BludgerTrack: 53.5-46.5 to Labor

Two new polls this week bring very little change to the BludgerTrack poll aggregate.

First up, note new threads below on this weekend’s elections in New Zealand and Germany.

Now to the matter at hand: new polls this week from Essential Research and YouGov have done next to nothing to alter the BludgerTrack poll aggregate this week, the biggest change being a reversal of a Greens gain last week. The Coalition nonetheless makes a net gain of two on the seat projection, being up one apiece in Queensland and South Australia. No new results on leadership ratings.

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.

1,226 comments on “BludgerTrack: 53.5-46.5 to Labor”

Comments Page 3 of 25
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  1. Jolyon Wagg @ #82 Saturday, September 23rd, 2017 – 10:54 am

    Sorry if my point was too subtle Player One.

    Your point wasn’t subtle. Merely wrong.

    Because you are opposed to marriage equality you don’t notice the unpleasant side of the “no” campaign until one of its comments is redirected at you.

    Wrong again. I never claimed there was no unpleasantness on the ‘No’ side. There is heaps. But the ‘Yes’ side can be just as bad sometimes, as PB demonstrated again yesterday.

    In particular, the hypocrisy of ‘Yes’ campaigners complaining about some ‘No’ campaigners linking same sex marriage supporters with pedophiles – when some of them were doing exactly the same thing here yesterday – is simply breathtaking.

    Don’t you agree?

  2. Player One

    Don’t you ever wonder why the ‘No’ side is so under-represented? Well, if you go back and re-read yesterday’s thread you might begin to understand it.

    The No campaign has never attempted to explain why some Australians should be treated less than equally when compared with others. This is not surprising. There is no satisfactory argument in favour of institutional inequality. All they have is prejudice. Sad to say, the voices of prejudice are often also religious voices. So two things – religious attachment and prejudice – have been conflated. There will be winners when this process is completed. They will be all those who subscribe to equality. And there will be losers too. The losers will be the voices of prejudice and repression. They will regret the parts they’ve chosen to play in this utterly depraved shambles that’s passing itself off as the No campaign.

  4. The losers will be the voices of prejudice and repression. They will regret the parts they’ve chosen to play in this utterly depraved shambles that’s passing itself off as the No campaign.

    That’s you Player One.

  5. BK thanks for the morning round up. Cartoon Corner in particular was a cracker.
    I noticed on David Rowes twitter feed that reference was made to the resemblance to a phallic symbol of Abbots arm holding the canary cage.
    David cited time pressures.
    😉

    Good luck with the back.

  6. P1 just loves throwing ‘echo chamber’ around here.

    In the case of this SSM ‘vote’ there were weeks of back and forward argument on here about what was the reasonable course of action to take once it became clear what and how the Coalition was going to present as their latest delaying strategy i.e. nothing that would conclusively settle the question.

    With this ‘administration’ there’s always a ‘but’ at the end of every statement.

    So there’s nothing strange at all about a majority of people with some interest in politics, reading and evaluating the various responses put forward, and deciding whether to take part or not.

  7. Chickens roosting:

    Barnaby Joyce’s political nemesis, ex-MP Tony Windsor, has hired the former government lawyer who spectacularly fell out with Attorney-General George Brandis to fight the Deputy Prime Minister in the High Court.

    It is expected Justin Gleeson SC will appear in the High Court next month acting for Mr Windsor, who is party to the proceedings because he was the runner-up for Mr Joyce’s seat of New England at the 2016 election.

    https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/federal/clash-of-the-titans-george-brandis-nemesis-justin-gleeson-joins-citizenship-case-against-barnaby-joyce-20170922-gymvqr.html

  8. CTar1 After pulling the last of my hair out watching Abbott in his early days as prime minister he competely and irrevocable lost me when he made Prince Phillip a knight, I understand then that he just did not get it.
    I think the party understands if Abbott continues as he has we will be in opposition after the next election. I still hope something will be done, Abbott true believers like Hastie and the like are starting to talk. We shall see what happens, unfortunately I have seen nothing in his character that makes me really confident.

  9. boomy1 @ #99 Saturday, September 23rd, 2017 – 11:35 am

    Don’t you ever wonder why the ‘No’ side is so under-represented?

    maybe coz you are in the minority? Has that ever entered your head?

    For someone who visits a polling website, you seem woefully uninformed on the relevant polls. The ‘No’ side are expected to end up with something between 30% and 40% of the vote. This has been fairly consistent since polling on the subject began years ago.

