Australia 2010 Archive

Day 8: Nielsen, marginal seats polls

By
Ben Raue
 – July 24, 2010

From the Nielsen poll in today’s Fairfax papers, Labor’s two-party preferred vote is up two to 54%. On primary votes, Labor is up three to 42, the Coalition down one to 41 and the Greens down one to 12.

There have also been a number of interesting marginal seat polls. An Advertiser poll of the marginal Labor seat of Kingston in Adelaide sho wthe ALP gaining a 13% swing on a two-party preferred vote. Possum is particularly impressed with the robustness of the poll.

Westpoll has conducted polls of four marginal seats in Perth. In the marginal Labor seat of Hasluck, the ALP leads 54-46. In the Liberal seat of Canning, former Labor state minister Alannah MacTiernan is just ahead, 51-49. The Liberals are ahead in Cowan and Swan, both of which they won off the ALP in 2007. Bear in mind that, with a sample size of 400, these polls have a large enough margin of error to overturn any of those results.

In the NSW south coast seat of Gilmore, an Illawarra Mercury poll reports sitting Liberal MP on a solid 60-40 two-party preferred lead, despite the redistribution turning the seat into a notional Labor seat.

Consider this an open thread for federal election discussion this weekend.

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Day 4: Essential, Labor-Greens preferences

By
Ben Raue
 – July 20, 2010

Yesterday, Essential followed Newspoll and Galaxy, with a poll showing the ALP with 55% of the two-party preferred vote. The ALP is steady on 41%, the Coalition up one to 39%, and the Greens steady on 13%. This puts them in a similar position to the latest Newspoll, give or take a point for each party on the primary vote.

The other big electoral news of the day was an announcement of a preference arrangement between the ALP and the Greens. The deal sees the ALP preference the Greens ahead of all other parties in all Senate races, in exchange for which Greens local groups in more than 50 seats agree to put the ALP ahead of the Coalition. Antony Green has an insightful blog post examining the implications of the agreement. Clearly this is a significant event, but due to my active involvement in the Greens campaign I’m going to steer clear of interpreting the consequences or the motivations.

That doesn’t stop you from doing so, dear reader…

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Seat profile #145: Curtin

By
Ben Raue
 – July 19, 2010

Curtin is a safe Liberal seat in western Perth. Despite being named after the former Labor prime minister, the seat has never been won by the ALP. The Liberal Party has only lost the seat once, in 1996 when the sitting Liberal MP lost endorsement and won re-election as an independent. The seat was held by prominent Liberal Paul Hasluck from 1949 until his retirement in 1969 when he was appointed Governor-General. It has been held by Julie Bishop since 1998.

The seat covers affluent suburbs along the north shore of the Swan River to the west of the Perth CBD, and along the west coast.

Continue reading…

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Election called for August 21

By
Ben Raue
 – July 17, 2010

News reports are unanimous in reporting that Prime Minister Julia Gillard is on the way to Canberra to meet with the Governor-General and ask for an election. There doesn’t appear to be consensus on whether Gillard will call it for the 21st or 28th.

The 21st will allow her to call a quick five-week election, but would mean that the writs would have to be issued by Monday, not giving voters much time to get enrolled. The 28th could give up to an extra week for voters to get on the roll.

Update: it’s the 21st.

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Seat profile #144: Tangney

By
Ben Raue
 – July 16, 2010

Tangney is a relatively safe Liberal seat in southern Perth. Tangney’s suburbs include Alfred Cove, Attadale, Melville, Applecross, Mount Pleasant, Winthrop, Leeming, Willetton, Canning Vale, Rossmoyne and Shelley.

Tangney has been won by the Liberal Party at all but two elections since its creation in 1974. The seat was held from 1993 to 2004 by Daryl Williams, who served as Attorney-General from 1996 to 2003 and continued to serve in the Howard government’s cabinet until 2004.

The seat has been held since 2004 by former CSIRO research scientist Dennis Jensen. He has developed a reputation as the more ardent climate change sceptic in the Liberal Party. He was defeated for preselection before the 2007 and 2010 elections in ballots of local Liberal members, but both preselections were later overturned by higher authorities.

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Deeply off the record…

By
Ben Raue
 – July 15, 2010

Many commentators have reacted with great surprise to how long it took the Liberal Party to preselect candidates for the Western Sydney marginal seats of Lindsay, Greenway and Parramatta. Parramatta was held by the Liberals until 2004, Lindsay until 2007, and Greenway is still Liberal-held, but the redistribution moved it into the Labor column, leading the sitting Liberal member to contest the neighbouring seat of Macquarie.

Yet despite these seats’ recent record of electing Liberals, the party has only preselected for Lindsay this week, with preselections to come on Saturday in Greenway and Parramatta.

It appears some light has been shed on the delays today when Barry O’Farrell, state Liberal leader, appears to have accidentally sent a message out publicly on Twitter when it was only intended to be seen by Fairfax Radio’s Latika Bourke.

The tweet appears to be in reference to the timetable for preselection in those seats and the struggle to find candidates – which would explain the low profile of all of those announced as contenders.

