Not-A-Poll: Best Prime Minister Of The Last 45 Years

(Round 1 has closed.  For results see Round 2.)

Round 1

Now and then we see newspaper polls rating the best PMs of the last few decades, or in the case of one Essential poll last week, the best government of the last ten years.  John Howard is a persistent "winner" of the first class of polling, but I've always believed he has an unfair advantage.  He tends to get a very high share of the Liberal vote with other Liberal PMs hardly getting any, while the Labor vote tends to be split up more between Hawke, Keating, Whitlam, Rudd and Gillard.  For that reason it's not clear whether Howard would beat all the Labor PMs on a head-to-head basis, although it looks like he probably would.

I've decided to run a similar Not-A-Poll exercise here in the sidebar just for fun over a period of several months.  The basic rule is that we keep going eliminating one PM at a time (perhaps more) until someone has over 50% at the end of a month.  The more complicated rules are:

ReachTEL: Bob Brown Foundation Peddles A Poll Porky

ReachTEL (commissioned) Liberal 41.2 Labor 33.3 Green 13.1 PHON 4.4 Ind/Other 8.0

Interpretation Liberal 41.2 Labor 37.1 Green 10.4 Other 11.3

Most likely seat result based on this poll 12-10-2 plus one seat undecided between the three main parties

Disclaimer: Polls are snapshots not predictions.

I may get taken off their media mailing list for saying it, but the Bob Brown Foundation have released a grossly deceptive claim concerning their current ReachTEL poll to the Tasmanian press.  Question two of their poll and its results are as follows:

The question design is a bit odd, but I think it is OK.  The results are 38.3% support, 44.7% oppose and 17.1% don't know/not sure.

Poll Roundup: Newspoll Moves! It Is Alive! (includes same-sex marriage polling)

2PP: 53.5 to Labor (+0.3 since last week)
Labor would win an election "held now" with a large majority

Time for another roundup of the state of play in federal polling.  This week's exciting development was that Newspoll, after a record six consecutive 2PPs of 53-47 to Labor, finally moved by a whole point to 54-46!  I am especially excited by this because had this week's result been another 53-47, I was going to lead off with a mock Death Certificate, and now I do not have to.

This briefly took my aggregate to an equal term high 53.8 to ALP (I tweeted this as 53.9 but later found a very small error) but then Essential moved back a point the other way after two 54s, and the primaries in YouGov didn't do a lot, so I currently have it at 53.5 to ALP. That was the Coalition's winning lead in the 2013 election, and also just shy of what Labor had when Tony Abbott was removed.  

The strange 2PP results of YouGov continue to baffle - this week it has the Coalition with a 51-49 lead off primaries that would normally imply something like 53.1% to Labor.  I discussed this issue last time, and the average difference between YouGov's 2PPs and the last-election 2PPs for their primaries is now running at a massive 2.9 points.  As noted last time, it's possible that the current last-election 2PPs are overstating Labor's lead, especially because of One Nation issues, but it's highly unlikely that they're doing so by three points.  Much more detail on the YouGov mystery from William Bowe here.

Questions To The ABS Re Marriage Law Postal Survey

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I have just sent the ABS the email below regarding the upcoming (unless the High Court decides otherwise) same-sex marriage postal survey. It raises various questions about quality assurance.  The email is exactly as sent except that I have removed my telephone number.  (I am happy for journalists who have or can find my number to call me at any reasonable time, but I do not want phone calls from time-wasting randoms.)

Also see Michael Maley's consolidated compendium of plebisurvey issues.  The entertaining issue of 16-17 year olds voting has now, alas, been knocked on the head by a fresh directive from Minister Cormann.

Will "Hate Speech" Be Illegal In The "Plebiscite"?

Things are moving fast in the Government's attempt to conduct a national voluntary postal vote on same-sex marriage.  Although we won't get to the High Court challenge against the "survey" until September 5-6 - meaning we might be a month away from knowing if the thing is on at all - a lot of questions are being raised and in cases answered about how exactly the plebiscite will be conducted, if it does proceed.  A major problem with the exercise has been that since it is not an Australian Electoral Commission process authorised by an act of Parliament, normal election requirements (authorisation, fraud and vote-buying protections and challenges) do not exist unless separately provided for.  In Thursday's instalment (Electoral Process, But Not As We Know It: Postal Plebiscite V2) I mentioned that at least regulation would be needed to get around these problems.  However the regulations available under legislation concerning the ABS are very limited concerning penalties.