    Here on PB, it seems closer to 1%. As I said before, there seems to be only 1 or 2 on the ‘No’ side. You might be tempted to think this is just because PB is a left-leaning blog – but that doesn’t follow. According the most recent Essential poll on the subject, even 28% of the ALP oppose it, as do 13% of Greens.

  10. CTar1
    P1 just loves throwing ‘echo chamber’ around here.

    This really just reflects the inadequacy of their arguments. If they had stronger reasoning they might be persuasive….

  12. give her a copy of The Feminine Mystique

    KayJay @ #20 Saturday, September 23rd, 2017 – 8:09 am

    lizzie (Block)
    Saturday, September 23rd, 2017 – 7:44 am
    Comment #10

    Behind the scenes at the ABC, things are very different. ABC workers have told The Saturday Paper the postal survey has inspired an avalanche of homophobic abuse from the public: radio call-ins, emails, text messages. For every Shelton presenting a mild, genial front to the “No” campaign, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of others emboldened to announce their hatred of queer people in any way they can.

    Don’t it make yer proud ❓

    The Australian way in action ❓

    Just a note on the “survey”. My favourite daughter is married to a gentleman who is homophobic, thinks education is useless, loves Youtube for the messages about the non moon landings and the flat earth etc. I have asked the FD whether they have received the letters for the survey and she tells me that her husband is looking after that. Being that DH husband believes that voting is pointless the postie, in this case may as well have dumped the letters.

    Never mind, I think a fresh cup of coffee will revive my spirits in time for my Saturday calls to loved ones in Canberra.

    à votre santé young lady.

    ☕

  13. Re Elizabeth Farrelly’s article. She can be a bit over the place sometimes but was pretty spot on this morning. The image showing what was intended to be a replacement for the Sydney Football Stadium proves what a lot of people suspected. The Tibby Cutter white elephant was put where it was for a reason.
    As for the light rail. If you want to see ugly then you need to take a trip on Alison Rd. All the trees were removed and have been replaced by ugly, grossly oversized poles to support the overhead wiring.
    A quick check of European systems show nothing approaching anywhere near the eyesore that Alison Rd has become. And I seriously doubt theres any room left to plant replacement trees to obscure it.

  15. Player One
    boomy1 @ #99 Saturday, September 23rd, 2017 – 11:35 am

    Don’t you ever wonder why the ‘No’ side is so under-represented?

    maybe coz you are in the minority? Has that ever entered your head?

    For someone who visits a polling website, you seem woefully uninformed on the relevant polls.

    PB does not draw from a randomised sample of the population. There’s no reason to suppose we should be representative of anything. Quite the contrary. We should expect to be highly skewed.

  16. Steely – I think Abbott has lost all sense of balance (if he ever had any) when he was rejected by the party.

    I reckon he believes in his own omniscience and that kick in the teeth (very much deserved) was like a crack in the mirror that he must repair at all costs.

    It is no longer about a party. It is about how he sees the order of the world – and that world has him at the centre.

    It is sad, really, that we can have someone like him continue to skew the national debate. (Or perhaps I should say further skew, since the ‘liberal party’s idea of centre is way too far to the right for anyone with an egalitarian bent).

  17. Player One

    IMO GG was being deliberately provocative as he really doesn’t care. Guytaur and others as sensitive reacted strongly to his baiting.

  18. briefly you are correct there is no extreme side of the yes campaign. I meant there are some extreme adovocates on the yes side of the campaign, and I am not going to argue with you about the other points, I am just going to do what I can do and vote yes

  19. Itza
    From way back; There was a Sydney urologist, now dead, who had a yacht called “Dartos” – sounded very speedy but I am told it got smaller in cold water

  20. I wonder if there is a chance that the not so good citizens of warringah will toss Tony out at the next election. Surely there must be a lot of libs prepared to give him the heave-ho for the sake of the party. I hope it doesn’t happen, of course. I want him to soldier on for the next 20 years.

  23. lizzie @ #117 Saturday, September 23rd, 2017 – 12:07 pm

    Player One

    IMO GG was being deliberately provocative as he really doesn’t care. Guytaur and others as sensitive reacted strongly to his baiting.

    I am not sure you can call GG’s contributions ‘baiting’. He holds a different opinion, and is not afraid to express it. But in any case, it is the continuing references to GG supporting pedophilia that really disgust me.

  25. For someone who visits a polling website, you seem woefully uninformed on the relevant polls. The ‘No’ side are expected to end up with something between 30% and 40% of the vote.