But it is still very unclear what the ‘internal poll’ could be telling them. It would be no surprise that the ALP would be favourites to win those seats, despite the ALP’s recent bed-wetting over the possibility of losing Lindsay. Yet how bad could it be that the party couldn’t find a candidate willing to take a punt on getting a federal seat, or so bad that they wouldn’t bother finding a candidate with enough time to win the seat?

The tweet has now been deleted, but it is sure to be highly embarrassing, and does suggest that the Liberals are struggling to compete federally in Western Sydney after their 2007 defeat.

Update: GhostWhoVotes in comments has pointed out that the original tweet still exists, even though it has disappeared from O’Farrell’s Twitter feed. It seems it isn’t so easy to delete tweets that have been retweeted.

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Seat profile #143: Perth

By
Ben Raue
 – July 14, 2010

Perth is a relatively safe seat for the ALP covering the Perth CBD and areas to the northeast. The seat covers the suburbs of Maylands, Mount Lawley, Bayswater, Ashfield, Bedford, Morley and Beechboro, as well as Perth itself.

The seat had a long history of being marginal, but recently has become a reasonably solid Labor seat, having been held by the ALP continuously since 1983. The seat was held from 1983 to 1993 by Olympic hockey player Ric Charlesworth, who competed in his fourth and fifth Olympics while holding the seat of Perth. Charlesworth retired in 1993 at the ripe old age of 41, and was succeeded by Stephen Smith. He has held the seat ever since, and is now Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade in the federal Labor government.

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Seat profile #142: Fremantle

By
Ben Raue
 – July 13, 2010

Fremantle is a safe Labor seat in Perth. The seat covers the centre of Fremantle itself, as well as surrounding areas, including Cockburn, Coolbellup, Palmyra, Success, Atwell, Jandakot, Spearwood, Coogee, Beaconsfield and Hamilton.

It has been held continuously by the ALP since 1934. The seat was held by John Curtin from 1929 to 1931 and again from 1934 until his death in 1945. He was replaced in 1945 by Kim Beazley Sr, who served as a senior Labor figure during the long years in opposition in the 1950s and 1960s, and served as a minister in the Whitlam government. He was succeeded in 1977 by John Dawkins, who served as a cabinet minister in the Hawke government and as Paul Keating’s Treasurer until his retirement in 1993. The seat was won in a 1994 by-election by former Premier Carmen Lawrence, who held the seat until her retirement in 2007.

At the last election, the seat was won by former United Nations lawyer Melissa Parke.

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Galaxy/Nielsen: 52-48 to Labor, Greens on 14/13

By
Ben Raue
 – July 12, 2010

I don’t usually post about the regular polls that we will see more of over the next few weeks as we plunge into the election, but I’ll make an exception for the two polls coming out overnight.

We have had two polls in the last few hours. The Galaxy poll in the Courier-Mail and the Neilsen poll in Fairfax newspapers. Both have Julia Gillard on 52% on two-party preferred teams, and both have the Greens recovering votes, up from 11 to 14 in Galaxy and up from 8 to 13 in Neilsen.

It is now worth noting that we now have a series of polls since Gillard took over as Prime Minister. All have the ALP in a winning position for the election, but with the exception of the weekend’s Morgan poll which had the ALP on 56.5%, none of them have the ALP on any more than 55%.

While they are a slight improvement over Kevin Rudd’s performance, overall the ALP’s chances of re-election have only really improved slightly. Kevin Rudd’s polls put him in a position where he was the favourite to win. After the last week’s events around asylum seeker policies, you would have to say that Julia Gillard, while the favourite to win the election, could very easily lose to Tony Abbott if things don’t go her way.

We now also have the first poll showing a recovery in support for the Greens after the Green vote fell when Gillard became Prime Minister. It isn’t at all surprising that the Greens would be recovering considering recent developments in climate change, asylum seeker and mining tax policy, but does indicate that the appeal of an atheist, childless woman as Prime Minister can only obscure the rightward drift of the Labor government for so long.

Having said all of that, it does appear that not a great deal has changed in terms of polling since Kevin Rudd was deposed. The ALP has a small but election-winning lead over the Liberal Party, with the Greens on track for an increased vote, but much of that appears soft and willing to consider switching back to Labor. You’d have to say that, based solely on polling, the overthrow of Kevin Rudd was one of the biggest over-reactions in recent political history.

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Seat profile #141: Brand

By
Ben Raue
 – July 11, 2010

Brand is a Labor seat to the south of Perth. The seat covers coastal areas from Kwinana to Mandurah, with a majority of the seat’s population living in the Rockingham council area.

The seat has existed since the 1984 election, and has always been held by the ALP, but isn’t held by a large margin. The seat was held by Kim Beazley from 1996 to 2007. Beazley had previously held the marginal seat of Swan from 1980 to 1996, and had served as a minister in the Hawke-Keating government. Beazley served as Labor leader from 1996 to 2001 and from 2005 to 2006. Beazley retired in 2007.

Brand was won in 2007 by Gary Gray, a former ALP national secretary.

Continue reading…

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