PM Announces November 24 Poll

Source: Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Prime Minister John Howard has announced Australia will go to the polls on November 24.

Mr Howard launched the election campaign after visiting Governor-General, Major General Michael Jeffery, earlier today.

(snip)

The Labor Party needs to win an extra 16 seats outright to claim a majority government.

The Coalition has had a string of poor opinion polls, a recent Newspoll showed Labor with an election-winning lead over the Coalition, with 56 per cent of the vote after preferences, compared with 44 per cent for the Government.



Read more: http://www.abc.net.au/default_800.htm

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There is an excellent chance that Howard will go, and he may not even retain
his own seat. This is the best chance Labor has had since the demise of the
Keating Government in 1996.

and there is a possibility they can do it. It has been done before.

Excellent guide to the election here, from Antony Green, the ABC's
election analyst - he's usually right on the button.

http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2007/

How accurate are the polls that show Rudd winning by 12 points?

and they only need a swing of 4% to win.

If those figures hold, Labor would win in a landslide, but as the saying
goes "the only poll that counts is the one on election day". It's all
too true that many people really only make up their minds when they're
actually in the voting booth, and it would be foolish to suppose that
there won't be many who, while they're fed up with Howard, won't make
the switch to Labor.

But such a wide margin now does allow for some people to stick with the
Liberals and still give Labor enough seats to win, although by a narrower
margin than current polls suggest.

Under our system of preferential voting, if a candidate doesn't win by
a margin of 50%+1 (I think that's the figure), the second preferences of
voters are distributed between the leading candidates. But it's Labor's
primary vote (i.e. first preferences) that's holding strong at the
moment, and that's a good sign. If they were reliant on preferences to
get them over the line, that wouldn't be so good, because you never know
which way preferences will be allocated.

I highly recommend this summary from Antony Green, who is an expert:

http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2007/guide/summary.htm

"If you swap the parties, the polls in 2007 are in fact remarkably similar to those in the twelve months leading up to the 1996 election, when John Howard defeated Paul Keating. Labor's high primary vote today has tracked the Coalition's vote of 1995/6, while the Coalition's low-vote has tracked Labor's low vote in 1995/6. Kevin Rudd has been regularly outpolling John Howard as Preferred prime Minister, as Howard was able to do to Keating regularly through 1995/6. The big differences with 1995/6 is that John Howard is more popular as Prime Minister than Paul Keating, but at the same time Kevin Rudd is spectacularly more popular as Opposition Leader than John Howard was in 1995/6."

I wonder if Labor could get a 30 seat pickup. Also, what is happening with the Senate elections?

and declared war on New Zealand or something.

Even to pick up the 16 seats required requires a much bigger than normal
swing away from the Government, thanks to the landslide for Howard in 2004.

The Senate will be interesting - it's unusual for any Government to
control both Houses as Howard currently does; Australians are usually
more pragmatic, and make sure there's more of a balance between the two
Houses.

Only half the Senate is up for re-election, as Senate terms are for six
years. So with the Coalition's majority, even a big swing to Labor won't
result in Labor domination of the Upper House. We'll most likely get
what we have now - a hung Senate with minority parties holding the
balance of power. Currently, it's two conservatives who hold the
balance - one from Families First (right-wing Christian), and one
from Queensland Nationals, neither of whom is up for re-election this
time. Both of them generally vote with the Government.

The best outcome IMO, would be for the Greens (currently there are four)
to add one, or hopefully two, seats to the Senate total, which in a hung
Senate could give them the balance of power. But in 2004, Labor did a
preference deal with Families First, which saw Steve Fielding elected
to the Senate even though he only got 1% of the primary vote. I wouldn't
put it past the Labor power-brokers, who come from the right-wing of
the party, to do another similarly insane deal this time.

And Senate seats will only change in July 2008, which means that no
matter what, the Libs will continue to control the Senate until then,
and can effectively stymie any Labor legislation.

Source: New Zealand Herald

CANBERRA - Australian Prime Minister John Howard has announced that his country will go to the polls on November 24. The announcement comes as a new opinion poll across the Tasman showed the veteran leader faces political annihilation driven by disgruntled young voters.

...

The poll will determine the future of Australia's military contribution in Iraq and its stance on climate change, with Labor promising to withdraw troops and sign the Kyoto climate pact, but it will be fought and won on domestic issues.

Rudd, 50, has promised generational change taking the country into the future, including sweeping reforms to health, education and controversial labour laws introduced by Howard. Those laws, cutting conditions and making it easier to hire and fire workers, are a major reason first-time voters and those aged under 29 are set to dump Howard, with three-quarters backing Labor, the Taverner/ Sun Herald newspaper poll said.

With Labor needing to pick up 16 seats in the 150-seat lower house to take power, the survey showed Rudd was on track for a landslide win, with up to 20 seats expected to change from government hands on polling day, the newspaper said.

...


Read more: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10469813

Will make an excellant Prime Minister, I wish him the best of luck in the election.

ousted beforehand. The Bali conference is in December.

:applause:

which will leave Bush out on a limb, won't it?

the U.S. "Clyde" and the world needs Australia to abandon its life of crime so that Clyde will have to go straight too.

:hi:

...Canada should follow next