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RUNS ON THE BOARD Current predicted outcome from individual electorate assessments featured in the House of Representatives guide
FEDERAL ELECTION 2004 Comprehensive coverage of the federal election to be held on October 9 Entry point for the Poll Bludger's election guide individually covering all 150 House of Representatives seats. The above link leads to a full federal pendulum linking to the individual entries, which are arranged on six pages as follows: New South Wales State-by-state guide to the half-Senate election to be held on October 9, the outcome to take effect on July 1, 2005 Preserved for historical interest, the Poll Bludger's guide to the pros and cons of the various potential dates for the federal election Complete seat-by-seat guide to the Queensland election held on February 7, 2004 William Bowe, the earthly conduit for the all-seeing, all-knowing force known to humans as the Poll Bludger, can be contacted here. Comments, corrections and extra information on candidates and local electorate matters will be gratefully received. ARCHIVES
September 2004 PSEPHOLOGY AND POLITICS Peter Brent offers the internet's closest relation to my own humble effort, with a somewhat lesser interest in state politics than the Poll Bludger. His site features valuable psephological insights illustrated with lots of tables and fun interactive pendulums. The ABC's federal election page, featuring Antony Green's general election overview plus his detailed and endlessly useful guides for each electorate. 612 ABC Brisbane - Federal Election Watch Former Labor Senator John Black's informed and outstandingly entertaining coverage of the Queensland end of the federal election campaign, featured on the ABC Brisbane site. Australian National University academic Andrew Leigh tracks the standing of the parties on the betting markets, which he argues are superior to opinion polls at predicting election outcomes. An insanely comprehensive election results archive covering every federal election ever held, all state elections going back to 1991, and more recent results from lesser nations around the globe. The Poll Bludger's alma mater presents results from every state and federal election in Australian history, offering depth but not breadth - no seat-by-seat outcomes or two-party preferred results. PANDORA Archive - Politics & Government The National Library of Australia's PANDORA website preserves various media and party web pages from elections going back to 1996. Former financial journalist and Jeff Kennett staffer Stephen Mayne and his crew go where the mainstream media either can't, won't or shouldn't, providing an invaluable outlet for disgruntled insiders wishing to air dirty laundry in public. "Australia's e-journal of social and political debate", edited by one-time Queensland Liberal Party state vice-president Graham Young. High school politics teacher Malcolm Farnsworth offers a comprehensive resource providing a wealth of technical detail on the Australian political system, without keeping the lid on his left-wing political views. Similar to the above, this is an excellent online introductory civics text maintained by Bryan Palmer. FEDERAL ELECTION BLOGS The Poll Vault Counter Spin Election Tracker Psephite ELECTORAL COMMISSIONS
Australian Electoral Commission PARLIAMENTS
Federal POLITICAL PARTIES
Australian Labor Party OPINION POLLS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Things of great use to me for which I would provide links if only they were online Malcolm Mackerras Godfather of Australian psephology and inventor of both the Mackerras pendulum and the term "two-party preferred", without which the Poll Bludger can't imagine where he'd be. Mackerras gets a bum rap from some due to his fondness for "bold predictions", his occasional failures attracting more attention than his frequent successes. A few of his pendulums are available here. AJPH Political Chronicles The Australian Journal of Politics and History provides easily-digestible twice-yearly round-ups of events in each state and federal jurisdiction, ideal for those of us trying to bluff our way through goings-on in states we've never been to and don't really know very much about. |
THE SENATE - PART ONE, SUB-SECTION A Antony Green has offered the astounding assessment that the Coalition could achieve the unprecedented feat of winning four seats in one state, namely Queensland, with both Nationals candidate Barnaby Joyce and the Liberals' Russell Trood set for victory (other readers who concur include Bryan Palmer of Oz Politics and regular contributor Geoff Lambert). Since they also appear set to win three seats in each state plus one each from the territories, this suggests that the Coalition will emerge with the first absolute majority in the Senate since 1981. If so, it appears that the scale of the Coalition's triumph at this election has yet to be fully appreciated. Green's perspective on the Senate election was one of many the Poll Bludger received from various readers, which have collectively exposed a few wonky assessments in yesterday's posting. Updates appear in order: New South Wales: Here at least it looks the Poll Bludger had it right yesterday in calling it as three Labor and three Coalition. If 100 per cent of votes were above the line (the real figure being more like 90 per cent), on current figures the last three standing in the battle for sixth place would be Liberals for Forests (0.81 of a quota), Labor (0.66) and the Greens (0.53). Since the Greens have put Labor ahead of Liberals for Forests, their elimination would result in the re-election of Labor Senator Michael Forshaw. Victoria: An apparently wrong call by the Poll Bludger in writing off Family First, which was based on the assumption the third Labor candidate would finish ahead of the Greens and then win the seat on their preferences. On present figures the Greens would be leading Labor 0.69 of a quota to 0.59. That would leave Labor preferences deciding the outcome between Family First and the Greens - and perhaps contentiously, they are delivering them to Family First. The Greens have thus been doomed in being frozen out by both Labor and Family First. Ironically, if they had done slightly less well their preferences would have given the seat to Labor, which they would surely have preferred. Queensland: It appears that Hetty Johnston (apologies to serious Senate watchers for yesterday's rather strange conclusion that Johnston was in with a chance), Liberals for Forests, the Fishing Party and the Democrats will progressively drop out leaving the third Liberal and Labor candidates, the Nationals, Pauline Hanson, One Nation, the Greens and Family First. Labor and Pauline Hanson will then drop out in quick succession - somewhat surprisingly, this means One Nation will have done better than its founder. The next to be eliminated will be either Family First or the Nationals - the result is very tight with the Nationals just a shade ahead. If the Nationals prevail they will aborb Family First's preferences which will put them about even with One Nation, again just slightly ahead. Since most of One Nation's support comes from last-minute fine-avoiding impulse voters, it seems reasonable to assume that this gap will only widen as absentee votes come into play. When One Nation and the various components of its accumulated vote scatter at this point, Antony Green calculates that the Liberals will have 1.08 of a quota and the Nationals 1.03, with the Greens stranded on 0.89. THE SENATE - PART ONE At this stage, the Poll Bludger's inkling is that the Coalition will indeed reach the "magic 38" and that this, along with maybe one seat for Family First, will produce the first clearly conservative Senate since 1981. That said, he has yet to fully think through the results for the three smaller states (although the result in Tasmania is a clear 3 Liberal, 2 Labor and 1 Greens). The rest are looking as follows: New South Wales: A clear three quotas for the Coalition, with the inevitable two for Labor. Since the combined Coalition, Labor and Greens vote was 88.2 per cent, leaving less than a quota to spare, it does not appear that talk of a micro-party harvesting enough preferences to be in contention is likely to be borne out. Instead the final place is looking like a battle between Labor (with a surplus of 0.6 over the second quota) and the Greens (with 0.5 of a quota). Of the substantial players, the Greens will get the Democrats' 0.15 per cent of a quota plus the Coalition's negligible surplus, while Labor will get preferences from Fred Nile and One Nation, collectively amounting to 0.3 per cent of quota. Worth noting is the poor performance of Family First (0.5 per cent of the vote) compared with Fred Nile's Christian Democrats (2.5 per cent). So it looks like the result here will be 3 Labor and 3 Liberal, whereas the Poll Bludger had predicted 3 Liberal, 2 Labor and 1 Greens. Victoria: A not dissimilar outcome to New South Wales, barring a turning of the tables for Family First (1.9 per cent) and the Christian Democrats (0.3 per cent). That leaves Labor (a 0.57 surplus over the second quota) competing with the Greens (0.61 of a quota) for the final place. In this contest, Labor will get preferences from Family First (0.13 of a quota), Family First, the DLP and Liberals for Forests (all of whom got 0.13 per cent of a quota) while the Greens will have to make do with the mildly pitiful Democrats (who also got 0.13 per cent of a quota). Maybe the micro-parties will make a difference, but the Poll Bludger's best guess is that here too the seats will split evenly between Labor and Liberal. Queensland: On the basis of the Poll Bludger's slightly rough and amateurish assessment, it appears that Hetty Johnston might actually get up, producing a result of 3 Coalition, 2 Labor and 1 Hetty Johnston. As for the make-up of the three Coalition members, it does appear that the third Liberal candidate, Russell Trood, has the edge over the National Party's Barnaby Joyce. CALL OF THE BOARD In keeping with the spirit of self-flagellation that makes Australian democracy what it is, the Poll Bludger calls to public attention the various wrong calls he made in his electorate assessments. Greenway (Labor 1.5%): The Poll Bludger defied conventional wisdom to an extent by giving Labor the benefit of the doubt in the seat, and while he may yet be vindicated, Liberal candidate Louise Markus led by 0.53 per cent at the close of counting. McMillan (Notional Liberal 2.9%): Only when the margin is over 5 per cent does the Poll Bludger feel cause for embarrassment. His tip was that the advantages of incumbency would allow Christian Zahra to make up the 2.9 per cent gap that an unfavourable redistribution had burdened him with, but he was quite incorrect and Liberal Russell Broadbent, who lost the seat to Zahra in 1998, recovered it with a margin of 5.3 per cent at the close of counting. Herbert (Liberal 1.5%): That Labor's position could hardly be any worse in Queensland was a widespread item of conventional wisdom, and a lot of media chatter suggested that the Townsville-based seat of Herbert was a particularly vulnerable seat for the Coalition. The value of conventional wisdom was clearly demonstrated here