A very encouraging result for the government from Westpoll in today’s West Australian, which has the Liberals holding firm in their Perth marginals of Stirling and Hasluck and set to win Cowan from Labor with a 5 per cent swing. The poll was conducted between Monday and Thursday with samples of a little over 400 for each seat. This is the second electorate-level poll Westpoll has conducted, and both have shown the Liberals travelling much better in these three seats than Westpoll’s regular statewide polling would suggest. If the overall 3 per cent swing indicated in today’s poll was replicated statewide, the two-party split in Western Australia would be at least 58-42 in favour of the Liberals. The last two statewide surveys showed Labor leads of 51.6-48.4 early last month and 53-47 early this month.
293 Comments
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110 Glen Says: October 20th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
Glen, the term ‘lying rodent’, in reference to John Howard, is from a liberal minister.
That does not mean it is not offensive….Pi!
Alex your comments are also offensive to call anybody a silly old git if its ok to go ballistic over a comment not directed at the disabled then William should delete your crude posts!
OK David.
If you want to believe a pollster who has a track record for results twice the size of the margin of error thats OK.
I would not be surprised considering the inherent liberal bias of THe West – Today’s hatchet job on Rud by Paul (I love Debortolis as much as Tony McManus) Murray is a prime example – he must have felt like an absolute dickhead when his prediction of a coalition victory in the State Election didn’t eventuate.
Ah but runawake, I never said that I ‘believed’ what these polls are showing. Merely that I don’t think that sampling error is a convincing explanation for the Liberal leads.
Paul Murray once described this website as “terrific”, so I tend to think he can’t be all that bad.
Labor is probably going to lose Cowan in the west, but that is only one seat lost. They aren’t going to lose seats elsewhere in the country.
I think the Liberals are going to lose Forrest to an independent.
Maybe so, but honestly his childish attack on Rudd not attending Beazley Snr’s funeral was pretty crass – even though Kim Jnr has said he is not offended by it as he understyands that both leaders are in Election mode.
What all the polls show lately is that soft ALP voters are moving back to Howard. How much of the ALP vote is soft will be shown the closer to polling day we get.
An independent who is supportive of AWAs unfortunatley.
Ruawake, the only differences are that Westpoll haven’t published their number of uncommitted/refused (and if your point is that they should have then I don’t disagree), and that Newspoll say “excluded” whereas Westpoll say “allocated”. There may be a subtle operational distinction between the two terms, but I don’t imagine it would amount to much.
PS These soft ALP voters are attracted to their SDA influenced policies but will jump ship very easily. The DLP must love this new look ALP but it still needs to be seen if the True Believers do
David,
You were talking about 3 polls, I assumed you meant, ACN, Galaxy, Morgan when you said “They all show small pro-Liberal swings from 2004″ You could not have been talking about Westpoll.
Lift your game mate.
ESJ – ‘choosing between the collective and the individual’. You seem to live in a Solzhenitsyn world. I’ve no doubt western societies have drifted into a framework of ‘me is all’ and ‘all opinions are equally worthwhile’ (contradictory positions). A position which is simultaneously anti-conservative and anti-social democratic. But that’s purely at the level of rhetoric.
The election might as well be considered about ‘the collective’ (climate change, education, health outcomes) versus the individual. Just as an absurd dichotomy.
Forgetting PD101, there is a simple solution to this thread. WA should secede, as they voted for in the 30s.
If the Australia wide poll did become close would seats like Kingston become close again or would the ALP run YR@W have done enough work to still have Rishworth win easily?
Glen – I hope you can now see the silliness of name calling – it contributes nothing to the debate.
William.
You are correct to a point, but as I pointed out earlier Patterson have a method of adding a 3-3.5% boost to a party because they cannot figure out why their poling was wrong.
Does this arbitary “boost” have any credibilty?
For what it is worth my take on the outcome in Perth is it will not be much different to the rest of the country. West poll is a bought poll by the most rancid rightwing rag in Australia and they got what they paid for. I live in Pearce and I don`t mind these poll results as it will shake up Labor activists and get them more involved in the campaign.Workchoices is Howards gift to Labor it bites here just as hard as the rest of the country.
For a p*sstake on election ads, Dave Hughes is a must read:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22617669-5012863,00.html
In this case of Kalgoorlie, arguably it does. Kalgoorlie has unpollable remote Aboriginal communities that vote Labor en masse – Stirling, Cowan and Hasluck do not.
