2021 Site Review

This post presents site data for 2021.  The activity graph tells the story of the year (the units are unique pageviews per week):

Most of the activity in the year came between late February and early June, including the WA election, the Tasmanian state election and the Braddon recount.  The peak for the Tasmanian state election in early May was the fourth most visited week in site history (behind 2016 federal, 2018 Victoria and 2019 federal) and May overall was the fourth most visited month (behind the months of 2016 federal, 2019 federal and 2014 Tasmania/South Australia.)  

2021 Federal Polling Year In Review

 At the end of each year I release a review of federal polling results for the year.  See the 2020 edition here, or click the "annual poll review" tab for articles back to 2014. 

How many polls?

Again the business of counting poll results for 2021 has been complicated by Morgan releasing eight 2PPs as dots on a graph only, and by not yet having anything from Essential since mid-November. (Essential drops its voting intention results in a batch every three months though has said it will be releasing them faster as the election approaches).  

This year saw 16 federal Newspolls released, tying 2020 as the sparsest year since 1991.  Essential has so far released 23, with probably one more to come.  Morgan released 15 as full poll reports, plus another eight that have so far appeared solely as dots on a graph.  New player Resolve Strategic graced us with eight.  That's a total of 62 fully released and eight as 2PPs only, putting us up again to around a level of poll frequency last seen in 2018, but well below the years before.  

Psephology And The Palace Letters

It's a nearly annual tradition on this site to release something every Christmas Day.  (Click the Xmas tag for previous examples.) It's also an annual tradition when I write the annual review, to list pieces that languished in the draft section, some barely started, others more or less complete but never quite seeing the light of day.  When I did this last year there was an unusual level of interest (a whole three enthusiastic requests!) in one of the unreleased items, about "psephological themes in the Palace Letters" and I decided to make it this year's Christmas present to readers.  This article mostly focuses on the 1974-5 cycle although the letters cover the 1975-7 cycle as well.   By the way, I am not the only psephologist dropping down chimneys with offerings this year.

The Palace Letters are a series of correspondence (not all of it related to federal politics) between the Queen's Private Secretary Sir Martin Charteris and Governor-General Sir John Kerr in the leadup to and the aftermath of the November 11 1975 sacking of the Whitlam Government.  They also include a large number of media articles that are public documents but would not be well known to a modern audience and that are fun to read over.  The letters were released after a very prolonged legal stoush, especially thanks to the persistence of Whitlam biographer and political historian Jenny Hocking.  

The Overrated Impact Of Party Preferencing Decisions

Advance Summary

1. For all the noise about preferencing strategies and preference flow changes, changes in the relative primary votes for the major parties are a much bigger factor in most recent federal election results.

2. The widespread claim that United Australia preferences caused the Coalition to win the 2019 election is false.

3. Labor is much more dependent on preferences than the Coalition and routinely wins many seats from behind.

4. No party's preferences will ever flow 100% to any other party and there is nothing anyone can do about that - whether it is Greens or Labor being excluded, some preferences will always go to the Coalition.

5. The preferences of climate-concerned independents in city seats tend to flow to Labor, although not quite as strongly as the other way around.

6. In many cases the preference flows from climate-concerned independents are irrelevant, since they will rarely be eliminated in seats that are closely contested between the majors.  

7. How to vote cards mainly exist to protect against informal voting.  Their impact on outcomes is minor.

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EMRS: Voting Intention Pretty Stable In Tasmania

EMRS Tasmania (state) August: Liberal 49 Labor 26 (-2) Green 13 Others 12 (+2)
Results very similar to 2021 election (seat result 13 Liberal 9 Labor 2 Green 1 IND)

A new EMRS poll of Tasmanian state voting intention is out and it shows very little change since the previous poll or for that matter the 2021 snap State Election result.  The only change in voting intention since the last poll is a shift of two points from Labor to Others.  In all the Liberals are up 0.3% compared to the state election, Labor down 2.2%, the Greens up 0.6% (though EMRS has form for overstating the Green vote) and Others up 1.3%.

The only close seat at party level this year was the final seat in Clark, in which Madeleine Ogilvie (Liberal, formerly ALP and then Independent) defeated Sue Hickey (Independent, formerly Liberal) by 2.2%.  A 1.1% swing from Liberals to Others would in theory elect a second Independent.  However in this poll the swing on primary votes is 0.5%, and the swing after preferences would be slightly smaller because of the swing against Labor.  The circumstances of the 2021 election with two fairly evenly matched high-profile independents running will probably not be repeated.  The two-point move to others might be seen as reflecting success for Johnston in making an impact since her election, but it could be random sample noise or anything, and EMRS has seen larger surges for Others in the past without anything coming from them,

At the time of the previous poll there had been a lot of chaos affecting Labor between the poll being taken and its release.  Had the departures of David O'Byrne and Bastian Seidel from the party hurt it?  This poll suggests either not by that much or if so it was temporary.  Nonetheless Labor's primary vote of 26% remains inadequate.  The party has only recorded four lower primary votes during what is now nearly eight years in opposition - two polls back in 2014-5 and two at the height of the government's pandemic bounce last year. 

It is a very long way til the next election and perhaps if the federal party manages to sort the state party out it will start to poll better.  In the meantime, members are free to keep freelancing and branches continue to rumble about it - as seen with preselection threats against Josh Willie over the recent poker machines bill.  Since there's nobody really in charge of the mess, whether these threats represent a handful of members or a more serious number, who can say. 

The poll's leadership ratings continue to show Peter Gutwein with a large lead over Rebecca White, up one point to 31 points (59-28) though such indicators skew to incumbents.  Something has changed since the days when White used to compete remarkably strongly with Will Hodgman and an early Gutwein on this measure, even when her party's primary vote was not that strong. However we don't have ratings for the leaders individually, so it's not clear if this is about White being less personally popular personally than she used to be (which was at one point very popular), or about Gutwein being personally very popular. I suspect that it's a lot of both.  Think that's all I have to say about this poll.

Detailed Comments On The Voter ID Debate

With the Bill scheduled to go before the House of Representatives tomorrow, I thought I should post some detailed comments about the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Voter Integrity) Bill 2021, aka "Voter ID".  The bill has been introduced to the House of Representatives but I have no knowledge of when it might be scheduled for a second reading vote.  On the one hand the government has struggled to make out the case that Voter ID as they propose it is necessary or would even work all that well in preventing deliberate voter fraud - the public evidence being that voter fraud is a relative non-problem.  On the other, opponents have been so inaccurate and overblown in their replies that the primary way their fearmongering will become true is if it so confuses their own supporters as to become a self-fulfilling prophecy and costs them votes.  That's a fate that would be self-inflicted for the way this issue has been debated.  Overall I would prefer not to be seeing this debate and instead to be seeing real bipartisan progress on long-standing problems with our electoral system such as the lack of savings provisions for unintended informal voting in the Reps and also the incorrect surplus method used in Senate counting.  

Labor Dominates In Recent Victorian State Polling

Recently two polls have shown that the Victorian Labor government of Daniel Andrews is currently crushing the Liberal opposition led by the recently returned Matthew Guy.  A Morgan SMS poll showing a 58-42 lead to Labor raised some eyebrows (mostly because SMS polling has in the past been volatile and trashy) but the first branded-as-such Newspoll for the term has reported the same 2PP.  In fact, the Morgan poll's primaries (ALP 43 L-NP 31 Greens 11 others 15) were even friendlier to Labor than Newspoll's (44-36-11-9) and but for the use of respondent preferencing the Morgan poll may well have come out 60-40.  This follows a Resolve poll in late October that had ALP 38 L-NP 34 Greens 10 IND 11 Others 7.  Resolve overestimates Independents, perhaps especially at Labor's expense.  I estimated the 2PP for that poll at 55.5 to Labor.  

Poll Roundup: Albanese Is Still Rating Below Morrison - Is That A Problem?

Since my last federal polling roundup, there has been quite a lot of new polling but the Morrison government's position doesn't seem to have improved.  We have seen:

* Newspoll (early October) 53-47 to Labor (Coalition 37 Labor 37 Green 11 One Nation 2 others 13)

* Newspoll (late October) 54-46 to Labor (Coalition 35 ALP 38 Green 11 One Nation 3 others 13)

* Essential (late October) 49-44 to Labor using Essential's 2PP+ method (Coalition 37 Labor 36 Greens 10 One Nation 3 others 8 undecided 6).  I get 52.2 to Labor by standard last-election preferences with undecided removed.

* Essential (early October) 46-45 to Labor using Essential's 2PP+ method (Coalition 36 Labor 34 Greens 9 One Nation 4 others 8 undecided 9.  I get 51.2 to Labor by standard last-election preferences with undecided removed.

