Another night before Christmas

Doubts the election is quite as imminent as all that, and a slightly dated poll result showing business as usual pre-budget.

Or maybe seven nights. According to Anthony Galloway of the Herald Sun, “speculation intensified yesterday about whether Mr Morrison will call the election tomorrow for May 11, or wait until the end of next week for a May 18 poll”. The latter would suit me better, if he’s reading. Liberal sources say the Prime Minister might be considering holding off “in the hope of a poll bounce after this week’s Budget”, which would be optimistic of him.

Also in the paper today is a rather unusual bit of opinion polling from YouGov Galaxy, which was conducted pre-budget – last Monday to Thursday, to be precise – from a large sample of 2224. The interesting bit is that Labor leads 53-47 on two-party preferred, discouraging the notion that the New South Wales election might have changed anything. However, the larger purpose of the exercise is to burrow down into voters’ perceptions of the party leaders, taken to include Pauline Hanson and Clive Palmer as well as the usual suspects. I don’t find this stuff particularly interesting myself, but there’s a lot of detail in the report linked to above, if you can access it.

UPDATE: The poll appeared not to provide the usual forced response follow-up for the initially undecided on voting intention, thus includes an undistributed 8% “don’t know”. The remainder went Labor 34%, Coalition 33%, Greens 9%, One Nation 8%, United Australia Party 3% and Australian Conservatives 2%. Excluding the don’t know component, this becomes Labor 37%, Coalition 36%, Greens 10% and One Nation 9%.

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.

1,277 comments on “Another night before Christmas”

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  1. Victoria

    I’m sure you’re correct about the “shovel-ready” articles in the RW press. No surprises there. And look how they protected Barnaby. 🙁

    There have been a number of attempts against ScoMo (mostly, I think, on social media), but the attempts weren’t ‘sexy’ enough’.

  2. lizzie @ #961 Sunday, April 7th, 2019 – 11:45 am

    WeWantPaul

    Well said. I have read Setka on Twitter and I know how anguished he feels at every worker’s death. The Coalition have left no stone unturned to prevent Unions from protecting (or even contacting) labourers.

    Sorry lizzie, I don’t mean to shout, but THAT is the real message. Worker deaths. Through cost cutting. Through deregulation. Through overworking. Through marginalization. Through trivialization. … I tried once to put a list together of workplace deaths, but I lacked the patience to dig out the information from the various government H&S websites, let alone to keep it current. The boy in Melbourne (I think) only last week was another, and too soon forgotten. The unions have a powerful narrative in worker Health and Safety.

  3. sprocket_
    says:
    . Now I could actually tell you some stories about how many politicians get their own bags out of the boot of limousines, but I won’t. Suffice to say, that Bill Shorten is one of those.
    _______________________________
    Shorten is more cunning than most. He waits until he’s PM until he gets his bags carried. 🙂

  4. And while we are on the avalanche from the Liberal Party Dirt Unit, including their outsourced providers NewsCorpse, bring it on, China.

    One question though, why did the story about Scotty being sacked from Tourism NZ go quiet so quickly?

  7. beguiledagain @ #989 Sunday, April 7th, 2019 – 12:13 pm

    Newspoll: 53 ALP 47 LNP
    Election: 82 seats for Labor. I’m pessimistic because the voters of NSW went for the LNP with all its baggage. In periods of turmoil voters tend to stay with the incumbent. I know that some voters can differentiate between federal and state issues. But I am depressed looking around the world at the resilience of the ratbag right. I’m hoping that the Shorten government will have a good working majority. But I think the odds are against what some people predict might be a landslide to Labor.

    As was commented upon the in the long form article about the world Murdoch has crafted:

    His newspapers and television networks had been instrumental in amplifying the nativist revolt that was reshaping governments not just in the United States but also across the planet.

    …The right-wing populist wave that looked like a fleeting cultural phenomenon a few years ago has turned into the defining political movement of the times, disrupting the world order of the last half-century. The Murdoch empire did not cause this wave. But more than any single media company, it enabled it, promoted it and profited from it. Across the English-speaking world, the family’s outlets have helped elevate marginal demagogues, mainstream ethnonationalism and politicize the very notion of truth. The results have been striking. It may not have been the family’s mission to destabilize democracies around the world, but that has been its most consequential legacy.

