Following a few days of campaign cameos by John Howard, Kevin Rudd, Mark Latham, Malcolm Fraser and John Hewson, two new polls today both have the ALP with slim leads.
The Newspoll in the Australian has the ALP back to an election-winning lead with 52% to 48%. The Galaxy Poll in News Limited tabloids has the ALP ahead on 51%. Both polls have the same primary votes of 42% for the Coalition, 38% for Labor and 13% for the Greens.
A Nielsen poll on Saturday had the Coalition ahead on 50.6% of the two-party preferred vote. The Coalition is on 44% primary, with the ALP on 36% and the Greens on 13%.
There is a clear trend in recent polls, with the Greens consistently polling around 13%, and the two-party preferred vote being tightly divided between the two parties.
In terms of the election guide, I have been going through and updating the candidate lists for each seat to the final ballot order, and have done all but a handful of seats (those beginning with ‘T’ and ‘W’).
I’m also going to be appearing on 2SER at 8am today, and for the following two Mondays, to discuss the election campaign.
Best of luck with your media appearances. Could I ask what time the polls close on the 21st and do they close at the same time in all time zones?
Note small poll in the Canberra Times (sample 407) on the Senate race in the ACT. Apparently commissioned by the Greens – suggesting a tight race but with a large error margin given the size of the sample not too much wieght should be placed on it.
Polls close at 6pm. You should see solid results for the House of Representatives by 7:30pm local time, although SA and WA close later due to time zones.
Given how close the 2 main parties are in the polls, there must be a reasonable chance of neither party getting a majority. Does anyone have a view on which side the 4 likely independents/greens (Oakeshott, Katter, Windsor and Bandt) would favour if this happened?
We guess is that Katter as a former National would support the coalition and Bandt as a green would favour ALP. Does anyone know about the other 2?
Oakeshott is a former Nat and is in a naturally Nat electorate. He would be punished if he didn’t support the coalition. Katter likewise. Windsor isn’t a former Nat, but in New England he would be hard pressed to support Labor.
Bandt would be a one termer if he supported an Abbott Government in a hung parliament. Very few Lib supporters in the electorate of Melbourne.
In the event of a hung parliament, Katter could be pencilled in to offer support for the Libs and Bandt for Labor. Oakey almost but not entirely certain for the Libs and Windsor would lean toward the Libs, but I couldn’t entirely rule out him supporting a Labor Government in exchange for a bit of New England pork-barrelling.
NBN is a big issue for Windsor – he might find it hard to support a Government committed to its demise
Windsor, Katter and Oakeshott work well together and I would expect them to move as a block. They probably wouldn’t fit in well with a Greens MP, so I’d expect them to move in a direction which gives them alone the balance of power, so they’ll probably support the bigger party.
That’s a good point Ben. They could more easily move as a block to either side if they could push that it was for stability. Either way they’d all pick up some treats for their respective electorates, which should soften any political blow. So, SMc, I would guess all three indi’s are ‘conservative leaning’, but that a lot would depend on the numbers.
Oakeshott was a Nat but his policy views closer to a wettish Lib than a rural populist he supported safe injecting room for example, but this where we need a US-style analysis of their political ideology as manifest in how they voted: http://www.voteview.com/houserank.asp
Thanks for the comments. Much appreciated.
In the Victorian state election of 1999, the ALP got into power with the support of 3 independents representing rural electorates. From memory, the coalition had more seats than ALP. So there is a precedent for rural independents supporting ALP.
Yeah, Oakeshott’s hardly a natural fit with the Nationals… he quit for a reason. Also, the area he represents isn’t really Nationals heartland any more – the only reason they’ve held onto it for so long is because of the coalition agreement that stops the Liberals from challenging a sitting Nat. When Mark Vaile first got into parliament in 1993, he only just beat the Libs, and the area’s got more urbanised since then. It’s safe conservative, but not necessarily good for the Nats. It’s best considered as marginal between the Libs and Nats, in the same way seats like Grayndler are best considered as ALP/Grn marginals.
Here’s another complication: according to an article in yesterday’s Sunday Times, any Nats elected in WA would sit as quasi-independents, similar to their state counterparts (there’s no coalition here). It also mentioned some bad blood between Brendon Grylls (state leader) and Warren Truss (federal leader)… Grylls (who apparently wanted to go with Labor after the 2008 election) felt he was being bullied into supporting the Libs by Truss. They’ve got an OK chance of winning O’Connor… if that happens, Tony Crook could end up closer to Windsor / Katter than the federal Nats.
I tip a hung Parliament.
I tip Labor to lose 20 seats to the Coalition (8 in NSW, 7 in QLD, 2 in WA, and 1 each in NT and TAS and VIC), and to gain 6 seats from the Coalition (3 in VIC, and 1 each in QLD and SA and NSW). Labor should hold marginal Macarthur, Greenway, Dickson, and Leichhardt because of my doubts about the Coalition candidates, and Braddon has a popular MP who should survive. Retirements and climate change cynicism will cost the Liberals some seats.
Warren: which two seats in WA? Hasluck and…?
Bird of paradox,
Hasluck and Swan – the latter has a Liberal MP until redistributions made it notionally Labor-held, but I have no doubt that the Liberals will win it back.
For further enlightenment, my tips include Sturt (SA) and Ryan (QLD) and Hughes (NSW) to Labor, while Bass (TAS) and Solomon (NT) and Corangamite (VIC) will go to the Coalition.