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 [...]

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 [...]

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; [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]