* Morgan (mid-late Sept) 54-46 to Labor (respondent preferences) (Coalition 36 Labor 36 Greens 12.5 PHON 3.5 others 12).  This would be c. 53.1 to Labor by last-election preferences

* Morgan (early Oct) 53-47 to Labor (respondent preferences) (Coalition 37.5 Labor 36 Greens 11.5 PHON 3 others 12).  This would be c. 52.1 to Labor by last-election preferences

* Morgan (mid-late Oct) 54-46 to Labor (respondent preferences) (Coalition 36.5 Labor 35 Green 13.5 PHON 3.5 others 11.5.) This would be c. 52.7 to Labor by last-election preferences 

* Resolve (late October) Coalition 37 ALP 34 Green 11 PHON 3 IND 9 Others 5.  Resolve doesn't estimate a 2PP, and overestimates independents as discussed last time.  I estimate 52.1 to Labor by last-election preferences.

Tasmanian COVID case tallies (transferred from sidebar)

====SUSPENDED 23 Dec 2021 - with the very rapid rise in Tas cases and insufficient official detail about case sources in recent days this page is no longer being updated.  See https://www.covid19data.com.au/transmission-sources-states for what appears to be the best data available on case sources ====

Since soon after the COVID-19 pandemic commenced I have been keeping a tally in the sidebar of the sources of reported Tasmanian COVID-19 cases.  While quite a few people in psephology and other scientific fields have been magnetically attracted to COVID data I have had relatively little to do with it and told a couple of journalists who wanted to interview me about it last year to go and speak to epidemiologists instead.  At this stage I am not graphing anything either; there are plenty of graphs at Juliette O'Brien's excellent covid19data site, and David Barry has raw case totals over time.  My sources are primarily the Tasmanian government page, press conferences and media reports, but there were some cases I was never able to get to quite add to the magic total during the 2020 outbreak.

My interest has been in trying to keep a tab on the sources of publicly reported cases - overseas, interstate, cruise ships, outbreaks in the health system (introduced to it by cruise ship passenger patients) etc.  I've been running this via a feature in the sidebar but recent changes to the Blogger software have made it so tedious to update that I've decided to transfer it to a post.  I am not sure how long I will keep doing this once Tasmania's mix of skill and good fortune in escaping community spread in recent months inevitably runs out and COVID spreads here, but for the time being hopefully this tracking is still of some interest to someone out there somewhere.  A link to this page will remain in the sidebar below the Not-A-Polls.  All numbers here are unofficial and are published for reader interest only.  

Condolences to all who have lost partners, family, friends and colleagues to COVID-19 and sympathies to all affected by it, directly or indirectly or both; physically, mentally, financially or any combination thereof.

FOLLOWING REOPENING (16/12/21)

10 ex interstate

42 close contact

Outcomes:

52 active

Total 52

BETWEEN FIRST WAVE AND REOPENING

1 South in quarantine ex overseas (1/12/21-10/12/21)

2 overlapping South in quarantine ex interstate (15/11/21-28/11/21)

2 overlapping South in quarantine ex interstate (one transferred from North) (2/10/21-29/10/21)

1 North in quarantine ex interstate (2-4/8/21, left state)

4 South in quarantine ex overseas (9/12/20 - 19/12/20)

1 NW in hospital ex interstate (11/08/20-1/9/20)

1 South in quarantine ex interstate (20/7-31/7/20)

Outcomes:

12 recovered/left 

Total 12

FIRST WAVE - ENDED 12/6/20

135 North-west hospitals cluster (inc approx 82 health staff 23 patients 23 contacts 1 aged care resident 1 other worker 2 ambiguous 3 other)
42 cruise ships
33 other overseas
2 interstate
6 close contacts of imported cases (3 overseas 2 cruise ships 1 interstate)
2 Devonport apparently local late March (inc 1 Mersey Hospital staff)
1 South 6/4, no details
1 South 16/4 (transport industry links)
1 Launceston Hospital 5/5
3 unresolved (by me) data discrepancies
Outcomes:
Recovered 211
Deaths attributed to COVID-19 13
Deaths after being cleared (other conditions) 2
Total first wave 226

Total Tas cases 290
Updated 23 Dec 21

Not-A-Poll Reset Time: Berejiklian Quits

With Gladys Berejiklian resigning as NSW Premier to be replaced by Dominic Perrottet, the sidebar Next Leader To Go Not-A-Poll has been reset.  These were the previous results:

The Not-A-Poll was started in November 2020, at which time Berejiklian had just appeared before ICAC and testified about her former relationship with Daryl Maguire.  As a result Berejiklian was the early leader but as time went on readers may have believed she would survive the crisis at least long enough for one of the federal leaders to lose the election and depart.  She was overtaken by Albanese on 15 April 2021 and he was overtaken by Morrison on 10 Aug 2021. 

Tasmania Doesn't Swing With The Nation Like It Used To

Advance Summary

1. Tasmania is routinely omitted from national state-by-state federal polling breakdowns because of small sample size.

2. In theory Tasmanian seats could be projected by just assuming Tasmania would get the national swing, but in practice this isn't very accurate.

3. In elections in recent decades, Tasmanian two-party preferred federal swings have been less similar to the national swing than was the case before the 1970s.

4. One cause of this is that while national swings at federal elections have tended to be much lower in recent decades, 2PP swings in Tasmania are not much lower.

5. Another cause is the tendency of groups of Tasmanian seats to swing together.

6. As a result of this, the national swing that has actually occurred has only correctly predicted the Tasmanian seat result once at the past ten elections.

7. While the swing in current national polling (if accurate) implies the Coalition would not win any Tasmanian seats in an election "held now", a more accurate read based on the history of projected shutouts is that the Coalition would probably retain one Tasmanian seat at the moment.

Poll Roundup: Why Is Resolve Diverging?

I last wrote a federal poll roundup in early August.  At that time I noted that the implied 2PP polling numbers of Newspoll, Morgan, Essential and Resolve this year had been more or less identical.  No new Essential voting intention polling has been seen since mid-July though another dump may appear within days.  

This is what we've seen since the last roundup:

* Newspoll (late August) 54-46 to Labor (Coalition 36 Labor 40 Green 10 PHON 3 others 11)

* Newspoll (mid-Sept) 53-47 to Labor (Coalition 37 Labor 38 Green 10 PHON 3 others 12)

* Morgan (mid-August) 54-46 to Labor (Coalition 37.5 Labor 37.5 Green 12.5 PHON 3.5 others 9)

* Morgan (late August) 54.5-45.5 to Labor (Coalition 37.5 Labor 38.5 Green 11.5 PHON 3 others 9.5)

* Morgan (mid-Sept) 52.5-47.5 to Labor (Coalition 38.5 Labor 35 Green 13 PHON 3 others 10.5)

* Resolve (mid-August) Coalition 40 Labor 32 Green 12 PHON 2 IND 10 others 3.  Last election 2PP would be very roughly 50-50 (my formula gives 50.3 to Labor) 

* Resolve (mid-Sept) Coalition 39 Labor 31 Green 10 PHON 4 IND 9 others 7.  Last election 2PP would be very roughly 51-49 to Coalition (my formula gives 51.1)

Now, it's true that Morgan's use of respondent preferences is inflating its leads for Labor (in the last three polls by an average of 0.9 points compared to last election preferences).  And it could be that the independent voters being (over-)reported by Resolve are actually much more left-leaning than the ones who split about 60-40 to Labor on preferences at the last election.  But still, one of these polls is very clearly not like the others.  Resolve has shown two consecutive Coalition primary leads of 8% while polls by other pollsters have had an average lead of minus 0.5.  Two Resolve polls in a row have come out as massive, beyond margin-of-error outliers. 

EMRS: Old Poll Could Have Been Worse For Labor

EMRS Tasmania (state) August: Liberal 49 Labor 28 Green 13 Others 10

Results more or less identical to 2021 election (seat result 13 Liberal 9 Labor 2 Green 1 IND)

A new EMRS poll has been released today, and it shows ... er no, strike that and start again.

For whatever reason Tasmanian pollster EMRS has just released a state voting intentions poll that came out of field 23 days ago.  EMRS has often not released polls close to the time they were taken in recent years, in some cases hanging on to results for 3-6 months before back-releasing them with other results.  I'm not a pollster but it seems to me that one of the advantages of polling for publicity for a company is releasing it at a time when it is topical and fresh rather than only unveiling it when it looks like something from the antique store.  In the meantime there have been significant developments with David O'Byrne leaving the Parliamentary Labor Party after leader Rebecca White said he should quit parliament, and Huon MLC Bastian Seidel announcing he would quit Caucus and would also resign his seat at the end of the year, citing disgust and demoralisation over Labor's ongoing infighting.

