The Australian today brings us a second round of figures from the weekend Newspoll survey. It shows that in spite of everything, the Prime Minister is rated the leader “more capable of handling Australia’s economy” by 48 per cent to Kevin Rudd’s 33 per cent, while Peter Costello leads Wayne Swan as “most capable of managing Australia’s economy as federal treasurer” by 53 per cent to 21 per cent. The Prime Minister is also rated the leader “most capable of keeping interest rates lower”, although his lead over Rudd has narrowed since last month.
Reflections on the Miracle of Democracy at Work in the Greatest Nation on Earth
Newspoll part two
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693 Comments
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Adam, you always go a little too far.
Edward,
Once at a social gathering, Gladstone said to Disraeli, “I predict, Sir, that you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease”. Disraeli replied, “That all depends, sir, upon whether I embrace your principles or your mistress.”
Bedtime at 12.30 I’ve enjoyed tonight and the rapid fire exchanges. Apologies William if we took a wrong turn into Talleyrand. Mea Culpa
I, for one, would like to see the questions they asked. I would not be at all surprised to notice questions leading respondants towards a certain answer – effectively turning the Australian into another arm of Lib Party propaganda. But that’s no particular suprise…..
Well it is 12:34am ill blame that lapse on tiredness…
I was wondering how rusted on everybody is how likely is there that we would not vote for our party of choice?
I couldnt bring myself to vote for the ’scumbags’ of the Greens that’s for sure or Family First and i would doubt i would ever vote Labor ’shudders’
V.good GG, I havent read that one. Its a bit like the Churchill one where whoever said “If I was your wife I would serve you poison” and he said “And I was your husband I should drink it”
I was being just a bit ironic there, Edward. The truth of the matter seems to have been that Gladstone believed himself to be a sinner of the blackest dye, although in fact he was a total innocent in most respects. He therefore sought out fallen women, as the lowest of the low, to administer to him the corporal chastisement he believed he deserved. He was never unfaithful to his wife in the strict sense of the term. I’m not pretending he wasn’t a bit weird, but it was a weirdness born of essential goodness.
“Talleyrand was an evil, sinister manipulator, and a total cynic.”
Adam, I swear that I was going to compare you to the Bishop of Autun, but I now see such a compliment would be unwelcome.
I think he was a wily manipulator, who generally acted in a way that suited both his own interests and those of France. And I think he would have accepted your characterisation of him as a cynic in a completely approving way.
Nath’s view of Fouche is correct IMO. he was a perfect example of the saying,”Govt’s come & go, but the police stay forever.
BT well done on picking Arthur Calwell & the shinboners. Did you Know that off the top of your head, ordo you have an excellent library?
Harry H, exactly… their are a number of workers affected and i feel very sorry for them.
As yet it has not also introduced tougher Laws regarding jailing employers for employees dieing on the job another policy backflip-
Harry sorry forgot about that part of it.
GG, that is a much older quote than Gladstone and Disraeli, although I forget who said it.
Nath, nothing exceeds like excess. If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing properly.
Adam,
As a sex therapist you make a great psephologist.
It was John Wilkes and the Earl of Sandwich.
I have just posted full results of the Jamaican election. Labour returns to office after 18 years in opposition.
http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/j/jamaica/
“Glen,
WTF is abolishment? Is it abolition?
Can’t have you inventing words can we?”
Glen wouldn’t do that intentionally, GG, he’s too well brought up to indulge in that sort of thing. Idle and vacuous pursuit of neologisms is far too hubristic for the likes of our Glen.
NOOO the PNP!
Disraeli on Gladstone : “a sophistical rhetorician, intoxicated by the exhuberence of his own verbosity”
Sounds like quite a few on this bloog, myself included.
np marky marky.
i think we both share fairly similar feelings. frustrated by the drift of everything to the right. appreciate that the drift of Labor to the Right has made them supremely electable (in fact unbeatable) but frustrated that they are now no different to a Liberal Government…any Liberal Government bar the extreme wacko’s that we have now that is.
I’ll be eternally grateful to Krudd for being JWH’s kryptonite and seeing this Government kicked out in disgrace.
However i don’t hold many positive thoughts for what Krudd’s Government will be.
Seems like the Labor Party of Jamaica is more conservative than i thought!
EC,
Hubrication, Glen is soaking in it!
Time to get the nasturtiums out.
