"Abyss" Piece Is Another Shanashambles

 

There is something badly wrong with the op ed sector of the Australian media.  Many outlets continue to pay for articles that are factually shoddy and that reinforce the prejudices of partisan readers rather than helping their readers to actually understand politics.  It's perhaps a vicious cycle in which some outlets think there is no market for anything better than an echo chamber, and by offering a bad product ensure they'll never find out otherwise.

The latest hopeless offering by Dennis Shanahan (screenshot above) is an example.  To be clear, nobody should deny that the Albanese Government has been shedding public support rapidly in recent months. Anyone in Labor's support base who is not at least a little bit concerned about this is a fool. 

Poll Roundup: Mixed Start To Year For Struggling Government

(17/2: Ipsos update added at the bottom. Also, Not-A-Poll added in sidebar: predict the next Newspoll 2PP)

2PP Aggregate: 53.7% to Labor (last-election preferences) (-0.4 since end of polling season last year)
53.2% to Labor with One Nation adjustment
Labor would easily win election "held now"
Government is now Australia's longest continually-trailing government in polling ever

Time for another roundup of the federal polling picture in the lead-up to an election expected to be held in mid to late May.  At the end of last year the Coalition's polling had been going slowly downhill after the initial recovery from the shock caused by the messy removal of former PM Turnbull.  Early this year there were some early signs things might be improving, but a bad Essential poll this week has somewhat muddied the waters.  In this article I'll just be discussing voting intention and leadership ratings as it is long enough without covering more.

This week has been a dramatic week in parliament and we still have to see how that plays out.  However, a change to laws affecting medical treatment of people on Manus Island and Nauru is not the same thing as an incident like the Tampa, the 2002 Bali bombings and the 9/11 attacks - all of which produced substantial poll movements.  The law change may lead to a major incident (perhaps orchestrated) which could affect polling, but here is how things stand for the time being.

How Federal Crossbenchers Gain Seats

I expect to release another Poll Roundup later this week, but have decided to put out something else I have been working on for a while first.

This is another post about general historical trends in federal elections concerning crossbench wins (see also Independents Seldom Replace Other Independents). Recently on Twitter, Peter Brent noted that the crossbenchers who had gained seats at the last few federal elections had all done so either by winning vacant seats or by defeating unpopular incumbents.

I looked at this theme more broadly and thought it was worth posting some expanded results going further back.  In federal elections, House of Representatives seats are won and lost between Labor and the Coalition frequently, and if a seat is close and the swing is on, then a personal vote only goes so far.  Incumbents who have had trouble-free terms are quite often victims of a national swing to the other side. However, they are rarely defeated by anyone else.

Not-A-Poll: Best State Premiers Of The Last 40 Years

This evening I've cluttered up the sidebar with a new round of Not-A-Poll voting for this site's choice of Best State Premier in every state, and eventually, from the whole country!

Quite early in this site's history I ran one of these for Tasmania, and following the fun had with the recent Best PM, Worst PM and Worst Opposition Leader Not-A-Polls I thought it might be worth running something similar for all states.

But before that, time to declare the result of the previous Not-A-Poll exercise:

Not-A-Poll: Worst Opposition Leader Of The Last 45 Years: Grand Final!

Oh yes, there was actually a book about these two!

Latham 158 - Downer 141
Grand Final: Abbott vs Latham

Welcome back to the final round of our exciting but brief quest to find this site's pick for worst opposition leader of the last 45 years.  We started by splitting the field into two groups, those who at some stage had been PM and those who had not yet been PM.  Tony Abbott cleaned up the former with an outright majority in round 1, while the latter was a closer contest.

The Latham-Downer stoush showed why I run these things for a month.  Downer led out of the blocks by a surprisingly large margin given Latham's primary vote lead from the first round.  But after a while Latham started gradually catching up.  After 23 days Latham took the lead, and his lead continued to grow; in the end it was close but not super-close (52.8% to Latham, about what John Howard beat him by in 2004).

So it comes down to this.  I stated the case for (or should that be against) Latham last time.  Regarding Abbott, his credentials as a bad opposition leader are seriously dented by the fact that he won an election and won it big, but it's unclear how much credit we should give him for that.  In tactical terms, he did steer the Coalition back to competitiveness by opposing Labor on emissions trading, and it might be that everything Labor did from there was self-inflicted as a result of internal tensions between a factional system and a self-styled presidential leader.  Abbott opponents may also argue that it's not just about whether you win or lose but above all about how you play the game, and I'm not sure those who want to take that line need me to provide examples (or that I have time to list them all.)  As with Latham, I suspect Abbott's post-OL performance taints his legacy as Opposition Leader, though in my view he was actually a much more harmless PM than he could have been.

In comments, reader Carl adds another relevant criterion: that good or bad Opposition Leadership in a tactical sense is not only about whether you win, but also the extent to which your victory limits you. 