There is talk that there will be a large Green vote from younger voters in Kingston but they would like to give the Libs their second preference. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out. Will Green voters follow the trend or be more evenly split?
Well, I don’t believe the Westpoll figures for a moment. If taken together with last week’s 52-48 split, there must be some pretty giant swings occurring in Perth and Fremantle!
Swan is likely to repeat its performance in 1998. Kim Wilkie is getting plenty of exposure out there, while I have yet to come across anything from Steve Irons other than a billboard.
Cowan is the interesting one. It is now very much McMansion territory with all the new suburbs in Wanneroo and with Graham Edwards’ retirement could turn blue (which is probably its natural inclination at the moment anyway). Luke Simpkins also seems to be getting all the coverage, with nothing much from Liz Prime.
And Maxine’s dance looked a darn sight better than Howard caught in an apparently uncontrollable throng!
My big thought from reading all of this is: How? How is a year’s worth of polling numbers so endangered or inaccurate or temporary that the Liberals can turn them around and pull off a win? How? It would lead me to think that Kevin Rudd would have to do something so monumentally boneheaded as to throw it away. The difference between the two parties willl fluctuate, that’s how polling works; it throws up a distribution of numbers: a 54, 55.5, 53, 51.5, 59 for the ALP, but it’s just that, statistical variance. That’s why we have rolling trends…
In a year, the mood has been overhwlemingly for change. It’s not Howard’s election to take back any more – if he wanted to do something, waiting until the end of October was the wrong thing. It’s Rudd’s to lose. Is Cowan changing hands? I’d put money on no. Are Hasluck and Stirling going to change hands? I’d put money on yes; How come a five percent swing to the government when teh rest of thw country is swinging away seven percent? What’s the dominant local issue in Cowan that makes this so? And why is it that we don’t know about it already? Is it just that nobody knows how to predict WA? Why is Cowan heading over the other side of the house, when Forrest is going to pieces, and nobody’s talkin’ abour Kalgoorlie? What the hell is going on in WA?
What’s with Howard’s “Mr Speaker” today?
There were two posts about this. Then nothing.
Tell me more.
Ahh, a fellow Pearce person
Pearce is problematic because of the regional areas of the seat like Northam, York & Merriden – staunch National Country, and of course the NAts won’t put up a candidate against Moylan, though the AWB debacle “may” be a godsend for the ALP.
Also Pearce has Gidgegannup with all the hobby farmers etc. Ellenbrook wil go well for the ALP cos of the hard work of the STATE member.
Someone heckled Howard while he was making a speech at a podium and he said Mr Speaker twice and then said you brought up a bad habit of his nothing too massive not as bad as McKew trying to dance or the Kevin 07 dog pooping while Rudd made a speech…all a part of the election campaign really.
As someone who has lived in the electorate of Stirling – I cannot understand why two of these electorates record Nationals votes of 1%. (Stirling and Hasluck in June) What sort of poll is this?
And a 50% primary for the Liberals in Stirling – I don’t like it and I don’t beleive it.
They must think Eoin Cameron is till the local member
Hey Michael Keenan is a good local member underestimate him at your peril i helped out in his campaign in 2004 and he a really down to earth bloke whose got a good record in the community he’ll do a much better job than Tinley…
William
10% of the Wide Bay electorate had no telephone service on Mon, Tues, Wed. This week.
What I am trying to say is that Westpoll look at their results from previous elections then add a “boost” to one party or another. This is reactive to previous elections. So they build in a bias related to who won the last election.
If they do the same with the possible 6% undecided it only adds to the MoE. As such there polls are meaningless.
Patterson do polls for The Western Australian and The Canberra Times.
They have been spectacularly wrong in Eden-Monaro for yonks.
Don’t worry Bill. If Howard wins I’m sure your position as head of the Greens for Howard movement will be safe.
I do agree with you that the results will be evident before the polls close in WA. But here in Australia, the candidates in WA ought to be grateful (imho) for compulsory voting. In American, the west coast states on the mainland (especially California) traditionally whine all the time in the last few hours of their polling there when the east coast news folks declare races before their polls close. Alaska and Hawaii have learned to deal with it. There have been studies in the past that have shown that turnout in states in the Pacific time zone does indeed fall off if the races are declared before their polls close. People figure “why bother, my vote wont’ count now for President” and ignore the fact that they could make a difference in the House, Senate or local issue races. You don’t have that problem with compulsory voting
Delusional to say it’s been anything other than a bad week for Labor. Howard now has the momentum, which isn’t everything, but it is something.