If Labor win the important job will have been done. If Rudd does well in office then that would be abonus. We cannot afford another three years of this government without it first being thouroughly cleaned out. Only then might I consider them.
I hope Rudd rushes towards a bill of rights, a republic, changing the flag and a radical foreign policy of engagement with Asia just to see him go down in flames as one or two termer lol…he’ll be our generations Whitlam!
Glen,
Whitlam opened the trade door to China in 1972. The boom we have experienced over the last 10 years is because of trade with China.
Your point about engagement with Asia- Fatuous Nonsense.
Portlandbet still showing line ball seat by seat – 75 Labor, Lib 73, Independents 2.
As a punter pining for the loss of the Spring Carnival at Randwick, I am biased towards the betting market, not the polls.
I’m not celebrating the end of Rodentus just yet, though Aristotle’s historical analysis is attractive – but why does anyone assume this election must be so much like 1996? – similarities are of course tired regime which had built up enemies and issues, especially in Queensland, but looks more like 1961 according to PortlandBet. Too close to call. Get ready for Don’s Party again! Should certainly be no early Labor celebrations. If Turnbull buys his way back and helps the PM with some cash ( and paid helpers), the total becomes 18 seats Labor needs. Malcolm could finance the whole Liberal campaign in NSW.
And then there is WA Inc, or what’s left of it. A total ‘rotten borough’ for Labor over there!
If the Greens poll less than 8% primary nationwide and their prefs exhaust into informal votes by them not completely all squares on the House of Reps, as they did in significant numbers in the NSW election, Labor will not win a number of the marginal seats around the 6%+ mark.
They must win at least a handful of such seats around this margin to overcome strong local campaigning by Lib women in marginals, who are known to work harder and are generally smarter than their boofhead male counterparts. But Jackie’s gone and Danna Vale looks old and tired, so maybe that won’t be such a strong factor.
There are also Labor ‘gifts’ to the Government by bad pre-selections like Cornes in Boothby. More than a handful of these nation-wide and Saint Kevvie could be done. And now too late to ‘re-select’ in most places.
In 61 ALP lost on leakage of Communist Party Prefs away from Labor, didn’t they Adam? Could the Greens do it to Labor this time? Not quite as doctrinaire as the old Comms, so will direct prefs to Labor, as most of them hate Serf Choices more than global warming, if that’s possible.
There’s also no DLP this time and no ’split’ in ALP – just enough ’spoils’ from ALP governments to keep the ALP Left quiet, isn’t that so Adam?
And of course there might be a place in the sun for some Lefties in Gillard’s Fair Work Australia, though most of them will come from Victoria.
So history shouldn’t repeat itself a la 61, especially if the lid is kept on electricity privatisation and public service pay cuts and sackings by the NSW Government. Robbo will save us, won’t he Adam?
Sir James Killen fell across the line in Moreton to give the Government a one or two seat majority in 61. They had a ‘credit squeeze’ that year, didn’t they? They called it the ‘credit squeeze’ election.
But then the Rodent is no Menzies – he’s got at least two terms to catch Ming the Merciless and looks like he’s already run out of puff before the campaign proper has started. Age shall not weary them?
Rudd is tired too, make no mistake, but he has a few years on Johnny, so he might just ‘get to the line stronger’, to use the racing analogy.
No chance of matching his hero Ming, so why did he hang on? – that word ‘hubris’ springs to mind – if he hands over to Costello soon after Rudd is elevated, Costello does a ‘John Major’ and had a chance. The duumvirate was always a doubtful proposition once poor Beazley was gone.
Oh silly John, tried to deliver that once-in-a-lifetime knockout blow to unions and ALP with Serf Choices and just opened himself up to a hiding. Not the sensible act of a suburban solicitor – the power and the rarified atmosphere finally got to him, till he thought he was the cleverest of them all and could rule forever. Never underestimate that ‘born to rule’ attitude the Coalition makes its own. Seen in the likes of Dolly Downer in particular.
Crash Through or Crash – and Rodentus will crash just like Gough did. But Gough’s fall was a tragedy and an evil plot. Rodent’s fall will be like the fall of the Berlin Wall. A triumph over sclerotic despotism!
Night All!
Baz, just a couple of things. I think you`ll find portlandbet has had seat-by-seat betting at 78-70-2 for quite a while. Not sure how Turnbull`s cash is going to increase Labor`s required gains from 16 to 18 either? The Libs currently hold Bennelong and Wentworth last time I looked. Am I missing something here?