In a welcome move, acting Special Minister of State Mathias Cormann has flagged the stronger possibility of special legislation to impose AEC-election-like conditions for the, er, whatever it's called.  This would create the really strange situation of the Senate approving laws governing a postal vote that the Senate had itself not approved and would have blocked if asked to approve it.  Such laws might themselves be subject to challenge.  The most important aspect of this debate for me, though, is the incorrect impressions of the impact of such possible laws that we are seeing in the media.  The SMH and ABC have referred to them as "ground rules for a fair and respectful debate on same-sex marriage", rules that would "stop hateful advertising material being distributed" and as protections against "malicious publications".  It isn't so.

EMRS: White Lead Is A Big Problem For Liberals

EMRS August Lib 37 ALP 34 Green 16 Ind 6 JLN 5 Other 1
Interpretation Lib 39 ALP 38 Green 13 Others 10
Modelled seat result based on this poll if election held now: Liberal 11-12 seats Labor 10 Green 3-4 
Warning: Polls are snapshots, not forecasts
Preferred Premier Rebecca White leads Will Hodgman 48-37

A new EMRS poll of state voting intentions is out.  Also see the trend tracker. The party breakdown shows scarcely any change from the May result but the startling outcome is that Rebecca White leads Will Hodgman as preferred premier by the thumping margin of 48% to 37%.

Let's put that in the historic context drawn from other states.  It's very simple: preferred premier is an indicator that usually strongly favours incumbents.  When established state premiers trail as preferred leader in Newspoll (never mind by eleven points), they either lose the next election or are removed by their own party.  EMRS is not Newspoll, and it's possible its continued devotion to landline polling (which I strongly believe to be not fully randomised) has meant its results have become total rubbish.  But if that's not the case, the government should be rather worried.  The suggestion is that so far negative attacks on the new Opposition Leader have either not worked at all or even backfired.  

Opposition Leaders don't lead by eleven points just because people like them.  Historically this sort of imbalance happens when governments are in deep trouble or their leaders are unpopular, or both. Federal governments sometimes recover from it; state governments historically don't. The large lead for Rebecca White is probably also a sign that among the voters who EMRS flags as undecided, or as intending to vote for a minor candidate, there are probably a lot who are leaning towards Labor or likely to direct preferences Labor's way.  It should be noted, for contrast and a bit of sobrietry, that the recent ReachTEL had only a small White lead from a format that doesn't skew to incumbents, so perhaps this EMRS is an outlier.  I am also aware of an unpublished commissioned poll showing Hodgman with a small lead using similar question design to EMRS.

Electoral Process, But Not As We Know It: Postal Plebsicite V2

An article I wrote about the serious defects of a postal plebiscite (back on the annual day reserved for silly jokes) has for some unfathomable reason more than doubled its hit tally in the last 24 hours.  Now that a postal plebiscite (but run by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, not the Australian Electoral Commission) has been announced by the government, it's time to update certain aspects of my commentary.

What it appears we will have (unless it is disallowed by the courts) is something so bizarre that it was not anticipated in any of the many polls about a plebiscite.  Effectively, it is a national vote on whether the government will allow a conscience vote to be brought on in the parliament.  (If the plebiscite proceeds and the "no" side wins, then the government will block a conscience vote, presumably ending any prospects for same-sex marriage for so long as the Coalition stays in power.  This rather heavy-handed approach appears to be an attempt to prevent a mass boycott from working.)

Is it constitutional?

I don't know, but we'll probably find out soon enough.  At least two sets of campaigners against the proposed plebiscite are filing for injunctions against it.  Section 83 of the Constitution requires that appropriations must be supported by law, and no law has been passed for this plebiscite.  However there are various standing general-purpose appropriations that governments have flexibility to use for the ordinary running of government, and also in emergencies.  The question will be whether an appropriation for this purpose is valid.

More Section 44 Cases In Spotlight

A very long time ago now two Greens Senators resigned after discovering they were dual citizens.  The Senate will refer their cases to the Court of Disputed Returns (typically the High Court) which will determine whether they were eligible to have been elected in the first place and, assuming that they weren't, will initiate a "special count" to fill their places.  In the weeks since then, however, many more MPs have come under the spotlight of the dual citizenship rule in Section 44 of the Constitution, and it's unlikely it has claimed its final victim yet.

The Constitution is very black and white about dual citizenships - section 44 says that if you are a citizen of another country, you are not eligible to be chosen or to sit in Parliament.  It doesn't seem to allow any ifs or buts about all that.  However, the High Court in Sykes v Cleary [1992] found that the Constitution was unrealistic and had to be "read down".  After all, if it were that straightforward then another nation could maliciously impose citizenship on Australian MPs and refuse to withdraw it.  Alternatively, for a given citizen of a given nation, procedures for getting rid of an unwanted citizenship might be unrealistically expensive, time-consuming, slow, dangerous, unreliable or unreasonable.