I’ve also had occasion to update my relative state result calculations off the back of Nielsen’s regular breakdowns and the large sample Tasmanian poll published by ReachTEL on the weekend. The latter has had a dramatic impact on Tasmania’s vote projection, which moves 4.2% to the Liberals in relative terms, without making any difference to the seat projection (a clean sweep being a hard nut for the Liberals to crack, at least according to my model). The Nielsen figures also lead to a slight strengthening in Labor’s relative position in Victoria and Western Australia, and a weakening in Queensland and South Australia (remembering that this is a zero-sum consideration: if Labor weakens in one seat it must strengthen somewhere else).

I’ve also done some tinkering with the way the model handles the bias and accuracy of Nielsen and Essential Research. This hasn’t made a substantial difference to the change from last week to this week, but there are some slight changes to the progress of the trendlines in the sidebar charts over the full course of the term, with the Greens starting out a little higher and falling further to reach their current position.

The abolition of a rural electorate has been achieved by merging Burrinjuck and Murrumbidgee into Cootamundra. Murrumbidgee’s western half is absorbed by Murray, the name of which changes from Murray-Darling to register the transfer of the state’s north-western corner by Barwon. The eastern part of Burrinjuck is absorbed by Goulburn. Part of Goulburn’s territory is in turn absorbed by Wollondilly, with knock-on effects in Sydney’s outer south-west.

Maps of the proposed boundaries can be viewed here. The redistribution commissioners will now receive suggestions and objections to the proposals until July 17.

UPDATE: A proposal for a redistribution of New South Wales’ state electoral boundaries has been published, the major change being that the metropolitan area gains a seat at the expense of the rest of the state. The new seat has been created in the inner city, with Marrickville divided between the new seats of Newtown in the east and Summer Hill in the west. Considerable rearrangement in the outer inland suburbs causes Menai, Smithfield and Toongabbie to be respectively renamed Holsworthy, Prospect and Seven Hills.

The abolition of a rural electorate has been achieved by merging Burrinjuck and Murrumbidgee into Cootamundra. Murrumbidgee’s western half is absorbed by Murray, the name of which changes from Murray-Darling to register the transfer of the state’s north-western corner by Barwon. The eastern part of Burrinjuck is absorbed by Goulburn. Part of Goulburn’s territory is in turn absorbed by Wollondilly, with knock-on effects in Sydney’s outer south-west.

Maps of the proposed boundaries can be viewed here. The redistribution commissioners will now receive suggestions and objections to the proposals until July 17.

UPDATE: Antony Green has published his estimated margins. The change from Toongabbie to Seven Hills has been particularly significant, creating a seat with a notional Liberal margin of 8.5% (through the absorption of Northmead and Winston Hills from Baulkham Hills) from one that had been safe enough for Labor that Nathan Rees was able to retain it in the 2011 landslide. The Liberals have been strengthened in Campbelltown, Oatley and Wollondilly, but Holsworthy is weaker for the Liberals than Menai which it replaces – and of course there is now one less conservative electorate in the country and one extra “left” electorate in the city.

I don’t normally give too much coverage to the internals in these polls, but there is very interesting movement beyond the margin of error in the gender breakdowns. Whereas all voting intention figures and personal ratings are little changed on the last poll for women, Labor’s primary vote among men is down seven to 24%, with Gillard down eight on approval to 28% and up ten on disapproval to 69%, and Tony Abbott’s lead as preferred prime minister widening from 48-42 to 56-35. The other noteworthy feature of the breakdowns is a big movement away from Labor among respondents under 40, but little change in the older cohorts.

We also had a Galaxy poll of 996 respondents published in the Sunday News Limited papers, which had the Coalition’s lead up from 54-46 to 55-45, from primary votes of 32% for Labor (down two), 47% for the Coalition (up one) and 11% for the Greens (up one). With Kevin Rudd as leader, the primary votes became 38% for Labor, 43% for the Coalition and 11% for the Greens, with two-party preferred at 50-50. Nonetheless, only 34% said Gillard should make way for Rudd with 52% opposed (32-60 among Labor and 33-51 among Coalition supporters).