Voting is open in the sidebar now and continues til 6 pm 31 August.

Poll Roundup: National Narrowing As Super Saturday Approaches

2PP Aggregate (2016 Preferences): 51.7% to ALP (-0.5 since last week, -1 in six weeks)
With One Nation preference adjustment 51.1% to ALP
Closest position since October 2016
Labor would probably still win election "held now" but it would be close

Even psephologists have trouble with counting to big numbers sometimes. Like two.  Normally I release a new post in this series every second Newspoll week, but two weeks ago on Newspoll Monday I had an inconvenient distraction.  By the time I'd got through that and a couple of days of work my mind was so much elsewhere that I had forgotten it was time for another Poll Roundup.

Anyway, another Newspoll week has come and gone and all the current streaks noted on my Newspoll records page have continued.  These streaks are: the Coalition for most 2PP losses in a row (now at 36), Malcolm Turnbull for most Better PM wins in a row (now 56), Bill Shorten for most negative netsats in a row for an Opposition Leader (now 69) and Malcolm Turnbull for the third-most negative netsats in a row for a PM (now 47, and he has overtaken Julia Gillard for second place for longest stay in negativeland by time.)

Worst Opposition Leader Of The Last 45 Years: Round 2

Last month I started a new multi-month Not-A-Poll series to give readers a chance to vote for the Worst Opposition Leader of the Last 45 Years.  The groundrules are here.  I split the contenders into two groups - those who never or had not yet become Prime Minister, and those who at some stage had been Prime Minister (whether before or after they were Opposition Leader.)

The results of Round 1 are in.

Firstly in Group 1 we now go to a cage match between Mark Latham and Alexander Downer. These two always dominated the voting.  At some stages, Brendan Nelson was also above the thresholds for making it into the runoff but he finished up four votes short of the 8% primary vote threshold and nine votes shy of the electability threshold.

Not-A-Poll: Worst PM Of The Last 45 Years

It's a little bit later than I intended but I've now found time to kick off the Worst PM Not-A-Poll as a sequel to the Best PM series that I ran for several months.  Voting in the sidebar, below the Prosser Not-A-Poll.  The first round will run until the end of May.  The rules are:

* this is intended as a shorter exercise than Best PM, so if there is not an outright majority in round 1 there will be a runoff between the top two only.

* in the case of a tie to get into the runoff, the PM who left office first will progress to the runoff.

* in the case of a tie in the runoff, the PM who received the most votes in round 1 will be deemed Worst PM.  If the two tied in round 1 as well they will be deemed equal worst.

* in the event of obvious or highly likely stacking by a single person I will deduct votes and declare changed results as I deem necessary - any changes will be logged as soon as I decide them.

* Gough Whitlam is not included as he won immunity by winning the Best PM Not-A-Poll series.

I do ask that people vote honestly.  It's common for supporters of political parties to automatically demonise the current PM while their party is in opposition, or the most recent PMs of the other side while their party is in government.  That said, you might honestly think the person that line of attack implies is the worst, and if that's the case, go for it.  (And no, this site doesn't make or break careers at federal level at least, so please don't vote for anyone on that basis.)

Worst PM will be followed by Worst Opposition Leader.

Not-A-Poll: Best Prime Minister Of The Last 45 Years: Round 3

"The Honourable Leader of the Opposition, Sir Billy Snedden, has broken his promise: the promise he made to me before the election. He promised not to tell any lies about me, if I didn't tell the truth about him."*

(image source, reuse subject to licence)

Two months ago I started a multi-round Not-A-Poll to determine this site's visitors' choice for the title of Best Prime Minister of the Last 45 Years.  The idea is that each month the Prime Minister in last place is eliminated and the rest continue until someone gets over 50% and wins.  There are rules permitting multiple exclusions in certain cases, to speed up the process a bit.  Each round runs for a month, so you can vote for different candidates from round to round if you want to. Multiple voting is in theory banned and adjustments may be made if I detect it, but there will probably be a lot of low-level multiple voting I can't detect or prevent. Comments about the merits of the contestants are welcome.

Not-A-Poll: Best Prime Minister Of The Last 45 Years - Round 2

PRIMARY VOTE LEADER FROM ROUND 1: Whitlam
EXCLUDED IN ROUND 1: Turnbull, Fraser
Rudd continues only because of irregular voting patterns for Abbott

Round 2 voting open in sidebar til 6 pm AEDST, 31 October

A month ago I started a multi-round Not-A-Poll to determine this site's visitors' choice for the title of Best Prime Minister of the Last 45 Years.  The idea is that each month the Prime Minister in last place is eliminated and the rest continue until someone gets over 50% and wins.  There are rules permitting multiple exclusions in certain cases, to speed up the process a bit.  Each round runs for a month, so you can vote for different candidates from round to round if you want to. Multiple voting is in theory banned and adjustments may be made if I detect it, but there will probably be a lot of low-level multiple voting I can't detect or prevent. Comments about the merits of the contestants are welcome.

