fold.

    So we finish with a PM who promises to publicly ‘shirtfront’ one of the most militarily powerful and dangerous leaders in the world, saying ‘you bet you are, you bet I am’. Someone who describes indigenous connection to the land as a ‘lifestyle choice’ and so on.

    Which is why, sooner or later, Abbott will go. Of all the PMs in my lifetime (and probably back to Federation) Abbott is the least temperamentally suited to being PM of this country (and that is not taking into account the fact that he is also the least ethically fit to be PM).

    The only reason why Abbott has not been thrown out of his job already is that there is no Peacock, Keating, Costello or Gillard ready to step in. But if it, arguably, benefits Labor to have him remain in the position, it is a clear and present danger to the nation!

  34. Dave

    [Greece Passes Law To Plunder Pension Funds

    …Bloomberg reports,

    Cash reserves of pension funds and other public entities kept in Bank of Greece deposit accounts can be fully invested in Greek sovereign notes, according to amendment to be submitted in parliament, country’s finance ministry says in e-mailed statement.

    Cash reserves can be used for repos, reverse repos, buy and sell-back, sell and buy-back transactions

    Pension funds, public entities will be able to claim damages from Greek state in case of overdue repayment, partial repayment

    Pension funds are not obliged to transfer their reserves to the Bank of Greece, according to finance ministry statement…]

    Trust us, we are the SYRIZANs. We are having difficulty screwing the filthy NAZI germans, the EU, the IMF and the WB so we are now going to screw YOU!

    I just loved the line about how the pension funds will be able to claim damages from the Greek State in case of overdue payment, partial payment.

  35. Jacquie Lambie shows my kind of humour saying “double disillusion” rather than the more usual “double dissolution”,

  36. Great blistering barnacles.

    I note that the people whom I opined to be quislings have finally woken up and have found their voice.

    Too late?

    Still no resignations from Wyatt or Mundine & Co.

  37. TPOF

    Bludgers posted the synopsis of the fourcorners report due to air on Monday re Abbott and Libspill

    [Prime Minister Tony Abbott says his Government has put its divisions behind it, and is now back on track, ready to deliver good government to Australians.

    But is this really true? Have the divisions built up over the past year and the wounds inflicted as the result of the threat of a leadership spill last month really been healed, or is he on borrowed time as leader?]

    This week on Four Corners, reporter Marian Wilkinson reveals leaked communications, top secret decisions and interventions from outside the Liberal Party intended to shore up Tony Abbott’s leadership, that suggest the party remains divided.
    .

    Not sure if we will hear anything new, but no doubt the Libs are still weighing up their options.

    http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2015/03/12/4196300.htm

  38. TPOF

    Sorry, didnt mean to insult real Ph Ds, just suggesting Abbotts ability to lie, obfuscate and mislead were at elite level!

  39. CTar1

    That is probably another sign of good service

    My contact has averaged probably one issue a year over the journey but they certainly went the extra mile on one occasion when the fault wasn’t with them but turned out to be Telstra equipment and they could easily have told me to sort it myself.

  40. victoria @ 737

    They are certainly weighing their options!

    Further to my comments about how Abbott schmoozed the press gallery, this stream of consciousness piece by Katharine Murphy sort of encapsulates it:

    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/feb/08/how-liberal-party-machine-swallowed-tony-abbott

    Murphy is capable of exceptionally incisive reporting of politics, and the move to the Guardian has freed her, and especially Lenore Taylor, of the need to toe the Press Gallery pack line driven by the dominant Murdoch empire. But that piece was incredibly revealing of the extent to which people who should know much better were seduced by a sociopathic conman and still don’t realise that that is what happened.

  42. ross @ 738

    I know what you meant when you used the phrase. Rather than defending real PhDs, I was pointing out that Abbott did not have the capacity to get one!

  43. Victoria @ 741

    My point exactly. She still buys this ‘a good man who has lost his way’ stuff.

    I went off Katharine when she enthusiastically bought into the Press Gallery mindset on Julia Gillard’s misogyny speech. I remember that when she was doing the Pulse for SMH she was actually trying to see what the rest of the world (i.e., those who were not saturated with the Australian Politics game) saw was so great about it. I gave her credit for trying, which most of her colleagues did not – convinced that the rest of the world got it wrong because it was not aware of the Australian political vibe. But the fact that she failed to see it showed that she had a blind spot that she could not repair (and still cannot).

  44. TPOF

    Indeed. Interestingly the two commentators that have well and truly jumped off the Abbott train is Savva and Onselen both at the Oz!

  46. [don

    Posted Friday, March 13, 2015 at 7:41 am | Permalink

    Barney in Saigon@435

    Kevin Bonham @ 409

    Cheers.

    Why don’t the pollsters publish their figures to 1 decimal place?

    Surely that would help eliminate rounding fluctuations.

    Because it would be statistically meaningless.
    ]

  48. [Why do you think the first decimal place would be meaningless?]

    Given the margin of error of opinion polls, wouldn’t going to decimal points in a way give it the appearance of more accuracy than it deserves?

  49. zoomster@711

    Getting seriously annoyed by the ‘boycott Halal products’ thing, which seems to be heating up on facebook.

    I hope that those objecting to halal certified foods are also objecting to organic certification, RSPCA approval, vegetarianism, labels stating a product is gluten/lactose/peanut free, diet products, etc etc – all of which provide dietary information for consumers.

    Ironically, if they got their way, consumers would still being buying halal foods, they just wouldn’t know they were.

    I’m glad most of my friends on Facebook chose to share anti-boycott links, showing where the boycotters are mistaken or just outright lying with statements that are false.

    If most of these companies actually withdrew their certificates (which are minuscule compared to the cost of producing food products itself), it will have a hard time exporting them to other markets. Not sure if that is a good financial decision at all. The Halal boycott has a far less significant impact on their bottom line.

    I wonder what the boycott spokespeople have to say about Kosher certifications on food products.

  50. guytaur@720

    AJM

    TPG is notorious for its poor customer support so it can produce the cheapest plans. That was the basis of my comment.

    Generally of course you are exactly right on competition. Its just now TPG will be big enough to get better deals at the wholesale level in access to wholesale.services.

    A colleague of mine is a big supporter of iiNet’s stance on anti-data retention legislation. We were discussing about it and wonder if part of the cost of iiNet’s plans consist of their ethical stance and their work in keeping this known in the press. He is worried due to TPG’s lack of stance on data retention and wonder if TPG might cause iiNet to withdraw from their stance.

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