A Record Begging To Be Broken: Labor's Low Winning 1990 Primary

One of the most tedious aspects of Australian polling commentary from time to time is obsessive focus on Labor's primary vote.  Somehow the Labor primary vote gets more attention than the Coalition's when the Coalition is more dependent on its primary vote than Labor is.  In current aggregated polling, Labor has a primary vote in the high 30s (BludgerTrack has it at 37.7%) but there will always be people who say this isn't high enough and that the party needs very near 40% or it can't win a majority. 

There may well be truth in this in terms of projecting from the present day to an election (because oppositions tend to fade and therefore have usually needed big leads at some stage of the term to win) but in that case the primary vote is not telling us anything we couldn't have determined from 2PP polling and its history alone.  The idea that Labor needs a primary vote with a 4 in front of it to win a majority on election day, premised on it only once having won a majority with slightly less, is incorrect.  The fact is we haven't seen a lot about what primary votes Labor wins a majority with these days, because it has only once done so since the rise of the Greens.  This article shows that at recent elections, Labor has missed four in-theory chances to win a majority with a lower primary vote than its record low 1990 majority-winning score of 39.4%.  While total minor party votes remain relatively high, it is very likely that if Labor ever wins federal elections again, it will someday break that record.  The primary-vote-to-win history - based overwhelmingly on elections either run in different minor party environments, or else lost heavily - is meaningless. What matters is whether Labor can assemble a decent enough 2PP result and a good enough vote distribution to win a majority of seats.  

Party Registration Crackdown Tracker

SCOREBOARD

+7 New parties registered under new rules

-13 Existing parties deregistered following new rules (excludes deregistrations under old rules)

Final net change following new rules: -6

Parties registered for 2022 election: 38

One party is listed as an applicant for registration that cannot occur before the election as the party register is now frozen.

Three parties are formally listed for potential deregistration that cannot occur before the election for the same reason. 

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(This article is continually updated - the original intro text is below)

The Electoral Legislation Amendment (Party Registration Integrity) Bill 2021 has passed the Senate without amendments and will shortly receive Royal Assent.  The Bill (i) increases the party membership number requirement for non-parliamentary parties to 1500 members (ii) requires that a person can only be counted as a member of one party (iii) prevents parties from registering names that use words already used by pre-existing parties without consent, with some exceptions.

My view on these changes was expressed in a previous article (The Trolls That Got There First).  I think the membership changes are in principle good and will not disadvantage minor parties with any real chance of ever winning seats - on the contrary they should reduce ballot paper clutter and encourage micro-parties to merge into units more likely to be competitive with bigger parties.  However I believe this should have been accompanied by reform to the current unfair and confusing treatment of non-party groups, which could become more common and cause increased confusion and unsightly ballot papers following this change. Also, the change disadvantages parties with their support based in the NT, ACT or Tasmania and there should probably be a one-jurisdiction registration option with the old 500 member limit.  

Not-A-Polls: Best And Worst Senator Collections

Things are somewhat quiet in Australian psephology at the moment and for a bit of general amusement I thought I'd start some Not-A-Polls in the sidebar to give readers the opportunity to rank which states have the best and worst collections of 12 Senators.  The Not-A-Polls will run for three months but I will extend them for if the number of votes received at that time for one or other is less than 100.  In each case I have allowed an option of vetoing the premise of the question by declaring that all the Senator lineups are either good or terrible (but I haven't allowed an option to rank slates equally).  

Do readers tend to like their own Senator slates, or despair of them?  

Given the number of Senators who are well known not to exist, I provide a list below of the current Senator lineups.  I've omitted the territories because two Senators is hardly a basis for an assessment, but Territorians both Northern and Australian Capital get to be neutral judges of these lineups!

New South Wales

Tim Ayres (Labor), Andrew Bragg (Liberal), Perin Davey (National), Mehreen Faruqi (Green), Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (Liberal), Hollie Hughes (Liberal), Kristina Keneally (Labor), Jenny McAllister (Labor), Jim Molan (Liberal), Deborah O'Neill (Labor), Marise Payne (Liberal), Tony Sheldon (Labor)

Victoria

Kim Carr (Labor), Raff Ciccone (Labor), Sarah Henderson (Liberal), Jane Hume (Liberal), Kimberley Kitching (Labor), Bridget McKenzie (National), James Paterson (Liberal), Janet Rice (Green), Scott Ryan (Liberal), Lidia Thorpe (Green), David Van (Liberal), Jess Walsh (Labor)

Scott Ryan has brought forward his retirement and will resign his seat prior to the scheduled October resumption of Parliament.  

Queensland

Matt Canavan (LNP), Anthony Chisholm (Labor), Nita Green (Labor), Pauline Hanson (One Nation), Susan McDonald (LNP), James McGrath (LNP), Gerard Rennick (LNP), Malcolm Roberts (One Nation), Paul Scarr (LNP), Amanda Stoker (LNP), Larissa Waters (Green), Murray Watt (Labor)

Western Australia

Slade Brockman (Liberal), Michaelia Cash (Liberal), Dorinda Cox (Green), Pat Dodson (Labor), Sue Lines (Labor), Matt O'Sullivan (Liberal), Louise Pratt (Labor), Linda Reynolds (Liberal), , Ben Small (Liberal), Dean Smith (Liberal), Jordon Steele-John (Green), Glenn Sterle (Labor)

(Dorinda Cox replaces Rachel Siewert who has resigned having decided to retire before the end of her term.)

South Australia

Alex Antic (Liberal), Simon Birmingham (Liberal), Don Farrell (Labor), David Fawcett (Liberal), Stirling Griff (Centre Alliance), Karen Grogan (Labor), Sarah Hanson-Young (Green), Andrew McLachlan (Liberal), Rex Patrick (Rex Patrick Team), Anne Ruston (Liberal), Marielle Smith (Labor), Penny Wong (Labor)

(Karen Grogan replaces Alex Gallacher who passed away on 29 August).  

Tasmania

Eric Abetz (Liberal), Wendy Askew (Liberal), Catryna Bilyk (Labor), Carol Brown (Labor), Claire Chandler (Liberal), Richard Colbeck (Liberal), Jonathon Duniam (Liberal), Jacqui Lambie (Jacqui Lambie Network), Nick McKim (Green), Helen Polley (Labor), Anne Urquhart (Labor), Peter Whish-Wilson (Green) 

Enjoy! Comments welcome if non-defamatory and clean.  

FINAL RESULTS (added Nov 22)

The Trolls That Got There First: Proposed New Party Registration Laws

 A raft of electoral reform legislation hit parliament this week.  Included in the collection of Bills introduced by Assistant Minister for Electoral Affairs Ben Morton are:

* The Electoral Legislation Amendment (Counting, Scrutiny and Operational Efficiencies) Bill 2021 which, if passed, allows the AEC to commence sorting prepoll votes at 4 pm, sets the prepoll period before polling day at 12 days, increases the number of scrutineers allowed for Senate elections and makes various changes to postal vote procedures.

* The Electoral Legislation Amendment (Political Campaigners) Bill 2021 which, if passed, alters requirements for disclosure by political campaigners, bringing them more into line with those for parties.

* The Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Offences and Preventing Multiple Voting) Bill 2021 which, if passed, firstly allows for a voter to be required to cast a declaration vote in future if they are a suspected multiple voter.  Secondly it clarifies that offences against electoral liberty may include "Violence, obscene or discriminatory abuse, property damage and harassment or stalking" in connection with an election and increases the penalties for breaches, including up to three years' jail.

Poll Roundup: Lockdowns And Rollout Problems End Morrison's Net Rating Streak

It's been a while since my last federal polling roundup and in that time the government's troubled vaccine rollout and the challenges polled by the Delta strain of COVID-19 seem to have put paid to government optimism about rushing off to an early election this spring.  Indeed, recent weeks have seen the government record its worst 2PP polling of the term so far, though by historic standards it is not yet in severe poll-based trouble.  

Voting Intention

Three weeks ago, four polls came out in quick succession:

* A Newspoll Coalition 39 Labor 39 Greens 10 One Nation 3 Others 9.  The published 2PP was 53-47 to Labor but Labor probably got lucky on the rounding here.  The average last-election 2PP for these primaries would be 52.5-47.5, and indeed when exactly the same primaries came out in early March, the 2PP was 52-48.  Given that this one rounded to 53, it must have been at least 52.5 prior to rounding.