UPDATE (Essential Research): Essential Research has Labor down a point on the primary vote to 35%, but is otherwise unchanged on last week with the Coalition on 47%, the Greens on 8% and two-party preferred at 54-46. Respondents were also asked who they voted for in 2010, an exercise which is generally recognised as being blighted by the tendency of some to mis-remember having voted for the winning party. Sure enough, once “didn’t vote” and “don’t know” are excluded, the results are 44% for Labor, 42% for the Coalition and 8% for the Greens, compared with election results of 38.0%, 43.6% and 11.8%. Respondents saying they had changed their vote were given a list of choices for why, but the samples here are very small and no clear pattern emerges from the results.

The poll also inquires about importance of election issues and the best party to handle them, which for some reason has “management of the economy” declining in importance since February (47% nominated it as one of their three most important issues, compared with 62% in February), with “political leadership” increasing (from 14% to 22%). Labor has gone substantially backwards as the best party for political leadership, along with environmental and population issues. Further questions on asylum seekers have 38% rating the Coalition as having the best policy against 13% for Labor and 7% for the Greens. A five-point scale of the issue’s importance has 37% rating it in the middle, 34% as important, and 24% as less important or not important.

UPDATE 2 (Morgan): The weekly Morgan multi-mode poll defies Nielsen in recording a shift to Labor on last week’s result, their primary vote up two to 33% with the Coalition down 1.5% to 44.5% and the Greens down 0.5% to 9%. The Coalition two-party lead narrows from 56-44 to 54.5-45.5 on previous election preferences, and from 56-44 to 53.5-46.5 on respondent allocated preferences.

Some bonus late-week polling to keep you going over the weekend:

• ReachTEL polling conducted for the Hobart Mercury points to a Labor wipeout in Tasmania and a comfortable win for Andrew Wilkie in Denison. After exclusion of the 6.8% undecided, the statewide primary votes are 48.8% for the Liberals, 28.2% for Labor and 11.3% for the Greens, suggesting a Liberal two-party lead of around 56-44 and a swing of 16% compared with the last election. The poll was conducted on Thursday night from samples of around 550 respondents per electorate for a statewide total of 2620, which probably makes it the most comprehensive Tasmanian poll ever conducted. Results by electorate (I have allocated the undecided components listed in the published primary votes in each case):

Denison: Andrew Wilkie 38.8%; Liberal 27.9%; Labor 21.3%; Greens 9.6%. The respective results at the 2010 election were 21.3%, 22.6%, 35.8% and 19.0%. Wilkie defeated Labor by 1.2% after preferences, but the published results suggest Labor would finish third behind the Liberals with their preferences securing a very easy win for Wilkie.

Franklin: Labor 38.4%; Liberal 47.1%; Greens 10.7%. The Liberals lead 51.0-49.0 after preferences, a swing of 11.8%.

Bass: Labor 25.5%; Liberal 56.9%; Greens 14.1%. The Liberals lead 61-39 after preferences, a swing of 17.7%.

Braddon: Labor 28.5%; Liberal 57.6%; Greens 7.6%. The Liberals lead 62.2-37.8 after preferences, a swing of 19.7%.

Lyons: Labor 27.5%; Liberal 54.1%; Greens 14.1%. The Liberals lead 59.0-41.0 after preferences, a swing of 22.5%.

• Another ReachTEL poll, this time targeting 1600 respondents in 11 seats in western Sydney on behalf of the Seven Network, inquired about Kevin Rudd’s popularity relative to Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott. Abbott led 64-36 over Gillard and 51-48 over Rudd, with enthusiasm for Rudd appearing to have cooled a little since ReachTEL conducted the same exercise three months ago. On that occasion, 42% said the return of Rudd would make them more likely to vote Labor against 25% for less likely. This time, the results were 36% and 31%.