Technical note: If you wish to vote on a mobile, switch to "View web version" at the bottom of an article.

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

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

Round 1

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

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

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

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

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

Is it constitutional?

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

Poll Roundup: Are Malcolm's Newspolls Worse Than Tony's?

2PP Aggregate: 53.2 to ALP (-0.2 since last week)
ALP would easily win election "held now"

Five weeks since the last Poll Roundup, things have not improved for the Turnbull government in opinion-poll horse-racing land. If anything, things have got worse.  We've had twin 53-47s to Labor from Newspoll and an Essential run of 52-53-54-54-53.  Closer 2PP readings from ReachTEL (52 then 51 for ALP) have arisen only because of the use of respondent preferences, and new entrant YouGov has produced a 49-51 followed by a 52-48 lead by a new respondent preferencing method off primaries that offer the government no more joy than the others.  (More on that later).  I'm not aggregating YouGov until later this week after its third poll has arrived, but my overall read of the others comes out at 53.2 to Labor this week.  Here's the smoothed aggregate:

The rot looks increasingly set in, with no large or lasting movement away from 53-47 since the start of the year.  As with the Gillard government, voters so far do not give this government credit for passing legislation or policy announcements. In polling terms, everything the government sends out comes back dead.  History doesn't say this position can't be won from, but it will probably need something large and unexpected to rebound in the government's favour.

How Often Are Federal Newspolls Released?

See 2021 update at bottom of article.

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A humble little subject, but I just thought I'd put up a resource piece about how often federal Newspolls are released and have been released over time.

The timing of federal Newspolls is frequently a subject of discussion, much of it clueless or biased.  One fairly prominent claim links the switch to federal Newspolls in the early 1990s with the frequent turnover of major party leaders, although there is actually no evidence that this is true at all.  On social media, Newspolls are eagerly awaited and considered "due" every second Sunday, mostly by one-eyed Labor supporters.  If Newspoll fails to appear this is claimed to be evidence that it is being "hidden" because the results are bad for the Coalition.  If this were actually the case, Newspoll would skew towards the Coalition compared to other polls (it doesn't), Newspoll would have gone AWOL during obvious Coalition low points like the Hockey budget, the Prince Philip knighthood and even the collapse of Malcolm Turnbull's "utegate" attack on Kevin Rudd (it didn't), and Newspoll conspiracy cranks would be able to post reliable advance predictions of when Newspoll would come out (they don't.)  But those tweeting these nonsense never let the facts get in the way of their inane barracking.

This week I saw a new strain of the viral dumbness that is Newspoll truthism - a claim that Newspoll was becoming less frequent in order to string out the time it would take for the Coalition to lose 30 consecutive Newspolls on Malcolm Turnbull's watch.  (Turnbull has lost 14 in nine months, while Abbott's 30 spanned sixteen months, making Newspolls 17% more widely spaced so far during Turnbull's losing streak.)

Poll Roundup: Recovery, Or Just Turbulence?

2PP Aggregate: 52.4 to ALP (-1.1 since last week)
Closest reading of 2017 so far
Labor would win election "held now" with a moderate seat margin

Five weeks since the previous edition, it's time for another roundup of the state of federal polling.  After some really bad readings from Newspoll in February and Essential in March, things seem to have settled down a little for the Turnbull government.  This week the government gained a 2PP point on both Newspoll (47 to 48) and Essential (46 to 47).  I aggregated the Newspoll at 47.8% and the Essential at 47.1%.  With a bit of help from the March Ipsos and (temporarily) last week's Essential falling out of the sample, these polls have improved the government's position on my aggregate by 1.1 points in a week, to 47.6% 2PP.

I normally show just the smoothed tracking graph of rolling averages, but here's the "spiky" graph of one-week end-of-week figures, because it has a story to tell.

Poll Roundup: One Nation Soars As Liberals Squabble

2PP Aggregate: 53.8 (+1) to ALP
Labor would easily win election "held now"
Coalition's worst position of the current term so far
On current polling One Nation could win at least three lower house seats

Normally I go a couple of Newspolls between poll roundups these days, but this week's has been one of those Newspolls.  Following a conveniently timed "Newspoll bomb" by former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, the Turnbull government has recorded a new worst set of figures, and leadership speculation is rife.  This comes on top of a Fair Work Commission decision to cut penalty rates, which is seen as bad news for the government although the process was set in train and, until its outcome, supported by Labor.