with a 5.45 per cent swing to Liberal incumbent Peter Lindsay, who ended the evening on a margin of 7 per cent. Labor candidate Anita Phillips will no doubt be spending the evening rueing her decision to abandon her seat in state parliament to tilt at this particular windmill. Moreton (Liberal 2.6%): A lot of late-campaign media chatter suggested Labor was hopeful and the Liberals worried. In the event Liberal incumbent Gary Hardgrave picked up a 1.24 per cent swing to lead by 3.8 per cent at the close of counting. Stirling (Labor 1.6%): Having lived there for the first 20-odd years of his so-called life, the Poll Bludger ought to know a thing or two about this Perth northern suburbs seat. Instead he withdrew his call that the Liberals would gain the seat on Wednesday. Why? Because state Liberal Party director Paul Everingham said so. Slap, slap, slap. At the close of counting Liberal candidate Michael Keenan led by 1.58 per cent. Adelaide (Labor 0.6%): The only seat the Poll Bludger wrongly picked for the Coalition, Labor challenger Kate Ellis ended the evening with an unsurmountable 2.09 per cent lead over Liberal incumbent Trish Worth. Adelaide voters appear to have dispensed with the wrong Trish. Wakefield (Notional Labor 1.5%): Liberal David Fawcett led by just 0.63 per cent at the close of counting, so this one was forgiveable. But it should be noted here that Labor member David Cox, also tipped by the Poll Bludger to hold, leads by just 0.28 per cent in Kingston. Braddon (Labor 6.o%): This one was much agonised over, but it seemed sensible to err on the side of conservatism. Instead Liberal challenger Mark Baker led Labor incumbent Sid Sidebottom by 1.4 per cent at the close of play. Solomon (Liberal 0.1%): The Poll Bludger is happy to admit that he has a fair bit to learn about Darwin, whose residents voted for Country Liberal Party member David Tollner in sufficient numbers to give him a 2.02 per cent lead at stumps. All that said, 141 (perhaps as much as 143) out of 150 is not too bad an effort and, relatively speaking, a slightly better effort than his call for the Queensland election in February. At this rate, a perfect showing can be expected some time around 2010. A LATE POLL AND ONE CHANGE OF MIND The West Australian today carries Westpoll results from five marginal Western Australian seats. No seat-by-seat breakdown could be located (and the samples were only 200 each) but the Sydney Morning Herald reports the aggregate outcome was 43 per cent Liberal, 35 per cent Labor and 5 per cent Greens. In accordance with the Poll Bludger's existing assessments, pollsters Patterson Market Research concluded the Liberals would pick up Hasluck and the result would otherwise be status quo. Contrary to earlier promises the Poll Bludger has found only one seat to withdraw as a gain for Labor, that being the New South Wales central coast seat of Dobell which has an ageing demographic that Medicare Gold does not appear to have been successful in winning over. The Runs on the Board tally is now final and definitive. THE SENATE AND THE GREENS There were so many things the Poll Bludger meant to deal with before now, so apologies to those who have already done their bit for democracy without having been privy to the wisdom contained herein. However there are things that should be on the record before the polling booths close shop at 6pm this evening, so for the benefit of posterity here are some last-minute odds-and-ends. Firstly, the contest for the territories' Senate seats has not been given the late-campaign treatment despite rash promises to the contrary. However there is little to add here to what was already said in the pre-campaign Senate election guide (updating this with the information contained in recent postings was another thing that was sadly left undone). The Northern Territory contest does not warrant discussion; to the Australian Capital Territory may be added Antony Green's assessment that there will need to be a combined Liberal-plus-Christian Democratic (that being the only party giving them preference) vote of 33.3 per cent, suggesting more Canberrans vote above the line than the Poll Bludger would have guessed. The other race will be between the Greens and the second Labor candidate, with the Greens needing to outpoll Labor's surplus over their 33.3 per cent quota. The Poll Bludger's final predictions: New South Wales: Coalition 3, Labor 2, Greens 1. Victoria Coalition 2, Labor 2, Greens 1, Family First 1. Queensland Coalition 3, Labor 2, Greens 1. Western Australia Coalition 3, Labor 2, Greens 1. South Australia Coalition 3, Labor 2, Democrats 1. Tasmania Liberal 2, Labor 2, Greens 1, Family First 1. The Coalition will thus be two seats short of its "magic 38" unless one takes the view that Family First (two seats) are their willing lackeys. The Greens will add five seats to their existing two, and while the Democrats will be pleased with anything they can get, on this assessment they will still be down from seven (eight including Meg Lees, who has no chance) to five. Also with no chance is One Nation's Len Harris, while the other cross-bencher, Tasmanian independent Brian Harradine, is going quietly. Another aspect as yet unmentioned is the prospect of the Greens winning seats off Labor in the House of Representatives. There is no reason to think that Cunningham, won by them at a by-election in 2002, will not follow the usual pattern of the quirky by-election result that is corrected at the following general election. Their real chances are in Sydney and the neighbouring electorate of Grayndler, plus Melbourne. The threat facing Labor is that the Greens will absorb enough votes from the declining Democrats and formerly Liberal-voting "doctors' wives" to overcome the Liberal candidates, most of whose supporters will put Labor last. Ever prone to optimism, the Greens are loudly hopeful of winning all three while holding Cunningham. However, the 2001 result in seats like these saw a substantial shift to the Greens due to the Kim Beazley Opposition's perceived complicity in the Tampa episode. If anything those votes are likely to drift back to Labor this time – failing that, they should at least hold their ground. That will give them a high enough primary vote to hold back the tide for Lindsay Tanner in Melbourne and Anthony Albanese in Grayndler. In Sydney however, Labor's vote was 44.3 per cent in 2001 compared with 49.1 per cent in Grayndler and 47.6 in Melbourne, which are both close enough to the half-way mark that preference leakage can be relied upon to do the rest. Here the Greens have two hurdles to jump – overcoming the Liberals, who polled 30.1 per cent last time compared with a combined 25.6 per cent for the Democrats, and then hoping that there aren't enough preferences leaking from Liberal to Labor to save the day for Tanya Plibersek. It's certainly possible, but the Poll Bludger's inkling is that Plibersek's strident leftism combined with inner-city enthusiasm for Mark Latham will see her over the line. The Poll Bludger's remaining tasks for the day as follows: have breakfast, vote (no editorial direction here I'm afraid), read the morning papers, probably deliver a seat or two back to the Coalition on the Runs on the Board tally, give the election guide one last update and head off to the National Tally Room to watch the action unfold. LATE POLLING Taken together, there's an impressive symmetry between three of the late opinion polls - Newspoll has it at 50-50, Galaxy have the Coalition ahead 52-48, while ACNielsen continues its recent trend of stronger showings for the Coalition with a remarkable 54-46 split and Coalition primary support at 49 per cent. Only Roy Morgan bucks the trend, reverting to its traditional ways with a 51-49 lead for Labor, though the state of play in the marginals is such that such a result might not win them the election. Yesterday the Courier Mail ran TNS polls for Queensland marginal seats (sample sizes about 300 each) that had the Coalition leading well in every one - by 56-44 in Herbert, 61-39 in Hinkler, 56-44 in Longman, 59-41 in Dickson, 53-47 in Moreton. They also covered Petrie but appeared not to provide a result, although Liberal member Teresa Gambaro was apparently in the clear. The Gold Coast Bulletin also ran a poll for the Brisbane Labor seat of Rankin that had Craig Emerson set to hold on with 42 per cent of the primary vote (after distribution of the undecided) against 40 per cent for the Liberals. They also spread their tentacles across the border with a poll of the New South Wales border seat of Richmond that had Nationals member Larry Anthony on 42 per cent (again after distribution of the undecided), Labor's Justine Elliot on 36 per cent and the Greens on 15 per cent, which would give Labor a slight edge in a seat they desperately need to win. Sample sizes here were around 450. THE TREES FROM THE WOOD This week's competing forestry policies have delivered an unambiguous win for the Coalition in terms of the media contest, with Dennis Atkins offering a particularly noteworthy assessment in Wednedsday's Courier Mail: It looks like Howard has performed a successful rope-a-dope strategy on Parliament's most avid Muhammad Ali fan, Mark Latham. Howard let a story run from early on in this election capaign that he was going to come over all green for Tasmanian forests – even to the extent of locking up 290,000ha, as the ABC breathlessly reported three weeks ago. But Howard was always careful to keep his forestry powder dry … Howard's game plan was for the Labor leader to jump first. A cat-and-mouse game continued for the next few weeks but Howard refused to blink, despite the urging of some of his colleagues who have a stgrohng Greens presence in their electorates. The real political consequence of a Tasmanian forests policy was always going to affect Labor more than Liberal, as we've seen by the brawling and splits of the past two days. Howard was able to make three succinct points: this was a sell-out of workers, proof that Labor was in bed with the Greens, and it was financially irresponsible. However, it's also possible that the controversy has provided concentrated benefits for the Coalition against diffuse benefits for Labor and that the reason the former have attracted more attention is that angry forestry workers and militant unionists embracing the Prime Minister make for better copy than the deliberations of late-minute deciders in metropolitan seats. But it's here that Labor will be hoping for its dividend, as they now offer a product differentiation that could prove very appealing to young voters who are over-represented among those who do not engage until late in the campaign. Here it may be worth noting the following assessment on the state of play among young voters from Rod Tiffen at Australian Policy Online: The polls tend to under-sample the young, not least because they are less often at home. Polling organizations are well aware of this, and weight their findings accordingly, but one suspects there is less reliability in recording the views of younger voters. This is borne out by the greater volatility over time in the findings for polls in this age group. This election also has the greatest age difference between leaders in living memory. Of all recent democratic