    I’m woefully misinformed obviously But with 30 and 40% of the vote you can’t win can you. What I can’t fathom is why you are playing this game.. You are not stupid but you have an agenda. Whose, I’m thinking. You are as whiney as Christopher Pyne but don’t have his gay marriage thoughts.So who are you…

  29. Player One
    briefly @ #110 Saturday, September 23rd, 2017 – 12:01 pm

    PB does not draw from a randomised sample of the population. There’s no reason to suppose we should be representative of anything. Quite the contrary. We should expect to be highly skewed.

    Exactly. But the more homogeneous PB becomes (and it has become much more homogenous recently) the less relevant it becomes.

    How do you know that PB is homogenous? How do you know it is becoming more or less homogenous? Or more or less relevant? And relevant to whom? To other bludgers? PB is about news and discussion.

    I would venture to say that in relation to ME, opinions have not changed at all over the last few years. The arguments have budded and bloomed, like annuals. But the values, evergreens, have barely altered.

  32. Peter Hartcher calls out Tony Abbott’s muddying of the waters bull shit.

    “All of us want to be decent and kind and caring and loving to our gay friends and family, but that doesn’t mean that we have to agree with the activists and change a definition of marriage which has stood since time immemorial.”

    The Marriage Act has been changed 20 times since it was introduced by the Menzies government in 1961.”

    The minimum legal marrying age for females in Tasmania was 12 until it was raised to 16 in 1942. And it stayed at the age of 12 in Western Australia even longer, until 1956.

    A man could rape his wife with impunity in Australia even as recently as the 1990s in some states. “The common law ruthlessly reinforces woman’s subordinate position in marriage,”

    The Northern Territory’s Protector of Aborigines blocked the marriage of a white man and an Aboriginal woman in 1959.

    The “no” case against same-sex marriage hopes that Australia will be captured by its ahistoric amnesia, frightened into a timid stasis under the impression that today’s arrangements are somehow a sacred artifact preserved unchanged from “time immemorial”

    And then of course there’s John Howard’s rewriting of the marriage law in 2004, time not very immemorial.

    http://www.smh.com.au/comment/enlarging-peoples-rights-is-the-australian-tradition-we-need-to-recapture-20170922-gymw5y.html


  36. Player One
    ..
    GG supporting pedophilia that really disgust me.

    I don’t think there is any question GG has not broken free of the catholic church.
    I also don’t think there can be any argument that the catholic church has protected pedophiles.

    There is only on step in the argument that can go wrong.

    GG support xx
    xx supports yy
    Therefor GG supports yy

    The problem with the argument is probable GG not accepting the second premise even though there is a royal commission to support it.

  37. The end game of this phase of the ME wars approaches.

    The sign is that the Kurds, at 30 million people the largest nation without as state, are holding a referendum on independence.

    They have been THE substantial allies on the ground in the fight against ISIS. The Kurds have been consistently our friends on the ground.

    We can safely assume that:

    (a) independence will be supported overwhelmingly.
    (b) the boundaries, any boundaries, would be vexatious
    (c) the governments of Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran will turn on the Kurds
    (d) the Iraqi Army that Australia is training and arming will be used to slaughter Kurdish independence. (There is an anecdote about the Iraqis asking the Aussies for training in mountain warfare. What for, there are no ISIS operatives in the mountains…?)

    But will the West do what it has always done?

    Use the Kurds up and then betray them?

  38. Just to give some balance to P1’s observations, last night I was called homophobic and a bigot for simply pointing out the fact that the postal survey is an opportunity for anyone who supports SSM to have their say and to communicate a message to the govt.

    And that was an entirely unprovoked attack by the way. And ridiculously over the top and ludicrous.

  39. Jenauthor I believe you are correct it has become about him and he heavily influences political debate. I now have little doubt that even if I agree with some of his points I now don’t think he is doing it because of the importance of the issue but for his own agenda or at very least knows what he saying is diverting attention from what ever message Turnbull is trying to get out.

  40. ab

    Surely there must be a lot of libs prepared to give him the heave-ho for the sake of the party.

    There undoubtedly are but but the selection of a another preferred candidate will set off a dummy spit of gigantic proportions and also involves a decision on which part of the Liberal Party the branch members are going to support.

    A wrong guess in this case is not going to lead to them to suddenly find they’ve got a non-Lib member but may leave them one with absolutely no influence or, even worse, one who has made promises to the electorate that will be actively thwarted by other members.