We are still getting very little federal polling apart from the weekly Essential readings and the slightly less than fortnightly Newspolls.  The latest Newspoll came in at 55-45 to Labor, the highest reading for the Opposition since March 2015.  (In total during the Abbott Prime Ministership Labor recorded four 55s and one 57.)  I've aggregated it at 54.8 after processing the primaries.  The last few Essentials were more restrained (typically for Essential) at 52, 52 and 53 for Labor, which I aggregated at 52.4, 52,2 and 53.0.  Overall, largely on the back of the recent Newspoll, my aggregate has for now gone to 53.8% in Labor's favour.  This is the first time in this term that it has exceeded the 53.6 at which Tony Abbott was disposed of in the term before.

Unicameral By Stealth: Tony Abbott's Senate Referendum Call

The Australian (Tony Abbott calls for Senate referendum, warns 'we are turning into Italy') reports that relevance-deprived ex-PM Tony Abbott has called for a referendum to reduce the power of the Senate to obstruct government legislation.

As outlined, the plan would allow for a deadlock between the Houses to be broken by a joint sitting of both Houses without the need for a prior double-dissolution election.  It appears that this follows one of two options outlined in this 2003 discussion paper on resolving deadlocks.  These options were:

1. A joint sitting can be convened after a bill has been rejected twice with three months between rejections
2. A joint sitting can be convened after every election for the full House and half the Senate, rather than requiring a double dissolution

It appears Abbott favours the first option, but this is not yet totally clear.  The 2003 proposals were killed off based on a finding that they would not pass a referendum.

Poll Roundup: 2016 Year In Review

Aggregate 52.0 to ALP (+0.1)
Labor would win an election "held now"

It's about the time of year when polling shuts down for a few weeks, so as usual I will post an annual recap.  If there are any late polls then I will edit the text to add them in.

In the three weeks since the last roundup, we've seen some evidence that the anti-Coalition trend in polling has softened, but not all that much.  Newspoll has come in from 53:47 for Labor to 52:48, while Essential's last three readings for Labor have been 51, 52, 53.  I aggregated the Newspoll at 52.1 and the Essentials at 51.3, 52 and 53.1.  There was also the Ipsos discussed in the update to the previous piece.  All up I have things at 52.0 to ALP, down from 52.4 three weeks ago:

Whatever is going on in February and March is likely to shape polling much more than whatever (if anything) is causing the very small comeback that we see here.

Poll Roundup: The Turnbull Slide Continues

2PP Aggregate: 51.8 to ALP (-0.1 since last week)
Labor would probably win election "held now" with a small majority

Almost four months since its re-election, the Turnbull coalition government continues to poll ordinarily.  It has still not led in a single poll by anyone, and only now are there some signs that Labor's lead might be stabilising.  With a new bad news cycle hitting the government, oh, about twice a day on average lately, there might even be relief it is not worse ... yet.  An implicit stoush between PM Turnbull and Tony Abbott over the history of rapid-fire shotgun negotiations might have looked like fodder for further movement, but Newspoll suggests it was seen as just beltway stuff.

Most of our polling still comes just from Essential and Newspoll though this week a third player, Morgan, dipped a very tentative toe in the water with one of its irregular phone polls.  The only voting intention result released was 55:45 to ALP, easily Labor's biggest lead from anyone so far.  Given the small sample size and the lack of adequate documentation of 2PP method or primary votes, this only counted for 10% of a normal poll in my aggregate, but even that made some difference.

Poll Roundup: 2015 Year In Review

2PP Aggregate: 53.5 to Coalition (+0.1)
Coalition would win election held now with unchanged to slightly increased majority

It's just about the end of another year in federal polling; should any unexpected late polls appear I will edit this article to add them in.  After an update for this week's polling I'll launch into an annual review along similar lines to last year's.  From here on in the pollsters tend to go into summer recess with Morgan and Essential returning in mid-January and the heavy hitters coming back in late January and early February.

This week's polls

This week we have had readings from Morgan and Essential, which continue to sit at opposite ends of the Turnbull-era spectrum, this week returning 56-44 and 52-48 respectively.  The former was Morgan's highest reading for the Coalition this term, and the respondent-preferences reading was even higher (57.5%).  Essential has had the Labor primary at 35-36 in the last four weeks while Morgan has had it at 28.5 then 27.  Either both are wrong or one is very, very wrong.

Although both pollsters showed an uptick to the Coalition, this was tempered by the Ipsos from a few weeks ago falling out of sample, so the net result is just a 0.1 point gain, for the Coalition, after everything, to finish the year in exactly their 2013 election result position.  At least, that's my take; as usual recently, others may well be higher.  (Edit: Yep; Bludgertrack 54.1 Mark the Ballot 55 and Phantom Trend 55.2.  MtB assumes zero-sum and includes Morgan but not Essential, and Phantom Trend treats Morgan as having the same sorts of house effects it's had for decades, so those points explain why the latter two are so high.)