elections, the coming Australian election is most like the 1992 US election between old, established George Bush senior and the young and relatively unknown Bill Clinton. In that battle between leaders from different generations the American punditocracy, most of whom were older than the Democratic candidate, underestimated Clinton and his appeals to the electorate. Having an older leader against a younger contender also highlights an asymmetry in the way commentators test leadership capabilities. It is considered quite legitimate to question the experience of the younger contender, but courtesy demands that elders be treated with respect. As long as the older leader is not obviously infirm it is considered bad taste to probe whether he is still up to the job. Old age, as such, will never lose votes, but a sense of not being on the current generation's wavelength will. Although the Liberals think the difference in age and experience counts in their favour, it is not clear that this is so, especially for voters younger than Latham. It is arguable that it may be in Labor's favour among younger age groups to sharpen the lines of generational difference. That, at least, will be the Poll Bludger's rationale if his prediction of a Coalition victory – which is in little danger of being withdrawn before Saturday – does not play out. For the time being the smart money says Labor has been outmanoeuvered and that the Coalition goes into the election with a decisive edge. Today's lesson ends with some miscellaneous electorate updates: Richmond (Nationals 1.7%): For reasons best known to herself, Labor challenger Justine Elliot called on John Anderson and Larry Anthony to apologise after the National Party's Western Australian website was "infiltrated" with "explicit messages about children". Her attempt to get Queensland independent Senate candidate and anti-child abuse campaigner Hetty Johnston to endorse her concerns backfired when Johnston said she had "the utmost respect for Larry Anthony" and felt it was "really cruel and damaging to the cause of child protection to play such trivial games". Gippsland (Nationals 2.6%): CFMEU-backed independent candidate Peter Kelly - "predicted to receive more than 10 per cent of the local vote", according to Brad Norington of The Australian – has registered his protest against Labor's forestry policy by directing preferences to National Party incumbent Peter McGauran. Various seats in Queensland: Michael McKenna of the Courier Mail reports that while Herbert is "still within grasp of Labor", "the Liberals believe it is 'relatively safe' given Prime Minister John Howard's popularity among the high military population". The report also contradicts other intelligence suggesting the Coalition is safe in the Bundaberg/Gladstone seat of Hinkler, which National Party sources are apparently describing as "line-ball", and says that other Brisbane marginals – Longman, Dickson and Bowman for Liberal, Brisbane, Rankin and Bonner for Labor – will stay with the incumbents. Reportedly, Labor has been concentrating its advertising on what it perceives to be its best hopes, Moreton and Petrie - "Liberal strategists concede Moreton is 'in trouble', more recent polling shows that Petrie has rebounded in the past week". LAST BUT NOT LEAST The Poll Bludger's series on the various Senate contests today brings us to Tasmania. For those unfamiliar with the rules, we begin with an easy-to-follow guide to how your preferences will trickle down if you vote above the line. Liberal: Family First; Christian Democratic; Democrats; Shayne Murphy; Greens; Labor. Labor: Shayne Murphy; Family First; Greens; Democrats; Christian Democratic; Liberal. Greens: Democrats; Shayne Murphy; Labor; Liberal; Christian Democratic; Family First. Democrats: Shayne Murphy; Family First; Greens; Labor; Liberal; Christian Democratic. Family First: Christian Democratic; Shayne Murphy; Labor; Democrats; Liberal; Greens. Christian Democratic: Family First; Shayne Murphy; Liberal; Labor; Democrats; Greens. Shayne Murphy: Family First; Labor; Liberal; Democrats; Christian Democratic; Greens. Citizens Electoral Council: Greens; Shayne Murphy; Democrats; Christian Democratic; Labor; Family First; Liberal. In 2001, Bob Brown got very near to a full quota with 13.8 per cent of the primary vote and minor party preferences did the rest. The Democrats and One Nation fell well short of both the Labor and Liberal surplus over the second quota, leaving the major parties competing for the final seat. The Liberals went into this contest with a slightly superior primary vote (38.8 per cent compared with 36.8 per cent for Labor) and were ahead of Labor on One Nation's ticket. But Labor would still have won, narrowly, if the Democrats had given them full preferences instead of splitting them between the two major parties. Interestingly, Tasmania is the only state where they are not doing so again this time, instead favouring Labor. The Greens should do at least as they did in 2001, leaving Labor, Liberal and another minor party candidate competing for sixth place, which will most likely be Family First. It is clear that Tasmania has been excepted from a number of mainland preference deals, as the Democrats have been frozen out by Family First as well as the CDP. The Democrats can retain a faint hope that the Greens might do well enough to deliver them their surplus, providing they stay in the hunt long enough to collect it. Shayne Murphy, who was elected as a Labor Senator in 1998 and made an indulgent decision to switch to the cross-benches, will need to outperform both the Democrats and the combined Family First-CDP vote, which doesn't seem likely. However, his preferences should ensure that the CDP ends up behind Family First, who will end up absorbing the votes of all three. Should that account for the Democrats, they will then get their preferences as well. If that puts them ahead of one of the remaining major party candidates, their preferences will put them ahead of the other and into the Senate. As for the major parties, the Liberals will need a much higher vote than they achieved in 2001 if they are to again win the last seat. On that occasion they ended up with the 3.3 per cent One Nation vote and half of the Democrats' 4.6 per cent - this time they will have to make do with the CDP. That's at least a 5 per cent handicap straight off the bat, so the recent controversies over forestry policy had better kick in hard if they're going to make it up. The Poll Bludger's tip: Liberal 2, Labor 2, Greens 1, Family First 1. Here's what the others think. Charles Richardson at Crikey notes that "what makes Tasmania difficult is that its voters do not necessarily follow the tickets. In every other state, well over 90% of voters vote 'above the line', so their preferences are distributed automatically. In Tasmania last time it was only 80%, and much less for the minor parties - for the Greens, an extraordinarily low 57%". Richardson says Shayne Murphy can win if he can poll "something over 3 per cent" and concludes that he will, if only because he has been "itching to say something controversial". Malcolm Mackerras doesn't seem interested in the idea of a second seat being won by a minor party or independent, saying the last seat is 60 per cent likely to go to Labor and 40 per cent to Liberal. As for Antony Green, the ABC website is "temporarily unavailable" due to "high traffic". I'll get back to you later with that one. INTELLIGENCE BRIEFINGS Some late indications on what's happening on the ground, including a number of polls conducted for small newspapers which may or may not be reliable, but all power to them for having a go. Hinkler (Qld, Nationals 2.3%): Alan Ramsey of the Sydney Morning Herald reports that this is "the only Liberal (sic) marginal in the entire country Labor has written off, for internal reasons". Those reasons presumably relate to their twice-unsuccessful candidate Cheryl Dorron, installed by an affirmative action ruling after losing the preselection ballot. Ramsey also reports that "the Government is optimistic it has regained ground in Adelaide but remain concerned about Queensland, both around Brisbane and on the north coast". Hasluck (WA, Labor 1.8%), Stirling (WA, Labor 1.6%) and Swan (WA, Labor 2.1%): Paul Everingham, director of the WA Liberal Party, told Amanda Banks of The Australian on Monday that "we are right in there in Hasluck, but it is going to be difficult for us in Stirling and Swan". Perth academics Harry Phillips and David Black are quoted saying Labor had "gained ground" during the campaign in these seats. The Poll Bludger will take their word for it, and has accordingly returned Stirling to the Labor side of the ledger, cancelling out his recent change of heart in Bass. Herbert (Qld, Liberal 1.5%): The Townsville Bulletin ran a poll from a sample of 472 on Saturday which found Liberal member Peter Lindsay and Labor candidate Anita Phillips tied on 38 per cent of the primary vote, or a bit over 41 per cent after distribution of the 8 per cent undecided. With the Greens on about 8 per cent this would give Phillips a fairly comfortable win. La Trobe (Vic, Liberal 3.7%): Newspapers in the suburban Leader group have run a poll conducted by Oz Info of 300 voters which shows Liberal candidate Jason Wood leading Labor's Susan Davies 52-48 on two-party preferred. The pollsters could only get an answer from three-quarters of respondents, which can usually be taken as a sign of inexperience. Farrer (NSW, Liberal 13.1%) and Indi (Vic, Liberal 10.7%): The Border Mail carried pointless but well-meaning polls of 600 voters from each of these two seats that showed Liberal members Sussan Ley (56 per cent of the primary vote) and Sophie Panopoulos (59 per cent) with predictably little to worry about. THE WOOD FROM THE TREES Appearances in the media suggest that Labor's qualified plan to end old growth logging in Tasmania has misfired, having created uncertainty among those employed by the timber industry without offering assurances solid enough to convince environmental groups. I'll take these on one at a time, so look forward to a sequel to this posting later today or tomorrow. For now it's time for a late-campaign visit to Tasmania, home to five seats that have all been held by Labor since 1998. Two of these, Denison and Franklin, are too urban, green and pro-Labor to enter our calculations. Patricia Karvelas and Brad Norington of The Australian reported yesterday that "most of the timber workers are in the northern and north-western seats of Lyons and Braddon ("central" would be nearer the mark than "northern" in Lyons' case - PB). The most marginal of Tasmania's seats is Bass, held by 2.1 per cent, where most timber workers are employed in softwood plantations and two softwood mills, unaffected by any stop to old-growth logging". There is an obvious precedent for Tasmanian voters punishing Labor for perceived pandering to mainland environmentalists, that being the 1983 election that brought the Hawke Government to power. On that occasion Hawke Labor's opposition to the Franklin Dam helped the Liberals retain all five seats with increased majorities even as their mainland colleagues were dropping like flies. But a lot has changed in Tasmania since then, and there is now a burgeoning