Victorian Election Postcount: Prahran

 

(Correct prediction posted to tallyroom.com.au . Notice date.)

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UNDECIDED SEAT: Prahran (Lib, 4.7%) 
SUMMARY: Contest between Clem Newton-Brown (Lib) and either Neil Pharaoh (ALP) or Sam Hibbins (Green)
RESULT:  Hibbins (Green) wins seat - awaiting formal declaration

This article followed the post-count in the undecided seat of Prahran, won by the Greens (subject to official confirmation) on preferences from third on primaries after eleven days of counting, including a recount.

The original (after reworking) article appears at the bottom of the post with updates scrolling to the top.  However, there was a surprise in the prepoll count - Labor did much better than projected on within electorate prepolls, which I'm told they targeted heavily - so much of the original modelling for questions 1 and 2 soon became irrelevant.  The modelling for question 3 turned out to be slightly pessimistic for the Greens compared to the reality.

The results of the three key questions, after recounting, are being reported unofficially as:

1. Does Pharaoh stay ahead of Hibbins?  Hibbins knocked out Pharaoh by 31 votes.

2. If the final count is Newton-Brown vs Pharaoh, who wins? Newton-Brown led by 25 based on the quick throw.  This margin remains to be confirmed (and is presently irrelevant.)

3. If the final count is Newton-Brown vs Hibbins, who wins?  Hibbins has won by 277 votes thus apparently winning the seat.

Assuming these results are now officially confirmed, Hibbins has won the seat for now.  It is possible that there will be a court challenge, but even if there is one Hibbins will be able to sit in parliament until such time as a court might decide otherwise.

The result is a major success for the Greens, who have unseated a Liberal in a single-seat electorate for the first time in any Australian state or federally, who have won both lower house seats they targeted, and who will hold more than one seat in an Australian parliament elected under a single-seat system for the first time.  Indeed, they have only previously won four seats in single-seat elections (one of them twice) and two of those wins were in by-elections.

Victorian Election Wrap: Federal Drag Strikes Again

Expected seat tally: ALP 47 L-NP 38 Green 1 Ind 1 (1 unclear)
Unclear seat: Prahran (Lib vs ALP vs Green)
Seats in minor doubt: Morwell (Nat leading ALP), South Barwon (Lib leading ALP), Bentleigh, Frankston (ALP leading Lib), Brunswick (ALP leading Green by large margin), Melbourne (Green leading ALP), Shepparton (Ind leading Nat by large margin)

Note: Following this article more serious doubts developed about Melbourne because of changes in vote totals (counting errors most likely).   The seat is now close but if 2010 patterns of non-booth voting are repeated the Greens will still win.  I've also put Shepparton in the "minor doubt" category because of the unusual nature of the campaign and the slim possibility the Independent candidate (now leading with 53.5%) will do very poorly on non ordinary votes.

I have a separate thread on Prahran.

Victorian Election Live Election Day Thread

SUMMARY 

SEATS APPARENTLY WON ALP 47 L-NP 38 GRN 1 IND 1 
(Seats included in tally with very low levels of doubt: Bentleigh,  Frankston (ALP),  Morwell (L-NP), Melbourne (Grn))
Seriously unclear seats (1):
Prahran (three-cornered, depending on exclusion order)

Labor has won the election
Summary last changed 12:45 pm

Victorian Election: Final Aggregate And Seat Model

 Live analysis here on a new thread from 6 pm on election night. 

2PP Aggregate using 2010 preferences: 51.7 to Labor
Polls point to highly likely but not certain ALP victory, general picture of modest swing and minimal to low seat turnover
Seat Projection: ALP 47 Coalition 41
(A very small number of these seats may be won by Greens or independents, but there is not enough objective evidence to back such wins.)

Going into the main voting day for the Victorian election, I have to say it's a bit different to elections I've devoted major modelling efforts to on this site (the 2013 federal election and this year's Tasmanian state election) in that there is still some room for doubt about who will win.  Although Labor has led in almost every poll in the last year and a bit, including 15 or 16 (depends how you count 'em) of the 17 polls released in the last six weeks, their lead is not much, and sitting-member effects left over from the last election make the deck a slightly unfriendly one.

