"Safe Seats" Falling Is Nothing New

The Australia Institute and its director have been putting out a lot of its usual Hung Parliament Club type stuff about how "power sharing parliaments" are the new normal, how there are no safe seats anymore and so on.  They've been trying to claim that the rise of teals and the decline of major parties means the traditional 2PP swing-based model is more or less dead, although I actually nipped that view in the bud days after the election.  If major party vote shares keep declining we may sooner or later get to a point where 2PP swing-based models cease to be of much use, but 2022 wasn't even close.  See also here, where I point out that the Coalition didn't actually get a raw deal in the "non-classic" seats and what actually caused it to lose so heavily in 2022 was that Labor beat it on 2PP and thumped it on 2PP distribution in the classic Labor vs Coalition seats.

The "power sharing parliaments" analysis misleadingly lumps stable Coalition majority governments and non-majority upper houses in with the sort of thing we saw in 2010.  They're totally different: a true minority parliament involves a government that must make a fresh negotiation for supply and confidence and that continually depends on the crossbench for those things.  (Yes the Coalition has its own internal arrangement but it's a long time since there's been the slightest doubt that the Nationals or their precursors would continue to support a Coalition government).  When there is a "hung Senate" the passing of legislation is often at stake, but except in the most extreme cases supply is not, confidence is not, the composition of the Executive is not.  Hung Senates aren't generally perceived as causing potential stability issues, and the ability of governments to send them to double dissolutions if they keep blocking things can make it easier to browbeat them than it is to browbeat minority Reps crossbenchers.  The most successful governments use Senate obstruction, where it happens, to extend their own lifespans, by being able to signal to their base without having to put up with the consequences of policy their base likes being passed unamended.  A government majority in both houses can easily go to a government's head - cf Howard 2005-7 and Workchoices.

uComms: Labor Just 23: How Much Stock Should We Put In This?

This article is part of my 2024 Tasmanian election coverage - link to main page including links to electorate guides and effective voting advice.

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uComms (Australia Institute) Liberal 37.1 Labor 23 Green 13.7 JLN 8.5 IND 12.8 others 5.0
Seat estimate if poll was accurate Lib 14 ALP 10 Green 4 JLN 2-3 IND 4-5
Poll should be treated with caution.

Today saw the the release of the third Tasmanian campaign poll by an established and identified pollster, this one being a uComms for the left-wing Australia Institute.

From the outset I should note some usual cautions.  uComms polls by automated phone polling (formerly all robopolling, lately a mix of SMS and voice robopolling).  The poll employs very primitive weighting (age, gender and location only, with no attempt to weight by any indicator of political engagement such as education).  At the 2021 election an Australia Institute uComms poll which I disputed at the time (What's This Then?  Commissioned Poll Claims Liberals In Trouble) was hopelessly inaccurate, underestimating the Liberals by over 7% and overestimating Labor by nearly 4 and independents by nearly 5.  There was never any attempt to explain why this poll got it so wrong.  

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?  

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.  

Tasmania: Secrecy Concerns Or Just Secretive Polling?

EMRS Tasmania (state): Liberal 52 Labor 25 Greens 13 Others 11

If accurate Liberals would increase their majority (14-16 Lib 7-8 ALP 2-3 Green)

 uComms (commissioned by Australia Institute) Tasmania (state): Liberal 50.3 Labor 31.8 Greens 10.7 Ind/Other 7.2

If accurate Liberals would retain majority but probably not increase seat numbers (13 Lib 9-10 ALP 2-3 Green)

New seat aggregate of all polls: Liberal 14 Labor 8 Green 3

"Sir Humprey: How are things at the Campaign for the Freedom of Information, by the way?

Sir Arnold: Sorry, I can't talk about that."

- Yes Minister, Party Games

Commissioned uComms Tasmanian State Poll

uComms (commissioned by Australia Institute): Liberal 39.0 Labor 29.4 Green 16.8 Ind 11.7 Other 3.1. 
Tasmanian state polling overstates votes for Greens and this poll is likely to overstate "independent" vote
After adjusting for likely skews, poll would be borderline in majority/minority terms for government in an election "held now" (seats c. 13-9-3 or 12-9-4)
Poll is difficult to interpret because of high "independent" vote, inadequate transparency and lack of uComms track record
Poll taken on October 22
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“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
- Douglas Adams

I often feel like Arthur Dent when it comes to finding the most very basic details of Australian commissioned polling.  The Australia Institute Tasmania's uComms poll from nearly a month ago first surfaced in the form of a uselessly skewed result about support for a Tarkine National Park.  Voting intention results were withheld from publication at the time, apparently because releasing them would have diverted media attention away from the supposed Tarkine findings, and it is only this week, 27 days after the poll was conducted, that they have finally been released.  Not prominently though - after seeing more uncritical media reporting of another issues question (regarding the proposed repeal of medevac legislation), I was finally able to find the voting intention results lurking unheralded in a PDF linked off a release of the medevac findings on the TAI website.