environmental constituency that hardly appeared to exist in 1983. The Greens now threaten to poll over 20 per cent in Denison where the Liberals these days are nowhere in sight (notwithstanding the bizarre delusions of Tasmanian Opposition Leader Rene Hidding). They are also a factor in Bass, where they managed well over 10 per cent in the main booths of Launceston at the 2001 election. The backlash will hit much harder in Braddon and Lyons, and the question is whether Labor's margins of 6.0 and 8.2 per cent are enough to absorb the shock. Normally it would be unthinkable for an opposition to lose seats held by margins of this order, but there are historical reasons to think these two are different. Labor built its strength here on the back of big swings in the GST elections of 1998 (10 per cent in Braddon and 9.3 per cent in Lyons) and 1993 (5.4 per cent in Braddon and 5.6 per cent in Lyons), which largely stuck the next time round. This suggests that Labor has had a lot of soft support in these seats from voters with very sensitive hip-pocket nerves. Despite everything he has just said, the Poll Bludger has withdrawn only Bass as a Labor retain in the election guide, since it was teetering on the brink already. With the Liberals yet to launch their own Tasmanian forests policy, Braddon is still on notice. Taking a step back, it appears the response to Medicare Gold has not justified any wholesale shift in Labor's favour, but there are still a number of seats on both sides of the ledger that warrant careful monitoring in the coming days. BOUND FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA Today the Poll Bludger will wrap up his Senate coverage and devote the remaining precious few days to the real action. What follows is South Australia, with Tasmania and the territories to come this evening. First, the grouped ticket preferences: Labor: Liberals for Forests; Greens; Democrats; Family First; Liberal; One Nation. Liberal: Family First; Liberal for Forests; Democrats; Greens; Labor; One Nation. Nationals: Liberal; Family First; Greens; Democrats; Liberals for Forests; Labor; One Nation. Greens: Liberals for Forests; Democrats; Labor; Liberal; Family First; One Nation. Democrats: Liberals for Forests; Family First; Greens; half-Labor, half-Liberal; One Nation. One Nation: Liberals for Forests; Labor; Liberal; Family First; Democrats; Greens. Family First: Democrats; Liberals for Forests; Liberal; One Nation; Labor; Greens. Australian Progressive Alliance: Democrats; Liberals for Forests; Family First; One Nation; Greens; half-Liberal, half-Labor. Socialist Alliance: Greens; Labor; Democrats; Liberals for Forests; Liberal; Family First; One Nation. Ex-Service, Service and Veterans Party: Liberals for Forests; Democrats; Liberal; Labor; Greens; Family First; One Nation. Liberals for Forests (ticket one): Labor; Democrats; One Nation; Greens; Family First; Liberal. Liberals for Forests (ticket two): Greens; One Nation; Democrats; Family First; Liberal; Labor. The Liberals scored an easy three quotas in 2001 and only if they lose a substantial proportion of the vote to Family First will they be in danger of failing to do so this time. Labor didn't come close and it will take a very fortuitous arrangement of preferences to put them in contention for a third seat. An interesting contest looms between Family First and the Democrats to see who picks up the preferences of the other, this being the strongest state for both parties. If it's the Democrats they will then need to overtake the Greens and make it home on their preferences. The Greens will get a boost in that they are very likely to do better than Labor's surplus over their second quota, in which case they will receive these preferences and then also those of the Democrats if they can outperform the Democrats/Family First. It's not altogether out of the question that Democrats or Family First can deprive the Liberals of a third quota while the Greens do the same for Labor, but a more likely result is three Liberal and two Labor. In this case the other place would go to either the Greens or the winner out of Family First and the Democrats - bearing in mind that the latter two would get an extra boost from the Liberals surplus to their third quota in this scenario. If Labor's vote can lift enough that they are still in the hunt at this point, they could hold a vague hope that Family First preferences might put them over the Greens. Pressed for a decision, the Poll Bludger's money is on the Democrats. Here's what others think. Malcolm Mackerras: "My prediction is that the Liberal Party will win three seats, Labor two and Family First one". Charles Richardson at Crikey says "ironically, the backlash against the Democrats from their preference deal with the fundamentalists (i.e. Family First) may be the very thing that drags down their vote and allows their preferences to put Family First within reach of a seat", and he countenances a range of possibilities including Family First winning a seat at the Liberals' expense, and even an unprecedented outcome where both the Democrats and the Greens win seats. But he ultimately favours a more "boring" outcome of three Liberal, two Labor and one Green. Antony Green alone considers Meg Lees worth a mention, but sees a contest of two halves in which the Liberals and Family First compete for a third seat, while on "the other side of the ledger" are Labor, Greens, Democats and also Family First if the Liberals win their third seat. He notes that "the lower the Labor vote, the more likely that Labor preferences will elect the Greens. The higher the Labor vote, the more likely the Democrats can stay ahead of the Greens". NEWSPOLL, MORGAN, GALAXY Tomorrow's Newspoll has the Coalition leading on two-party preferred for the first time year, not counting the ridiculously quirky result of May 28-30. That lead however is as narrow as they come, being 50.5-49.5. The 2.5 per cent shift to the Coalition from last week is in contrast to the other weekly polls which showed a boost to Labor from their campaign launch, but in ACNielsen's case this was coming off what was clearly a rogue result. Morgan today released its weekly face-to-face poll which returned Labor to its customary position lead, although 51.5-48.5 is still less than what they're used to from this organisation. Also today the News Limited tabloids carried the third fortnightly poll of the campaign from Galaxy Research, who have turned in remarkably consistent results. This poll has the Coalition ahead 52-48, an identical result to ACNielsen, but they seem to have done inordinately well out of minor preferences - at 45 per cent, their primary vote is at the lower end of what would be considered a winnable position for them. BACK TO EARTH WITH ACNIELSEN ACNielsen today offers the first comprehensive poll taken entirely after both parties' launches. It finds the Coalition ahead 52-48 on two-party preferred and, in keeping with the organisation's other recent results, with a striking 48 per cent on the primary vote. The poll apparently includes a question on Senate voting intention that shows the Greens on 12 per cent and the Democrats on 5 per cent, but until the full report is available little can be added to what the Sydney Morning Herald has to say. THE TOP RIGHT-HAND CORNER AND THE BIT ON THE LEFT Having dragged his heels in running through the various Senate contests, the Poll Bludger today offers two for the price of one - first Queensland, then Western Australia. As usual, we begin with a look at where your preferences will go if you, like most people with normal lives to lead, vote above the line. Attempts by various parties to obscure what they are up to by submitting needlessly complicated tickets don't cut it here - this is based entirely on the order of the candidates that matter. Labor: Greens; Hetty Johnston; Democrats; Family First; Liberals for Forests; Liberal; Nationals; One Nation; Pauline Hanson. Liberal: Nationals; Family First; Hetty Johnston; Liberals for Forests; Democrats; Greens; Labor; Pauline Hanson; One Nation. Nationals: Liberal; Family First; Hetty Johnston; Liberals for Forests; Democrats; Greens; Labor; One Nation. Greens: Liberals for Forests; Democrats; Labor; Hetty Johnston; Liberal; Nationals; Pauline Hanson; Family First; One Nation. Democrats: Hetty Johnston; Family First; Liberals for Forests; Greens; half-Liberal, half-Labor; Nationals; One Nation; Pauline Hanson. Pauline Hanson: One Nation; Hetty Johnston; Family First; Liberals for Forests; Liberal; Nationals; Democrats; Labor; Greens. One Nation: Pauline Hanson; Hetty Johnston; Liberals for Forests; Family First; Nationals; Democrats; Greens; Liberal; Labor. Hetty Johnston: Democrats; Family First; Liberals for Forests; Pauline Hanson; One Nation; Greens; Labor; Liberal; Nationals. Family First: Hetty Johnston; Democrats; Nationals; Liberal; Pauline Hanson; One Nation; Labor; Liberals for Forests; Greens. Socialist Alliance: Greens; Labor; Democrats; Hetty Johnston; Liberals for Forests; Family First; Liberal; Nationals; One Nation; Pauline Hanson. Liberals for Forests: Labor; Hetty Johnston; Democrats; Liberal; Family First; Nationals; Greens; Pauline Hanson; One Nation. Fishing Party: One Nation; Nationals; Pauline Hanson; Hetty Johnston; Family First; Liberal; Labor; Liberals for Forests; Democrats; Greens. H.E.M.P.: Greens; Labor; Democrats; Liberal; Liberals for Forests; Nationals; Family First; Hetty Johnston; One Nation; Pauline Hanson. Non-Custodial Parents Party: Hetty Johnston; Pauline Hanson; One Nation; Family First; Liberals for Forests; Nationals; Liberal; Labor; Greens; Democrats. As always, Labor and Liberal are each assured of two places. The third place-holders on the Liberal and Nationals tickets, Russell Trood and Barnaby Joyce, face their own battle to be the Coalition's third contender. In 2001, 2.9 per cent of the vote separated the Nationals' Ron Boswell from the Liberal candidate (Russell Trood once again) which was given another 1.1 per cent of padding when preferences from Call to Australia, who aren't running this time, went to Boswell. This time the Nationals will have to settle for the Fishing Party. Morgan's Senate poll had them on just 3 per cent, while a survey of 929 voters on the Gold Coast (once a strong area for the National Party) published by the Gold Coast Weekend Bulletin on September 25 had them on 5 per cent. While it is true that the Nationals traditionally do better than the polls suggest, the Liberals seem well in the hunt to displace them. Hetty Johnston, Family First and the sentimental favourite of every psephologist, Senator John Cherry of the Australian Democrats, have emerged as a mutually-preferencing voting bloc that will put whoever emerges first out of the three into serious contention. Johnston has a head start here because each of the other two has her ahead of the other, while the opposite is true of Family First. There's a good chance that whoever makes it through could edge the Coalition out of a third place and make it home on their surplus. Pauline Hanson's only chance of winning serious preferences is if she can outperform this three-party bloc, in which case she will pick up Hetty Johnston's vote. Hanson would also get preferences from the Non-Custodial Parents