The polls suggest that probably Labor will get home with a seat tally in the high 40s, but other still-plausible scenarios (in decreasing order of likelihood) are a fairly comfortable Labor win with around 50 seats (just maybe if the polls have herded a few more), a scraped and very lucky Coalition win, or some kind of tied or otherwise hung parliament.  Anything else (eg a Coalition win where they win the 2PP as well, or a really lopsided Labor win) would be a serious surprise.

Victorian Poll Roundup: Endless 52-48 Edition

2PP aggregate: 51.8 (-1.4) to ALP by last-election preferences (52.6 expected preferences)
Current seat projection based on aggregate: 48-40 to Labor

This is probably the second-last of my posts on Victorian polling prior to the main day of polling for the election on Saturday.  I will be out on a field trip in the day on Friday.  Another post is expected either overnight Friday or Saturday morning - once I am satisified we have the results of all the major polls we're going to get.   Then it will be on to the live coverage on Saturday night from 6 pm.  I cannot promise you fancy graphics or dancing swing charts but I hope my live blogging will be of some interest.

(Speaking of things of some interest concerning Victorian elections, a plug for Adam Carr's page on early Victorian elections 1851-1864!)

This week's polling

Lately we've had new state polls from Morgan (twice), Essential and Galaxy.  The first Morgan SMS poll taken from 21-24 Nov and with a sample size of 1152 produced a 52:48 2PP off primaries of 39.5 to the Coalition, 33.5 to Labor, 17.5 to the Greens and 9.5 to others.  This series had favoured the Greens by an average of at least five points compared to other pollsters (indeed 17.5 was its lowest reading for them so far), so it was hard to tell whether this result signified that trend waning slightly, or that it was actually a not so good sample for the party.  The series also clearly skews against the ALP compared to other pollsters.

EMRS: Liberals Fall To Four-Year Low

EMRS: Liberal 42 (-4 since September) Labor 31 (-2) Green 19 (+3) Ind 6 (+3) PUP 2 (+1)
Interpretation: Liberal 43 Labor 34 Green 17 PUP 2 Others 4
Likely outcome based on this poll "if election held now":  Hung parliament (12-9-4) with slim chance of Liberal majority (13-9-3)
New aggregate of all polls: Likely Liberal majority government (13-9-3)

A new quarterly EMRS poll of Tasmanian state voting intentions has been released.  See also the excellent trend tracker on the EMRS site.  This poll continues a downward trend in this pollster's readings noted in my previous EMRS article (Closest Gap In Four Years) and sees the polled gap between the major parties close further and the Liberal vote at its lowest level since November 2010.  It's a rather poor poll for the new Hodgman government that suggests it has significantly lost support since winning office just eight months ago.  If this poll is to be relied on, the government would be in danger of losing its freshly minted majority in an election proverbially held now.  The next election is not until 2018 so there is not too much for opponents to get excited about yet.

Comments On The Lambie/PUP Split

This is what Jacqui Lambie's Facebook page looked like before she joined PUP (image: @AutumnalMonk)

In recent weeks the always edgy relationship between the Palmer "United" Party and its Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie has spiralled out of control.  Lambie is now effectively an independent.  The party no longer has any influence on her Senate votes, she no longer has any influence on its Senate votes (and is currently banned from the party room), and there at present appears little prospect she'll be preselected for it again (if PUP even exists in 2019 or whenever else Lambie's seat next comes up.) Her photo has been removed from PUP's website, she has removed its branding from hers, and Lambie and party founder Clive Palmer are insulting each other publicly with no discernable restraint.  PUP is a strange party so one would not be too firm in predicting anything here, but this sure looks like an ex-relationship. 

