Adelaide’s Advertiser newspaper today carries a slightly curious poll of voting intention in Boothby, held for the Liberals by Andrew Southcott on a margin of 5.4 per cent. Conducted by phone from a sample of 649, it shows Southcott leading Labor candidate Nicole Cornes by an improbable 49 per cent to 32 per cent after distribution of the undecided. No two-party result is provided, but commenter Matthew Sykes has transcribed the paper’s large volume of generally unilluminating data from the poll throughout the previous comments thread. No doubt the Advertiser’s pollsters do their best, but my mind is drawn back to the final week of the state election campaign last March, when it ran a poll showing the Liberals neck-and-neck in Norwood and set to retain Hartley. Labor went on to win the seats with respective margins of 4.2 per cent and 4.6 per cent.
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Advertiser Boothby poll
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516 Comments
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Dyno Cornes is a product of the Labor machine gone wrong… and yes behind the scenes they will be saying that… but of course you want get that from people such as Hugo or Adam who are the yes men of the party. Products of a factional malaise within a party of which about 20% of its members (those in factions) dominant. Democracy in action (inaction).
Contrary to all this i do think that Maxine McKew is an excellent choice as a candidate… and will divert Howards attention during the campaign from campaigning in other areas the coalition needs to win.
#126 another one that`s been getting to me lately is the `shoe-in`(sic). The correct spelling is `shoo-in`, and the term has nothing to do with putting in the slipper. Ah, that feels better.
Yes, MM is an inspired choice by Labor.
I think Howard will keep Bennelong but the fight for it is a massive drag on his energy and time.
Also, paul @ 60, for what its worth I think the democrats don’t have a bad record in parliament, with a few exceptions.
However i think they are a spent force now; I think they alienated a lot of their supporters with the gst, the infighting of meg vs natasha, and then all the leadership woes afterwards.
Having a government majority in the senate, ironically, has also hurt both the democrats and the greens because they have not been able to get the attention of the media and public by helping block or win substantial concessions on major legislation, which was possible when they had the balance of power.
#131 Mmm, the large Iron Knob swing to the Libs is obviously something Antony Green will have to incorporate into his Nantucket Sleigh Ride analysis.
well you know what they say about swinging iron knobs and certain lib ministers…
hehehehe
*hides*
McKew should be an effective parlamentary secratary to start with. Later on she will be a minister. But that is only if Labor win seats like Bennelong and Boothby.
If MM wins Bennelong, she will become the Minister for Beating Howard. She will be feted across the country as the Blessed Max. Men will swoon and women will curtsy in her presence.
Further to gusface’ comment about when women got the vote.
My mum was given the right to vote in SA’s upper house, the Legislative Council for the first time in her life, and the same for many thousands, mabe hundreds of thousands of other SA women, when she was about 50 years old.
Back in the late 60s or maybe early 70s.
Until then there was a property condition on the right to vote in the Upper House which few women had in that era.
Some shenanigans by Donny Dunstan, bless him, got rid of the requirement and she got her right thanks to him.
I’m sure some here will be more au fait with the details.
On Advertiser Polls,
Does anyone know if they apply weighting to their data. I don’t recall seeing it stated anywhere that they did, when i think most of the other pollsters explicitly state this.
If they don’t apply some weighting to their data, it would be likely that their margin of error would be more than expected.
Must chip in. From the electorate of Boothby. Despite my still simmering outrage over Mick Keelty, William. Thanks for tempering.
The Advertiser poll lacks credibility, goodness knows what model was used. Mike Rann pointed to a similar Advertiser poll three days prior in a State election, which was totally opposite to the actual landslide result for Labor in Vinnie Cicarello’s seat of Norwood.
Notwithstanding, Nicole was totally at sea on radio this morning in her knowledge of Labor’s IR policy, I am sad to acknowledge. She copped a talkback hammering as a result, even from Labor oriented callers. My sister, as I have said, the notorious swinging voter, likes her, but also commented she thought Nicole an ‘airhead.’
The radio interviewer, Matt Abraham, was gentle with Nicole, to his credit. He could have gone in very hard, as he has with the very high profile, such as Mark Latham.
I was initially outraged at the choice of Nicole especially over another hardworking candidate. Thanks, Kevin Foley.
Nicole’s profile despite this questionable poll, has improved. I thought that her initial ignorance of anything political, leaving aside Labor, would have been sharpened. Apparently not.
Still, as we all know, the polls narrow once the campaign starts. SMILE.
A separate observation.