  41. Puffy, The Magic Dragon. (Block)
    Saturday, September 23rd, 2017 – 12:02 pm
    Comment #112

    give her a copy of The Feminine Mystique

    I gave her a kindle Ebook reader some time ago when I thought that she (the FD) was reading regularly.

    Sadly I think she read a romance book while at the beach with her lifesaver husband and subsequently read the “40 shades” books.

    Nothing since.

    While I have the book mentioned and will mention it to her I think she has settled for the very, very lowest common denominator.

    Thanks for the suggestion.

    😎 Very warm in Newcastle today.

  43. Briefly
    This is as sinister as any homophobic beating meted out by physical means.

    Yep! The no campaigners, having been long deprived of the right to mete out physical violence against gays, has instead resorted to inflicting spiritual and psychological violence instead. The no campaign is seething with hatred disguised by a veneer of coded language and victim-playing. Not only that, they have emboldened far-right hate groups to inflict their own hate on the community, as we saw with the neo-nazi posters in Melbourne.

    By putting a question of individual self-worth up to a public vote, creating a space of “public discussion”, and by attempting to silence any criticism of that process by screaming “bigotry” and “oppression”, the no side, aided and abetted by the Traitor Turnbull, have given license to an outpouring of homophobia into civil society from the fringes. When you legitimise and endorse hate, hatred comes rushing out.

    This is what people like Steely Dan and PlayerOne don’t get: they have lent their respectability and credibility to a hate campaign.

  44. A wrong guess in this case is not going to lead to them to suddenly find they’ve got a non-Lib member but may leave them one with absolutely no influence or, even worse, one who has made promises to the electorate that will be actively thwarted by other members.
    Like Tim Wilson.

  45. frednk

    I have been resisting doing a retread of yesterday’s discussion on the topic but you have repeated a basic error.

    There is no evidence that the RC in Australia IS ‘protecting child rapists’.

    There is no argument that is WAS doing so.

    But there is no evidence AT ALL that it is doing so now.

    The tense used means everything in this context.

    Given the known reforms IMO, it is (a) much more unlikely than previously that child sexual abuse would occur and (b) it is highly likely that any incidents would see the light of day. As far as I know, there are no current reports of ANY case of child sexual abuse by priests.

    The repeated accusations used to vilify GG has been that the RC IS supporting child rapists.

    GG supports the RC.

    Therefore GG supports child rape.

    You may both resile and apologise to GG hould you so choose.

  46. BW
    Kurdistan if/when it gets independence will be a landlocked nation surrounded by hostile nations. The problem for the whole Kurdistan idea is the pocket in Syria that cuts access of most of the Kurdish region to the sea.

    Syria may not be in a position to protest much but Turkey IS and I predict that if Kurdistan looks like becoming a reality, Turkey will seize that piece of Syria, which of course has a very large Turkman population as well as Sunni Arabs. Actually I do not predict so much as assume, given that there is already Turky/Isis/Kurdish conflict in the region

    The new Kurdistan would then have hostile Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey on its borders. It would need to become super friendly with at least one of its neighbours if it wants to import or export or even have air linkages.

    Of course if Turkey is persuaded to be friendly then it would become a viable even thriving state, but this is by not means a given, especially if there are increased calls for secession of Kurdish regions from turkey.

  47. This is what people like Steely Dan and PlayerOne don’t get: they lend respectability to a hate campaign.
    Why because saying violence is always wrong and not the answer. Get a grip

  48. Haven’t seen or heard of “by name, by nature” for a while. He was still among the living 4-5 years ago
    but it wasn’t his yacht

  49. Boerwar @ #145 Saturday, September 23rd, 2017 – 12:35 pm

    frednk

    I have been resisting doing a retread of yesterday’s discussion on the topic but you have repeated a basic error.

    There is no evidence that the RC in Australia IS ‘protecting child rapists’.

    There is no argument that is WAS doing so.

    But there is no evidence AT ALL that it is doing so now.

    The tense used means everything in this context.

    Given the known reforms IMO, it is (a) much more unlikely than previously that child sexual abuse would occur and (b) it is highly likely that any incidents would see the light of day. As far as I know, there are no current reports of ANY case of child sexual abuse by priests.

    The repeated accusations used to vilify GG has been that the RC IS supporting child rapists.

    GG supports the RC.

    Therefore GG supports child rape.

    You may both resile and apologise to GG hould you so choose.

    The Catholic Church has signalled it will oppose any move to force priests to report details of child sexual abuse received during confession, despite calls from the royal commission to make it a legal requirement.

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-14/royal-commission-into-child-sexual-abuse-recommendations/8804040

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