I hope Kevin isn’t getting a touch of the Lathams. His comments on charging the President of Iran at a time when the Americans are talking about attacking Iran just sounds silly. The whole ALP foreign policy has been about keeping out of other people’s business and concentrating on our own area of influence and now suddenly Kevin wants to send the international cops to arrest Iran’s President! Take the troops out of Iraq but send the cops to Iran!
Please. Please. Don’t let him turn into another Latham.
571
Glen Says:
October 3rd, 2007 at 12:58 am
>blockquote>I hope Rudd rushes towards a bill of rights, a republic, changing the flag and a radical foreign policy of engagement with Asia just to see him go down in flames as one or two termer lol…he’ll be our generations Whitlam!
And this pretty much sums up where the Liberals are at. Turnball at least wanted us to have our own head of state.
Poll finds rejecting mill likely to help Libs in Tasmanian marginals. However, ALP is currently ahead 61-39 2PP in both Bass and Braddon. Sample size of 492
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Mill-rejection-would-help-Libs-poll/2007/10/02/1191091117036.html
Playing with the poll figures is addictive.
I’ve redone the figures, this time I have ignored the newspoll marginal and safe seat results. Instead I have worked out what percentage of liberal votes would have to change to get the state swing and then distributed the swing according to the number of Liberal votes in the seat.
I am also now using the ABC 2007 swing values.
Doing this I get:
31 Liberal
8 National
108 ALP
Kooyong and Wannon still go to the ALP (Victoria is swinging hard), Warringah stays in the hands of the LIB’s.
Using the 2007 swing data and the newspoll safe seat results I get
24 Liberal
7 National
112 ALP
So somewhere in the Newspoll safe seat data is a swing that is greater in safe liberal seats than is explained by a fixed percentage of Liberal voters changing votes.
I think the place to look now is the Liberal primary vote, assuming the primary vote is higher for the liberals in safe liberal seats.
If we assume that the swing is a fixed percentage of Liberal voters is spot on, Kooyong is outside the margin of error. If the Liberal party can’t fix whatever is causing the swing, or the member can’t convince the voters that not all Liberal members are mad right wingers or Howard huggers ( whatever the issues is causing the swing) he is gone.
Sorry Adam too many ifs at the moment to put a $1000 on it.
Charles, I will settle for either scenario on election day.
Well here it is. The government is seeking to roll out Tampa II: “No more African refugees: Andrews”
He might just come to my suburb, a long-time resettlement area, and particularly now for Sudanese (and other horn of Africans). The kids in our prep class are if anything much politer and more attentive than the Aussie natives. Businesses, cultural and sporting groups are already being set up, including an african run employment agency. And, contrary to popular ignorance, the majority are Christians, indeed more so than the rest of us.
The only serious claim here is about the linguistic capacity of the adult migrants, and to a lesser extent inevitable cultural issues (eg a patriarchal system, but one of a kind common here only 2 or so generations ago). For god’s sake they are REFUGEES/humanitarian entrants: yet people want them to have spot on English…
It is a shocking appeal to prejudice. I’m sorry, this government is morally bankrupt.
(Please forgive the rant)
If you give 2% to the local member for a good campaign and assume Labor has picked a field of duds you get.
40 Libs
10 Nat
97 ALP
And Kooyong still goes to labor
40 Libs
10 Nat
97 ALP
I’ll still settle for that figure!
Paul K @ 575
I’m with you on that one. One of the most ridiculous things I’ve heard from Rudd and completely off message. I guess he’s trying to toughen up his image but that’s just silly.
More useless results.
All based on a fixed percentage of Liberal/National voters getting upset.
Uniform swing is 16.04 you get 2 Lib members and 2 NAT members. If the swing is larger, NATs become the larger conservative party ( I was curious).
If the whole country was as upset with the Liberals as we are in Victoria the result would be: 17 LIB 5 NAT 125 ALP.
If the all states were equally upset ( uniform swing of 8.8) you get: 35 LIB 8 NAT 108 ALP and Kooyong still falls.
WA doesn’t swing at all :35 LIB 9 NAT 105 ALP.
Graeme I’m with you… it’s eye-rollingly bad politics.
I don’t think the African refugees decision was a wise move at all – I don’t think there’s much fear there to exploit to begin with, and I think it’s just going to make them look racist.
