Tasmania 2024: Yet Another Mystery Poll

This article is part of my 2024 Tasmanian state election coverage.  Click here for link to main page with links to effective voting advice and seat guides.

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UPDATE 22/3: The Mercury has revealed that this poll was by high-quality pollster Freshwater Strategy and taken about a fortnight ago, and the Fontcast has announced it was THA-commissioned,  New details are also that the Greens are on 13 and Independents 11 in Lyons, the Greens are on 10 in Bass (apparently leaving about 13.7 for independents and others), independents are on 10 in Braddon (leaving about 13.8 for Greens and others) and 28 in Clark (Greens on 20), and in Franklin the Greens are on 13 and independents on 17.  

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Original article

After a reasonably polling-rich start to the 2024 Tasmanian campaign, little polling has been seen recently, with the youngest public poll 16 days out of the field as I write.  This creates a fair amount of uncertainty regarding whether anything has happened with voting intention in what has been a noisy and bumpy campaign.  In particular, has the fact that the Liberals are ahead and are the only party that any poll has had within, say, 5% of a plausible majority result, caused any late bandwagon effect to their side?  (I should note that bandwagons to a party capable of forming majority government don't always happen.  The two elections where conspicuous bandwagons did occur were 2006 and 2018 but for both these elections other factors could be cited.)

Today Sky News has released some figures from a poll by an unnamed pollster and source and have said they have been asked not to name.  As is too often the case Sky have failed to report on the polling dates.  What we have is a purported seat breakdown probably by someone with not much of a clue about how Hare-Clark works (14-9-4-4-4) and primary votes for the majors and JLN only.

The primary votes reported are:

Bass Lib 40.28 ALP 25.87 JLN 10.2 (leaving 23.68)

Braddon Lib 49.24 ALP 14.65 JLN 12.28 (leaving 23.83)

Clark Lib 25.35 ALP 21.37 (leaving an enormous 53.28)

Franklin Lib 33.23 ALP 27.4 JLN 8 (leaving 31.39)

Lyons Lib 38.46 ALP 23.26 JLN 11.2 (leaving 27.18)

As an average this puts the Liberals on 37.3 per division, Labor 22.5, JLN 8.3, leaving 31.9 for Greens and others, though the statewide total for the Liberals would be slightly higher because of the smaller voter numbers in Clark.  This is very similar to the recent uComms poll - again with a 40% non-major party vote; can such things be true? There is no information on the treatment of undecided voters, who I've assumed are redistributed but that might not be the case.

An unusual aspect of the poll is the use of two decimal places.  I have seen this before from some minor pollsters and am still trying to gather information regarding who does this most often.  MediaReach, used by the Liberals in 2018, is one poll that has done this, but I believe there are others.  

Seat Breakdown

It is most likely that whoever has interpreted this poll has come up with this (in the form Liberal-Labor-Greens-JLN-IND):

Bass 3-2-1-1-0

Braddon 4-1-0-1-1 

Clark 2-2-1-0-2

Franklin 2-2-1-1-1

Lyons 3-2-1-1-0

TOTAL 14-9-4-4-4

(That is not the only possibility; for instance one might have Franklin with two Greens and no independent and one of Bass or Lyons with an independent and no Green - but that seems less likely.)

However, if that is so, their Franklin interpretation is doubtful.  The Liberals with 33.23% (2.66 quotas) would probably beat JLN (0.64 quotas).  The reason for this is that the Liberals would be likely to spread their vote between at least their second and third candidates who would both stay ahead of the JLN lead candidate.  The JLN ticket would suffer badly from leakage as their candidates were excluded with no obvious number 1 candidate, while the Liberals would only leak significantly off maybe one surplus and minor candidate exclusions.  So I would think 15 Liberal and 3 JLN is the more likely read on these numbers.  There is not enough information to say whether the numbers for Greens or Independents have been correctly analysed.  

As is often the case, despite having apparently sold them a seat short, Sky comes up with "The Liberal Party is set to gain seats in Tasmania at the weekend but may need to rely on the Jacqui Lambie Network to form power".  Well, one would bloody well hope the Liberals would gain seats, given that they only currently hold 11 and the parliament is being enlarged by ten!  But even on my reading of these numbers the Liberals would in fact be losing seat share, even from their depleted startline position of 11/25 (44%).  Even 15/35 is slightly less than that.

The mystery poll chimes strongly with the narrative from Becher Townshend on the Fontcast last week, which had Labor's vote collapsing in the south and Labor at risk of only winning one in Braddon (a disaster previously not widely canvassed, though the number in this poll is so low it's very hard to credit).  I am not sure whether we should treat these events as independent or whether this could be an old poll that was seen by Fontcast or their sources.  

I have had a lot of trouble finding time to do a polling aggregate this election and the challenges of doing so are unusually fiendish (even worse than 2021 when there were hardly any polls).  Nonetheless I am working on one and hope to have something tonight or overnight in a separate article.  

Who would govern?

As for who would govern in this mess (if it happened), one would at first think the Liberals, but they have managed to insult almost everyone they might need to work with, and the crossbenchers might not be that forgiving if they're not getting any ministry or policy prizes.  Labor would be presumably unable to govern without a major backtrack on their no-deals pledge, which would result in an illegitimate government that would probably be smashed after a single term.  Aside from a quick second election, is there a fourth possibility, not a Coalition of Chaos but a whole Cabinet of it?  Could a crossbench of eleven or twelve (if that really happened) seek to govern by themselves, appointing independents from the Upper House as extra Ministers?  I find it hard to see because Labor would need to vote the Liberal government out without taking government itself, and why on earth would Labor do that?  If the new government succeeded Labor would become superfluous, and if it failed they would be blamed for enabling it.   But this is a reminder that if an incumbent Premier is defeated on a no-confidence motion the Governor must consider who is most likely to have the confidence of the Parliament going forwards.  It is not necessarily the Opposition Leader.