Tasmanian polling outfit EMRS has released one of its occasional surveys of about 850 respondents on state voting intention. As always, you need to go to EMRS’s Table 3 to get the “percentage of decided voters” figure that other pollsters would publish as the headline: Liberal 48 per cent (up two since February), Labor 25 per cent (down two) and the Greens 22 per cent (up five). These figures are respectively up two, down two and down three on the February poll, conducted shortly after Lara Giddings became Premier, and would almost certainly deliver majority government to the Liberals if repeated at an election. Giddings has also gone backwards from her unpromising start against Will Hodgman as preferred Premier: Giddings is down five to 22 per cent, Hodgman up four to 42 per cent and Greens leader Nick McKim up two to 18 per cent.

In other news, the recount to determine who fills former Premier David Bartlett’s vacancy in his House of Assembly seat of Denison was won by Graeme Sturges, who lost his seat in last year’s election. Sturges is best remembered for telling a security guard at a 2009 parliamentary function: “Don’t you know who I am? I’ll have your f..king job.” This is generally credited with the subsequent collapse of his primary vote from 9.6 per cent 1.9 per cent. Sturges owes his recount win to the fact that the other Labor incumbent to lose their seat, Lisa Singh, has since found a place in the Senate – she polled 6.0 per cent at the election. This effectively produced a two-horse race between Sturges and the one remaining Labor candidate, Madeleine Ogilvie. The recount, based on preferences from the votes which elected David Bartlett, gave 5362 votes to Sturges (51.3 per cent) and 4197 to Ogilvie (40.1 per cent). The Australian’s Strewth column advises that Sturges has retracted his apology after the security guard incident, which was “forced by a spin doctor”.