• Roy Morgan has published a phone poll from a small sample of 475 respondents dealing mostly with party leadership, but also including voting intention results. The poll has the Coalition leading 59-41 on two-party preferred from primary votes of 26% for Labor, 50.5% for the Coalition and 12% for the Greens, remembering that the margin of error here is 4.5%. Further evidence of a Coalition-skewed sample came with a 47-35 lead for Tony Abbott over Julia Gillard as preferred prime minister, and a 27-65 approval/disapproval split for Gillard against 41-51 for Abbott. The poll also offered detailed material on preferred Labor and Liberal leader. Kevin Rudd led for Labor with 33% support against 14% for Julia Gillard, 11% for Bill Shorten and 10% for Stephen Smith. Tony Abbott did similarly poorly for preferred Liberal leader, finishing third with 18% behind Malcolm Turnbull on 47% and Joe Hockey on 19%.

• Roy Morgan has also scoured through two years of its polling to provide the “top 10 professions more likely to vote for each party”. This shows Labor’s base remains resolutely blue-collar, with the “new class” professions dominating the Greens list. Defence force members topped the Liberal list with police in sixth place, managers and finance industry types also featuring prominently.

Seat of the week: Blaxland

The western Sydney seat of Blaxland has been held by Labor without interruption since its creation in 1949, and provided Paul Keating with a seat throughout a parliamentary career lasting from 1969 to 1996. The electorate currently extends from Bankstown in the south through Bass Hill and Regents Park to Guildford in the north. The area is marked by a strong Arabic presence, especially around Guildford, together with a large Turkish community around Auburn and concentrations of Chinese and Vietnamese at Fairfield East and Regents Park. The two strongest areas for the Liberals, Woodpark and Guildford West in the electorate’s north-western corner and Bass Hill and Georges Hall in the south, are middle-income and contain the highest proportion of English speakers. The abolition of a neighbouring electorate to the north caused the electorate to be substantially redrawn at the 2010 election, adding 24,000 of the abolished electorate’s voters around Auburn South together with 14,000 at Bankstown in the south (which had been removed from the electorate in the 2007 redistribution). Transferred out of the electorate were 20,000 voters around Cabramatta to the west and 18,000 around Greenacre to the south.

Blaxland’s greatest moment of electoral interest came with its inauguration at the 1949 election, when Jack Lang attempted to move to the new seat after winning Reid as a Labor renegade in 1946. He failed, and the seat has since been won for Labor by margins of never less than 8.8%. James Harrison held the seat for the 20 years before the arrival of Paul Keating, who was succeeded at a 1996 by-election by Michael Hatton. Hatton’s career proved rather less illustrious than his predecessor’s, and he was dumped by the party’s national executive ahead of the 2007 election. The ensuing preselection was won by the Right-backed Jason Clare, a Transburban executive and former advisor to NSW Premier Bob Carr, who prevailed over constitutional law expert George Williams and Bankstown mayor Tania Mihailuk. Clare suffered what by Sydney standards was a modest 4.4% swing at the 2010 election, reducing the margin to 12.2%, but the electorate’s five corresponding state seats swung by between 13.8% and 20.3% at the state election the following March, with Granville and East Hills falling to the Liberals and Bankstown, Auburn and Fairfield remaining with Labor.

Jason Clare won promotion to parliamentary secretary in 2009, and then to the outer ministry after the 2010 election in the defence materiel portfolio. He shifted to home affairs and justice in December 2011, further recovering defence materiel after Kevin Rudd’s failed leadership bid the following February. He was promoted to cabinet as cabinet secretary in the February 2013 reshuffle which followed the retirement announcements of Nicola Roxon and Chris Evans, again trading in defence materiel while maintaining home affairs and justice. His Liberal opponent is Anthony Khouri, a local businessman of Lebanese extraction who together with his brothers founded custom-made luxury car manufacturer Bufori. ReachTEL has twice conducted automated phone polls showing Khouri in the lead, by 54-46 in March and 52-48 in June.