Party and also the Fishing Party if the Nationals were knocked out, but would need to at least match her 10 per cent vote from 2001 to stand much of a chance. The Greens should be able to knock Labor's third candidate out of contention, but since Labor's surplus to their second quota was just 3.2 per cent in 2001, it may not deliver them enough preferences to put them over the line. The combined vote for the Greens and their preference-feeders, Socialist Alliance and Help End Marijuana Prohibition, will need to be about 11 per cent. For what it's worth the aforementioned Morgan and Gold Coast polls had the Greens on 8.5 and 11 per cent respectively. Here's what others think. Malcolm Mackerras: "In Queensland, my belief is that the Democrats will retain their existing seat (John Cherry) while the Nationals will take the seat of the Hansonite, Len Harris. My predicted distribution for the Coalition is two Liberal and one National. But it is possible there could be three Liberals, with the National Party missing out. I hold out virtually no hope for the either of the famous Queensland female Senate candidates, Pauline Hanson (Group K) or Hetty Johnston (Group O). While each has her own box above the line, the lack of description for that box is a major disadvantage". Charles Richardson at Crikey thinks it "a real lottery. My best guess is 2 Liberal, 2 ALP, 1 National and 1 Green, but the Democrats and Hetty Johnston are both in with a chance, and a rough shot for the famous red-headed one". Antony Green declares it "very difficult to work out" but eventually agrees with Richardson. The Poll Bludger will go out on a limb and predict three Liberal, two Labor and one Greens. My basis for tipping a National Party failure is that the Boswell-versus-Hanson contest attracted a great deal of attention to the National Party and their popular incumbent in 2001, whereas the Nationals are fielding an unknown this time and Hanson is not being taken as seriously. Over in the west: Labor: Greens; Democrats; Family First; Liberals for Forests; Liberal; One Nation. Liberal: Family First; Liberals for Forests; Democrats; Greens; Labor; One Nation. Nationals: Liberal; Greens; Democrats; Family First; Labor; One Nation. Greens: Democrats; Labor; Liberals for Forests; Liberal; Family First; One Nation. Democrats: Liberals for Forests; Family First; Greens; half Liberal, half Labor; One Nation. Liberals for Forests: Democrats; Greens; Liberal; One Nation; Family First; Labor. Family First: Democrats; Liberal; Liberals for Forests; Labor; Greens. One Nation: Family First; Liberals for Forests; Democrats; Liberal; Labor; Greens. Christian Democratic: Family First; Liberal; Liberals for Forests; One Nation; half-Labor, half-Greens; Democrats. Peculiarities include the Nationals favouring the Greens over the Democrats and Family First, and a complicated effort from the Christian Democrats that appears to betray embarrassment that half of their preferences will go to the Greens' Rachel Siewert ahead of Labor's Emi Barzotto. The Poll Bludger doesn't care to waste too much time on this one because he's very confident the result will be three Liberal, two Labor and one Greens. However, Charles Richardson thinks that "Democrats, One Nation and Family First, together with some preferences from micro-parties and surplus from a major party, might put together a quota between them", potentially electing either Family First or the Democrats. EXAMINER EXAMINED For the second time in the campaign the Launceston Examiner has run results from a poll conducted by EMRS covering about 200 voters in each of Tasmania's five electorates and again the results are bad for Labor, perhaps implausibly so. The following table details the latest figures (which come from the days before Labor's campaign launch on Wednesday) with results from the survey of three weeks earlier in brackets.
The Lyons result can be safely written off but it could be that Labor will indeed have their margins garnished here and in Braddon, although it's unlikely to be enough to cost them the seats. Bass on the other hand is looking as interesting as ever and will be the subject of intense scrutiny when the first results come in on Saturday, which will happen earlier than for mainland electorates since Tasmania is the only state to have already begun daylight savings. Also today, The Sunday Age carries an ACNielsen poll of two Victorian seats from a sample of 1013. La Trobe is a Liberal-held seat with a retiring member and a margin of 3.7 per cent, while McMillan is held by Labor's Christian Zahra but was made notionally Liberal with a margin of 2.9 per cent following the redistribution. In keeping with the Poll Bludger's current assessments for these seats, Labor is narrowly ahead in McMillan (52-48 - Coalition 45 per cent, Labor 42, Greens 7) and slightly behind in La Trobe (49-51 - Coalition 47 per cent, Labor 35, Greens 13). The latter result suggests a slightly excessive flow of minor party preferences to Labor. PARRAMATTA AND EDEN-MONARO (AGAIN) (PLUS OTHERS) A Taverner poll in today's Sun-Herald is one of the few polls of the campaign to show Labor looking good in decisive marginal electorates. The samples are small, but the poll has the virtue of having been taken on Wednesday and Thursday evening, after the Labor campaign launch. The seats in question are the New South Wales Liberal-held marginals of Eden-Monaro, Parramatta and Dobell along with the endangered Labor seat of Greenway. The first two of these were covered by yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald and Canberra Times polls but the Sun-Herald offers contrasting results, with Labor leading 60-40 in Parramatta and 52-48 in Eden-Monaro (bearing in mind the margins of error would be in the order of 10 per cent). The disparity between the Parramatta results is a bit alarming but ACNielsen, with a sample of 1002, would have to be given the greater weight. Pooling the Eden-Monaro result with that from yesterday's equally small sample poll in the Canberra Times suggests a very slight Liberal lead, in keeping with general expectations. It appears that Taverner's results from Eden-Monaro and Parramatta are from samples of about 300 while the results from Dobell and Greenway, where Labor respectively leads 54-46 and 51-49, are derived from 100 voters who are being tracked throughout the campaign. It may not be much to go on but these results are the first evidence that Medicare Gold has hit its mark, as the same voters were favouring the Liberals 51-49 and 54-46 three weeks earlier. The Poll Bludger has thus been fortified in his current assessment that Labor will respectively gain and hold these seats. Also today Newspoll offers its collective survey of 12 picked marginal electorates which, in contrast to their recent aggregate polling, shows the Coalition leading 52-48. The poll, like Taverner's (which covered three of the same seats), was conducted on Wednesday and Thursday evening. In "late" news, The Advertiser yesterday ran a poll of 686 voters in the marginal Labor Adelaide seat of Kingston. In contrast to their polling in nearby Liberal seats, this showed Labor well ahead by 56-44 on two-party preferred. Primary vote after distribution of the 14 per cent undecided: Labor 45.5 per cent, Liberal 37, Greens 7, Family First 4.5, Democrats 3.5. PARRAMATTA, EDEN-MONARO AND ELSEWHERE Two polls taken after the Liberal launch on Sunday and before Labor's effort on Wednesday suggest Labor will need every bit of the bounce that Medicare Gold can offer them if they are to win two vital New South Wales seats. Parramatta is one electorate where Labor had been feeling confident, thanks in large part to the misadventures of Liberal member Ross Cameron. But today the Sydney Morning Herald carries a poll from ACNielsen that shows Cameron with no less than 49 per cent of the primary vote (in keeping with their recent pattern of remarkably high primary results for the Coalition) and a 53-47 lead on two-party preferred, despite recording "the highest recognition rating ACNielsen has recorded in an electorate this election". In fact, "of those people who know who he is, 54 per cent approve of the job he is doing". The sample is a substantial 1002, high enough for the report to feel comfortable discussing the margin of error (an all too rare feature of Australian opinion poll reporting, as discussed by an excited Terry McCrann of the Herald Sun). In the equally important seat of Eden-Monaro, a commenter at Christopher Sheil's Back Pages reports that a poll in today's Canberra Times has Liberal member Gary Nairn leading Labor's Kel Watt 54-46. More bad news for Labor with Roy Morgan's weekly phone survey, which continued to charter new territory for the organisation in finding a further increase in the Coalition's lead, now at 52.5-47.5. Unfortunately, ACNielsen are not forthcoming with a full national poll this Saturday. BEHIND IN HINDMARSH If Medicare Gold really is going to swing older voters, the one electorate where the impact should be clearest is the coastal Adelaide seat of Hindmarsh, ranked number one in the country in the table in the posting below. Today The Advertiser (print version only, it appears - thanks to reader Phil Robins for passing on the figures) carries a poll of this electorate taken a few hours (too few, perhaps) after the package was launched on Wednesday and it shows the Liberals with a very handy lead in a seat where their departing member Chris Gallus was reckoned likely to take about 3 per cent of her personal vote with her into retirement. Primary vote figures are Liberal 46 per cent, Labor 36, Greens 5 and Democrats 2, with Liberal leading 53-47 on two-party preferred. BROKEN CIRCUITS The Poll Bludger's Runs on the Board tally has remained stuck in a very narrow band since week two of the campaign, when the Coalition opened up a slim lead as polling trends suggested soft support for Labor in decisive Queensland marginals. There were a few occasions when potential circuit breakers looked set to prompt a substantial revision in favour of one side or the other, but each time ambiguous poll results suggested it was safer to favour the status quo. However the early evidence suggests that Labor's snappily branded Medicare Gold package, promising to eliminate waiting lists for the elderly, has cut through more effectively than the Coalition's more expensive but also more diffuse bag of tricks from their launch on Sunday. Centrebet promptly slashed its odds for a Labor victory from $3.30 to $2.70, and here apologies are in order for my failure to have mentioned before now the remarkable research conducted by Andrew Leigh of the Australian National University showing betting markets to be more accurate at predicting election outcomes than opinion polls. The Poll Bludger is no expert on demography, but thanks to the Australian Parliamentary Library's electorate demographic rankings (of which Alan Ramsey had a fair bit to say in the Sydney Morning Herald) he doesn't need to be. The target audience for this one is clear - older voters on lower incomes. Below are Coalition marginal seats and their proportion of voters aged 65 or over, with their ranking among the 150 House of Representatives seats in brackets (percentages calculated by Peter Brent at Mumble).
