The Mercury today has the first public poll of the campaign for next Saturday’s Tasmanian state election, being a ReachTEL survey of 3179 respondents conducted on Thursday night. The result is encouraging for the Liberals, indicating enough support to win an absolute majority with three seats apiece in Bass, Braddon and Lyons, and two in Denison and Franklin. Labor’s numbers suggest two in each electorate, including a likely gain from the Greens in Bass, a probable gain from the Liberals in Braddon (although the Liberals could just about hold their fourth seat on these numbers), and a firm gain from the Liberals in Franklin. All of which is more in line with internal polling the Liberals were hawking last week than the last public poll from EMRS, way back in December.
The headline figures from the poll are Liberal 46.4%, Labor 31.1%, Greens 12.1%, Jacqui Lambie Network 5.2%, others 2.0% and 3.3% undecided. After excluding the undecided, which accounted for 5.0% in Bass, 3.5% in Braddon, 2.9% in Denison, 2.4% in Franklin and 2.5% in Lyons, the breakdowns are as follows:
| Total | Bass | Braddon | Denison | Franklin | Lyons | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Liberal | 48.0% | 55.1% | 58.7% | 33.8% | 42.6% | 49.6% |
| Labor | 32.2% | 25.6% | 24.7% | 44.0% | 36.0% | 30.5% |
| Greens | 12.5% | 10.7% | 5.8% | 19.2% | 15.3% | 11.4% |
| JLN | 5.4% | 6.9% | 7.7% | 1.5% | 4.7% | 5.7% |
| Others | 2.1% | 1.7% | 3.1% | 1.5% | 1.4% | 2.8% |
| Sample | 3179 | 641 | 636 | 624 | 633 | 645 |
A preferred premier question finds Will Hodgman with his nose in front of Rebecca White, by 51.8% to 48.2%. This is not the first indication that White’s personal ratings may be outpointing her party’s electoral support. After the Liberals circulated their favourable polling a fortnight ago, Labor came back with their own finding that White led Hodgman by 46% to 41%, while noticeably failing to provide any numbers on voting intention.
Hodgman to remain Premier. They’ve been a reasonable State Government. Lambie got all the headlines in the lead up, but has fizzled. The whole campaign has been on local issues. Barnaby who?
It was the pokies ban wot dun it.
I’m with the first post above rather than the second.
The Hodgman government has been more or less ok, which is about the best you can hope for from a government down here.
Labor made a big stride forward in replacing Bryan Green with Bec White, but they don’t have much of a team behind her and don’t look at all ready to come back. The return of David O’Byrne (highly likely on these polling numbers) will help.
Greens seem to be suffering from relevance deprivation.
https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2018/02/tasmania-2018-reachtel-confirms.html
ReachTEL Confirms Liberals Probably Winning
This poll is consistent with my current impression of an outcome around 13-10-2, but there are a few funny things that are still possible.
Thanks for the write up Kevin. Looking forward to your update on campaign.
Gorks
Greens have been hopeless down here. More or less a non-campaign. Hardly any signage, no letterbox material, no TV ads, bugger all campaign events.
I have no idea what’s gone wrong organisationally, but heads should roll.
It will be a noteworthy achievement if the Liberals win. Only their second back-to-back win and the first since the 1980’s.
Electric vehicles: SA Labor proposes no stamp duty, free rego for zero emissions cars
http://reneweconomy.com.au/electric-vehicles-sa-labor-proposes-no-stamp-duty-free-rego-zero-emissions-cars-94207/
Shorten should pledge to remove the luxury car tax from electric vehicles.
Hmmm… if I could summarise the Tassie campaign thus far…
Plenty of big dirty money to support the Libs, Labor running as best they can. The local Liberal times….. oh sorry, the Mercury running full tilt Liberal (as usual), and the Greens (who). Would have to be the most inept Greens campaign I have ever witnessed in my time of voting, not sure if this is because of their focus on the Batman contest?
All that said, i would be taking that “independent” poll with a grain of salt. ReachTel have been working hand in hand with the Libs for the entire campaign (and last). Would wait for the EMRS and if that supports ReachTel then i would agree with the predictions, but for this to occur that would have had to have been a huge swing since xmas.
So as a summary, Last election predictions from EMRS
In
Dec 13… Libs 49, Lab 22, Grn 19
Feb 14… Libs 50, Lab 23, Grn 17
Election (march) Libs 51, Lab 27, Grn 14
If I were conducting these polls I would have been stoked with this king of accuracy. The shift from Green to Labor is a quite common thing before the election in Tassie and if a greens candidate needs preferences to get in it is usually on the back of the Labor preferences (and vice versa)
This Election
Dec 17… Libs 34, Lab 34, Grn 17, IND 6 and Jackie Lambie Network 8
I am not saying that poll is completely bogus but EMRS will be out this week so it will be interesting to see how the two compare. Have we seen a 16% 2PP swing in a short election campaign before?
New thread.