William Bowe
Editor of The Poll Bludger @PollBludger
William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, is one of the most heavily trafficked forums for online discussion of Australian politics, and joined the Crikey stable in 2008.
From dodgy phone polls to the current betting odds and the Brumby vs. Baillieu showdown, William Bowe wraps up the latest news from the upcoming Victorian election.
The Poll Bludger’s Victorian election guide is now open for business, sort of -- profiles are available for all Labor-held seats, but only the two most marginal Coalition seats have been completed at this stage, writes William Bowe.
The Greens' grand hopes of winning as many as four or even five seats in the lower house are now in tatters, and their chances of securing the coveted balance of power greatly diminished, says Poll Bludger's William Bowe.
The Victorian election is living up to its billing as the latest battlefield in new paradigm politics, with the Liberals finding themselves shunted from the front pages by a stoush between Labor and the Greens.
The latest Newspoll shows the parties still araldited together on 50-50 with the two party preferred. But Tony Abbott's person ratings have dropped a whopping 9 points, says William Bowe.
The Australian Electoral Commission has finalised the last of its two-party preferred Labor-versus Coalition counts, and it confirms Labor has won a narrow victory on the national total of 6,216,439 (50.12 per cent) to 6,185,949 (49.88 per cent), a margin of 30,490, writes William Bowe.
Very little actually changed in yesterday’s counting, which saw a continuation of the slow decline in the Labor total that is the usual pattern of late counting.
Minority government was a frequent occurrence in the first half of the twentieth century, and has undergone a renaissance as the major parties’ share of the vote has declined in the past two decades.
There are five seats still in doubt as far as I’m concerned, though it’s not unknown for outsiders to emerge on the radar late in the count.
How has state-level polling tracked through the campaign week-by-week, based on an aggregate of Newspoll and Nielsen results.