TAI claim to be in the business of research, but depriving the audience of the data needed to analyse polls closer to the time they are released suggests they are more interested in using polling to make political points than in allowing their data to be critically examined at the time at which it is current.   For an organisation that claims transparency as one of its interest areas, and makes over 100 references to transparency on its website this is, to put it mildly, hardly a consistent way to operate.

One might ask why look at Tasmanian polling at all in the wake of the national polling failure.  But the national polling failure was in a marketplace with a history of exceptional performance, and the error was one that involved having one major party a few points too high and the other a few too low.  In Tasmania, such errors have always been common, and the nature of Hare-Clark is such that they're not the difference between one side winning outright and the other doing so.

Migrants Voting For One Nation and UAP? (Plus Some Polling Comments)

A Few Pointed Words About Polling

Before I start this article, a quick four paragraphs regarding polls, in lieu of a formal roundup.  Firstly and mainly for Tasmanian readers, there has been some (disappointingly uncritical in some cases) media coverage of a poll commissioned by The Australia Institute (Tas) concerning proposals for a Tarkine National Park.  Unfortunately the poll is simply totally unsound.  It uses a loaded preamble that gives arguments for one side of the debate, quantifying a claimed total clearance area while not quantifying how much of the area included is really old growth or rainforest, and further leading the respondent with a comment about claimed community and business support for a National Park.

Having been presented with just one side of the argument, respondents may well be led to give the answer that suits the sponsor, or may well be driven to just hang up if they don't agree with the statements made.  The poll report also provides no data whatsoever on other questions asked, disconnection rates or on the methods and extent of any weighting used to obtain the final results.  The question design also fails to establish whether any support for a National Park would be in addition to some logging activity or as an alternative to it.  Maybe voters really do support a Tarkine National Park of some kind, maybe they don't (the risible voter support for the Greens in Braddon in recent years is not the most promising sign)

I have been trying to write about polling more generally but it is very difficult to get the job done with any motivation when leading pollsters, with the sole exception of YouGov's Queensland polling, have thus far done virtually nothing about the pressing need for a major improvement in polling transparency following the 2019 Australian polling failure.  As such there is no basis for confidence that Newspoll's current picture of a close federal race is in any way accurate (the Coalition's 51-49 leads might really be 54-46 or more, or alternatively Labor might be in front, though that is much less likely.)  And since Essential keeps suppressing its voting intention figures although its unsatisfactory reason for doing so long ago expired, there is no way to benchmark any of its leadership polling, and its issues polls are often problematic.  

Media coverage of commissioned polling also continues to be as awful as before.  Some recent amusing nadirs were rival YouGov poll results being cited and uncritically reported by friendly media on both sides of the NSW abortion debate, and also the Your Right To Know campaign claiming to have Colmar Brunton polling supporting their position, but failing to publish the details of the polling.  If you want to scrutinise it, you can't - you just don't have the right to know.  Media are rightly, if in some cases hypocritically, concerned about laws that can unduly limit what public interest information they are allowed to report. But the claim of media outlets to be servants of the public in reporting public interest information is undermined when they so frequently fail to report relevant information or cautions about their stories when they could and should, largely for reasons of laziness and the back-patting of sources who have fed them material for easy articles.

On to the main course ...

There has been quite an amount of interest in an ABC article by Stephanie Dalzell that claims that migrant voters are increasingly voting for populist right outfits like One Nation and the United Australia Party. Of course, some migrants will vote for these parties, but the article is not a useful contribution to establishing how many.  

A few election notes (especially re Tasmania)

Just a few quick notes on a number of things, mainly to bring links to various articles to the top.

Election night coverage

On election night I am very pleased to say I will again be live blogging for The Mercury, starting from 6 pm and probably going til about 11 or maybe later, except for any time when I may or may not need to stop blogging and write a quick article for them.  The link will be posted here when known.  It is possible the coverage will be paywalled; if so there are various subscription offers starting from $12, or it may be there will be a paywall-free link.  Once that has been finished, after a brief break I will relocate to home and then continue on here for a while.