The Poll Bludger knocked up a similar table for average taxable income shortly after Labor's tax cuts for lower income earners were announced, and a cursory comparison of the two shows why Labor has chosen to make the bigger play out of the health policy, launching it later in the campaign and preceding it with Mark Latham's declaration that the election was "a referendum on Medicare". Where one had to venture beyond 2 per cent territory to find electorates with a significant proportion of winners from Labor's tax policy (though the family benefits may have been another matter), Medicare Gold hits hard where it matters most - Dobell, Adelaide, Hindmarsh, Paterson, Deakin and Richmond, every one a knife-edge marginal and many among those where they were looking in danger of falling short. Of course, Labor's best yield of all should come in seats where both target groups are in abundance, and here a clear pattern emerges - the five outstanding examples are coastal electorates outside Sydney and Melbourne, and no less than four are held by the National Party. These include Richmond, located on the New South Wales side of the Queensland border, renowned for its caravan parks and sea-change retirees, and held by junior minister Larry Anthony; its neighbours Page and Cowper, held by back-benchers Ian Causley and Luke Hartsuyker; and the Victorian seat of Gippsland, held by Science Minister Peter McGauran, a once rural conservative electorate that absorbed the depressed Labor-voting towns of Morwell and Traralgon in the redistribution. The one Liberal-held seat is also on the New South Wales north coast - Paterson, held by back-bencher Bob Baldwin (pardon the alliteration). There are a number of seats here currently assessed by the Poll Bludger as wins for the Coalition where a rethink will be in order if the next polls show a substantial bounce to Labor. If last week's pattern is followed, Morgan will today release a phone poll conducted Wednesday and Thursday, with an ACNielsen poll taken from Tuesday to Thursday to follow tomorrow. But regardless of what these polls show, it would be prudent to bear in mind the precedents of 1980 and 1993 when scare campaigns in the last week over Bill Hayden's "wealth tax" and John Hewson's GST helped secure one last term for the Fraser and Keating governments. A TALE OF FOUR SEATS Four new campaign updates for the ever-burgeoning House of Representatives guide. Once again, the action begins in the electorate of ... Wentworth (NSW, Liberal 7.9%): The Greens announced that the order of their preference recommendation would be Labor's David Patch, followed by independent Peter King, and then Malcolm Turnbull. The importance of Greens preference allocations is often over-rated, since their voters overwhelmingly favour Labor over the Coalition regardless of what the card says. However, the party's formal preference might influence Greens voters who were less clear on who they preferred out of Labor and Peter King. King obviously thought so, as he unsuccessfully courted the Greens with a series of environmental policy announcements he was in no danger of ever having to act upon. King now faces a greater struggle to achieve his aim of overhauling Labor and then securing victory over Turnbull with their preferences. On Tuesday, The Australian reported that "recent internal ALP polling" had Turnbull on 30 per cent, Patch on 27 per cent and King on 25 per cent. For Patch and King, these are identical results to those in an ACNielsen poll last week, but Turnbull is 4 per cent lower. Both suggest the split of King's preferences will decide the outcome between Turnbull and Patch. Fairfax (Qld, Liberal 9.5%): For the second time in less than a week, Labor candidate Ivan Molloy has been at the centre for a firestorm that knocked Labor "off-message" in an important phase in the campaign. On Tuesday the Courier Mail published a photo taken in the Philippines in 1983 that showed Molloy bearing a sub-machine gun and standing next to a similarly equipped local whom the Mail claimed to be a member of the Moro National Liberation Front, a Marxist rebel group with roots in the same soil as the troublesome Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Molloy seems to have conducted legitimate and indeed quite remarkable academic research through his penetration of this organisation, but it appears he sensed the subtleties of the matter were doomed to be lost and gave his party a questionable assurance that he had had no dealings with extremist Muslim organisations. The controversy prompted Mark Latham's most embarrassing gaffe of the campaign when he confused his candidate with similarly named serial killer Ivan Milat, but most would have been impressed by his sure-footed recovery. Greenway (NSW, Labor 3.2%): An article by Paul Sheehan in the Sydney Morning Herald on Monday took Labor candidate Ed Husic to task for his near-total media silence, specifically his persistent refusal to speak to either Sheehan or to the The Bulletin for an article it ran on Greenway earlier in the campaign. Sheehan contrasts this with the highly fancied Liberal candidate, Louise Markus, who promptly agreed to an hour-long interview as would be expected of a candidate who was taking her campaign seriously. Husic's reticence is unusual given his background as PR flack for state-owned Integral Energy, but Sheehan reports that the real story behind his preselection was his background in "the Labor right faction which dominates the Communications Electrial and Plumbing Union", with whom Sheehan has had a troubled relationship. Riverina (NSW, Nationals 19.9%): Nationals member Kay Hull has twice caused the Coalition embarrassment in the part fortnight. On Tuesday Hull said she would cross the floor to vote down the sale of Telstra if the numbers were such that her vote would prove decisive. Hull was one of a number of National Party MPs who publicly agonised over the party's decision to fall in behind the Liberals on the Telstra sale legislation that came before the House last year and she eventually abstained from the vote after moving an amendment to have the matter put to a referendum, which failed to get a seconder. Last week Hull suggested that those who could afford to do so should be made to pay fees to send their children to public schools. LAND OF HOPE AND GLORIA Welcome to the belated second installment in our six-part series looking at the state Senate contests, today's subject being Victoria. As a service to bewildered Victorian voters, what follows is a guide to how your preferences will trickle down to the serious contenders (very generous interpretation here) if you vote above the line. This irons out the meaningless subtleties within the various party tickets and focuses on where the preferences will land where they matter. The DLP and Christian Democrats for example have placed most Coalition candidates ahead of most Labor candidates, but what matters is that Labor's Jacinta Collins is ahead of Liberal Judith Troeth as these two will be fighting it out for one of the last two places. Also, Labor have submitted a complicated ticket that appears designed to obscure the fact that Family First have done astonishingly well out of them. Coalition: DLP; Christian Democratic; Family First; Liberals for Forests; Democrats; Greens; Labor; Socialist Alliance; One Nation. Labor: Liberals for Forests; Family First; DLP; Christian Democratic; Greens; Democrats; Socialist Alliance; Liberal; One Nation. Greens: Socialist Alliance; Democrats; Labor; DLP; Liberals for Forests; Liberal; Family First; Christian Democratic; One Nation. Democrats: Family First; Liberals for Forests; Greens; half-Liberal, half-Labor; Socialist Alliance; DLP; Christian Democratic; One Nation. Family First: Christian Democratic; DLP; Liberals for Forests; Labor; Democrats; Liberal; One Nation; Socialist Alliance; Greens. One Nation: Christian Democratic; Family First; Liberals for Forests; Liberal; DLP; Labor; Democrats; Socialist Alliance; Greens. DLP: Family First; Christian Democratic; Labor; Liberal; Liberals for Forests; One Nation; Greens; Democrats; Socialist Alliance. Liberals for Forests: Family First; DLP; Democrats; Labor; Liberal; Greens; Christian Democratic; One Nation; Socialist Alliance. Christian Democratic: Family First; DLP; Labor; Liberal; Liberals for Forests; One Nation; Labor; Socialist Alliance; Democrats; Greens. Socialist Alliance: Greens; Labor; Democrats; Liberals for Forests; Liberal; DLP; Family First; CDP; One Nation. After Labor and the Coalition win their inevitable two seats, there will most likely be a tight contest between Liberal, Labor and Greens candidates for the final two positions along with either Family First or the Democrats. In the contest between the latter two, the group tickets suggest Family First will finish ahead and then absorb Democrats preferences and not the other way round. Beyond that, the deck is stacked in favour of Labor and Family First and against the Liberals and the Greens. If either of the latter two are to win one of the last two seats up for grabs, they will have to do so with something very close to a full quota on the primary vote - 43 per cent for a third Liberal seat, or 14.3 per cent for the Greens' David Risstrom. The usual successful scenario for the Greens involves their candidate overtaking the Democrats and then absorbing their preferences, allowing them to defeat the third place-holder on Labor's ticket. But this time the Democrats are preferencing Family First, as are both the major parties. If Risstrom needs preferences to achieve a quota he can only get them from Labor and the Democrats, and then only if Family First are eliminated before him. The Coalition was able to win in 2001 with a modest 39.5 per cent of the primary vote in 2001 with the help of preferences from One Nation (who polled 2.4 per cent) and the DLP (2.2 per cent). Since neither can be relied upon this time, they will struggle to retain the third seat. Family First's challenge is to finish on top of the minor party pile, and then overtake either major party and absorb their surplus over the second quota. If they succeed, they will most likely to do at the expense of the Coalition leaving Labor and the Greens competing for the other seat. If they fall short, a full complement of preferences from the "Christian coalition" will then flow on to Jacinta Collins and deliver her a third Labor seat, with the other place going to either Liberal or the Greens. The Poll Bludger made a special effort to think this through by himself without drawing upon the efforts of other commentators. With that effort out of the way, he