ELECTORAL, POLLING AND POLITICAL ANALYSIS, COMMENT AND NEWS FROM THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CLARK. YES THE LORD'S PRAYER SHOULD BE REMOVED FROM THE TASMANIAN PARLIAMENT, IF YOU WANT A RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE AT THE START OF EVERY SITTING DAY HAVE ONE TO THE CLUE FAIRY INSTEAD.
Saturday, October 31, 2020
Queensland 2020 Live
Friday, October 30, 2020
Queensland 2020: Rolling Final Days Roundup
I'll be covering the Queensland election here on election night and in detail throughout the postcount, though on some days I may be busy with other things during the day.
Another Queensland election count is a day and a bit away and there's a distinct lack of data for the usual polling aggregation/modelling type game, so I've decided to start a rolling roundup article which will cover a number of possible themes. When new polls appear - assuming they do - new sections covering them will be posted at the top of the article. I also have a new article in The Guardian. I should clarify that I didn't speak to any of the nameless insiders personally, and was going off other media reports. There were reports since I filed that one that unnamed Labor insiders were more confident yesterday because internal polls had supposedly shown an uptick following one of those debates that nobody much watches. This narrative was gleefully and even gullibly snapped up by Sky, perhaps because it was useful for attacking Gladys Berejiklian. The NSW Premier will doubtless be scapegoated in the event of an LNP loss even if there is nothing special in the early/late voting history to justify such a charge.
Tuesday, October 27, 2020
Post-Budget Federal Polling Roundup
I haven't done a federal polling roundup for a long time, because most of the time at present we are only getting Newspoll. However, last week saw the quarterly batch release of Essential's new poll results and there is actually enough information out there to make it worth sneaking in a general if slightly dated polling review in the small window of spare time I have between the ACT and Queensland election counts. My previous comments about federal polling (or mostly, the Australian's lousy coverage thereof) were here.
This year we saw very little of a common polling trope in previous years - fevered speculation about whether the government of the day would get a "Budget bounce". Actual budget bounces are rare, but the extremely well-received 2019 Budget not only saw an immediate lift of about 0.6% in aggregated polling for the Coalition, but also either coincided with or kickstarted a longer recovery that continued through the campaign. We now know that all that polling was wrong, but we don't know if it was wrong by the same amount all along. In any case, 2019 was another example of the strongest evidence (such as it was, since it could be coincidence rather than causation) for the Budgets that most help government polling usually occurring in a Coalition government's election year.
Newspoll recently recorded a 51% 2PP for the government before the Budget and a 52% after it, which people unfamiliar with the idea of random statistical noise may have taken as evidence of another Budget bounce. However, the evidence from Essential weakens if not completely negates the evidence for the bounce, depending on how Essential is interpreted.
Sunday, October 25, 2020
ACT 2020 Final Results Review: How Did The Greens Win Six Seats?
Saturday, October 17, 2020
2020 ACT Election Live And Post-Count
ACT Election 2020
Labor-Green government has been returned
Final result Labor 10 Liberal 9 Greens 6
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DISCLAIMER - all assessments are provisional except where stated as definitive calls. Hare-Clark elections are very complex.
Friday
9:30 Final distributions are up - barring any kind of challenge (which is unlikely) it's all over.
In Brindabella Davis (Green) defeats Werner-Gibbings (ALP) by 82 votes, with Wall 110 ahead of the cutoff point.
In Ginninderra Ramsay is out by 166 votes.
In Kurrajong the Greens get two by 407 votes.
Tuesday, October 6, 2020
The Queensland Poll Drought Is Finally Over
Note added 16 Oct: The Newspoll just out is virtually identical to the YouGov poll below so I have nothing to add to this article on its behalf, save that it is not just one poll saying this now, but two by the same company, and with much less time remaining. It should be noted though that the Greens primary is down 1% on the YouGov poll, which makes the 52-48 2PP off those primaries rather than 51-49 seem more tenuous, especially with the information that the UAP is polling something in the Others tray.
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YouGov 2PP 52-48 to Labor
Projected seat result if this poll is accurate: ALP win, but majority status touch and go (approx ALP 48-9 LNP 37 KAP 3 Green 2-3 ON 1 Ind 1 - almost no net change from 2017)
Over three months since the last, and less than four weeks til polls close, we finally have another public voting intention poll for the 2020 Queensland election. Finally, for a week at least, I will be able to scan social media in search of polling data in some peace without the Violent Femmes singing "WHY CAN'T I GET JUST ONE POLL?" or the Angels responding "AM I EVER GONNA SEE A POLL AGAIN?" in my head. The release of a rather large statewide YouGov sample that has Labor leading 52-48 finally gives me something to apply a statewide poll model to so I can talk about modelling and this election. Though in comparison to 2017, there's really nowhere near as much to say.