Links

Some links to recent items on my site that may be useful:

How To Make Best Use Of Your 2019 Senate Vote

Tasmanian House of Reps Seats

Tasmanian Senate Guide

Senate Voting: Another Poor Article By Richard Denniss

It's a shame to have to be distracted from more important things (like counting all the candidate malfunctions this election) in order to deal with an article by Richard Denniss in the Guardian.  I wasn't going to do this, having already done so on Twitter, but unfortunately an email has been seen by me suggesting that a voter took it seriously.  I can scarcely believe this is so, and wonder if I should refer the email to the AFP as a hoax, but the thought of people being Wrong on the Internet about this needs addressing.  Rant warning applies.

To start with, let's declare on Richard's behalf what he failed to admit in his latest article.  Richard Denniss is a former sceptic of Senate voting reform who defended the coercive, corrupted and dangerous Group Ticket Voting system.  In that system, abolished prior to the 2016 election (but still extant in the WA and Victorian upper houses) voters' preferences were being sent they knew not where, and parties could be elected off tiny vote shares based on a weighted lottery of preference deals and effectively random events.  In defence of this old system,  Denniss, of the left-wing Australia Institute, made the ludicrous claim that "the vast majority of Australian voters trust parties to allocate preferences and opt to vote above the line."  Really, Australian voters trust political parties when politicians are among the least trusted occupations?  (OK, the link is only Morgan, but with effect sizes that large, even Morgan can be trusted here!)  We saw exactly how much Australian voters really trusted parties in 2016 when only about 30% of Coalition above-the-line voters, 14% of Labor ATL voters, and 10% of Green ATL voters (and single figures for most minor parties) followed their party's Senate how-to-vote card.  In Tasmania, voters didn't even trust the Labor Party to pick its own candidates properly, and overturned its preselection.

Tasmania 2018: Commissioned Pokies ReachTEL

On 14 Feb 2018 the Australia Institute Tasmania conducted a ReachTEL poll for the 2018 state election (see guide), some questions from which have been on public display for some time.  Some results on company tax cuts and donations disclosure were published some time ago and a further tranche on poker machines was published a few days back.  As well as this I have obtained (with thanks to the reader who passed it on) the primary voting figures from the poll, which was taken on the night nominations for the election was announced.

Voting Intention

The voting intention figures are old rope now but may be of some interest in terms of discussions of how the campaign has unfolded. Voting intentions were Liberal 41.7 Labor 30.5 Green 11.0 JLN 4.6 Other 8.0 Undecided 4.2.  What would be a staggering 68% of undecided voters said they were leaning to the Liberals, except that the effective number of undecided voters after scaling would have been just 39, giving that 68% figure a margin of error of at least 15% (even more after scaling).  After redistributing the undecided the results were Liberal 44.6 Labor 31.1 Green 11.1 JLN 4.8 Ind/Other 8.4.

New Commissioned Tasmanian Polls

Tasmanian state election season is heating up with regular policy announcements (at least from the government) and rumours that the election could be called this weekend for March 3 (what, not the same day as South Australia again?  Surely too good to be true!)

I expect we will have some public polling before too much longer so we can see if the Liberals have recovered from an utter stinker from EMRS late last year, but in the meantime the shady forces of commissioned polling are out there doing their stuff.  This week Tasmanians were treated to not one but two rounds of robo-bombardment.  A diabolically odd anti-pokies question left many scratching their heads (especially pokie opponents) while reports of the warm fuzzy niceties of the other poll on offer sparked Twitter responses like this:

OK, there was actually only one response like that, but this poll even asked voters if they liked Tasmanian political leaders as human beings!  It also asked if voters thought Jacqui Lambie was good at her job, which came as a surprise to me, because I didn't know she had one anymore.  

MediaReach Liberal Poll

Anyway, the long and cuddly robopoll has seen the partial light of day first, and what this is is a MediaReach internal poll commissioned by the Liberals, with a sample of a whopping 3,000.  Methods details are bereft - I've seen a claim it only canvassed landlines, but I constantly see the same claim about other pollsters who ceased doing so years ago - so there's not much more to say about it yet.  