Poll Roundup: G20 No Help To Government

2PP Aggregate: 53.1 to ALP (+0.8 since last week, +2.1 in five weeks, highest in four months)
ALP would easily win election "held right now"

A fairly quick update as I have a lot of other work to do, which may sometime over the weekend or so include putting this piece of pseudo-scientific garbage in its place.  This week the federal government hosted the G20 meeting in Brisbane.  This would have been expected to at least allow the government to dominate the media cycle and demonstrate its international credibility.  However, things haven't been that simple.  Climate change was seen to dominate the agenda (probably to a greater extent than it actually did), and the isolation of Vladimir Putin by various Anglosphere leaders was still an anticlimax compared to the threatened "shirtfronting".  Even when Australia signed a generally well-received (if probably not well understood) free trade agreement with China, the Prime Minister still ran into Parrot problems.

But doubtless the worst moment of the conference for the Coalition was the PM's widely slammed address in which he was seen as not only rabbiting on to world leaders about irrelevant domestic issues, but also doing so in a way that whinged about the known unpopularity of government measures such as GP co-payments.  It was a free hit for the Opposition and it was duly and effectively taken.

Victorian Poll Roundup And Seat Betting Watch: Sandbelt Edition

2PP aggregate of recent Victorian state polling:  ALP leads 53.2-46.8

"Nowcast" seat estimate based on this 2PP: ALP 49 Coalition 39

It's taken a while for enough polling to build up to justify another Victorian pre-election roundup to follow last fortnight's, but that point has been reached with the belated release of results for the Fairfax-Ipsos poll taken last weekend.  Why it has taken the Age until Friday to get this data out there is anyone's guess, but at least we have it now.

If you followed the media comments about the unreliable mutterings of both parties about internal polling and the like, you'd have seen claims from both sides that things have tightened up through this week.  These claims always need to be treated with caution, since the side in the lead has an incentive to make them to discourage complacency, while the side trailing has an incentive to make them to discourage despair.   They might turn out to be true, but with no data fresher than Monday, we'll need to wait for more polling to be sure.

Based on where things stood early this week, there would have to be a lot of improvement to make a serious difference to the picture of a very likely change of government.  At that stage the gap was, if anything, widening slightly, but the broader picture is a lack of any major change for quite a while. 

Poll Roundup: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

2PP Aggregate: 52.2 to ALP (+0.2 since last week, +1.2 in three weeks, highest in twelve weeks)
ALP would probably narrowly win election "held now" outright

Four weeks ago I declared the Abbott government's budget blowout "over", their aggregate position having come back to 49% 2PP, which was about where it had been back in April.  It had taken almost half a year to get back to that point, but assuming that the Coalition was now going to poll competitively for a while, it was easy to believe that they were on the track to re-election.

What's happened since may bring just a little smile to ALP supporters, since no sooner did the government finally get back to effective parity than its ratings turned around and started heading down again.  As the Abbott government approaches the first anniversary of losing the lead, this small shift back adds a little more interest to the question of when and under what circumstances they might actually get it back.

Victorian State Election: Late October Polls And Seat Model

2PP aggregate of recent Victorian state polling:  ALP leads 52.6-47.4

"Nowcast" seat estimate based on this 2PP: ALP 48 Coalition 40

After a week buried deep in the Hobart City Council count I've finally found time to get stuck into the Victorian state election.  This thread starts with a roundup of recent polling, then goes into the early version of a seat-probability model similar to my one that picked 93% of seats correctly at the 2013 federal election.  The federal election version was whipped up very quickly in the shadows of the post; I have much more time to work on this one so it will probably do much worse.

The new polls

Six polls have been released in the last week or so, by a range of methods.  Two of them have had suspiciously high Green votes.  For the Morgan SMS poll it also had a suspiciously high Green vote in late September, so I'll assume this is systematic.  The Ipsos poll is the first of its kind, and their federal poll published today hasn't shown any skew to the Greens, so I'm assuming for now that their methods are no more prone to green skew than the four more established pollsters.  Anyway in aggregating these six polls at the bottom I've pinged the Greens 0.9 of a point in every poll except Morgan SMS, for which I've applied a very lenient deduction of four.  For more information on this decision see my new blog header.