Chloe Fox, the now State member for Bright, was unsuccessful in an earlier attempt at Boothby. Had Chloe been the current candidate for Boothby, would have romped it in. Will do so, beyond this Federal election. I have no doubt Chloe will run.
#160: “The statistically weighted phone poll of 649 electors”
So yes it is.
Dear peoples, you / we have now spent a whole day arguing about one candidate in a not-especially-vital seat, a seat which will in any case, I maintain, go with whatever swing there is across metro Adelaide regardless of who the candidate is, as suburban seats nearly always do. Can we get back to something important tomorrow?
The bottom line in Boothby is that it is the ALP who are the disgrace, not Nicole Cornes. She may very well be a bimbo, I really have no idea, but the way the ALP handled the situation left her with little chance of creating any other public image.
First they ask her to be a candidate and give her just 24 hours to reply, despite the fact that she was completely unfamiliar with any ALP policy and had no political background. Then the very next day after she agreed she was whisked away to the ALP national conference. Then the morning after that she is left to fend for herself at a press conference with nobody from the ALP in sight to help her out.
Would it really have been that hard to ask her 2 months earlier, keep it on the quiet, and then announce it once she has had time to brief up on policy? I really don’t get what the ALP were thinking when they handled it so abysmally.
Re 140,
The Australian has an article this morning discussing how “Rudd refuses to guarantee anyone their seats should Labor win the election”. Trying to play shadow front benchers off against each other I guess.
Where’s Matt Price?
151
marky marky says: The left is the true path, using more words.
Marky you should take a long hard look at the Liberal party after this election. That is what happens to a political party when those that believe there is only one true path get control.
Labor will win this election because they have moved to the center. Gillard is from the left, Gillard will have some say in future policy.
In my view the Rudd/Gillard team was a brilliant move, it shows people of different political bent can come together to get things done.
The hard right have taken control of the Liberal party, for them it’s the opposition bench, if the hard left got control of the Labor party there would be room for a central party to from ( the democrats could get their act together) and it would be the opposition bench for Labor and Liberal.
We are a democracy, a true path isn’t worth jack unless 50% of the voters agree.
Charles,
well said. Although i do note that Marky Marky has made some important points about where Labor is headed overall. His earlier comments about the SDA certainly had some truth to them. I’ve known people who have been SDA members and got royally screwed – the union did a deal with the company which resulted in bugger all gains for the workers, but increased membership for the union – of course, the more members they have, the more chance they get to act like Mel Gibson at ALP National Conference. I loathe ther factional divisions of the ALP and i especially loathe the hateful little people that support them. You can’t even have a discussion with these nasty little pieces of work as they get so worked up about their precious faction – totally blinkered! A good example would be the spray i received from James yesterday when i questioned the campaign of ALP Right Faction Candidate for Isaacs, Mark Dreyfus – you should have seen the vitriol – it was a legitimate set of points met with the fanatic bile that only a true factional die hard (left or right) can produce. If and when the ALPs conservative opponents are defeated, the next fight will be among the factions and i fear it won’t be pretty at all.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22490484-29277,00.html
Completely not Bootheby related, but according to the link Dr Karl will run for the Senate for the Climate Change Coalition.
Don’t worry, Possum will be along with another cubic time series soon
Apparently Howard (already hard-right, or is that hard-self) is too left for the new future of the Liberal party as the extreme right take over and try preselecting their science experiments. God save Australia should Howard win this election – it will be delivered right into the hands of real neo-cons loonies.
Ed the pseph @ 151,
Why should McKew necessarily have to wait to become a Minister? She might not have been in Parliament before, but she has more experience of the workings of power in Canberra than perhaps any Labor frontbenchers except McMullan and Crean. She’d be an asset in Cabinet, and I’d promote her, along with Combet, straight in.
i was driving home from work yesterday and heard the ALP candidate for boothby on the radio – i literally cringed, and almost crashed the car. same with the news last night – i had to mute the telly and could only watch her interview through a slit.
is it too late for the ALP to dump her/find someone else?
172 Charlie Says: September 27th, 2007 at 10:20 am
Telecommunications and the arts minister?
What portfolio looks after the ABC? Because if Labor wins, and McKew gets in, she should get that job and her first job would be to clear out the board of the ABC, namely Janet. *evil grin*
Uncle Joe is saying he would love to be on a AWA. He is also saying young people these days have the skills to negotiate with their boss. He likens it to the fact they can negotiate to get mobile phones contracts valued about a $1000, or they can get a car loan or to go overseas. How is that the same as having to go to your boss, and in big business it could be 3 or 4 up managers who get the final decision, and asking for a payrise or negotiate changes to their work conditions and hope that the boss does right by the employee?