    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/03/magazine/rupert-murdoch-fox-news-trump.html

  8. If Morrison and Co can maintain discipline and stay on message for 6 weeks, Labor might struggle to pick up more than 76 seats – a bare majority. However, there has not been much LNP discipline over the past 6 years, so there’s no reason to think anything will change over the next 6 weeks. The greater risk for the LNP is that their campaign runs off the rails – that’s how seemingly tight elections can turn into landslides, and there are quite realistic scenarios where Labor can end up with 90+ seats.

  9. A R: “Other things can be bomb-like under the right conditions. Such as tanks full of petrol. “

    Actually a tank FULL of petrol will be relatively safe – it’s the vapour that that’s explosive…

    So the procedure for decommissioning an underground petrol tank doesn’t involve pumping out all the petrol and leaving the tank there (as it might contain quite a lot of vapour). Instead if one must decommission in situ then, either:
    – fill it with sand or concrete
    – if it is to be re-used within a few years (e.g. two years), fill it with water and a corrosion inhibitor and monitor

  12. Men Against Violence Australia

    Ten million dollars for domestic violence.

    Fifty million dollars for a statue of Captain Cook.

    One hundred and eighty-five million dollars for a press conference on Christmas Island.

    What more needs saying?

  14. Chinda63 @ #976 Sunday, April 7th, 2019 – 11:57 am

    Awesome, Fess.

    That’s the way to fight them.

    By quoting stuff from twitter on a blog mostly frequented by ALP supporters?
    Nup!
    Get out there and campaign as some of us here are doing. Door knocking, phone banking, street stalls, railway stations… out among the voters.

  15. Rex Douglas @ #977 Sunday, April 7th, 2019 – 11:58 am

    EGW @ #972 Sunday, April 7th, 2019 – 11:55 am

    Rex Douglas @ #970 Sunday, April 7th, 2019 – 11:53 am

    EGW @ #947 Sunday, April 7th, 2019 – 11:36 am

    Rex Douglas @ #944 Sunday, April 7th, 2019 – 11:35 am

    WeWantPaul @ #939 Sunday, April 7th, 2019 – 11:29 am

    Everyone already thinks Setka is the day quintessential union thug. Stories about him wouldn’t add anything.

    And although it was very successful for decades it has become apparent that unions are both, unsurprisingly, overwhelmingly good for workers (even non-unionised workers) and also less obviously very good for the economy as a whole.

    ….

    In relation to coal mining, what might be good for coal mining workers is scientifically proven to be detrimental to every other citizen, the environment and thus the economy.

    John Setka has nothing to do with coal mining.
    He represents and leads workers in the construction industry.

    He is a senior rep of the CFMMEU, which is pressuring Labor to continue propping up coal.

    Some in the mining division only. A small minority.
    Do try to get to grips with facts and reality Rex.

    When you merge with others you own their behaviours. That’s the price of fame.

    Oh right!
    Then the Greens own the very worst behaviour of any Greens member.
    Thanks for the clarification Rex.

  18. To carry it further (or dig myself into a deeper hole): the Greens tried capturing au pairs to power their hamster wheels … it didn’t work as the wheels fell off!

    They should have hooked up to the MSM – an endless source of spin.

  19. I suspect the budget, especially after Shorten’s reply has not moved the polls much at all, if any.
    So 53/47 for both – just so Williams Poll Bludger chart can flatten out a bit.

  21. The campaign for the north continues…today, as most days, in territory held by the Libs. The prospects are very good!!

    It’s really very heartening. We say we hope for change and appeal for the help of voters. They enlist for change. It’s a great thing.

  23. Who put the red stiletto in Corman’s head?
    Who is peering through the door?
    What is Barnyard doing with those dead fish?

  26. ‘Late Riser says:
    Sunday, April 7, 2019 at 12:32 pm

    So much to see in a Rowe. But who is the rabbit beside Pauline?’

    Easter Bunny?

    I do like dead carp Joyce.