* Essential Coalition 37 Labor 36 Greens 10 One Nation 4 Others 6.  After rescaling to remove undecided and get sum to 100, Coalition 39.8 Labor 38.7 Greens 10.8 One Nation 4.3 Others 6.5.  The published 2PP is 47-45 (=51-49) to Labor under Essential's 2PP Plus method using (mostly) respondent preferences, but by last-election preferences I get 52.1 to Labor.  

* Resolve Political Monitor Coalition 38 Labor 35 Greens 12 One Nation 4 "Independents" 7 Others 5.  Resolve does not publish a 2PP.  By last-election preferences these numbers come to about 52.0 to Labor if taken as published, but Resolve overestimates independents.

* Roy Morgan Coalition 39 Labor 37 Greens 11.5 One Nation 3 Others 9.5.  Morgan's published 2PP was 52.5 (respondent preferences); I get 52.0 (last election).  

In the last week two fresher polls have arrived:

* Another Newspoll with a 53-47 2PP to Labor, but this time with the Greens on 11 and Others on 8, which all else being equal suggests the 2PP this time was probably close to 53 prior to rounding.

* A Morgan with a 53.5% 2PP to Labor off primaries of Coalition 37 Labor 37 Green 12.5 One Nation 3 others 10.5.  I get 53.3 (last election).  This is the highest 2PP poll for Labor of the term except for some bushfire-era Morgans for which only 2PPs were back-released. 

The 2022 Pendulum Only Slightly Favours The Coalition

 With redistributions in Victoria and Western Australia complete, the AEC has gazetted new boundaries.  Antony Green has released an estimated pendulum for the next election, now looking most likely to be held in 2022 rather than 2021.  There were some slight differences between Antony's initial estimates and those of William Bowe and Ben Raue, and I expect many of these would still apply to the final version.  Furthermore the AEC will release its own estimates later.  But pending the AEC estimates I thought I would use Antony's estimates as a starting point for a look at the 2022 pendulum and how much it helps or harms each side based on what we know so far about candidates.  This article is fairly mathsy and has been rated 3/5 on the Wonk Factor scale.  

There are three questions I am most interested in here:

1. All else being equal, what national two-party preferred (2PP) vote does the Coalition need for a better than even chance of a majority?

2. All else being equal, what 2PP vote does each side need for a better than even chance of winning more seats than the other?

3. All else being equal, what 2PP vote does Labor need for a better than even chance of a majority?

The Ipsos MyView Drink Survey Shambles

With telephone response rates falling, and people who answer polls by phone becoming less and less representative, many pollsters have turned to online panel polling.   As part of my interest in polling I have joined a number of online panels, to get some insight into the experience of respondents and ways in which their experience may shape how they respond.  Being on polling panels is also helpful because I get to see some of the polls that are in the field and how they are designed (polling disclosure being as poor as it is, and many of these pollsters still not being Australian Polling Council members).  By this method I also earn a very small amount of extra income by answering surveys on a range of topics.  It's worth mentioning that despite some misconceptions to the contrary I am not a professional pollster or market researcher, so there's nothing stopping me taking most such surveys, though now and then my honest answers to a particular screening question will see me rightly screened out.  There's also not a lot stopping the panels from kicking me off.  

One of these panels is Ipsos MyView and I thought I should share a recent experience with them that I found especially absurd and that might provide some insight into the lives of online panel poll recipients.  I may not have gone public had it been entirely a one-off, but my general experience is that this panel is very buggy compared to at least some others.  Surveys sometimes crash or screen the respondent out without providing any points, or lurk in the respondent's dashboard as awaiting completion for weeks but if you click on them you are told the survey isn't available as you may have already taken it.  There has been some improvement in this in recent months, with the panel more often referring the respondent to a different survey rather than screening them out immediately, but there are still far too many glitches.

Updated note to email subscribers

 In June I posted a note to say that the Feedburner system that sends out automated emails from this site was "going away" (ie stopping working).  I was expecting this to take effect from the end of June, but the date seems to have now been pushed back to mid-August, and most of my posts seem to have still been sent out via the email system in the meantime.  There may be further changes and at this stage I cannot be sure that the existing email feed will stop working altogether at any time.  

In the event of the Feedburner feed stopping working (ie I am still posting articles but subscribers are not receiving emails about them) then I recommend that email subscribers sign up to other services that will allow you to enter your email address and a site name and receive an email feed of that site.  You may want to bookmark this post to come back to it should you realise you haven't heard anything from me for more than a few weeks and wonder why.  Anyone who wants to be sure of getting any article I write may want to sign up to such a service right away.

In comments to the previous article commenter Et3e! mentioned two example feed sites: feedrabbit.com and blogtrottr,com.  I have tested these and find that they work in more or less the same way except that Blogtrottr includes ads with the email of the article text. 

I've considered maintaining my own email list about the site and decided not to do it - too labour intensive and fiddly.  (I edited an email newsletter for a few years once and have no desire to repeat the experience.)

I should caution that both Feedburner and Blogtrottr are very fast in sending out emails (depending on the options chosen).  Initial release versions of articles are often sent out when an issue is fresh and information is emerging - they are more likely to contain typos, unfinished sentences and other errors.  I often say that I only have time to write this stuff, not to proofread it! I view all articles on this site as like a one-person Wikipedia - often I get them out as quickly as I can, but the articles are polished and more content often added later.  So what you get in the initial email and what the article looks like 24 hours later are sometimes rather different.  

I also recommend that anyone wanting to sign up to a feed of this site starting from now uses one of these services or find another similar service.  I've taken down the link to the Feedburner feed signup because I am not sure if the signup system is still working.  If Feedburner reverses all these mooted changes and does so in a language I can understand I may restore it.  

Tasmania 2021: Voters Who Voted In One House Instead Of Two

This year Tasmania controversially had Legislative Council elections on the same day as a House of Assembly election, for the first time ever.  With the election being called for May 1st on March 26 with no prior warning the Tasmanian Electoral Commission had very little time to adapt to the logistic challenges of some voters having to vote in both houses.  These voters were the voters in the eastern Launceston division of Windermere, which occurs entirely within the Assembly division of Bass, and voters in the large division of Derwent, which is mostly spatially in Lyons but includes many voters in the northern suburbs of Glenorchy within Clark. 

The initial controversy around the holding of the elections on the same day concerned potential unfairness to candidates.  Party candidates could benefit from generic party funding for the Assembly campaign while independent Legislative Council candidates were restrained by the Council's strict spending caps.  There were arguments about whether parties could even legally run generic campaigns without in the process incurring expenditure on behalf of their Legislative Council candidates, though so far in terms of post-election challenges this aspect has not come to anything.  As it happened voters voted quite differently in the two houses, so while the Lower House campaign may have distorted the Upper House outcomes, there isn't any clear sign that the latter are different to what would have been expected anyway.

Could A Major Party Soon Take Control Of The Tasmanian Legislative Council?

The recent Tasmanian state election featured the holding of Legislative Council elections on the same day as the House of Assembly election for the first time ever.  This was controversial in fairness terms, and there were suggestions that parties might be breaching the Electoral Act, in particular by their candidates benefiting from generic party advertising that fell outside the strict Council spending requirements.  All has gone quiet on the challenge front following the election so far, but the Tasmanian Electoral Act allows a snoozy 90 days (!) for would-be challengers to get their act together, so it's too early to be certain that we've heard the last of it.  The strikingly different voting patterns in the overlapping booths could make it difficult to satisfy the court that Lower House generic advertising affected the upper house results, if that was something that the court considered relevant.  

One of the three seats contested saw a change in party status, with Liberal Nick Duigan picking up Windermere on the retirement of three-term conservative independent Ivan Dean.  This took the Liberals up to four seats out of 15, with Labor on five and six remaining independents.  

Tasmanian Senate Contest And Integrity Commission Polling

Over the last two days results have been emerging of an Australia Institute Tasmania poll about the Tasmanian Integrity Commission, together with one about the next Tasmanian Senate race.  Unfortunately both these polls are unreliable.  In the Senate race case, the main problems are that polling Senate races is very difficult because standard polling platforms do not simulate the Senate voting experience, and also a recent robopoll at state level was way out.  In the case of the Integrity Commission poll, however, the main problem is the use of a skewing preamble.  This polling is also of interest because I believe it is the first uComms poll to be covered by the Australian Polling Council's disclosure requirements, so it will be interesting to see what surfaces on the uComms website over the next day or two.  

Distrust The Evidence Of Distrust!

The Tasmanian Integrity Commission was established in 2010 via a bill passed in 2009 by the then Bartlett Labor government.  Political tragics and commentators generally view it as at best a modest specimen of the integrity commission genre and at worst the sort of commission you have for the sake of saying you have one.  

