Monday 7 November 2011

Is the Coalition's own polling beginning to worry O'Farrell in the lead up to the Clarence by-election?


The Federal seat of Page and the state seat of Clarence sit squarely in the middle of NSW Nationals country.


In 2007 the Nationals Chris Gulaptis stood in Nationals safe federal seat of Page which had been held by the Ian Causley for six years until his retirement – and lost it with a -7.83% swing against him.

In October 2011 the Nationals once again picked Gulaptis to stand in the Nationals safe state seat of Clarence held by Steve Cansdell for eight years until his resignation in September 2011. In March this year Cansdell had been re-elected with a +19.8% swing towards the Nationals.

Since Gulaptis’ most recent nomination a number of Clarence Valley residents tell me they have been phone polled twice by ReachTEL, the North Coast Nationals favoured opinion pollster.


Gulapatis himself has been reduced to a racing analogy:


One could be forgiven for thinking that the polling results sitting on Barry O’Farrell and Andrew Stoner’s desks in Sydney are not favorable to their candidate and that the Nationals are looking at losing quite a few percentage points off their very comfortable 31.4% tpp margin in this seat - something NSW Labor would not let them forget in a hurry.

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