now calls your attention to what others think. Malcolm Mackerras: "In Victoria, my assessment is that the 1998 result will be repeated exactly. In 1998, each of the Labor and Coalition tickets secured three places". Charles Richardson at Crikey (no link): a number of scenarios are "possible", "but they point to the most probably winners being 2 Labor, 1 Liberal, 1 National Party, 1 Green and 1 Family First". A more equivocal assessment is offered by Antony Green. FAMILY FIRST, LABOR LAST Antony Green has dropped a line to advise caution in my assumption that Liberal preferences will overwhelmingly favour the Greens over Labor in Melbourne purely on account of the how-to-vote card. As Green points out (and as the Poll Bludger should know because he lives there), the Liberals struggle to find volunteers to attend to the booths in this inner-city electorate, so most Liberal voters will indeed have to make up their own minds. It could be that many will have noted the words of wisdom of conservative commentator Andrew Bolt of the Herald Sun. This difficulty is normally associated with minor parties, who would love to be able use a disciplined flow of preferences as a bargaining chip but lack the organisational strength to get how-to-vote cards into voters' hands at the booths. As has been frequently remarked, this kind of problem will not necessarily apply to Family First, which has arrived on the scene with a pre-existing support base in the Pentecostal churches that brought it into being. On Friday, Family First announced that it would, as expected, recommend preferences to the Coalition in almost all of the seats in which it is fielding candidates. This could well deliver a substantial number of swinging votes to the Coalition. The Poll Bludger went delving into the results from the only other election Family First has contested, the February 2002 state election in South Australia, searching for evidence to support this theory. He was a little disappointed to discover that most of the party's candidates were eliminated in the earlier rounds of the count so their two-party preference could not be easily assessed, but one electorate that fit the mould was the northern Adelaide seat of Wright. The Family First candidate made it to the final round with 2105 votes of which 1541 were primary and 564 were preferences, mostly from the Democrats. These 2105 votes went on to favour the Liberal candidate to the tune of 62-38, despite being diluted by Democrats votes that would mostly have favoured Labor. However, it should also be noted that Family First preferences appeared to favour Labor in the electorate of Elizabeth - the Poll Bludger would be intrigued to know if their preference recommendation differed here. UPDATE: Quentin Black, who fell 530 votes short of winning the seat of Hartley for Labor at the state election (which would have given Labor a parliamentary majority), writes in to note that Family First received 918 votes in the seat which split 80/20 in the Liberals' favour. For what it's worth, a 50-50 split would have made it line-ball. But as reader Peter Fuller points out, the party has spread its resources thinly in terms of the lower house for the coming election by fielding 106 candidates, whereas it "cherry-picked" seats at the state election - including Hartley, which is home to the Paradise Assemblies of God Church. He also notes a fairly obvious point I had missed in relation to Elizabeth, that it was a "straightforward case of donkey voting". NEWSPOLL, MORGAN, WESTPOLL Tomorrow's Newspoll has Labor maintaining most of its surprise lead from last week, now leading 52-48. Roy Morgan's face-to-face poll released today had the parties evenly split on two-party preferred. Morgan has suffered enough from the Poll Bludger in one week so he will make no comment on their headline "Hung Parliament Looks Likely". The poll is a big improvement for the Coalition on last week's comparable face-to-face poll, where they trailed 53-47, but in the ballpark of Friday's phone poll where they led 51.5-48.5. Better news for Labor today with The West Australian's Westpoll running 200-sample surveys of Stirling (Labor 40 per cent; Liberal 37 per cent), Hasluck (Liberal 40 per cent; Labor 37 per cent; Greens 10 per cent) and Kalgoorlie (Liberal 42 per cent; Labor 32 per cent; independent Graeme Campbell 10 per cent). No further breakdown was given; the undecided are presumably not distributed. On these figures Labor would hold on to Stirling and Hasluck, currently assessed by the Poll Bludger and many others as seats they will lose, while they could be philosophical about the tall order confronting them after the death of candidate Kevin Richards in Kalgoorlie, held by Liberal Barry Haase with a margin of 4.3 per cent. AROUND THE GROUNDS Week five, and what better way to kick it off than with a batch of new campaign updates for the House of Representatives guide. Melbourne (Vic, Labor 19.9%): The electorate of senior Labor front-bencher Lindsay Tanner was the subject of an ACNielsen poll in yesterday's Sunday Age, and it indicated a growing threat to him from the Greens. From a significant sample of 1,006, the results had Tanner on 49 per cent (47.6 per cent in 2001), the Greens' Gemma Pinnell on 27 (15.8 in 2001) and Liberal Jerry Dimitroulis on 22 per cent (24.9 in 2001). This would mean that for the first time the Liberals would be eliminated before the Greens, who would then receive the overwhelming majority of Liberal preferences. Had Liberal rather than Greens preferences been distributed in the final round in 2001, Lindsay Tanner would have prevailed by roughly 5 per cent. ACNielsen's two-candidate preferred result favouring Labor over the Greens by 63-37 can be dismissed, as the overwhelming majority of Liberal voters will follow a how-to-vote card that wasn't available to them during the survey. Tanner could hardly lose with 49 per cent of the primary vote, but he would emerge with an uncomfortable margin and the Greens could feel justified in describing the seat as "marginal Labor/Green". Eden-Monaro (NSW, Liberal 1.7%): The Eden woodchip mill has emerged as a bargaining chip in preference negotations between Labor and the Greens, who are keeping their options open on preference recommendations in 26 marginal seats pending the full release of environmental policies. Labor will need to factor in a possible lengthening of the odds against them in Eden-Monaro in weighing up the merits of such a deal. The Coalition was earlier seen to have put its pro-logging vote in jeopardy when it proposed to phase out old-growth logging in Tasmania, calculating that anti-logging sentiment in the cities was of greater concern. Fairfax (Qld, Liberal 9.5%): Labor candidate Dr Ivan Molloy showed admirable loyalty in declining to distance himself from the politically (and indeed intellectually) stupid statement of his wife, state member for Noosa Cate Molloy, that she held Liberal sitting members "accountable" for the Bali and Jakarta bombings. Dr Molloy reacted with a column in The Australian that found less objectionable language to express broadly similar sentiments, but his wife's statements seem more likely to linger in the public mind. Solomon (NT, Liberal 0.1%): David Tollner was in the news yet again when it emerged that a neighbour had been attacked by his bull mastiff, curiously named Brussels Sprout, which reportedly resulted in the 27-year-old mother of three being hospitalised for two weeks. The Age reported on September 23 that Tollner's lawyers wrote to the paper warning that they would be sued for damages if any "false allegations" concerning the incident led to the loss of his seat. Gippsland (Vic, Nationals 2.6%): Peter McGauran was embarrassed last week when it emerged the Department of Environment had made a submission calling on the Victorian Government to deny access to the Alpine National Park high country by mountain cattlemen, who had been assured by McGauran as their local member that they had the Government's support. TROUBLE AND STRIFE Judith Brett, professor of politics at La Trobe University and author of Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class, let fly with her handbag yesterday at those of us who have employed the term "doctors' wives" to characterise voters who are deserting the Liberal Party in their safest urban electorates (the Poll Bludger's defence is that he has always employed quotation marks). Among Brett's numerous well-made points: Women have always been more sensitive than men to the moral dimensions of politics. They first left their homes to enter public politics in large numbers in the 19th century to support moral causes such as temperance and the abolition of slavery ... It was the fear of the moral power of women voters, in particular their opposition to the male pleasures of drinking and gambling, that motivated much of the opposition to the female franchise ... Until feminism and the 1970s, the Liberal Party was the natural home of the morally concerned woman looking to cast her vote in the national interest ... That Liberals would even use a term such as "doctors' wives" to describe morally motivated, well-educated middle class women shows the depth of their conviction that self-interest is the main political motivator, that no matter what they say about values, politics is really about class and these women are too woolly-minded to realise it. That said, it must be granted that class obviously has a fair bit to do with it since these are specifically "middle class" women under discussion; women lower down the social scale are as likely to be shifting their votes the other way. Certainly Newspoll's demographic analysis graphs in Thursday's Australian, which span results from the past three years, do not suggest any seismic shift on either side of the gender divide since 2001. If Liberal voters in safe urban seats are abandoning their party, there doesn't seem any particular reason to think that women are driving the phenomenon. Whatever the reason, it is indeed being seriously suggested that the Liberals harbour fears for members up to and including John Howard in Bennelong, Peter Costello in Higgins and Tony Abbott in Warringah. It was reported last weekend that in Joe Hockey's seat of North Sydney, a traditionally safe Liberal electorate that was nevertheless won by independent Ted Mack in 1990 and 1993, Liberal internal polling had the combined Labor and Greens vote at 52 per cent. The Poll Bludger suspects that the Liberals are playing games here in a move to scare supporters out of registering a protest vote, just in case. George Megalogenis and Elizabeth Colman of the Australian are on the money when they say the members for these seats are merely "comparing notes on the rumblings from formerly rusted-on supporters" and that a post-materialist anti-Howard backlash can only prove decisive in the more marginal city seats of Adelaide and Deakin in Melbourne's eastern suburbs, as well as the wild card of Wentworth. AN INNINGS AND 300 RUNS For the second week in a row ACNielsen has produced an eyebrow-raising primary vote for the Coalition. Speaking on Sky News this evening, Margo Kingston revealed that the poll to appear in tomorrow's Fairfax broadsheets will have the Coalition on 50 per cent, solidly higher than for any of Howard's three previous victories and indeed for any major party since 1975. Also today, Roy Morgan produced its first poll in living memory (phone rather than face-to-face) showing the Coalition with a two-party preferred lead, of 51.5-48.5. This nugget of information was buried inside Morgan's report on the findings for its very interesting poll rating the various opposite numbers in major portfolios. The polls might reflect what were seen to be intemperate displays by Mark Latham in his dealings with reporters on Sunday. ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST Very bad news for Labor today with The Advertiser running a poll from a remarkable sample of 1,114 showing Liberal incumbent Trish Draper - she of the European travel rorts - leading her quality Labor challenger Tony Zappia 52-48 in the Adelaide electorate of Makin. Primary vote after distribution of 12 per cent undecided: Liberal 46.5 per cent, Labor 41 per cent, Family First 4.5 per cent, Greens and Democrats 2 per cent each). Makin is one of three Adelaide marginals that Labor desperately needs to win if as expected they fail to make substantial inroads in New South Wales and Queensland. The Poll Bludger's assessment had been the Labor would indeed win all three - one who thinks otherwise is Michelle Wiese Bockmann of The Australian who yesterday criticised "a rudderless, under-funded state campaign marred by factionalism and underwhelming candidates", the latter assessment directed mostly at Adelaide candidate Kate Ellis who "has let state Labor MP Tom Koutsantonis, a key adviser, launch personal attacks on sitting member Trish Worth". That said, the accompanying Newspoll geographic and demographic analysis survey (based on the last two weekend polls that produced national results of 50-50 and 52.5-47.5 in Labor's favour) indicated a 6 per cent swing to Labor in South Australia. However, this would have been based on a smaller sample for the entire state than the Advertiser poll has for just one electorate, which is sufficient evidence for the Poll Bludger to withdraw Makin as a projected Labor gain. Runs on the Board accordingly shifts another notch in the Coalition's favour. MORGAN AND THE SENATE Praise be to the Roy Morgan organisation, which has apparently been asking respondents a bonus question on Senate voting intention since mid-August and has only now chosen to unload the results. The cumulative outcome favours Labor even more heavily than their House of Representatives surveys, with the Coalition down 5 per cent from 2001 to 37 per cent and Labor up 2.4 per cent to 36.5 per cent, while the Greens are up 4.9 to 12 per cent. The big surprise is that the Australian Democrats are on 6 per cent, three times what they have managed in Morgan's normal polling this year. What follows are Morgan's takes on these figures, followed by the Poll Bludger's explanations of why they're wrong. New South Wales: The Senate seats would most likely remain unchanged, with the L-NP winning three of the six seats up for election and the ALP winning two seats. The Greens would retain their seat. Firstly, there is no seat for the Greens to retain. It is Aden Ridgeway of the Democrats who is up for re-election. Secondly, Morgan's figures have the Coalition on 37 per cent, well short of what they would need to secure the third seat which Morgan predicts here (compare and contrast with their finding for Western Australia). The Coalition's surplus over their second quota would be 9 per cent, with which they would have to fend off the combination of Family First, One Nation, the Democrats and Liberals for Forests, who have all put each other ahead of the Coalition. That would add up to at least 12 per cent on these figures. Fred Nile also favours Family First ahead of the Coalition. The real outcome would be two Coalition, two Labor and one Greens, plus one from the others - probably Family First. Queensland: The ALP and L-NP would each have won two seats with Pauline Hanson also winning a seat, resulting in the loss of an L-NP Senator. The remaining seat going to either the Greens or the Democrats - preferences following a vote for Pauline Hanson will be important. Again Morgan appears not to realise that it's the Senators elected from 1998 rather than 2001 who are up for re-election. The Coalition in fact only won two seats in 1998 and thus would not "lose" a Senator on the basis of this result. If Hanson indeed wins a seat, her preferences will not be "important" as she will be elected by a narrow margin and will have only a small surplus to pass on. If she fails narrowly, making it through to the the final round as she did in 2001, her preferences will not be distributed at all. But Morgan's figures in fact give good reason to think she won't be elected, their assessment to the contrary being based on an apparent spike in the "independent/other" vote from 7 to 13.5 per cent in the most recent weekend's opinion polling. Firstly, the 13.5 per cent figure would be based on a sample of about 100; secondly, it would still include support for Hetty Johnston and Family First, among others. With just about everyone putting Hanson and One Nation last on preferences, there's not enough there for her to match the combined vote of the Democrats (7 per cent), Johnston and Family First, who are all preferencing each other. This is a hard one to pick, but the Poll Bludger's reading of Morgan's figures is three Labor, two Liberal and one Democrat (namely John Cherry). Western Australia: The ALP and Liberal Party would each win two seats with the Greens also winning a seat, resulting in the loss of a Liberal Senator. The remaining seat would fall to either the ALP or the Australian Democrats. Morgan's Coalition vote from the past two weekends is 43.5 per cent, which is three quotas with 0.5 per cent to spare. How on earth were they able to conclude that the Liberals would not win a third seat, and that Labor, with 30 per cent of the primary vote, might? The outcome based on Morgan's figures (and indeed on most other reasonable assessments) is as plain as plain can be - Liberal three, Labor two, Greens one. South Australia: The Liberal Party would win two of its three seats up for re-election, the ALP would win two seats. The remaining two seats would be a contest between the ALP, Australian Democrats, Greens and an Independent - not the Liberal Party. What independent? Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say they mean Family First. We then move on to the problem of their figures, the most recent of which show Labor with an unlikely lead over the Liberals of 45 to 31 per cent. In failing to predict Labor will win three seats, Morgan are either confessing that they have no confidence in their figures (and here the Poll Bludger sympathises with Morgan, as he does not begrudge them providing such figures despite the small samples), or demonstrating a failure to understand the Senate election system. If the results are accurate, Labor would win three seats and the Liberals two, with the other going to the Democrats or Greens - the "independent/other" vote of 6 per cent being too low to sustain Family First, despite this being their home state. Tasmania: The Liberal Party would retain two seats and lose one seat, with the ALP winning two seats (unchanged) and the Greens retaining their one seat. The remaining seat would be contested between the ALP and the Greens. One more time: this election will replace Senators elected in 1998, not 2001. The result in 1998 was Labor three and Liberal two, plus Brian Harradine. Two seats for Labor would not be "unchanged"; there is no seat for the Greens to retain; and if the Liberals "retain two seats" they will not also "lose one". The Greens' "one seat" - that of Bob Brown - will remain no matter what happens on October 9. As for the figures, once again the Poll Bludger sympathises with the small samples and will not mock the enormous discrepancy between the results from August and those from during the campaign. But assuming the current results are correct, Morgan appears to be over-rating Labor as well as the Greens, who have been known to fantasise about winning two Tasmanian Senate seats at one election, and missing the combined effect of the mutually preferencing Democrats (4 per cent) and Family First (surely a large part of the 7.5 per cent "independent/others" and the natural inheritors of a part of Brian Harradine's base). Bearing in mind that a preference deal between Family First and Labor has confused the situation horrendously, these figures if accurate would produce a result of two each for Labor and Liberal plus one for the Greens, with Labor, Liberal, Family First and the Democrats all in contention for the final place. Victoria: The ALP and L-NP would have each won two seats with the Greens also winning a seat, resulting in the loss of an L-NP Senator. The remaining seat would either go to the ALP or the Australian Democrats. Correct. Well done. UPDATE: It appears I did not make it sufficiently clear that the above assessments are an interpretation of Roy Morgan's figures, rather than what I believe to be the actual state of play. An insight into where the poll might have gone wrong is provided by the "analysis by House of Representatives voting intention" table at the bottom of the page, which indicates implausibly large numbers of people voting for different parties in the House and Senate. Respondents would have been asked about Senate voting intention after they had already given an answer for the House, and many would have felt compelled to nominate a different party because they did not wish to appear unsophisticated. In many cases the Democrats would have been the first name that entered their heads. Having been conducted early in the campaign, these results would also under-estimate Family First, who have been building what Lisa Simpson might reluctantly describe as "the momentum of a runaway train". | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||