Federal 2025: Classifying The Independents

In the list of declared candidates for the 2025 federal election, there was an unsurprising upswing in the number of independents.  There are a number of points of relevance arising from this and I'm putting up an article with a rough classification that I will edit as the campaign proceeds.  

I am interested in the nature of independents running at the election for a few reasons.  One of these is that polls that offer "independent" as a generic option everywhere often get the independent vote as high as 10-12%, but independents polled "just" 5.29% in 2022.  The reason for this is that voters who pick the independent option in these polls could find that there is no actual independent in their seat, or only one they've never heard of or don't like.  For this reason, some of the polls that use this "generic ballot" method stop doing so once they have the names of candidates, and doing so makes the polled estimate of the independent vote much more accurate.  

Poll Roundup: Federal Hung Parliament Club Edition

CROSS-POLL AVERAGE 52.6 TO LABOR (-2.0 in two weeks)

Aggregate of recent polls assuming no overall house effects 53.2 to Labor

Recent Newspoll would not be likely to produce a hung parliament if replicated

Significant chance of hung parliament based not on most current polls, but rather on historic pattern of leads shrinking.  

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Welcome back to another edition of Poll Roundup.  At the time of the last edition the Labor Opposition was a very long way in front but things have since got a lot closer.  I covered some of this at the start of a more recent piece but following today's Newspoll, hung parliament talk has become widespread.  Sectors of the press gallery are embarrassing themselves more than usual, while sectors of the press gallery that always embarrass themselves are doing what they do best.  

"Hung parliament club" is my nickname for a circle of usual suspects in the Tasmanian left and commentariat who continually argue that hung parliaments in Tasmanian state elections are both extremely likely and uncontentiously desirable.  My view is that their constant public hankering after minority situations makes majority government more likely, not less.  Federally, there have been echoes of this in Adam Bandt's constant poll-spinning that uses various unsound arguments to claim a "power-sharing parliament" is highly likely.  However overall the federal variant of hung parliament club makes even weaker claims about the likelihood of a hung parliament than are seen in Tasmania, and then goes on to claim that a hung parliament could lead to crazy chaos and an immediate fresh election.  The main suspects here are innumerate types in the Canberra press gallery, who seem to have listened to each other too much (or perhaps to party hacks or low-grade pollsters) instead of seeking any kind of informed take on how to interpret the numbers. 

Poll-Shaped Objects: January 2022

Welcome to a new irregular series for this site.  From time to time I will do a post that covers and comments on all of the poll-shaped objects that come to my attention in a given month.  Where relevant, the article may also discuss real polling on the same issue.  Once I've decided there is enough material and time to put out an issue for a given month, all others that I see in that month will be added to the piece.  However I won't necessarily put out a PSO article every month; usually I will release such articles when there seem to be far too many of the things around and I feel that the proper order of things needs to be restored.  An early version of this idea can be seen in a 2017 article Poll Roundup: Attack Of The Poll-Shaped Objects.

The term poll-shaped object is one that I use to deride the overly credulous reporting of unsound or insufficiently transparent polls in media articles, and also the peddling of such polls by pressure groups, so-called think tanks, parties and other groups that cling to the foolish belief that you can influence public opinion by telling fibs about it.   A PSO can, for instance, be any of (i) something that is claimed to be a poll but isn't (ii) an especially unsound poll or (iii) a possibly sound poll for which the level of reported detail has been woefully lacking.  (The term is by analogy with piano-shaped object, something that appears to be a piano but sounds horrible or is impossible to play - whether by reason of shoddy construction, mistreatment or decay.)

Poll Roundup: Albanese Is Still Rating Below Morrison - Is That A Problem?

Since my last federal polling roundup, there has been quite a lot of new polling but the Morrison government's position doesn't seem to have improved.  We have seen:

* Newspoll (early October) 53-47 to Labor (Coalition 37 Labor 37 Green 11 One Nation 2 others 13)

* Newspoll (late October) 54-46 to Labor (Coalition 35 ALP 38 Green 11 One Nation 3 others 13)

* Essential (late October) 49-44 to Labor using Essential's 2PP+ method (Coalition 37 Labor 36 Greens 10 One Nation 3 others 8 undecided 6).  I get 52.2 to Labor by standard last-election preferences with undecided removed.

* Essential (early October) 46-45 to Labor using Essential's 2PP+ method (Coalition 36 Labor 34 Greens 9 One Nation 4 others 8 undecided 9.  I get 51.2 to Labor by standard last-election preferences with undecided removed.

* Morgan (mid-late Sept) 54-46 to Labor (respondent preferences) (Coalition 36 Labor 36 Greens 12.5 PHON 3.5 others 12).  This would be c. 53.1 to Labor by last-election preferences

* Morgan (early Oct) 53-47 to Labor (respondent preferences) (Coalition 37.5 Labor 36 Greens 11.5 PHON 3 others 12).  This would be c. 52.1 to Labor by last-election preferences

* Morgan (mid-late Oct) 54-46 to Labor (respondent preferences) (Coalition 36.5 Labor 35 Green 13.5 PHON 3.5 others 11.5.) This would be c. 52.7 to Labor by last-election preferences 

* Resolve (late October) Coalition 37 ALP 34 Green 11 PHON 3 IND 9 Others 5.  Resolve doesn't estimate a 2PP, and overestimates independents as discussed last time.  I estimate 52.1 to Labor by last-election preferences.