Poll Roundup and Seat Betting Watch July 30 - Includes History of Seat Transfer By Swing

 Note added 5 Aug: I see there's a lot of people coming here today, could be something to do with something that happened yesterday.  I watched it on ABC News 24 and thought it was the slowest form of motorsport with the longest pitstops I'd ever seen!

Yes, OK, the election's been called. There will be new material here (the usual weekly roundup and seat betting stuff plus some stuff on projecting results five weeks out) sometime overnight or, if things go slowly, tomorrow late morning.  

There could even be a Wirrah!

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2PP Aggregate (Tuesday 30 July): 50.2 TO COALITION (effectively +0.1 since last week - slight method change)
Individual Seat Betting: Labor favourites in 65 seats (+2, Banks and Reid)
Seat Total Market: Labor 68 seats (+2)

This is week five in a regular weekly series in the leadup to the federal election.  Week four was here and through it you can click back to the previous weeks.  Or just click the "betting" label at the bottom.  As stated before, the aim of this exercise is not to claim that seat betting markets have predictive value, but to test whether they do, and to see which of the markets and the aggregated polls see the ultimate outcome of the election first.

ReachTEL (State): The North Remembers

Yesterday's article Tas Federal BaByLon Still Falling? covered the Sunday Examiner's large sample-size ReachTEL of Bass, Braddon and Lyons, three at-risk federal electorates.  The poll showed Labor trailing in all but within striking distance in Bass and Lyons.  This poll challenged a widespread view that the return of Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister had fixed things in the state and that Labor would now retain most or all of its seats here.

The Examiner also asked a state voting intention question - just primaries and nothing else.  Below are the results with undecided voters removed, with the June results of the Mercury statewide ReachTEL shown in gray, and the swing from the June poll shown as well.

ReachTEL - Tas Federal BaByLon Still Falling?

ReachTEL: Bass 54-46 to Coalition, Braddon 56.8-43.2, Lyons 54.4-45.6

This week's Sunday Examiner contained details of a fresh ReachTEL of the northern Tasmanian federal seats of Bass, Braddon and Lyons.  The sample sizes (Bass 626, Braddon 617, Lyons 659) are extremely large for Tasmanian seat polling and possibly the largest Tasmanian seat polls ever undertaken. A previous large statewide federal ReachTEL taken in early June shortly before the replacement of former Prime Minister Julia Gillard showed Labor being thrashed in all these seats, despite Lyons being held by Labor's Dick Adams on a margin of 12.3%.  In the case of Bass, this repeated a result from the start of the year.  The strength of the Lyons result was quite surprising, and in some circles disbelieved.

The return of Kevin Rudd to the Prime Ministership was expected to create a lift in Labor's fortunes, as it has everywhere else, but there were reasons to suspect this might be muted in Tasmania and that Bass and Braddon at least were still in trouble.  Primarily, the massive swing against Labor at federal level under Gillard (probably running at around 14% considering data from a range of polls) was being boosted by the delicate state of the Tasmanian economy and dissatisfaction with the state Labor-Green government.  The margins shown in the previous ReachTEL were very large, and even taking sample size and the apparently slightly Coalition-leaning nature of ReachTEL federal results into account, it seemed unlikely that a change at the top alone would fix the problems.

An early online taster article provided details of the new ReachTEL as follows:

Poll Roundup and Seat Betting Watch July 23

2PP Aggregate (Tuesday 23 July): 50.3 TO COALITION (+0.3 SINCE LAST WEEK)
Individual Seat Betting: Labor favourites in 63 seats (no change)
Seat Total Market: Labor 66 seats (-2)

This is week four in a regular weekly series in the leadup to the federal election.  Week three was here and through it you can click back to the previous weeks.  Or just click the "betting" label at the bottom.  As stated before, the aim of this exercise is not to claim that seat betting markets have predictive value, but to test whether they do, and to see which of the markets and the aggregated polls see the ultimate outcome of the election first.

This Week's Polls

So far this week we have had three polls: a 52-48 to Labor (by last election preferences) from Morgan Multi-Mode, a 52-48 to Coalition from Newspoll, and a  51-49 (It is alive! It moves!) to Coalition from Essential. The last represented Essential's best reading for Labor since February 2011.

Aggregators out so far (Mark the Ballot, Pottinger) have shown not much overall movement as a result of this and project the most likely outcome as a very narrow Coalition win (in MTB's case if an election was held now, in Pottinger's assuming Aug 31 as the date).  I suspect Bludgertrack will show similar, or perhaps a little more to the Coalition. 

My interpretation is that Labor would probably very narrowly lose an election held right now.  I say this not because of the 2PP picture but because the state picture is not lining up well enough - Labor is increasingly struggling to get the swing required for substantial gains in Queensland, but is apparently still in trouble in Victoria, NSW and Tasmania.  However, there is plenty of time for this to change.

Poll Roundup and Seat Betting Watch July 16

2PP Aggregate (Tuesday 16 July): 50.0 TIED (+0.2 for ALP since last week)
Individual Seat Betting: Labor favourites in 63 seats (+2 this week - Lingiari, Brisbane)
Seat Total Market: Labor 68 seats (+2)

This is instalment three in what seems to be becoming a regular weekly series in the leadup to the election.  The first Seat Betting Watch is here and last week's Poll Roundup and Seat Betting Watch is here.  As stated before, the aim of this exercise is not to claim that seat betting markets have predictive value, but to test whether they do, and to see which of the markets and the aggregated polls see the ultimate outcome of the election first.