• Essential Research has moved in Labor’s favour, their primary vote up one to 36% with the Coalition down one to 47% and the Greens steady on 8%. On two-party preferred, the Coalition lead is down from 55-45 to 54-46. The monthly personal ratings record very little change, with Julia Gillard down one on approval to 37% and steady on disapproval at 54%, while Tony Abbott is steady on 40% and down one to 49%. Abbott’s lead as preferred prime minister shifts from 41-39 to 40-39. Pleasingly, further questions concern campaign finance and find 29% support for public funding of political parties against 47% who think they should be funded only by donations; 65% support for donation caps against only 17% for unlimited donations; and only 5% opposed to public disclosure of donations (Institute of Public Affairs, take note). Thirty-six per cent supported the $1000 disclosure threshold originally proposed by the government, 26% favoured the $5000 agreed to under the doomed compromise with the Liberals, and only 17% supported the present $12,000 threshold. Other questions concerned tolerance (69% rating racism a large or moderate problem in Australian society) and Pauline Hanson (58% think it unlikely she would make a positive contribution to parliament against 30% for likely).

• The weekly Morgan multi-mode poll has Labor down half a point to 31%, the Coalition up half to 46% and the Greens steady on 9.5%. Both previous election and respondent-allocated preference measures of two-party preferred are at 56-44, compared with 55.5-44.5 and 55-45 last week.

Further polling:

• The Sunday Fairfax papers carried results from a ReachTEL automated phone of 3500 respondents in six Labor seats, which found Jason Clare on 48% of two-party preferred in Blaxland, Peter Garrett on 49% in Kingsford Smith, Bill Shorten and Wayne Swan on 53% in Maribyrnong and Lilley, and Jenny Macklin on 57% in Jagajaga. Also covered was Craig Emerson’s seat of Rankin, but here we were told only that he was trailing. The poll also inquired as to how people would vote if Kevin Rudd was returned to the leadership, which had Labor improving 4.5% in Kingsford Smith, 8.4% in Blaxland, 3.6% in Lilley, 11.8% in Rankin, 3.1% in Jagajaga and 8.6% in Maribyrnong.

• Roy Morgan also published a phone poll of 546 respondents on Friday which found 21%, 16% and 16% of respondents would respectively “consider” voting for Julian Assange’s Wikileaks Party, Katter’s Australian Party and the Palmer United Party. The Australian Financial Review also reported that Labor pollsters UMR Research had found 26% of respondents “would be willing” to support Assange’s party. Personally, I don’t find questions on voting intention of much value unless respondents are required to choose from a limited range of options.

Preselection news:

• Martin Ferguson’s announcement that he will bow out at the coming election has unleashed a preselection struggle for possibly the safest Labor seat in the country, the inner Melbourne seat of Batman. The vacancy was immediately perceived by Julia Gillard and Bill Shorten as a chance to accommodate Senator David Feeney, a Right powerbroker and key Gillard ally who has been stranded with what looks to be the unwinnable third position on the Victorian Senate ticket. However, Feeney is meeting fierce opposition from the local Left and those who believe the seat should go to a woman after Tim Watts was chosen to succeed Nicola Roxon in Gellibrand. Penny Wong and Jenny Macklin are in the latter camp, while Julia Gillard’s intervention has been criticised by Brian Howe, the Keating-era Deputy Prime Minister who held the seat from 1977 to 1996. The early talk was that Feeney might be opposed by ACTU president Ged Kearney, but she soon scotched the idea saying she wished to remain in her current position. Support is instead coalescing behind local Left faction member Mary-Anne Thomas, executive manager of Plan International. Two early starters have withdrawn to give her a clear run: Tim Laurence, the mayor of Darebin, and Hutch Hussein, refugee advocate and former national convenor of Emily’s List. Brian Howe has come out in support for Thomas, while Martin Ferguson is backing Feeney despite his long association with the Left. Stephen Mayne and Andrew Crook of Crikey have an extremely detailed review of the situation in the local branches.

• Ed Gannon of the Weekly Times reports the Victorian Liberal Party has defied Tony Abbott and angered the Nationals by resolving to field a candidate in Mallee, which will be vacated by the retirement of Nationals member John Forrest. The Nationals candidate, former Victorian Farmers Federation president Andrew Broad, said any opponent fielded against him would be “another Liberal Party muppet run out of Melbourne”, which Liberal state director Damien Mantach said was a “shrill outburst … unbecoming of someone who is aspiring to be a local leader and elected to high office”.