Now, I'm not sure if ReachTEL weren't available (they're prim and proper about refusing dual commissions if they have a conflict in a market) or if the Liberals just don't trust them anymore, but MediaReach was a novel selection indeed.  This pollster hasn't been seen in Tasmania before and its only previous testable public results have been in the NT, where it was out by about five points 2PP in an electorate poll and a territory election poll.  So what do we know about its accuracy in the Tasmanian or indeed any similar context?  Diddly-squat.  Add to that that it's a commissioned poll that wouldn't have seen the light of day had the Liberals not liked the result, and the only weight I can aggregate it at is zero.  Still, it will be fascinating to see how it scrubs up on election day.

Actually, if I did aggregate this poll it wouldn't make much difference anyway.  Oddly giving results to two decimal places (not that there is anything actually wrong with that) the poll has the following results:

Liberal 41.12

Labor 34.29

Green 12.81

Lambie Network 6.19

leaving 5.59 for others.

Poll Roundup: The Clock Strikes Twenty

2PP Aggregate: 53.6 to ALP (+0.2 since last week)
Labor would easily win election held "right now"

This will be a rather brief Poll Roundup by my standards, because apart from same-sex marriage polling (covered in a separate rolling post) there isn't all that much around to see!  We're five weeks on from my previous roundup, and in terms of the prospect of the government recovering before the next election, that's another five weeks down the drain.  Predictively, that doesn't mean a lot, but it is bad news for one particular member of the Coalition: the PM.  He edges another two Newspolls closer to matching the metric of 30 consecutive Newspoll 2PP losses that he used to justify the removal of Tony Abbott.  Just ten to go ...

Precisely what happens if these ten are all lost and the Coalition are still down the tube nobody knows.  Would the whole "thirty Newspolls" thing take on a life of its own in public perception of Turnbull's fate, contributing to even worse Newspolls, or would it only be of interest to the beltway and political junkies, and shrugged off as irrelevant by everyone else?  For it to be game over the very same week, while logical and fair, would seem too obvious, too artificial.  These bad polls seem so set in, and the Galaxy-run Newspoll so remorseless, that it's hard to see just what would end it.  A personal triumph on same-sex marriage? Worth some bounce surely, but enough for 50-50 after such weakness on the issue? War with North Korea? Maybe, though whether the more likely mechanism there is a rally round the flag or Newspoll being hit by an errant missile meant for Guam is not clear either.

Fishy Prospects In The Seat Of Lyons

ReachTEL Lyons: Lib 42 Labor 30.4 Green 12.4 Lambie Network 10 SF+F 2.7 Others 2.5
ReachTEL polls in Tasmania have in the past skewed against Labor and to the Greens
Seats that would be won based on this poll: Liberal 3 Labor 2 (status quo)

The Australia Institute has released a large-sample ReachTEL of the state seat of Lyons.  Lyons has long looked like the most crucial seat in determining whether the Hodgman Government can maintain a majority at the next state election, as on a more or less uniform swing to Labor, the third Lyons seat is the third to fall.  Polling has long appeared touch-and-go as to whether the party is likely to hold three seats there or lose one to the Greens or maybe someone else.

The commissioned ReachTEL also covers fish farms, which are seen as a significant environmental issue in the leadup to the next election.  I am satisfied that the poll has not been selectively released and also that ReachTEL have a good record in not letting commissioning sources tweak the primary vote polling design.  So while all commissioned polls are to be treated with some caution, and all seat polls always require special care, I'll have a look at what the data from this poll suggest.

As usual with ReachTEL the data require a lot of unpacking.  ReachTEL use a different format to most other polls, by initially giving voters a set of options that includes "undecided", and then allowing those who are "undecided" to say which party they are leaning to.  However the "undecided" in ReachTEL polls would be included in other polls' headline figures, while the truly undecided voters (those not even leaning to any party) are excluded, as they are by other pollsters.

Will The Future See An Even Bigger Senate Crossbench?

It's a long way from the next Senate election to be talking about the future of the Senate, and also a strange time to be doing it with most observers far more fixated on the goings-on downstairs.  But someone is talking about it, so I thought I'd have a detailed look at what they are finding.  The Australia Institute has released a report that attempts to use polling to predict what the Senate might look like in 2019 and 2022.  (There's also a report in AFR, which was originally paywalled but at the moment I can access it OK.)

That another double dissolution "held now" would so flood the Senate with new crossbench Senators as to make the 2016 result look tame is really not worth contesting, and I'm not going to bother with double-dissolution projections off the current numbers.   What is of interest is that the report claims that even if the next two elections were half-Senate elections, on current polling the size of the non-Green portion of the crossbench would increase.  The report's headline projection for 2019 is an extra two non-Green crossbench Senators, and for 2022 after two half-Senate elections, an extra four.  Based on the averageing of two poll results, the report suggests that after two half-Senate elections, there could be a non-Greens crossbench of fourteen Senators, dominated by One Nation with six.