There has been increasing frustration with the Integrity Commission's powers lately after it ruled that it could not investigate matters relating to Adam Brooks' candidacy at the 2021 state election because the election campaign occurred while parliament was dissolved and was therefore outside its jurisdiction.  The Greens made a complaint to the Commission (no they did not "refer" the matter*) asking it to investigate "the circumstances of Adam Brooks' pre selection, the support that the Premier gave him throughout the campaign and the manner of his resignation,".  Partly this complaint seems to have been an attempt to fuel the silly and sore-loserly "tainted election" claim surrounding Brooks (the Liberals would have easily won three seats in Braddon anyway), but there are some genuine questions up for grabs here.  Was Brooks a recent party donor?  Did the tipoff that resulted in Brooks facing charges in Queensland come from a party-connected source, or was it simply coincidence?  

Email subscription changes

Up until now this site has offered an email subscription service, though I'm not sure how many people would have seen it.  Tucked in the bottom right hand of the page, for anyone who ever scrolled down that far, has been a space marked "Follow by email" where an email address can be entered.  At least in theory, anyone who enters their address then gets emailed the text of articles that are posted on this site, sometime within a day or so after the articles being posted.  (As one of the subscribers myself, I've found this to be more than a little hit and miss.)

The email service started rather slowly - this site started in October 2012 and by the end of 2012 only my mother and I were subscribed to it.  However it's continued to pick up subscribers over time.  Weirdly the smallest number of new subscribers was picked up in 2019 (a federal election year and a busy year for the site) while 2018 saw one of the largest numbers of new subscribers.  

For some time there's been an announcement inside my Blogger console that the Feedburner email service is "going away", which is a curiously quaint way of saying it aint gonna work any more.  I believe this takes effect from this week.

After (one by one, because there wasn't any other way!) culling over a thousand spam signups from the list, I've downloaded a file of the 110 genuine email subscriptions so that I may be able to, in future, transfer these over to a new email system providing the same service.  However, while I am pretty familiar with using mailing list sites such as MailChimp, what I don't know is how to replicate what the existing Feedburner service does.  That is, I don't know how to set up a service that will monitor my site, notice when I've got a completely new post up, and at that point (or preferably several hours later when I've culled out most of the gremlins and typos) send out an email to subscribers.  Also, of course, I would want to be able to put something in the sidebar where people could subscribe to this site.  

If anyone does know how to do this (and maybe someone will tell me immediately!), please let me know.  Otherwise, the email subscription service may be on hold for a short time, a long time or permanently pending me working out how to (and whether to) best replace it.  

If/once a new system is up to date, details will be posted.  

Update (11 July)

The article I posted yesterday has still gone out via the existing email system, so perhaps the change has not taken effect yet.  I'm continuing to explore and test alternatives (see comments) while I wait to see what happens.  

Recent Newspolls Do Not Prove That A Hung Parliament Is Likely

Today's Australian reports claims by federal Greens Leader Adam Bandt that recent Newspolls suggest Australia is headed for another minority government situation similar to that which occurred (for the first time in many decades) in 2010.  It's a typical case of using polls for a purpose for which they are neither intended nor fit.  

The most relevant quotes:

"The Greens leader used ­research from the parliamentary library to argue that Labor’s only chance of forming government, based on the past six months of Newspoll, is to gain the support of the Greens and independents on supply and confidence.

The research, based on a uniform swing in each electorate, predicts Labor would have reached 75 seats on its two best polls this year – one seat short of a majority government.

“The maths just says we are heading towards a power-sharing parliament; (there) is a swing against the government,” Mr Bandt told The Weekend Australian. “It shows Morrison being pushed out of majority government but not enough for Labor to win in its own right.”

The Major Parties Are Not "Neck And Neck" In Victoria

RESOLVE PM (Victoria state) Labor 37 Coalition 36 Green 9 IND 12 Others 5

2PP Estimate 54-46 to Labor.  If numbers repeated at election, Labor would win easily (c. 50 seats)

"Independent" vote very likely to be overstated

-------------------------------------------------------------

I've had too little time for writing here in recent weeks, largely because of a backlog of contract work that I had to clear after it built up during the Tasmanian snap election.  There are a few pieces I have been working on that I do hope to finish some time but they will be well behind the news cycle should they actually appear.  However, I wanted to make some comments about reporting of today's Resolve Political Monitor poll of Victorian state election voting.  This furthers a concern I have had about some responses to the 2019 federal polling failure - that some media sources that commission or work with polls have responded with trendy solutions that lose information and then lead to worse reporting of what polls are actually claiming to show.  

In my initial coverage of Resolve's entry to the major polling markets I noted that fingering two-party preferred figures as a major culprit in the 2019 federal polling failure was simply incorrect: polls were wrong overwhelmingly because their primary votes were wrong, with errors in preference estimation making only a small contribution to the failure.  I doubted the claims that this would deliver readers "something deeper" than "the “horse race” nature of the way we reported the results of TPP questions" and suggested that what this would actually lead to was journalists reporting the horse race off primary votes.  In the case of the reporting of this specific Victorian poll, the horse race commentary hasn't gone away, it's just got worse.  It's like being told just the relative positions of the horses near the end of a race without being told one of them is flagging and the other is charging home strongly.  

Upper Hunter By-Election Live And Post-Count

-----------------------------------------------------------

UPPER HUNTER (National, 2.6%)

By-election caused by resignation of Michael Johnsen

2019 primary votes Nat 34.0 Labor 28.6 SFF 22.0 Greens 4.8 LDP 4.4 SA 2.2 AJP 2 CDP 1.9  

Seat called win to Nationals at 8:24 pm Saturday (final swing to Nats 3.26%)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Saturday: Final 2PP 55.82 to Nationals (+3.26)

Monday: 2PP now at 55.7 after a strong performance for the Nats on initial postals more than cancelled out a comparatively weak performance on iVotes.  

Sunday 8:00 Good performances in the other prepolls have the Nats up to 55.4 now.  Still no sign of the iVotes.  

Sunday 2:20 Muswellbrook prepoll has come in dropping the live 2PP to 54.5.

Sunday 1:10 The 2PP in the live count is now sitting at 56.8.  Labor has stopped the rot in a couple of prepolls today and the 2PP will come down when Muswellbrook prepoll is added.  My projection has dropped to 54.6 but I believe that's on the low side.   Still no sign of the iVotes but I believe they're coming today.  

Poll Roundup: Another Budget Rates Pretty Well As Early Election Talk Resumes

With the 2021 Budget now released it's time for this site's annual post-Budget federal polling roundup.  

Voting Intention

The current polling consensus is that Labor has a narrow (51-49ish) lead, though we should not be too confident Labor is ahead at all given the errors seen at the 2019 election.  We can hope that pollsters have successfully addressed the causes of the errors (and also not overcorrected, in which case Labor might in theory be ahead by more). YouGov at least has taken targeted action aimed at fixing the 2019 problems, but until we actually see a test at a federal election, we don't know.

The current Newspoll had Labor ahead 51-49 (unchanged) off primaries of Coalition 41 Labor 36 Greens 12 One Nation 2 others 9.  The second ever Resolve Political Monitor poll (link to my April discussion) has primaries of Coalition 39 Labor 35 Green 12 One Nation 2 Independent 8 Other 5.  Treating "independent" in this poll as generic "others", I get a 2PP of 51.1 to Labor (+1 since April).  If "independent" is carved out, I get 51.9 (+0.9), but I don't recommend this as there are plenty of low-information voters who use "independent" as a catch-all term for indies and minor crossbench parties such as KAP, Centre Alliance etc.   As noted in the initial article about this poll, using Independent as a standalone option can lead to inflated readings compared to actual Independent vote shares.  

Tasmania 2021: What Was The Point Of This Election?

LIBERAL 13 LABOR 9 GREEN 2 IND 1 (Unchanged from before election)

This is another state election where I think a post-election washup post is in order, some of which will cover similar ground to the 2018 washup.  I started writing this a few days after the election but found it was hard to assess the result without knowing for sure who had won and lost.  I ended up rewriting this piece quite a few times and have stripped out a lot of commentary because the article was getting way too long.  

This election's been a crazy and fascinating ride.  The interest levels in it, especially Clark, have been extremely high on this site.  The post-election Adam Brooks news just adds more weirdness to the mix, and now we have a Labor leadership election as well (the first since Michael Field defeated Neil Batt in a party room ballot in 1988, and the first under new rules with voting by members and delegates).  

Test

This is a test post because my website was being blocked by Firefox and Chrome this morning based on a presumed phishing false positive which I've reported.  Individual links are working OK; I just wanted to see if I could post new content or not.  

