The Howard Aggregation 1993-1996

In 2018, on the 25th anniversary of the Paul Keating's famous and unusual 1993 election victory, I released The Keating Aggregation, an account of the well-known polling downs and lesser-known polling ups of the Hawke-Keating government on its way to that celebrated victory.  

Today, it is 25 years since the Keating Government was turfed by the Liberal-National Coalition led by a second-time Opposition Leader, John Howard.  And to mark the 25th anniversary of that occasion too, today I present a polling aggregation for the years 1993-1996.  Together with the above Keating piece, this means that 2PP aggregations for all the terms from 1990 onwards are now available online; other historic aggregations are available at Poll Bludger.  Incidentally, aggregation itself existed in the early 90s, and while looking for missing poll data I found old newspaper articles by Brian Costar that used 2PP aggregation to estimate election results.  What I haven't found yet from that time are any aggregation graphs.  

The Keating Aggregation 1990-1993

A bit of a special feature for today ...

25 years ago today Paul Keating's Labor government won re-election against the odds, having battled a recession and fallout from the mid-term removal of the previous Prime Minister Bob Hawke.  Among all Australian elections, 1993 stands out as an oddity, the one that breaks almost every predictive election model that can be thrown at it.  If you want to get a feeling of just how unexpected it was, check out Lateline from a couple of nights before.

It is easy to forget that in office Keating was a very unpopular Prime Minister, widely considered arrogant and abrasive, and blamed for comments about "the recession we had to have".  He did not poll a single positive Newspoll netsat in 109 consecutive Newspolls on the job.  Yet history has been kind to him, in part because of this alleged electoral miracle.