Poll Roundup And Seat Betting Watch: Fear Of A Hung Parliament Edition

2PP Aggregate: 50.2 to Labor (unchanged)
Seat projection for this 2PP: probable narrow Coalition win, not necessarily with majority (estimate 76-69-5)

As usual, this roundup is quite long so feel free to just read whichever bits interest you.

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It may as well be a recorded message: for the eighth (!) week in a row national 2PP voting intention has been around 50:50 and there has been no significant movement in the 2PP at all.  Excitable noises are made about moves of 1-2 points this way or the other in this poll or the other (typically by the media those polls are associated with) but it is all meaningless babble as nothing has actually happened.

This week Newspoll came out at 50:50 following four weeks of 51:49 to Labor.  Ipsos, which has tended to lean slightly to the Coalition but is bouncy because of its smaller sample size than other pollsters (and lack of artificial bounce-retardants, I suspect) raised the odd eyebrow with a 51:49 to Labor (by both kinds of preferences).  Essential went to 50:50 after being 51:49 to Coalition last week and ReachTEL went to 50:50 as well.  The two-point move in ReachTEL was mostly caused by volatility in their respondent-preference sampling; by last-election preferences the Coalition improved by only 0.7 points.

Some Recent Senate Polling And Related Claims

This article assumes, for the sake of analysis, that the Senate election will be a double-dissolution under the new Senate system.  Neither of these things are yet confirmed, but both appear highly likely.  

I thought that there had been no polling at all of the Senate races yet, and innocently told a journalist so this week, but to my surprise reports of not one but two Senate polls have surfaced (one since I made that comment).  There are also many reports of an (apparently unpublished) Australia Institute analysis that claims that from five to nine non-Green crossbenchers could get up at a double dissolution, apparently based on commissioned Senate polling from ReachTEL and Research Now.  The Research Now (an online panel poll a la Essential) polling has been published but the main thing I can find on the ReachTEL is an AFR report from a month ago (!) that had somehow escaped my notice.

What Scientists Do: More On That Penalty Rates Poll

In Monday's Crikey subscriber email, Ben Oquist of The Australia Institute (paywalled) took issue with some comments I made about TAI's recent polling in a piece entitled Polling And Penalty Rates.  While I could have just added my reply as an update to the original article, some of Oquist's comments are too cheeky by half - in a way that typifies the general rottenness of commissioned-poll-spruiking in Australia - and I think that dealing with these issues deserves a fresh article.  Peter Brent has also replied and my reply is quite similar.

Oquist's comments concern objections I raised about the use of forced-answer methods in an issue poll conducted by robopolling rather than allowing a don't-know option.   That said, of the two statements he says that I "confidently state", one (“a ‘don’t know’ option would certainly have changed the numbers considerably’’.) was in fact stated by Brent!

It is true that my initial response (on Twitter) that most voters who went for the "stay the same" option would actually have no opinion was overconfident and probably incorrect, but I'd already said that in my article which Oquist links to, so here Oquist is flogging a horse that has already run away, which must be convenient for him. Oh, except that anyone with enough attention span to read my article that he links to will see that this is so!  The problem remains that some substantial number of respondents would have had no actual view, and that these were forced to give an answer (or hang up) and then claimed (by TAI) as supporters of the existing system.  I add that when questions like this have an available "meh!" option ("stay the same"), it is likely some voters would take it when they really had no clue, even with an undecided option included.

Polling And Penalty Rates

(Note: this piece now has a follow-up.  See What Scientists Do)

Penalty rates have been on the political radar lately. A poll on the subject released by The Australia Institute on Sunday has attracted a fair amount of interest.  Many Coalition MPs support cuts to current penalty rates (which are required extra loadings on pay for certain occupations for weekend, evening or public holiday work) and the Labor Opposition is currently campaigning against such cuts.  This will probably be a significant philosophical divide between the parties at the 2016 election.

If we are to believe the poll's sponsor and reporting of the poll by the SMH yesterday, the government will face a massive backlash, including from its own voters, if Sunday penalty rates in the retail sector are reduced as recommended by the Productivity Commission.  The reality is that the views of Coalition supporters on the proposed change are rather less clear.

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.)