Negotiating a mobile phone contract, a car loan or a loan for going overseas doesn’t put at risk a happy working environment. Not getting a phone or a car loan isn’t going to be the end of the world, but being on the wrong side of the boss can be, even to the point they may not give a good reference when applying for another position.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Young-people-capable-of-IR-deals-Hockey/2007/09/27/1190486444315.html
Do the ALP have a position on restoring the staff rep to the ABC board?
What did they say about it at the time?
There might be some sensitivity about a former ABC employee becoming Communications Minister, but it is a good fit.
It is a Booth-by Booth analysis
Uncle Joe is saying he would love to be on a AWA. He is also saying young people these days have the skills to negotiate with their boss. He likens it to the fact they can negotiate to get mobile phones contracts valued about a $1000, or they can get a car loan or to go overseas
Will 175
And the reality is that most people don’t have much room to move with these contract ‘negotiations’ anyway, they are pretty well all standard form contracts that you take or leave, and can only fiddle around with at the margins.
Unky Joe lives in lala land. Of course he would love to be on an AWA, he is in the small minority of elites (and that is what you are Joe) who actually do have some serious negotiating power with a prospective employer, and a decent range of jobs to choose from in his post-parliamentary career, (which may be sooner than he would like). Not least of all because he will have a very nice parliamentary pension safety net to cushion him from the harsh workplace realities the rest of us have to deal with.
What a palooka.
Mike Rann is a mile in front according to the latest Newspoll. Using the logic of Bill Weller (113), the federal Libs really have something to worry about there.
Optimist @ # 168 said:
“I loathe ther factional divisions of the ALP and i especially loathe the hateful little people that support them.â€
What are factions?
Factions are groping of people who have a similar basis for their thinking. They come together to get support for their plans and to help lobby others to support what they want done. You find them everywhere from political parties to P & C’s. They allow the development of ideas and concepts to be debated and thought out at a level below that of the decision-making body/group. This enables the really silly ideas to be discarded early and for those ideas that have some merit to be developed and improved prior to being brought before the final decision making body.
Whenever you have people coming together to make decisions you will have factions. It is an important of our democracy because it makes it mandatory that before an idea or a concept comes up for decision it will have been through a long process of development and it will have the support of a critical number of the members of the decision making body. This ensures that the time of the decision making body is not waisted on items that have little support.
The two biggest factions we have are the Labor Party and the Liberal Party, both of which has smaller factions. It is also worth noting that the broader a particular body is the more factions you will have.
This does not mean that factions cant have a negative effect if taken too far but to condemn them out of hand is short sighted and denies the natural order of things.
No matter how small or large the group there will always be factions. Some may be permanent as in the Left and Right of the ALP or they may just come together for a particular issue.
If you want to get rid of factions you had better come up with a system that can do the same thing. However, could I suggest that if you feel so strongly about it that instead of this silly attitude of condemning those who belong to a different faction a better plan would be to try and make them work better.
PS
Usually you find that those on the loosing side are the most anti faction faction.
What are you talking about, and who is the “us” you speak on behalf of?
Kev @ 164 – remove “ALP” and insert “Kevin Foley” and I agree wholeheartedly.
The MPs that I know have told me they were totally blindsided by this – it appears that no one knew it was on the cards until it was already in the media. The news that she had been preselected was greeted with general eye-rolling, but as I said earlier, when you actually meet her you find that there’s more substance than you expect.
I still think she’s in with a chance, but a lot of that will depend on the state-wide ALP swing.
Whogivesarats,
that’s a cute Webster’s Dictionary definition of factions. Talk to me when you have a sense of how they really function at party level. If you’re ok with branch stacking as a central component of democracy – good luck to ya.
Optimist (184) – it’s a tad glib, is it not, to equate factions with branch stacking – it’s like saying that some armies have committed war crimes, so therefore all armies are evil. It’s a shame, as your posts are normally well-thought out, but in this case you are going in hard on a popular misconception. It is, in short, a facile argument. The alternative to “factions” (and WhoGivesARats @181 is correct in pointing out that factions don’t only occur in political parties) is where everyone argues their own position. That might be more democratic, but I can’t see much ever getting done under that scenario.
Of course factions can be pernicious, but they also provide much-needed stability to “broad-church” political parties.
It’s not really that surprising for a new fringe party, but look how the FF vote from last election has splintered.
Optimist
Thank you for your reply and for you appreciation of my definition of factions. Just for the record that was straight off the top of my head. I hope that if I got the definition from another source I would have acknowledged that source.