There’s an IPSOS poll in the field – someone I know was interviewed last night. My guess is it’s for The Bulletin. Very curious survey – usual sort of demographic data and only one real question: which party do you intend to vote for at the coming election (not the usual if an election were held today) – unprompted by any list of options. No question about preferences when friend nominated a minor party.
Graeme and CTEP: My guess this is to sure up the votes of the remaining Hansonites. While most people have moved on, those who haven’t never will. This policy matches up to Hanson’s comments late last year in regards to ‘Africans bringing tuberculosis and AIDS this this country’, so the more I read about it, the more I think it is to reclaim some votes from One Nation and Pauline’s senate ticket. Very few Labor votes will swing that way, there are bigger issues to worry about.
Re #580 & #585 – Graeme they are morally bankrupt, and Call the election please it is eye-rollingly bad politics. They are still pursuing the tactics of trying to appeal to the prejudice of a small section of the population while at the same time further alienating the rest of the population – it’s exactly this sort of politics which is going to lose them a swag of ’safe’ seats.
In the Oz today, they quote results from a poll saying that Aussies have lost confidence in Bush and the Iraq invasion. 64% oppose Iraq and 48% want a more independent foreign policy. 69% say Aus and US should set greenhouse targets. Only 37% now have a positive feeling toward the US.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22522721-5013404,00.html
These findings imply strongly that Bush is a big negative for Howard. The US attacking Iran would not be at all good for our govt. Also 73% say Iraq has made Aus a more likely terrorist target, so, if there is a terrorist incident, it is possible that people will blame the Iraq involvement.
I sense a change of tactics from the government.
I think they’ve also decided to release a fair bit of detailed policy in the next couple of weeks before the election is called. They will do this for the following reasons
1. build up some momentum
2. make it look like they don’t just release policies during an election campaign (I think they’ve left this one a bit late).
3. outflank Rudd by releasing more policy detail, so they can paint him as “full of talk, but fuzzy on detail” (and by implication, not to be trusted).
I think they’ll keep releasing policies now and try to contrast them with Rudd’s… the aim being to appear that the Libs policies are more practical, detailed, and immediate while Rudd’s are “pie in sky”, in the future, and swamped by committees.
Up to now, Rudd has beaten Howard by announcing policies (without a lot of fine detail) whilst Howard has talked about the past. But there’s a big danger for Rudd now I think…. Howard has realised his mistake and is now going on policy attack. Rudd needs to get more detail and immediacy in his policies or he will be vulnerable to an attack on the basis of just looking into the future, without any practical, detailed plans for getting there.
Howard also knows that Labor has released quite a few policies, and so is holding off the rest until the election campaign. So Howard’s idea is probably to resist calling the election so he can release policies whilst hoping Rudd will sit on his hands and not release anything significant until the actual campaign starts.
On that basis, I expect that Howard will recall parliament for the final week. What do you think?
Edit: cross out “also” on the second line of my previous post.
It’s not about detailed policy.
Core and non core promises etc and so on. Who in there right mind believes anything a poly says before an election.
I do believe Howard will recall parliament. There are changes needed to the FOI act before they lose power. Their last desperate act will do some good.
Charles, my sources also indicate parliament will sit in October.
Labor will be doing well to get 80 seats, but something closer to 100 would be especially sweet.
I’ll stick to my prediction of:
79 Labor
69 Rodent’s Forces Of Darkness
2 Windsor/Katter
There is a change of tactics, but those outlined in 591 are not going be enough to do the trick, and the Government knows this.
Instead the purpose may be to take the heat out of things for a while, going quiet on aggro. Notice how Joe Hockey was being nice last night?
The strategy here would be to maximise the impact of the massively negative ads when they come.
They should make the devastating Swiftboat attacks on John Kerry look tame. I can’t wait to see some yellow-eyed serpent on the box saying, “I served with Kevin Rudd, and I can tell you…..”.
The problem for the Govt is that Labor ‘own’ most of the issues.
Howard’s policies will want to be better than yesterday’s hospital attempt which was quickly shot down.
It fills the void, is a general statement that most would agree with and most would understand that it is not one likely to come to anything.
Not much harm in it and certainly there is a risk for the Govt in responding to it as it would allow Rudd to raise the issue of Iraq and Iran and, the Govts intentions [to suck up to Bush once more] should they win an election.
Costello didn’t do himself much good on radio yesterday either, suggesting it was an insult to be compare to Wayne Swann. Right of the end of the arrogance meter that comment.
Kina… quickly shot down by who? The Labor Party? I thought the AMA welcomed it.
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