All seems to be fine now but if anyone has this problem please report cases of it to me by email (k_bonham@tassie.net.au) and please excuse any frustrated tones in any reply!

Brooks (Braddon) Instant Recount 2021

RECOUNT: Ellis (Lib) vs Sheehan (Lib).

Recount will conclude Thursday morning.  Unofficial result: Ellis has won by about 749 votes.  

Warning: unusually wonky recount.  The Braddon recount has been upgraded to Wonk Factor 5/5.

Senate Surprise: Abetz Demoted To Third

News has just come through that Tasmanian Liberal preselectors have released a ticket with Senator Jonathon Duniam first, Senator Wendy Askew second and Senator Eric Abetz third.  This comes as a surprise after recent Fontcast gossip that suggested Abetz and Duniam would fight out the top spot on the ballot with Askew to be placed third (gender issues notwithstanding).  Askew has only been a Senator for just over two years since being appointed to a casual vacancy.  

Previously Abetz had been on top of the Senate ballot four times in a row since being first appointed to the Senate on a casual vacancy.  Previous pretenders to the top position Guy Barnett and Richard Colbeck were demoted by preselectors to risky positions where they subsequently lost their seats.  (Barnett went into state politics where he has been successful, while Colbeck returned to the Senate after the disqualification of Stephen Parry and topped the 2019 ticket).  

Almost Everything In West Media's Polling Video Is Wrong

Got my right hand high, with the thumb down ...

I'm writing a long washup piece re the Tasmanian election and its outcomes but my attention has been diverted by clueless Twitter praise of a YouTube video by The West Report, called "Who really is the preferred PM?"  Strangely the video doesn't actually talk that much about preferred PM scores or say who the preferred PM actually is, but it says a lot of other things that are just not accurate.  It's possibly the worst thing I've seen about polls on a vaguely prominent platform since Bob Ellis.  

The video claims at 0:31 that the questions in the polls aren't public while highlighting a statement from Resolve Political Monitor that says "All questions are designed to be fair, balanced and accurate, e.g. voting questions emulate the actual presentation and ranked preferences of ballot papers as closely as possible". The words from the second "questions" on are highlighted.  But in Resolve's case, what appears to include at least some of the questions is published.  It's also perhaps a bit early to judge Resolve on its transparency approach since it has so far done one national poll.  The Newspoll standard questions, however, are not only regularly published verbatim in The Australian but have existed in stable form for just over 35 years.  I can vouch that the questions as published by Newspoll are their questions, exactly, as I have been polled by them a few times going back to the early 1990s.  Granted, it would be beneficial for pollsters to openly publish exact details of the ballot forms they offer voters (including being clear about Resolve's exact voting intentions question), but in Newspoll's case and for some questions for Resolve, we do see what they are asking.  Ditto for Essential, by the way, although Essential unfortunately doesn't usually release the order (if there was one) in which options for issue questions were asked. 

2021 Tasmanian Postcount: Lyons

(Link to main 2021 page including link to other postcount threads)

LYONS (2018 Result 3 Liberal 2 Labor)

SEAT RESULT 3 Liberal 2 Labor (called)

CALLED ELECTED: Rebecca White (Labor), Guy Barnett (Liberal), Mark Shelton (Liberal), Jen Butler (Labor), John Tucker (Liberal)

Lyons is as dead as it gets as a party level contest with the Liberals on more or less exactly 3 quotas, Labor on more or less exactly 2 and the Greens on just over half, and the rest is mostly Shooters.

Rebecca White has topped the poll with 1.4 quotas.  Guy Barnett is also over quota and Mark Shelton is on .72 quotas and will win, though it will take a while.

2021 Tasmanian Postcount: Franklin

 (Link to main 2021 page including link to other postcount threads)

FRANKLIN (2018 Result 2 Labor 2 Liberal 1 Green)

ALL SEATS CALLED: 2-2-1, Jacquie Petrusma and Nic Street (Lib) re-elected, David O'Byrne (Labor) re-elected, Rosalie Woodruff (Greens) re-elected, Dean Winter (Labor) replaces Alison Standen (Labor)

There is no suspense about the count in Franklin: all the incumbents have won except that Alison Standen has lost heavily to Dean Winter and David O'Byrne in a within-party contest.  Winter's campaign was initially blocked by left unionist elements in the party and this was only overturned by federal intervention (at the behest of another union that took exception to the claim Winter wasn't Labor-y enough).  The result confirms the utter senselessness of leaving Winter off the Labor ticket for even five minutes and Labor should identify those irresponsible and ensure they don't get asked to pick the squad again.  

2021 Tasmanian Postcount: Braddon

(Link to main 2021 page including link to other postcount threads)

BRADDON (2018 result 3 Liberal 2 Labor)

SEAT RESULT 3 Liberal 2 Labor 

CALLED ELECTED: Jeremy Rockliff (Lib), Anita Dow (ALP), Shane Broad (ALP)

WITHIN PARTY CONTEST (Liberal): Adam Brooks extremely likely to win, Roger Jaensch vs Felix Ellis for third Liberal seat.  Expecting formal confirmation soon that Brooks and Jaensch have won.   (UPDATE: confirmed)

In Braddon there is nearly 84% counted.  The Liberals have 3.42 quotas, Labor has 1.6, the Greens 0.32, the Shooters 0.23 and Craig Garland has 0.37 (6%) and has beaten the Greens again!  Jeremy Rockliff has topped the poll, of course, and currently has 1.74 quotas.  

2021 Tasmanian Postcount: Bass

(Link to main 2021 page including link to other postcount threads)

BASS (2018 3 Labor 2 Liberal)

CALLED RESULT 3 Liberal 2 Labor

MPs CALLED: Peter Gutwein (Lib), Michael Ferguson (Lib), Sarah Courtney (Lib), Michelle O'Byrne (Labor), Janie Finlay (Labor).  

Jennifer Houston (Labor) loses seat to Finlay.

In Bass, we currently have 81% counted, which is pretty good.  Premier Gutwein has already smashed Will Hodgman's 2018 record for the largest number of personal votes ever recorded by a candidate, and his 48.2% primary vote is the second highest of all time, behind Doug Lowe's 51.2% (which was pre Robson rotation).  For the Robson Rotation era he beats Robin Gray's 42.2% by six points, though that was achieved with seven candidates on the ticket and not six.  The concentration of the Liberal vote in Gutwein is amazing and has left incumbents Ferguson and Courtney looking a bit neglected!  They're bound to win on Gutwein's surplus though; indeed Ferguson will probably clear quota right away and Courtney might do so too.  

2021 Legislative Council Postcounts: Windermere and Derwent

(Link to main 2021 page including link to other postcount threads)

WINDERMERE Vacancy (retirement, Ivan Dean, conservative IND)

Nick Duigan (LIB) vs Geoff Lyons (ALP) or Will Smith (IND)

Duigan won after preferences of Smith.  

DERWENT called, Craig Farrell (ALP) has retained.

This is a very brief (initially) postcount thread for Windermere, which I am doing second behind Clark because the Legislative Council matters!  Labor's Craig Farrell has retained Derwent as he is leading Ben Shaw 48.7-41.2 and the Animal Justice preferences (10%) will favour Farrell.  Farrell might win 55-45 or slightly more.  

2021 Tasmanian Postcount: Clark

(Link to main 2021 page including link to other postcount threads)

CLARK (2018 Result 2 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green, when election called 1 Liberal 1 Labor 1 Green 2 IND, when election held 2 Liberal 1 Labor 1 Green 1 IND)

SEATS WON 1 Liberal 1 Labor 1 Green 1 IND.

CALLED WINNERS: Elise Archer (Lib), Cassy O'Connor (Green), Ella Haddad (Labor).

PARTY CONTEST: Liberal vs IND, Liberal well ahead, INDs will gain, both INDs need to overtake Liberals for them to lose.  Liberals strongly expected to win.

WITHIN-PARTY CONTEST: Behrakis (LIB) vs Ogilvie (LIB) for expected

 Liberal 2nd seat. Ogilvie will win.  

IND vs IND CONTEST: Johnston vs Hickey, Johnston ahead and expected to win.

UPDATE: Clark called as wins for Johnston and Ogilvie after exclusion of Davis.  

Tasmanian Election Day 2021

Yes the glorious day has arrived, we are finally there!  We are (checks watch), er, ten months early.  

Tonight I will be doing live coverage for The Mercury.  The link will be edited in to this article when available.  It may be paywalled but there is usually a cheap introductory subscription for non-subscribers.  My live blog for the Mercury will probably start somewhere in the 6-6:30 range and go until late night although I may have to stop it to file articles and do interviews eventually.  I will be based at the tally room.  I ask media outside of the Mercury not to contact me by phone or email between 5:30 and about 11 tonight; once I have finished the live coverage I should be available for other interviews (feel free to say hi in the tally room when I don't look too busy to arrange).   Scrutineers are very welcome to send me news and figures by phone or email.