One of the problems with factions is that they can give rise is intolerance to other opinions and a tendency to try and belittle others because they disagree with you
The problem that you suggested was attributed to factions is just a little misleading in that branch stacking is usually the result of personal ambition. As an example of this is the problems the Liberal Party had in the electoral division of Cooke in southern Sydney. However, it is true that that in this case one particular candidate formed his own faction to support his ambition. Now what is the problem the faction of the personal ambition?
Hugo,
you’re missing my point. It’s not an either/or situation. The logic you seem to be using dictates that we have factions as they are or not at all – I don’t advocate that position. Futhermore I never equated factions with branch-stacking. I was merely pointing to an obviously undemocratic by-product of the way factions function in the real world of political parties. Thank you for pointing out the fact that factions exist in other aspects of life, but i thought it was obvious that my remarks were referring to the specific impact of factionalism in party politics.
I haven’t suggested that we somehow wave a magic wand and get rid of factions – I am talking about how counterproductive factional rivalry has become in a party environment. Of course, a healthy debate of ideas and opposing views is a good thing, but that is not, in reality how factions work in political parties these days. Does that clarify things a bit or am i still not making sense?
In theory, your last line about stability is correct – in practice, factions are rapidly degenerating into dysfunctional tribes of political savages that will eat each other at the first opportunity…..that, in my opinion is not a recipe for stability at all.
Whogivesarats,
sorry missed that last post. In response, I would say that I’m not sure where you get the idea that Towke’s bid for Baird’s seat was about forming a “faction of personal ambition (?)”
I reject the idea that branch stacking is simply about personal ambition – it is nowhere near that simple. Personal ambition plays a role, but only in the context of a group endeavour – people act in unison with the group (faction) as a result of longer term personal ambition – you seem to suggest that branch stacking only occurs when an ambitious would-be candidate uses some unknown power to enlist the aid of the many people it takes to effectively stack branches. It doesn’t work that way in real life politics.
I’d go on, but i honestly don’t know what to make of the question – “now what is the problem the faction of the personal ambition?”
I’m not having a go, it’s just that there is a typo somewhere in there that has left me confused as to what you mean.
Once everything is focussed on the election, this won’t matter. Once the advertisements start during the grand final, peripheral issues won’t count.
Here is an example of what we can expect.
https://www.getup.org.au/campaign/ClimateCleverer&id=126
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSAKIjna-bA
Run those two ads and it will be all over bar the shouting.
By the way has anyone noticed how fast getup is racking in the money?
WOW!!!!!
That is just one days worth. They did the same yesterday!!!!
marky marky @ 146
Just on the “rich” buy share in the stock market
The rate of share ownership in Australia is one of the highest in world
“That puts Australia’s per capita population of investors just ahead of the United States, where 50 per cent of the population own shares.â€
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2004/s1037330.htm
So is over 50% country “richâ€? Because many people i know who buy and sell share are from so called ‘working class “.
I expect the work choices ads to run in the Grand Final as well. The three hot button issues. If they all aren’t someone should be sacked at their respective organisation.
James,
since you’re posting again – could i have a response to our Dreyfus/Isaacs discussion from yetserday?
Did you catch my last comment / question to you?
The difference is of course Labor has to pay for their ads, the government uses our money and justifies by saying “Well, they did it?” Boy, have I heard that excuse many times – from children.
The only way the Labor Party has been able to compete with the Coalition is by appearing to change their stripes…they have elected conservative leaders to combat the centre-right Coalition…
Look at Rudd the most conservative Laborite of them all, look at the State Premiers…Beattie (gone but still was a right winger), Iemma (right winger), Brumby + Bracks (right wingers), Mike Rann (right winger), Alan Carpenter (right winger), Paul Lennon (right winger)…you bag the Coalition for being conservative but it is the ALP who have moved itself to the right to get into power…primarily because the Coalition struggles when it comes up against right wing Labor leaders…
But sneaking beneath the surface is the rabid left of the ALP and when they show their ugly face the ALP get punished and the Libs are back in town…
What hypocrisy from Rudd…oh we dont know who’ll be leader of the Libs they are a shambles and unelectable…then yesterday oh i can’t guarantee any front benchers spots in the event i win, not even the most important one of treasurer…another own goal by Rudd!
Nobody bags the Coalition for being conservative, you imbecile. They bag them for being jackboot extremists.
By the way did anyone see the Alexander Downer Lateline skit done by the Chaser? Absolutely brilliant. Its not on You Tube yet.
Glen. You and the Liberal Party are way out of touch.
stunkrat what you consider extremist is only being conservative or centre-right…god help us if Gillard becomes Treasurer!
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