This Week's Polls

As well as the 51-49 to Labor from AMR late last week, we've now had a 50-50 from Nielsen, a 52-48 to the Coalition from Essential and a 51.5-48.5 to Labor by last-election preferences from Morgan Multi-Mode.  (I did cop an "AGGGGHHH!!!!" and a "stupid" on Twitter for continuing to prefer last-election preferences to respondent-allocated but I'll believe KAP voters have turned into lefties only when data show they have.)

The net impact of these on my aggregate has been small and I currently have the two parties dead level on two-party-preferred vote share.  Essential and Morgan don't seem to be behaving the same way compared to other pollsters as they did before Rudd was reinstalled, and Mark the Ballot has a nice wrap of what a pain in the neck this all is for modellers here. (Also see the comment by Julian King on that article.)  Fortunately, the probably false assumption that neither has a significant house effect results in them largely cancelling each other out in my very simple model, but it's a bigger problem for those who take Morgan's large sample size into account.  It may turn out that either of these pollsters has struck it lucky and all the rest are too high or too low, but I'll keep assuming that that isn't the case.  Something to keep an eye on here is that Rudd is doing very well with young voters, and young voters are the most difficult to sample accurately for conventional polls, even with scaling.

A Spot Of Bother About Quolls

source

(This article is a pseph-free-zone, but you can always vote in my Not-A-Poll to the right on how many federal Tasmanian seats Labor will win.  For those more interested in polls than quolls, I aim to post poll roundup very late on Monday night.)

 The species photographed above is the eastern quoll (Dasyurus viverrinus).  It's very cute.  It comes in two colours (tan and black) and, if you believe some people, our limited supply is very nearly gone.  If you believe others, its numbers are just on the bouncy side. 

The species featured on 7:30 Tasmania this Friday with a lengthy headline report concerning the decision by Environment Minister Brian Wightman to reject an application to list the species as Endangered on the Tasmanian Threatened Species List, even after approval was recommended by the Scientific Advisory Committee.   For the time being, you can see the main report here and a following interview with wildlife biologist Nick Mooney here.  These may not stay up for all that long.

New Not-A-Poll Added: Tas Labor Seats At The Federal Election

I've added this site's third ever Not-A-Poll.  The first was to obtain reader feedback on the use of jump breaks in articles (it went to preferences!) and the second was Best Tasmanian Premier of the Last 30 Years.  This one (in the sidebar on the right) asks interested readers to pick how many Tasmanian seats you think Labor will win at this year's federal election.  Once I know the election date it will be set to close at midnight the day before.  I believe that even after you have voted you can change your vote. At least, I can.  (Maybe you need to be logged in.)

Here's a quick form guide thus far.  (Or if it's really all too hard, just roll a six-sided die and subtract one; you'll have a one in six chance of getting it right!)

Poll Roundup and Seat Betting Watch - July 9-10

2PP Aggregate (Tuesday 9 July): 50.2 (-0.2 since last week) for Coalition 
Individual Seat Betting: Labor favourites in 61 seats (+3 - Page, Eden-Monaro, Moreton)
Seat Total Market: Labor 65 seats (+7)

Last week I introduced a Seat Betting Favourites Watch series in which I intend to monitor the performance of seat betting markets in predicting results for specific seats in an election that is difficult to model.  The reinstatement of Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister has resulted in a massive poll jump for a government that was clearly doomed under ex-PM Gillard, and nobody really knows whether the bounce will amplify before it declines.  It is a good test for whether the markets can out-predict the polls at a time when the polls have good reason to be suspect as predictors, or merely follow them.  I am personally sceptical of the reliability of betting as a predictive method.

This Week's Polls

This week we've had three national polls so far.  Essential Report showed no change on last-week's one-week-sample 52-48 to Coalition.  Newspoll was up one point for Labor to 50-50 and Morgan produced a generally dismissed headline figure of 54.5-45.5 to Labor.  As is sometimes the case Morgan's use of respondent-allocated preferences was creating an out-of-whack result, and when preferences were allocated following the more reliable last-election model, the result was 52.5-47.5 to Labor.

Taken together these polls are slightly better for Labor than the post-change polls of the last two weeks and my own rough aggregate has moved from 50.4 to 50.2 for the Coalition.  Mark the Ballot has Labor 50.5-49.5 ahead and a Bludgertrack update is expected tomorrow. (Update: Bludgettrack is at 50.5 for Labor as well.)

Seat Betting Favourites Watch - July 3

This is a series that may run on here sporadically from now til the federal election, the date of which is now unknown but considered most likely to be in either late August or late October. At this stage I'm thinking of posting an update in a fresh article weekly around the middle of the week, but the posting time will vary according to my other commitments.  Also it may well be that someone else starts covering the same thing better, in which case I may just link to them and leave them to it.

Following the first week of Rudd-return polling, six polls by five companies have shown Labor somewhere in the range of 48-51% two-party preferred, with five of the six showing the government just behind.  Seat models point to a very close election if the an election was proverbially "held today".  The re-fired Bludgertrack projects 74-73-3 (ALP first), Mark the Ballot gives a uniform swing (or lack thereof) at 73-75-2 and Pollytics reports "My election simulation produces a similar result 76 seats to the ALP vs. 72 to the Coalition, with 2 Independents." (This is not the same as the 77-71-2 simulation I questioned as a slightly unsound extrapolation from its given data at the bottom of my previous post, and I assume it incorporates more data.)