Month: February 1998

One sitting Liberal and one sitting Labor MLA will be replaced by a candidate of their own party, according to the latest Canberra Times-Datacol poll.

Liberal candidate Brendan Smyth is ahead of both sitting Liberals, Trevor Kaine and Louise Littlewood, in Brindabella. And Labor candidate Jon Stanhope is ahead of sitting MLA Roberta McRae.

The poll asked those people in Brindabella who said they were voting Liberal a subsidiary question. They were asked which individual candidate would get their first preference, and similarly for Labor in Ginninderra. This was to get a feel for how voters were responding to the Hare-Clark system. The table shows the result.

Under the Hare-Clark system, the Ginninderra and Brindabella electorates have five seats each and the major parties stand five candidates in each. (Seven for Molonglo). But the party cannot determine the order of the candidates on the ballot paper. Under the Robson rotation system each candidate in the party column gets a fifth of the ballot papers with his or her name at the top of the column. So one voter might get Berry at the top of the Labor column and the next voter in the queue might get McRae and another Stanhope. Similarly for the Liberal column.
Continue reading “1998_02_february_sitting mlas gone”

There has been a slight shift from the Labor Party and undecideds to the Liberal Party and independents in latest Canberra Times-Datacol polling for the ACT election. Previously the major parties were line ball.

But the overall picture remains the same for seats in the new Assembly as previous polling, with six seats to each of the major parties (two in each electorate), one Green and Paul Osborne certain of seats. The other three seats are two hard to call.

It is now (with last week’s percentage in brackets): Liberal 22.9 (21.5), Labor 21.3 (22) minors and independents 21.5 (20.3), undecided 34.3 (36.2).

Of the three electorates, Brindabella is the most certain. With undecided distributed pro-rata, Labor and Liberal are on about 35 per cent each, giving them two seats each. Mr Osborne is on 16, giving him the fifth seat.
Continue reading “1998_02_february_second poll”

Support for the republic and the indirectly elected president has increased since the Constitutional Convention, according to the latest Canberra Times-Datacol poll.

The poll was taken ACT over the past four days. It shows that the ACT is more likely to embrace change than other states and territories.

The Datacol poll puts support for the republic at 69 per cent with 14 against. Support for the indirectly elected model is at 71 per cent, slightly higher than support for the republic, presumably because some constitutional monarchists see it as a lesser eveil than a directly elected president.

Canberrans appear to have embraced the thought of having the president elected by a two-thirds majority of Parliament on public nomination with community consultation — the bipartisan model preferred by the convention — possibly because they put having a republic as more important than the method of choosing the president.

Support elsewhere is not so high either for a republic or the bipartisan model. Newspoll in The Australian puts support for the bipartisan model at 47 per cent with 45 against and 8 don’t know. The ACT-Neilsen poll in The Sydney Morning Herald put support for the bipartisan model at 43 per cent with 45 per cent for the present system.
Continue reading “1998_02_february_republic poll”

A substantial majority of Canberrans want to directly elect their head of state, according to the most recent Canberra Times-Datacol poll.

The poll shows also that about half of respondents want the head of state to play an active part in day to day politics and not just play a largely ceremonial role.

Only 14 per cent of Canberrans are opposed to a republic.

The poll shows that younger people and females are more in favour of direct election than older people and males. People who do not favour a republic are more likely to want a direct election if there is to be one.

Sixty-one per cent want a direct election. The poll re-enforces the view that a majority of Australians want to elect their president, but the support for that view is less in Canberra than elsewhere in Australia, where support runs in the mid to high 70s, according to recent polls.
Continue reading “1998_02_february_repub poll”

Method : Computer Assisted Telephone Interview (CATI).

Date : week ending Feb 7, 1998

Sample Size : 600 ACT wide

Sample : Random Digit Dialling Sample of Canberra.

Selection within household : Eligible voter with most recent birthday.

Survey Scope: Persons registered to vote in ACT.

Questions:

1. Thinking about the question of Australia becoming a republic some time in say the next 10 years. Generally are you: in favour, neutral or against Australia becoming a republic?

2. If Australia was to become a republic, the head of state would change from being the Governor General to being a president. There are a number of different ways to choose a president. One way is to have the president elected by members of parliament, another is to have the president elected the Australian people in a vote, another way is for the president to be appointed by the prime minister of the day. Which method of appointing a president would you prefer: elected by Parliament; elected by the people; appointed by the Prime minister or some other way?
Continue reading “1998_02_february_rep poll questions”

The Australian Democrats have warned against the possibility of a Carnell Government supported by the Osborne group.

