Recent NSW State Polling

The purposes of this post are: firstly, to add some context to the dramatic findings of a recent NSW state Newspoll, and secondly, to link to the full results of some late August NSW state union polling that may be of some interest to somebody out there.  I have actually had the latter for a few weeks but because I have been overseas and then very busy it has taken this long to do anything with it.

Newspoll record?  Well, not really ...

The recent Newspoll has found that Mike Baird's status as Australia's most popular Premier by far has come to a sudden halt after nearly two years of stellar ratings.  This finding was also foreshadowed by a slightly earlier Fairfax ReachTEL which showed Luke Foley ahead of Baird as Preferred Premier.   The latter result, while still striking, was not quite the sensation it appeared to be: the forced-choice method used by ReachTEL does not advantage incumbents in the way that the method used by Newspoll, Galaxy, Ipsos and Essential does.  So an Opposition Leader being preferred Premier in a ReachTEL poll usually just means the two-party race is close and the Premier is a little bit under the weather.                                    

The Newspoll found Mike Baird's net satisfaction rating has crashed from +39 (61-22) in January to -7 (39-46) now.   The Australian listed this at the top of a list of the greatest netsat falls by a Premier in Newspoll history.  In a poll-to-poll sense this is true, but it is a misleading statistic as the intervals between two consecutive Newspolls in a given state historically have been anything from a few days in some cases to four years in others.  In this case, eight and a half months is an unusually long interval, especially when the old Newspoll often routinely polled at intervals of two months.

New South Wales: Decisive Win For Coalition

Seats apparently won: Coalition 52 Labor 32 Green 3 Ind 2

(Includes some seats not absolutely certain)

Seats in doubt and not included in list above:

East Hills: likely Liberal retain

Gosford: Labor leading

The Entrance: likely Labor win

Lismore: National vs Green, Nationals currently slightly favoured

Expected outcome Coalition 53-54 Labor 34 Green 3-4 Ind 2

Normal Programming Resumes

The Liberal-National coalition under Premier Mike Baird has won the NSW state election comfortably and decisively despite a large swing back from the massive margin in the 2011 poll.  On present counting, both the primary votes and the seat distribution will finish up about as predicted before the election.  The main surprise is a strong seat performance by the Greens, who without much increasing their statewide vote have won three or perhaps four seats.

New South Wales: The Final Week

NSW Primary Aggregate (updated 27 Mar) Coalition 45.4 Labor 34.0 Green 10.7 Others 9.9
2PP By 2011 Preferences: 55.8% to Coalition
Estimated 2015 Preferences: 54.0% to Coalition
Seat Projection (estimate): Coalition 53 Labor 36 Green 1 Ind 3

It's time to kick off my rolling post for the last week of the NSW election, which will be updated an unknown number of times through the week.  Before posting too much detail and getting into some of the finer modelling detail - I've posted provisional figures above, but these will be revised through the week - I want to get something up about the big picture of where the polling is at.

From their position last week I thought there were three things Labor needed to do all of to still win the NSW election:

1. Reduce the primary vote gap to the Coalition compared to what polling was showing at that time.
2. Increase their preference flow from the Greens and minor parties compared to what polling was showing at that time.
3. Get lucky on the distribution of seat swings.

There is some evidence that 2 may be occurring.  There is still some evidence that 3 is unusually likely.  But as concerns 1, the four polls out in the last week don't provide cause for hope; indeed they suggest the gap is widening.  No amount of preferencing or uneven seat swing magic will win it if the primary vote gap is too big.  And so, based on current polls, Labor starts the final week in a losing position and needs a late swing back to have a realistic chance.  The extent to which dramatic swings occur in most election campaigns is overstated and Labor's task if they want to win is very challenging now.

New South Wales: March Poll Roundup And Seat Modelling

(For the final week's article go here - note added 26 Mar because this one for whatever reason is still getting more hits!)

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Current aggregate (updated March 19): Coalition 44.6 Labor 35.3 Greens 10.2 Other 10.0
2PP Estimate: 53.3% to Coalition (54.6 by last election preferences)
Current median seat projection: Coalition 52 Labor 37 Others 4

Summary:

1. Recent polling shows the Coalition continuing to maintain a primary vote lead of at least eight points over Labor.

2. Recent polling also shows that while preferencing patterns among minor party voters may change, they are unlikely to change by nearly as much as in Queensland.

3. However, current polling when translated to seat projections suggests only a small Coalition majority.

4. There is more uncertainty than normal in translating the Coalition's current lead to seat results, and for this reason current voting intention levels do not quite assure the Coalition of victory. 

5. Any narrowing of voting intention from this point would make a hung parliament significantly more likely.

New South Wales Roundup: Is Even This A Bridge Too Far?

Time to kick off some NSW state election analysis, much of it in broad and general terms.  I haven't done the usual seat-modelling yet; that will follow in a week or two.

Feds Will Destroy Everything

A common theme on this website is the massive influence of which party holds power federally on state elections.  While this impact is not obvious in every election, and isn't even present in a few, there is a long-established pattern that is the very first thing anybody looking at state elections needs to know.  Once a party has been in government federally for any length of time at all, it starts tending to shed seats in state elections.  This process continues until it has lost most if not all of the states, and not long after that it will probably lose federally as well.  A new federal government comes in with massive majorities in many states, and then starts losing those.  Rinse and repeat.

Since the Liberal-National Coalition came to power federally it has faced four state elections, winning only Tasmania where an ancient Labor government could not escape retribution for a deeply disliked coalition with the Greens.  This happened while the federal government was still relatively new.  However, the Coalition has also lost office in Victoria and Queensland and failed to win in South Australia.  The Victorian result was no surprise, SA was a vaguely forgiveable case of electoral geography 1, 2PP vote 0, but the Queensland result was an earthquake.  The government that had won office with a record majority only three years earlier, almost wiping its predecessor out of Parliament, was sent packing (by one seat) with a 14% swing against it.  The LNP's aggressive and divisive born-to-rule approach in office had done it no favours but things would have been very different had Julia Gillard still been in the Lodge.

With declining levels of rusted-on adherence to both major parties, there's just no such thing any more as a win so big that you cannot possibly waste it in a single term.  That applies especially when the prevailing wind from Canberra is not in a party's favour.  In fact, the idea that a seat margin at one election determines the seat margin at the next is overrated anyway - what winning big really does is just gives a party a lot of seats in which it has new personal votes.  It turns out that in NSW even that doesn't apply much this time around.  So is there such a thing as an election that is too hard to lose, or is nothing actually safe in state politics anymore?