2021 Tasmanian State Election Polling Drought

One of the regular services I've provided on this site and, before that, on Tasmanian Times, is polling-based forecasting of Tasmanian elections.  At all elections since 2006 there have been multiple public polls that have allowed me to do this, and some of these polls have had very good sample sizes indeed. However this year (link to my 2021 guide main page) we have had no public polling since February.  By public polling, I mean a poll either released by a polling company off its own bat, or commissioned by a media outlet that is always going to publish the results.  We have had a single commissioned poll with voting intentions data released (uComms commissioned by the left-wing Australia Institute), and some rumours about party polling.

I would like to be able to present a forecast and say that it should be as reliable as in previous years, but with such a low level of polling data I can't do that.  There might be more voting intentions polling to come, but I don't have any specific reason to expect any.  This especially follows the news that EMRS, who last polled in February, will not bring forwards their May omnibus to include a poll for this election.  

Before I get into some fine detail about the maths of such a lack of polls, I want to cover some general points: how did we get here and why does it matter?  The tail end of this article is more technical and gets up to around 3/5 on the Wonk Factor scale.  

The Governor's Role In The 2021 Tasmanian Election

The 2021 Tasmanian election campaign (link to main guide) has seen various claims about the role of the Governor Kate Warner, both in calling the election and in resolving the aftermath should the election produce a hung parliament.  Not only are these claims incorrect, but some of them (concerning the calling of the election) are both unfair to the soon-to-retire Governor Warner and by implication anti-democratic.  

Calling the election

The first set of claims that have circulated concerns the Governor's role in calling the election.  The claims being made fall into two groups:

1. That the Governor may have made a mistake in accepting Premier Gutwein's advice to dissolve the Parliament and hold an election.

2. That the Governor made the correct decision, but that she must have relied on false or misleading advice from the Premier in so doing, and would otherwise have not called the election.

I first saw claims of type 1 in an April 2 op ed by Charles Wooley  (paywalled, and need to scroll down).  It's far from being the only thing I disagree with in that article:

What's This Then? Commissioned Poll Claims Liberals In Trouble

 Australia Institute uComms: Liberal 41.4 Labor 32.1 Greens 12.4 IND 11 Other 3.1

If accurate Government would probably lose majority (approx 12-10-2-1 or 12-9-3-1, perhaps more INDs)

Handle with caution - commissioned robopoll, IND figure looks exaggerated

Aggregate-based model of vaguely recent vaguely public polling: approx 13-8-3-1

A week out from the 2021 Tasmanian state election (link to guide main page) there remains no public polling that is less than two months old.  This is a parlous situation and I feel that relying on the media to commission useful polling at a useful time has failed and that for future state elections it will be necessary to look at crowdfunding reputable polling to fill the void a few weeks out.  If, that is, such a thing proves viable.  

Ditching Two-Party Preferred Won't Resolve Australia's Polling Problems

Resolve: Coalition 38 Labor 33 Green 12 One Nation 6 IND 8 Others 3.

My 2PP Estimate 50-50

Alternative Estimate 51-49 to ALP

A new federal polling series has been launched and what we have before us is a mixture of the good, the bad and the interesting.  Such is my initial reaction to the launch of Resolve Political Monitor, a new poll by Resolve Strategic for the SMH and The Age.  Many of the reporting decisions around this new poll appear intended to keep it on a similar footing to the Nine stable's former Nielsen and Ipsos polls.  The poll will run monthly, and excitingly will include bi-monthly state polling for NSW and Victoria, something there has been a deplorable lack of in recent years.  

Legislative Council Voting Patterns 2017-21

Advance summary:

1. This article presents a revised analysis of voting patterns in the Legislative Council (the upper house of Tasmanian Parliament) based on contested divisions involving the current (and one retiring) MLCs in the last four years.

2. Although there is a degree of independence in all Legislative Council voting (outside of party blocks), the Council continues to have a fairly clearly defined "left" side consisting of the five Labor Party MLCs, and independents Mike Gaffney, Ruth Forrest, Rob Valentine and Meg Webb. 

3. The three Liberal MLCs and retiring independent Ivan Dean form a "right" cluster and independents Rosemary Armitage and Tania Rattray now clearly more often vote with that cluster than with the left.

4. The votes recorded in the last year have also seen greater fracturing of the left cluster, more divisions with both major parties on one side and a higher proportion of divisions where the government wins.  

5. A possible left-to-right sort of the Council is Valentine, Webb, Gaffney tied with Forrest, the five Labor MLCs in no particular order, Rattray, Armitage, Dean, and the three Liberal MLCs in no particular order.

6. Going into the 2021 elections, the left holds an absolute majority in the Legislative Council, normally meaning that the government needs the support of Labor or at least two left independents to win votes.  The left will remain in majority, the question being the size of that majority.

7. The left-right split is only rarely reflected perfectly on the floor of the Council at the moment.

----

WA 2021 Button Presses And Final Results Comments

 I've just taken a brief break from my extensive coverage of the snap Tasmanian election to return to the 2021 WA landslide because button presses may be imminent - the WA Electoral Commission says buttons will be pressed in the three smallest regions Mining and Pastoral, Agricultural and South-West today from 3 pm WA time.  That said there have been varying reports on social media as to whether this will happen or not.  If the elections are really approaching button press status then it is disappointing that the WA Electoral Commission site does not include the below-the-line vote totals in order for election-watchers to revise our expectations and I hope this will be improved in the future.  

I have had no time to add to what was already up on my postcount thread, which I consider to have been largely overtaken by Antony Green's detailed coverage.  In short no doubt has been raised about Agricultural as 3 Labor 2 National 1 Liberal, and expectations in Mining and Pastoral have settled on 4 Labor 1 Liberal 1 Daylight Savings (of which I will have more to say if that occurs) while the last two seats in South-West (beyond 3 Labor 1 Liberal) are a multi-party mess with about five parties having been in contention at some stage.  I'll add comments on the results when they are up and later when time permits I will also be adding some summary comments on the Lower House final results.  

Legislative Council 2021: Derwent

This is the second of the Legislative Council guides that I am putting out quickly as I am keen to ensure that the LegCo elections do not get neglected (especially as they are currently expected to be on the same day as the state election).  My guide to Windermere is up, and links for all pages will be added to my general state election hub page.  An analysis of voting in the chamber in the last four years has also been posted.

I will be doing live coverage of the state election from 6 pm for The Mercury on their website and I expect this to include the Legislative Council elections too, assuming that they go ahead on May 1 as flagged.  Postcount threads will be posted for any seats that remain in doubt or of interest following counting night.

Derwent: Seat Profile

As its name suggests Derwent covers much of the middle and upper Derwent Valley.  It starts in the suburbs of Glenorchy and takes in Bridgewater/Gagebrook, Brighton, the major town of New Norfolk, and a scattering of small farming, fishing and timber towns up to Lake St Clair and out into the south-west.  It even takes in Great Lake which isn't very Derwent Valley at all.

Legislative Council 2021: Windermere

With a snap state election called I am scurrying to get my Legislative Council guides out as fast as possible too, as I am keen to ensure that the LegCo elections do not get neglected (especially as they are currently expected to be on the same day).  I've started with Windermere because it is the most interesting on paper; link to Derwent is here and both pages are linked off my general state election main page.   An analysis of voting in the chamber in recent years has also been posted.

I will be doing live coverage of the state election from 6 pm for The Mercury on their website and this will include the Legislative Council seats too.  Postcount threads will be posted for any seats that remain in doubt or of interest following counting night.

Seat Profile

Windermere covers the eastern side of the Tamar River including George Town and the northern and some eastern Launceston suburbs.  At the 2017 redistribution it was expanded, gaining the Lilydale area from the abolished division of Apsley (the nearest parts of which are now McIntyre).  Windermere is a diverse electorate, including the strongly Labor satellite suburbs of Ravenswood and Waverley, the pro-Liberal suburbs of Norwood and St Leonards, and some booths with fairly high Green votes along the river.

Holding The House Of Assembly And Legislative Council Elections On The Same Day

Having completed the initial runs of my Lower House guides it's now time to move onto the Legislative Council.  But before I do there is a general matter about the Legislative Council elections that I wish to cover in its own post.  For the first time in the state's history as a state (I am not sure about colonial elections) this year's Legislative Council elections are set to be held on May 1, the same day as the House of Assembly elections.  While there are advantages in holding the elections on the same day, I believe this is unfair to independent candidates because of the Council's strict spending restrictions, and that for this reason the Legislative Council elections should have been moved (perhaps to May 29) and should be moved if this is still possible.  