Democrat leader Jane Errey cited the latest Canberra Times-Datacol polling suggesting that the Liberals could get seven seats and the Osborne group two, which would be a majority.

But Paul Osborne has said he will not automatically vote for Mrs Carnell.

Ms Errey said the Democrats were in a better position to keep a Liberal Government in check on issues like school closures, environment, planning and the sale of Actew.

She said the Osborne group had been rated last by the ACT P & C survey and last on planning by the ACT Conservation Council.

“”In addition there are questions over the group’s social agenda.

The council’s Isabelle Vallin said that a vote for the Osborne group was a vote against the environment.
Continue reading “1998_02_february_pollfill”

The Labor left comprehensively lost yesterday’s election.

True, Kate Carnell was a great media performer and did a pretty sound job with her Budget and economic planning in difficult economic times, but the rest of the Liberals, with the exception of Gary Humphries were hardly inspiring.

This should have been an unlosable election from Labor’s perspective.

John Howard’s Liberals had hacked into the town. Canberra is naturally Labor anyway, usually returning Labor members to federal parliament.

What happened? Labor has only 1500 members in the ACT. The left dominates the branches. It is virtually impossible for members of other factions to get pre-selection. The parliamentary party had no right member and only one from the centre.

The result has been a narrow base of policies and a narrow group to pick a leader from. People from the right or centre gave up trying to have an influence and were sick of the concentration on factional fighting instead of going out into the community to earn support and the vote.
Continue reading “1998_02_february_pollanalysis”

Labor and the Liberals are running neck and neck for the February 21 election, according to the latest Canberra Times-Datacol poll.

But both major parties are polling very low — in the low 20s and the undecided vote is in the mid-30s across the ACT.

The likely outcome is 6 Labor, 6 Liberals and 5 independents and minors. Of them, the Greens’ Kerrie Tucker and Independent Paul Osborne will get a seat and the other three will be divided among the Osborne candidate in Ginninderra, Michael Moore and the Democrats.

The only non-incumbent or non-party candidates to register on the opinion poll radar are Jacqui Rees in Molonglo and Alice Chu, Manuel Xyrakis and Helen Szuty in Ginninderra each with between 1 and 2 per cent. The Ginninderra three have virtually no hope because of the higher quota. Ms Rees has only a long outside chance. Past polling experience shows that independents’ vote rises and the Democrats vote falls closer to the election.

The poll shows that Kate Carnell is more popular than she has even been, with 59 per cent approving her performance, but the chief ministership will depend on how the minors and independents fall.
Continue reading “1998_02_february_poll results”

Friday’s Page 1 headline, “”Carnell will hold her job: poll” drew a few mutterings in the newsroom. “”Very courageous” (in the Humphrian sense), was the most common.

Opinion polling can be a risky business, especially at election time.

Elections are one time when pollsters put their neck on the line. They predict community opinion and have the prediction verified or denied a few days later.

If they do badly, no-one is going to give them other work. If they do well, other work (where there is no verification later) comes in because people can be confident it will be reasonably accurate.

The Canberra Times has used an ACT company, Datacol, for all four ACT elections, each time with very satisfactory results. It has given us the base to report community opinion at election time and to make some educated guesses as to the make-up of the Legislative Assembly.

This time Datacol was chillingly accurate. The tables tell the story in detail.

It was the fourth time in four elections that Datacol had got it right.

It was the third time that the polling told us things that instinct would have told us was not believable. In the 1989 election the pollster predicted the 23 per cent for Labor and the 14 per cent for the Liberals. It defied rational explanation at the time. In 1995, the poll had the Liberal party ahead, something unthinkable in this Labor town. And in 1998, with the embers of the Howard slash-and-burn all around us, he said the Liberals were substantially ahead of Labor. The poll got the overall trend right and got the order of the first five parties or individuals right in every electorate (except the maverick Michael Moore in Molonglo).
Continue reading “1998_02_february_poll aftermath”

Could you imagine a direct election for the president being held now?

There would be a Labor candidate and a Liberal candidate and a few populist independents.

What would Opposition Leader Kim Beazley be saying? He would use the standard cliches of any mid-term by-election.

“”I call on the people of Australia to send a clear message to the Howard Government,” he would say. “”On Saturday vote for Labor’s Bill Hack for president.”

The election for president would presumably be for a fixed term so would often be out of kilter with the main election. So the election itself would be politicised, even if the office were not.

Mr Beazley and Prime Minister John Howard should state what their parties’ position on a directly elected president. Would their parties stand candidates? Would they expect those candidates to retain party membership on attaining office?
Continue reading “1998_02_february_op-ed republic”