  32. poroti

    There is a cartload of symbolism attached to the ‘sacred heart’ onto which has been photoshopped a lump of coal.

    chttps://aleteia.org/2018/06/08/explaining-the-strange-symbolism-of-the-sacred-heart/

  33. ‘Late Riser says:
    Sunday, April 7, 2019 at 12:32 pm
    So much to see in a Rowe. But who is the rabbit beside Pauline?’
    ___________________________________
    It could be Hanson going down the rabbit hole in pursuit of the Port Arthur conspiracy.
    It could be referring to Pauline Hanson’s call 2 years ago to boycott Halal easter eggs.
    It could be a Donnie Darko reference whereby the rabbit has been sent to correct the present timeline by making sure a jet engine lands on Pauline before 1996.

  39. Another comment on the Rowe cartoon. That’s the Carlton FC symbol on Frydenberg’s arm.

    Frydenberg is a Carlton FC supporter. Carlton is better known colloquially as ‘The Silver Spoons’, ‘The Filth’ or the ‘Pig’s Arse’.

    After three rounds of footy they are three nil.

  40. Aside from all the taxpayer funded advertising next week, there could be another reason why Morrison is delaying the election.

    The LNP would surely have received the results of internal polling following the budget speech last Tuesday. That polling could have been unfavourable for the LNP, indicating a poorly received budget. So Morrison would be trying to delay the inevitable as long as possible.

  41. @Outsider

    I am predicting at the moment, that Labor will win around 85 seats, which proportionally similar to their 2007 result. The question I am asking is how big the cross-bench is going to be. Because large amounts of money are being poured into campaigns for Independent center to center-right but sane candidates. Also there is a very strong anti-Coalition sentiment in the election, not so much a pro-Labor one.

  42. poroti
    says:
    Sunday, April 7, 2019 at 12:48 pm
    nath
    Hanson has a gun so I’ll go with your a) Port Arthur
    ____________
    agreed.

  43. the decision to delay calling the election tells us that internal polling has shown no bounce from the budget. Government wants to spend more on gov ads – can we expect something about “Budget 2019” spruiking tax cuts, infrastructure spending and energy payments?

    Labor needs to say “call the election and stop wasting taxpayers dollars on political ads”.

    Polls tonight 53/47. if any MoE gives it 52/48 the murdoch media will claim a comeback. if it goes 54/46 then the melt down will be epic.

    today’s media reports that both parties expect a status quo outcome in Qld doesn’t seen credible.

  44. Kieran Gilbert
    ‏
    Verified account

    @Kieran_Gilbert
    Following Following @Kieran_Gilbert
    More
    . @JoshFrydenberg likens electric cars impact in transport sector to iPhone in communications, says those ridiculing them will end up buying them.

  45. Professor Louise Newman @LouiseKNewman
    1h1 hour ago

    Woman with severe mental illness is being held in immigration with aim of sending her to Canada, separating her from partner. Does the Government not recall the scandal of mistreatment of Cornelia Rau? Detention is no place for the mentally ill and is an abusive lack of care.

    Why does Immigration take such pleasure in dividing families/children/partners? That guarantees a worse outcome for mental health and coping with new country.

  46. sustainable future @ #1034 Sunday, April 7th, 2019 – 12:58 pm

    the decision to delay calling the election tells us that internal polling has shown no bounce from the budget. Government wants to spend more on gov ads – can we expect something about “Budget 2019” spruiking tax cuts, infrastructure spending and energy payments?

    Labor needs to say “call the election and stop wasting taxpayers dollars on political ads”.

    Polls tonight 53/47. if any MoE gives it 52/48 the murdoch media will claim a comeback. if it goes 54/46 then the melt down will be epic.

    today’s media reports that both parties expect a status quo outcome in Qld doesn’t seen credible.

    I’d say the reason for the delay in calling the Election is the Libs will try and use the Senate to launch some smear campaign under Parliamentary Privilege.

  48. Michael Koziol@michaelkoziol
    29m29 minutes ago

    PM Scott Morrison says the story of Winx the horse shows that if you have a go, you get a fair go in Australia

    @AnodyneParadigm
    Replying to @michaelkoziol

    Great. That’s all we need. A wiseacre in the Lodge, masquerading as The Horse Whisperer

  49. Sustainable – Albo was on Speers this more and said exactly those words. Also backed Shorten on EC charging (and he would have had a lot to do with that policy)

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