Still, it’s only one bad week.
Rudd wouldn’t want to have a bad debate, though.
Nowhere did I refer to 3 “polls”. My post mentioned three “results”. i.e. Cowan, Stirling and Hasluck. It should have been perfectly clear what I was referring to.
I agree that W.A. will be irrelevant on the night. 4.9% swing in NSW and 3% or less everywhere else gets the ALP across the line and into government. NSW is the one to watch as even large swings in other states wont do it unless NSW swings above 4. (I think from playing with the ABC’s calculator).
David.
You are correct, I made a false assumption. Sorry.
Glen at 179 – Michael Keenan might be a good local member – but do you really think that there are 800 people there who when asked would say that they are going to vote National?
I can’t believe it and this is why I doubt the result!
It’s good to see some of my fellow bloggers coming around on Forrest. I’ve been saying it for months, that Forrest could fall to either Noel Brunning (ind) of Peter Macfarlane (alp).
A quick update on Forrest.
There seems to be momentum towards the greens in Forrest. This could be very helpful to Labor (if their liberal voters) and greens chances in the Senate.
Peter Macfarlane held his campaign launch today. About 80 to 100 people attended. Held a sort of fair in the centre of Bunbury. Unlucky for him that it was the same day as Kim Beazely Sr funeral. Got some state members and Senator Ruth Webber.
Noel Marino still under pressure. Now from local newspapers and radio. She seems to always be unable for comment.
Watch this space.
I’m assuming you mean Noal Marino, unless by some sort of divine intervention she and Noel Brunning have morphed into some sort of uber liberal
Bah – NOLA, Even I stuffed up in my typo correcting yours
Frank Calabrese #189 & 190
Lets hope not to many votes make the same mistake.
Uber liberal. Thats a scary thought.
174… It is called a “senior moment” and somebody some where is keeping count. So far it is still in single digits but come election day who knows? One of the problems of having a “senior” as your front man.
I disagree with this bad week BS. The Liberals did more so they may have won the week but nothing bad happened to Labor.
You’re talking out of your arse again, Glen. You know nothing about WA politics. Brand will not be marginal – Garry Gray is miles in front.
For the aficionados amongst you I can report that Kim Beazley’s funeral was a moving and great tribute to a first-class politician and man. To see Gough, Bob, Bill and PJ next to each other was fantastic. Even better was the sight of Gough resting his hand on Bob’s shoulder as he left the cathedral! The eulogies were about a time that was so different to today, and about men who gave and received respect. Kim Beazley achieved much in life from just 3 years in government. I, for one, salute the man who made it possible for me and thousands of others go to university. I salute a man who had a genuine and sincere desire to improve the lives of our indigenous people. Vale, Kim.
GB,
Labor lost the initiative – that’s the bad thing that happened to them. It’s not BS, it’s just common sense.
On ABC news just heard Howard saying stuff like “12 megabit speeds” in reply to the damaging report on Australian broadband compared with the rest of the world??? For god’s sake, this guy sounded like a dinosaur. Hasn’t got a clue.
AND it was very obvious.
Someone out of his time.
I just saw Howard’s “Mr Speaker” moment on the news. It wasnt done as a joke he did it on instinct, he forgot were he was. It was hillarious.
PJK with respect you obviously dont know much about WA politics because Brand is a marginal seat im afraid you need to brush up on your politics young staffer before you get your knickers in a twist about how great socialism was under Gough pity everything they did was not sustainable lol too bad what a legacy shattered dreams….
Brand of course covers the State seat of Peel, where during the By-Election at the height of the CCC inquiry into Smith’s Beach with daily releases of Bugged Phone Calls etc – the Labor vote actually INCREASED.
And today’s story in The West regarding an African Family’s car in Gosnells being daubed in racist slogans and Nazi Swastikas won’t help those African and Sudanese voters in Stirling one little bit.
” Errr, arrr, rusted-ons and swingers figures from The Daily Telegraph, Mr.Speaker.”
{Has the first week of the campaign prompted you to change your vote?
Yes, I see a clear winner who’s got my vote!
85% (954 votes)
No, I am still undecided and need to see more policy details
14% (166 votes)
Total votes: 1120
This poll started on Saturday, October 20, 2007}
Naturally no claims are made regarding the pseohological rigour applied in gathering the numbers posted so far, but it’s the most straight-forward question and possible answers they’ve conjured up in recent memory.
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