Apologies for continued heel-dragging on a full review of the state of the Tasmanian Senate contest, one remarkable feature of which has been a Liberal Party bungle in fielding only three candidates when their primary vote was sufficient to have raised at least the possibility that they could have won a fourth. Some idea of [...]

Tasmania will require a good hard think, so that will have to wait for tomorrow. The situation in the other states not yet covered is as follows:
South Australia: With the Liberals certain of three seats and Labor certain of two, the final place will be a contest between Labor and the Democrats. The crucial point [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]