• Katter’s Australian Party and the Palmer United Party have unveiled high-profile Senate candidates in country singer James Blundell and former Western Bulldogs AFL player Doug Hawkins, who will respectively run for the KAP in Queensland and the PUP in Victoria.

The electorate of St George was for much of its history a classically marginal middle suburban seat, frequently changing hands until Whitlam government minister Bill Morrison recovered it for Labor in 1980 after being unseated in 1975 (the unsuccessful candidate in the intervening 1977 election was Whitlam’s son Antony, who had served in the previous term as member for Grayndler). Morrison was succeeded in 1984 by Stephen Dubois, who retired when Watson was created in 1993 as part of a rearrangement that abolished St George and the Bondi-area electorate of Phillip. Labor accommodated Phillip MP Jeannette McHugh in Grayndler, while Right faction heavyweight Leo McLeay moved from Grayndler to Watson. Meanwhile, Labor’s grip tightened thanks to demographic change which has left Watson with the highest proportion of non-English speakers (72.8%) of any electorate in the country, most notably through the concentration of Lebanese at Lakemba and Chinese and Koreans at Campsie. However, the trend to Labor sharply reversed amid a Sydney-wide backlash at the 2010 election, which reduced Labor’s 18.2% margin by exactly half.

Watson has been held since McLeay’s retirement in 2004 by Tony Burke, who had entered politics the previous year as a member of the state upper house. McLeay had long hoped that his son Paul would assume the seat upon his retirement, but the strength of support for Burke within the Right compelled him to abandon the idea. Paul McLeay was instead accommodated in the state seat of Heathcote, which he held from 2003 until he joined the Labor casualty list at the 2011 state election. Burke meanwhile won swift promotion to the shadow ministry in 2005, going on to serve in cabinet as Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister in the Rudd-Gillard government’s first term and as Sustainability, Environment, Water, Populations and Communities Minister (further gaining arts in March 2013) in its second. Burke has been a resolute supporter of Julia Gillard’s leadership, and spoke publicly of the “chaos” of Kevin Rudd’s prime ministership when he launched his unsuccessful challenged in February 2012.

The Liberals have preselected Ron Delezio, a businessman who came to national attention after his daughter Sophie received horrific injuries in separate accidents in 2003 and 2006. Delezio ran in Banks at the 2010 election, picking up an 8.9% swing against Labor’s Daryl Melham, and unsuccessfully sought preselection there again for the coming election.

Also:

• JWS Research has conducted automated phone polls in the Melbourne seats of Isaacs, Chisholm and Melbourne Ports, each with a sample of around 500 respondents and a margin of error of slightly below 4.5%. These point to a huge swing in Isaacs, a small swing in Melbourne Ports, and no swing in Chisholm, with an improbably large gap separating the first from the last. Isaacs: Liberal 45%, Labor 35%, Greens 8%, 55-45 to Liberal (15.4% swing to Liberal). Melbourne Ports: Labor 49%, Liberal 41%, Greens 6%, 55.2-44.8 to Labor (2.7% swing to Liberal). Chisholm: Labor 51%, Liberal 42%, Greens 3%, 55.6-44.4 to Labor (0.2% swing to Liberal).

• Essential Research has Labor regaining the primary vote point they lost last week, now at 35%, with the Coalition and the Greens steady on 48% and 8% and two-party preferred steady at 55-45. Other findings suggest support for higher renewable energy targets (11% think the current 20% target by 2020 too high, 33% about right, and 40% not high enough), wind farms (76% support, 11% oppose), compulsory vaccination (87% support, 7% oppose), the right of childcare centres to refuse children who have not been vaccinated (78% support, 11% oppose), and a ban on advertising of sports betting (78% support, 12% oppose), and opposition to privatisation of the ABC and SBS (15% support, 57% oppose). Fifty-two per cent think it important that Australia have a car manufacturing industry against 35% not important; 61% favoured a proposition that “with government support, Australia can have a successful manufacturing industry” against 22% for “there is no future for manufacturing in Australia and government support would be a waste of money”.

