Australia - 7 September 2013

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Julia Gillard has announced a Federal Election for Saturday 14 September.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Nope Parliament will be dissolved on 12 August. Holy sh**t Tony's got to get some policies and he's got oodles of time to cost them.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Way way too early to make a prediction. What I will say, is there won't be a blow-out either way.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

It'll be a close election, Labor Gains in Victoria/Qld, Liberal maybe everywhere else.

What makes you think Labor will gain seats in Victoria? They did very well there last time, and I can't see them doing too much better this time.

There are about 3 seats in VIC that could fall in a very small swing to the ALP... considering the polling in VIC has the ALP up 10% TPP... those seats would fall in a uniform swing.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

It'll be a close election, Labor Gains in Victoria/Qld, Liberal maybe everywhere else.

What makes you think Labor will gain seats in Victoria? They did very well there last time, and I can't see them doing too much better this time.

There are about 3 seats in VIC that could fall in a very small swing to the ALP... considering the polling in VIC has the ALP up 10% TPP... those seats would fall in a uniform swing.

That's from the latest poll for the state Labor party, not the federal one. The latest federal poll that included Victorian data, published a month ago yesterday, showed a small swing towards the Coalition.

Sorry the last poll had the ALP up 54-46 in VIC Federally, I didn't remember clearly.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Candidate declaration from the London-Ecuador constituency

Useless attention-seeking twat...

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Headline from the Sydney Morning Herald:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I wonder if these first few days of 'campaigning' will set the tone for this election? Could be a long painful seven months for the ALP.

It's such a hysterical response... election years tend to see more retirements and re-shuffles.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

There were more Laborites in 1996 and Liberals in 2007 available to quit than there are Laborites right now, but was there a similar sense of imminent doom at this point in those cycles?

Uh... yeah.

The polling is actually closer this year than this point before 1996 and 2007. I say anyone expecting a 1996-2007-like result is probably in for a disappointment.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

I'm on my phone, so hopefully others will put this down... first Newspoll is uuuuuugly for the Government. Of course, election year polling notwithstanding.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Yeah it's been a sh**t week for them.

Which probably makes you pretty pissed since you're a Labor Left hack.

Is that constructive?

Headlines: 56-44
ALP primary down 6, Coalition up 4
Gillard now only 2 points ahead of Abbott

But of course, that's the beauty of an 8 month campaign... you know, there's 8 months to go.

But again, election-year polling as we all know is like a pig's breakfast - there will likely be little consistency for the next 4-6 months.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

The ACT Opposition Leader is quitting to challenge Senator Gary Humphries for Liberal pre-selection for the second Senate seat in the ACT (the first guaranteed to go the ALP's Kate Lundy).

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/opinion/political-news/seselja-to-challenge-humphries-for-act-senate-seat-20130204-2dt5t.html

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

There were more Laborites in 1996 and Liberals in 2007 available to quit than there are Laborites right now, but was there a similar sense of imminent doom at this point in those cycles?

Uh... yeah.

The polling is actually closer this year than this point before 1996 and 2007. I say anyone expecting a 1996-2007-like result is probably in for a disappointment.

I don't know about 1996, but didn't Labor only establish a convincing lead in 2007 when Rudd became the leader?

Nope, Labor led consistently throughout 2006... the massive 10%+ leads came after Rudd yes, but Beazley had a lot of 53-47 polls (that actual 2007 election result)...  the issue was preferred PM, Howard was ahead 54-25.

Interesting poll I found from April 2001... the poll was "who do you think is likely to win the election"

ALP: 65%
Coalition: 23%...

In fact the Government was in deep trouble until August 2001... then it all turned around.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Well, Fraser was 7 years and almost 3 months...

The thing to note, and why I will use the 2001/2004 elections for comparison, but will be careful about applying their lessons too tightly is this.

In 2001, the polling looked terrible, then Tampa in August was followed by 9/11 in September. It allowed John Howard to stoke two elements, xenophobia (basically winning back bogans and other Pauline Hanson types back) and nationalism. Beazley couldn't compete because he was a nice, considered and non-aggressive guy. Howard steam-rolled them.

In 2004, the turn-around didn't really kick in until the campaign was almost upon us. The release of medicare gold, while attractive to the left, basically sent out messages of Whitlam 2.0 ... which sent older people and suburbanites fleeing back to Howard's arms. Then there was the embassy bombing in Jakarta that allowed Howard to bring back the national security argument, against Latham who wasn't too interested in it. That was then followed by 'the handshake' a few days before the election. Latham was a worrying entity to a lot of people due to his image as an aggressive boof-head. The handshake just  pushed undecideds over to Howard and in a big way.

So, it wasn't some kind of natural pattern, circumstances need to exist to force those changes in perception and shift momentum in the other direction.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hReBMauqhrY

For those who don't know what we're talking about...