Historic cases of elections held close together

The following table shows cases where the House of Assembly and Legislative Council elections were held close together:

(Source: Parliament House website).  In the early days, Legislative Council elections seem to have been held on a range of days of the week, resulting in some cases of the elections falling four days apart.

2021 Tasmanian State Election Guide: Lyons

This is the Lyons electorate guide for the 2021 Tasmanian State Election.  (Link to main 2021 election preview page, including links to other electorates.)  If you find these guides useful, donations are very welcome (see sidebar), but please only donate in these difficult times if you can afford to do so.  Note: if using a mobile you may need to use the view web version option at the bottom of the page to see the sidebar.

Lyons (Currently 3 Liberal 2 Labor). 

Most of the state

Rural, outer suburban and forested.  

Lots of tiny dispersed towns that take many years for an MP to work

2021 Tasmanian State Election Guide: Franklin

This is the Franklin electorate guide for the 2021 Tasmanian State Election.  (Link to main 2021 election preview page, including links to other electorates.)  If you find these guides useful, donations are very welcome (see sidebar), but please only donate in these difficult times if you can afford to do so.  Note: if using a mobile you may need to use the view web version option at the bottom of the page to see the sidebar.

Franklin (Currently 2 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green)

Eastern shore Hobart (Clarence City), much of Kingborough, Huon Valley, D'Entrecasteaux Channel

Urban/outer urban/treechange/rural

2021 Tasmanian State Election Guide: Clark

This is the Clark electorate guide for the 2021 Tasmanian State Election.  (Link to main 2021 election preview page, including links to other electorates.)  If you find these guides useful, donations are very welcome (see sidebar), but please only donate in these difficult times if you can afford to do so.  Note: if using a mobile you may need to use the view web version option at the bottom of the page to see the sidebar.

Clark (Currently 2 Liberal 1 Labor 1 Green 1 Independent)

(When election was called 1 Liberal 1 Labor 1 Green 2 Independent)

(2018 Result 2 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green)

Western shore Hobart, primarily Hobart City and Glenorchy City

Inner and outer urban

2021 Tasmanian State Election Guide: Braddon

 This is the Braddon electorate guide for the 2021 Tasmanian State Election.  (Link to main 2021 election preview page, including links to other electorates.)  If you find these guides useful, donations are very welcome (see sidebar), but please only donate in these difficult times if you can afford to do so.  Note: if using a mobile you may need to use the view web version option at the bottom of the page to see the sidebar.

Braddon (Currently 3 Liberal 2 Labor). 

North-west and western Tasmania including Devonport, Burnie and Ulverstone

Regional/rural/remote

2021 Tasmanian State Election Guide: Bass

This is the Bass electorate guide for the 2021 Tasmanian State Election.  (Link to main 2021 election preview page, including links to other electorates.) If you find these guides useful, donations are very welcome (see sidebar), but please only donate in these difficult times if you can afford to do so.  Note: if using a mobile you may need to use the view web version option at the bottom of the page to see the sidebar.

Bass (Currently 3 Liberal 2 Labor). 
North-east Tasmania including most of Launceston
Mixed urban/small-town/rural

2021 Tasmanian State Election Guide: Main Page

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Header added 2 May: The election has been run and the Liberals are the largest party but it remains to be determined for sure whether they have a majority.  

Postcount threads are being unrolled:

Clark 

Windermere and Derwent

Bass

Braddon

Franklin (zzzzz)

Lyons

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Welcome to the main page for my 2021 Tasmanian state election coverage.  This page will carry links to all the other articles about the election that I write prior to the close of polling, and will contain general big-picture stuff and links to all the specialised articles (once these are written).  It will be updated very frequently.  Each electorate has its own guide page.  Note that these are my own guides and I reserve the right to inject flippant and subjective comments whenever I feel like it; if you do not like this, write your own.

Tasmanian Snap Election? Early Elections and Majority vs Minority

Following the resignation of Sue Hickey from the Liberal Party, placing the Gutwein Government into minority, there have been strong rumours since Wednesday afternoon of a May 1 snap election.  Whether or not the election is actually called for this date or soon, I thought it would be interesting to cover some of the history.

The resignation of Sue Hickey from the Liberal Party presents no clear threat to confidence in the government.  Hickey has promised continued confidence in the government in the absence of "corruption", but notwithstanding her definition of "corruption" or whether the government can trust her, they presently have another confidence vote if needed from Madeleine Ogilvie.  So I classify this as an unforced early election.

However, the spectacle of recent days and the constant goading that losing a majority brings would be unappealling for the Government.  It seems most likely that the Government brought on Hickey's departure having already decided to go to an election ASAP, perhaps inspired by the example of the McGowan government which has been massively re-elected and which has followed a similar COVID-19 storyline to Tasmania.  There is however one major difference between Tasmania and WA: federal drag.  In the absence of COVID-19, McGowan's government would have been expected to increase its majority anyway (though not by as much as it has), while Gutwein's would have been expected to go backwards.

Sue Hickey Disendorsed And Leaves The Liberal Party

I am still on remote fieldwork for another few days but the developments of the last two days deserve a quick post.  Yesterday Tasmanian House of Assembly Speaker Sue Hickey and Premier Peter Gutwein both announced that Gutwein had told Hickey that there was insufficient support for re-endorsing her as a Liberal candidate in the next Tasmanian state election.  While no formal endorsement announcements have been made, this effectively ensures that Hickey is disendorsed.  

What got us here?

For interstate and international audiences and any Tasmanians who have spent the last few years down a cave, Hickey is a former Hobart Lord Mayor, small businesswoman and long-time and long-suffering Liberal who was elected to state parliament in 2018, polling just under two-thirds of a quota in her own right.  Even before her election, Hickey had showed that she was about as left-wing as one can get in the Liberal Party without falling off the edge of the plane.  She was overlooked for an immediate ministry, but claimed she had been promised a ministry if she ran and was elected.  On the first day of the parliament, Hickey accepted a nomination from the opposition benches and was elected Speaker instead of the Government's nominee Rene Hidding.  It was a secret ballot but one can safely assume Hickey's thirteen votes were ten Labor, two Greens and herself.  

AsiNine: NSW Labor Not At Hundred-Year Low

With much attention on the Western Australian election and also a rather interesting Newspoll this weekend, unfortunately there was a third story that saw some of the most lamentable poll reporting that has been seen from a major network for a while.  I've put the other matters aside for an hour or two now, because what has happened here needs to be strongly condemned.

The first I saw of this poll was a news item tweeted by the Nine News Sydney account, concerning a disaster poll for NSW Labor, one supposedly finding that the party's primary vote was lower than at any election since 1904, and worse even than the 2011 debacle.  The Twitter video of the news report was three minutes and 18 seconds long.  I watched it three times in disbelief that a report of such a momentous poll did not even name the pollster involved, let alone state who had commissioned the poll.  Then I ranted about it on Twitter.  Then I watched it a fourth time just to make sure that I hadn't just made a real fool of myself.  But it was real - 198 seconds complete with interviews with ex-Premier Morris Iemma, but no mention of the pollster's name.  This alone was quite ridiculous.

(I've been told there is a longer version that does name the pollster, but haven't seen it, and don't know how widely versions with and without the pollster named were broadcast.)

WA 2021 Legislative Council Postcount

Note added 1 April: I have had no time to update this page because of the Tasmanian snap election.  Button press comments and final results comments are being added on a new thread.

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It seems a bit dubious to be calling what is going on in WA at the moment a "postcount" when on the Monday morning after the main count we are only at 43% counted in the lower house (about half the votes that will be included) and a similar level upstairs.  However, that's the convention so I'll stick with it, especially since I won't have time for anything I could flatter by calling it a live counting thread.

Anyway for now I have not started a lower house postcount thread for time reasons.  The lower house result currently looks like probably 53-2-4 or 52-3-4, with Liberal-held Churchlands most in doubt.  There is also some doubt about Liberal-held Carine and Nedlands (both of which Labor is leading), the Nationals' Warren-Blackwood (Nationals leading) and the ABC still has the Nationals' North-West Central (Labor leading) in doubt, possibly because the seat is so varied (Poll Bludger projects an easy Labor win).  I suggest keep an eye on PB for further developments in the Lower House; if a seat is still interesting once the percentage counted gets much closer to completion I may have more to say.

This thread will follow counting in the six Legislative Council threads, and I will gradually unroll them as my very limited time permits.  Just for starters I thought it was worthwhile putting up some general notes on the counts.