• Morgan has Labor down two points on the primary vote to 31.5%, with the Coalition and the Greens steady on 45.5% and 9.5%. The move against Labor is softened by preferences on the respondent-allocated two-party preferred measure, on which the Coalition lead shifts from 54.5-45.5 to 55-45. On previous election preferences, the change is from 54.5-45.5 to 55.5-44.5.

UPDATE 2 (Morgan): Morgan has Labor down two points on the primary vote to 31.5%, with the Coalition and the Greens steady on 45.5% and 9.5%. The move against Labor is softened by preferences on the respondent-allocated two-party preferred measure, on which the Coalition lead shifts from 54.5-45.5 to 55-45. On previous election preferences, the change is from 54.5-45.5 to 55.5-44.5.

Isaacs covers south-eastern bayside Melbourne from Mordialloc south to Carrum, from which it extends inland as far as Western Port Highway to encompass Keysborough in the north and Carrum Downs in the south. The bayside suburbs are naturally marginal and shifted decisively to the Liberals at the state election in November 2010, whereas the centres further inland are strong for Labor. Population growth, aided by development in and around Keysborough, has caused the electorate to lose territory in the latest redistribution, which transfers around 7500 voters in Springvale South and another 3500 in Cheltenham to Hotham. Labor’s strength in the former area is such that their margin has been shaved from 11.0% to 10.4%.

Isaacs was effectively created in 1969, prior to which the name was attached to a seat which covered the unrelated Caulfield area. Redistributions have made a strong mark on the seat’s electoral history, the presence or absence of Beaumaris at the northern coastal end being the decisive factor in the Liberals’ competitiveness. With Beaumaris in the electorate from 1969 to 1977, Labor’s only win was in 1974, when it provided a crucial gain for a beleagured Whitlam government. David Charles gained the seat for Labor in 1980, and retained it until retirement in 1990 despite the return of Beaumaris in 1984. Isaacs then became one of nine Victorian gains for the Liberals with Rod Atkinson’s win at the 1990 election. Atkinson held the seat for two terms before redistribution saw the electorate trade Beaumaris for southern bayside Chelsea and semi-rural Cranbourne, allowing Greg Wilton to win the seat for Labor against the trend of the 1996 election.

Greg Wilton first survived an adverse 2.3% swing in 1996, having inherited a post-redistribution margin of 3.9%, and added a further 4.8% to his margin in 1998. His career ended in tragic circumstances in 2000 when he committed suicide amid widely publicised domestic troubles. This did much to embitter Wilton’s friend Mark Latham towards then Labor leader Kim Beazley, whom Latham accused of failing to support Wilton during his crisis. Ann Corcoran, who had won preselection as a factionally unaligned compromise candidate, was elected as the new Labor member without opposition from the Liberals at the subsequent by-election. Corcoran went on to suffer swings of 3.6% and 5.1% in 2001 and 2004, but was saved by a redistribution between the two elections which removed Cranbourne and added Noble Park, boosting her margin by 3.8%.

Corcoran’s factional non-alignment, together with her weak electoral performance, caused her to lose preselection at the 2007 election to Mark Dreyfus, a prominent barrister and Queen’s Counsel. Right faction backing gave Dreyfus a narrow preselection victory when the 50% of the vote determined by the party’s public office selection committee overwhelmed a majority for Corcoran in the local party ballot. Dreyfus picked up swings of 5.9% in 2007 and 3.3% in 2010, and won promotion firstly to parliamentary secretary after the 2010 election and then to cabinet as Attorney-General following the resignation of Nicola Roxon in February 2013.

The Liberal candidate at the coming election is Garry Spencer, who obtained the rank of lieutenant-colonel in a 20-year career with the Australian Defence Force before working as a management consultant and engineering lecturer. Spencer emerged as candidate in February after the party’s first choice, business consultant Jeff Shelley, withdrew citing personal reasons. However, The Age reported being told by Liberal state director Damien Mantach that Shelley was no longer the candidate minutes after Shelley had told the paper he was not aware he might be disendorsed. The report further noted “mounting concerns about Mr Shelley’s former employment with troubled Brighton-based solar panels installation company Cool World”, which had gone into administration.