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hReBMauqhrY

For those who don't know what we're talking about...

I very little about Australian politics, but it seems amazing that handshake could have swung voters though.                                                                                                                                                       I know Gillard has been very unpopular and labour have been clobbered in state elections but I'm still expecting, her to pull of a narrow victory when voters are faced with the choice of PM Abbott.

It wasn't the handshake alone, it was just what convinced people that he was a brute. For months before, there had been rumours of a bucks night video (which never actually surfaced) and he was forced to explain why he broke a taxi driver's arm. The handshake didn't make people think he was a thug, it merely allowed them to decide that what they had been told was in fact true. I think prior to the handshake, they were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, caught up in partisan mud-slinging, the handshake dispelled that cynicism.

This is pretty much entirely accurate and although the addendum than we never like our politicians to be violent is perhaps useful, there's nothing further to add.

Yup, nail on the head.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

New Nielsen poll - ugly, pure ugly

Primary vote
ALP: 30% (-5)
Coalition : 47% (+4)
Greens: 11% (NC)

TPP
ALP: 45%
Coalition: 55%

Preferred PM (first time Gillard's been behind in 7 months)
Gillard: 45% (-4)
Abbott: 49% (+9)

Gillard: 35%
Rudd: 61%

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

I would actually think most of the independents (Katter has his own party now) and Bandt will probably lose. I still think Windsor can survive.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Where is the data about Wilkie? When I was down in Hobart a month ago, the local people were saying they weren't happy with his single-issue fixations.


In order...
1. Thomson
2. Oakeshott
3. Wilkie
4. Bandt
5. Windsor
6. Katter

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

I doubt the carbon tax is as big of an issue as people think... to me, the leadership of the future is Combet and Clare...I don't mind seeing Shorten elevated and shot down as a post-election leader.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Downer is right, the thing Abbott and the Liberals are at risk of, and I did notice a little of it in the Bufget reply speech, is acting too much like a PM-waiting, despite the polls, Australians could easily swing back to say 'not so fast'.

I expect the polls to tighten. I still expect the Coalition to win (however physically ill the idea of Tony Abbott as PM makes me (I'd be ok with Hockey , Turnbull, Julie Bushop))

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

New Nielsen poll is 54-46 to the Coalition (a 6% swing to the
ALP)

Also Newspoll has things unchanged at 56-44.

What is interesting is that preferred PM has tightened up again, they're tied in Nielsen (8% boost for Gillard) and she's one point behind in Newspoll.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

So no budget bounce then.

According to Newspoll, no

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Nielson was over-estimating the Coalition vote, the 6-pt swing is more of a correction from a previous bad sample, I suspect. I prefer to watch Nielson, Newspoll and Galaxy and assume the actual result is somewhere in the middle of the three of them.

Yeah, the average. Plus the ever-present Australian election year polling caveat.

The director of Nielsen pretty much said that the last poll was essentially an outlier, with this poll returning to trend. He noted the only two things of potentially statistical relevance was the 5% drop in the Coalition primary vote and the boost in Gillard's standing as preferred PM.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Sitting governments have been down this much and come back... so that's the historic part.

So it poses two questions...

Could they? Yes
Will they? Probably not - for no other reason than there isn't really a big game-changer coming. Gillard's issues are about perceptions and honestly, her political judgement but also the judgement of those around her.

Note, Gillard's popularity goes up when she's strong, forceful and not stage-managed. After watching Abbott's election lau... I mean, Budget reply speech - Gillard made a look to one of her colleagues which was priceless basically saying "I cannot believe he's getting away with this". This is the Gillard people need to see.

I am hearing that the utterly dire internal ALP polling has started to turn back, but the issue is, would it be enough? and will it be in the right places?

The Liberal campaign managers know this could easily turn against them, so their strategy has been for Abbott to appear to look like the election is a done deal and act moderate and reasonable, talking about good-governance etc etc. It's very effective.

There are routes that ALP could take, start showing the hypocrisy in the Coalition campaign - Abbott keeps referring to his front-bench being a part of the Government that brought surpluses and reduced debt... but they also were the Government that oversaw Children Overboard, the AWB scandal, the biggest percentage increases in the public service (ESPECIALLY in Health), putting massive cash drains like the baby bonus on the books ... and remind Tony Abbott how fond he was of increased federalism and taking power away from the states... oh and his support for a carbon tax.... plus, you know scrapping low-income support supplemental payments to pay for tax cuts under the carbon price (which he wants to scrap) and deferring the increases to superannuation...

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Chances that Abbott pulls an Akin?

Although, I guess if it was coming, he's had like 3 1/2 years now...

Abbott has a history of saying stupid things, but the ALP has been PRAYING for a clanger of one from him since he became leader and it really hasn't happened yet... and I don't expect it to. If there's *sigh* a positive thing I can say for him, it's this, he has shown a degree of self-discipline I never expected.