Saturday former Liberal minister announced Stuart Robert that he would soon retire from politics and call a by-election in his seat at Fadden in Queensland.
There has been recent speculation that former Liberal Prime Minister Scott Morrison will soon also retire, which would mean a by-election in his New South Wales seat of Cook.
In the 2022 federal election, Robert won Fade by a margin of 60.6-39.4 to Labor with Morrison winning Cook by a margin of 62.4-37.6 against Labour.
Federal on April 1 Aston by electionLabor had a 6.4% swing in its favor to wipe out a Liberal margin of 52.8-47.2 in the 2022 election. Even if Fadden and Cook had such a swing in its favour, would make, these seats would still be comfortable grips for the liberals.
Given that they are very unlikely to win Fadden or Cook in a by-election, and would be embarrassed if the Liberals took a swing in either seat, I don’t expect Labor to contest either by-election.
Pre-Budget Essential poll: 53-41 for Labor including undecided
In last week’s federal pre-budget Essential bearing, conducted in the days before May 2 from a sample of 1,130, Labor led by 53-41, up from 52-43 four weeks ago. Primary votes were 33% Labor (one down), 32% Coalition (one up), 14% Greens (solid), 5% One Nation (one down), 2% UAP (one down), 8% for all others (one lower). one) and 5% undecided (maximum one).
Despite the Coalition’s primary vote gain, Labor increased their two-party lead. That suggests that respondents’ preference flows to Labor were stronger than before.
Between 48 and 29, respondents were in favor of increasing the percentage of job seekers without a cost-of-living component in the demand (this was true for half of the sample). With the cost of living component, support was 50-29. An additional question from the Solve poll from April had support for raising JobSeeker to 43-31.
Respondents were asked to rate Anthony Albanian and Peter Dutton from 0 to 10, then ratings of 0-3 were counted as negative, 4-6 as neutral, and 7-10 as positive. Albanians improved from 40-27 in March to a 41-24 positive rating, while Dutton dropped to 35-23 negative from 33-26.
Asked to name the treasurer, 33% correct named Jim Chalmers. By 41-27, voters approved his job performance. By 45-42, voters believed the budget could make a difference in the cost of living.
For health, education and social security, many more people thought government spending was too low rather than too high. For renewable energy projects and the NDIS, the difference between too low and too high was much smaller. For defense more people thought the expenditure was too high than too low.
In terms of taxes, many more individuals thought personal taxes were too high rather than too low, but too low and too high were equal for taxes on oil and gas producers and too low was far ahead for taxes on international corporations.
Voters voted 52-22 to allow New Zealanders who have lived in Australia for at least four years to become Australian citizens.
Morgan poll: 53.5-46.5 for Labour
In last week’s magazine federal Morgan poll, held 24-30 April, Labor led 53.5-46.5, a three-point gain for the Coalition since last week. Primary votes were 36% Labour, 35.5% Coalition, 13% Greens and 15.5% for all others. I believe this is Labor’s worst result in a Morgan poll since late November 2022.
Local elections in the UK were disappointing for Labour
I reported on the local government elections in the United Kingdom on Thursday The Poll Bludger. The Conservatives lost more than 1,000 councillors, but Labor only had a nine-point margin over the Conservatives on the BBC’s Projected National Share.
While that is Labour’s best performance since they were last in government nationally in 2010, it was much worse than current national polls which give Labor a 17-point lead.
A US debt default could occur as early as June 1 if Congress does not take action to lift the debt limit. The Turkish elections of May 14 and the Greek elections of May 21 were also discussed.
Incumbents easily re-elected in Tasmanian upper house elections
Each May, two or three of the 15 seats in Tasmania’s upper house are up for election to six-year terms. Elections were held on Saturday in Rumney, Murchison and Launceston. Independents in the last two had over 70% of the primaries, while Labor’s Sarah Lovell won 50.5% of the primaries. Rumneywith 26.5% for the Liberals and 16.6% for a Conservative Independent.
These results maintain the status quo in the upper house. Analyst Kevin Bonham said there are four Labor out of 15, four Liberals, three Left Independents, one Centrist Independents and three Conservative Independents. The Liberals have a majority in the lower house.