How Much Does A Home State Federal Leader Matter In That State?

This piece came about, indirectly, because the Courier-Mail was printing silly sentences again.  A piece commenced with the following lines:

"Kevin Rudd has refused to reveal whether under-pressure Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese can win Queensland despite the former Prime Minister joining him for day one of a whirlwind ‘jobs tour’ across the state. 

[..] 

Mr Albanese was joined by Mr Rudd on the pre-campaign hustings at Southbank – however the former Prime Minister declined to comment when asked by The Sunday-Mail about how or whether Labor could win the state."

Rudd claims he declined to comment because it was the Courier-Mail rather than because of the question.  Whatever the facts in that regard, two things stood out to me in the opening line. Firstly there's the idea that the former Prime Minister is a divine revelator who can exclusively "reveal" facts  about the prospects of Opposition Leaders in his state.  Secondly, the idea that winning Queensland is a realistic or relevant goal for an Albanese-led ALP.  After all, Labor currently needs an enormous 8.44% swing to win the 2PP in Queensland, and has only won the Queensland 2PP three times since the Second World War - 1961, 1990 and 2007, all of them by a whisker

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: Grand Final!

     VS  
(image source, licence)                                (image source, licence) 


Round 5: Whitlam and Keating tie, Gillard eliminated
Disputed Returns adjusts Gillard total following stacking (result not affected)

The last round is upon us.  These two dashing gentlemen (actually both pictured several years before they became Prime Minister) are the final contestants for this site's multi-stage Best Prime Minister of the last 45 years.  Hmmm, I think there might be a lot of Tasmanians voting in the final round somehow.  These two are the last left standing after they tied for first (following four previous outright Whitlam wins) at the end of a cracking round which had the following raw final totals:

Best Prime Minister Of The Past 45 Years: Round 5

(image source, licence)

"A conservative government survives essentially by dampening expectations and subduing hopes. Conservatism is basically pessimistic, reformism is basically optimistic."

Excluded: John Howard (13.9%)

I chose this particular quote from the primary vote leader of round 4 of my multi-month best PM Not-A-Poll as a send-off by said leader to the last eliminated Liberal contestant.  Given the left-wing bias of this site's readership and consumers of psephology in general, Howard has actually done pretty well to make it this far, but overachieved by somehow edging out Bob Hawke in round 3, and his elimination in this round always looked extremely likely.  

Not-A-Poll: Best Prime Minister Of The Last 45 Years, Round 4

(Image: Flickr:Gostalgia licence)

"The main sufferers in Australian society — the main victims of social deprivation and restricted opportunity - have been the oldest Australians on the one hand and the newest Australians on the other. " 

Three months ago, I started a multi-round Not-A-Poll to determine this site's choice for the title of Best Prime Minister of the Last 45 Years.  Each round, one Prime Minister (sometimes more) is given the boot until someone gets over 50% and wins.  Each round runs for about a month, so you can vote for different candidates from month to month if you want to.  Multiple voting is in theory banned, but still readily possible at low levels; adjustments may be made if required.  It is what it is, but at least it's preferential in a way, unlike, say, Australian bird of the year.

The winner of each round gets a photo and a quote on the top, except for the final round when photos of both candidates will go up together.  And there is an obscure rule that if there is a new Prime Minister voting stops for a month to give the new PM time to establish themselves as incredibly brilliant and win the contest. I mention that because there's chatter about that the incumbent (eliminated in last place in this contest with a ridiculously small vote) might not even last the coming sitting week.

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:

2013 Ehrlich Award For Wrong Predictions

Not much going on in the world of pseph with all the polls still asleep (though Morgan is showing some signs of waking up soon) so not much to report lately.  I am hoping to soon publish a review of Cory Bernardi's oxymoronically-titled "The Conservative Revolution" but this depends on me being able to obtain a copy without paying for it. (If any readers can help out with this, that would be great.  I promise to take appropriate medical precautions prior to opening its pages.)

===================================================================

This article unveils the second annual Ehrlich Award, which at or about the start of each year will be given to the "wrongest" published prediction I observe relating to (or made in) the previous calendar year. 

There are a few groundrules - for instance the predictions need to be meaningful (in terms of being able to assess objectively whether they have happened), and secondly predictions that carry a stated assessment of chance of falsehood are not included unless that assessed chance is ludicrously low.  After all, even odds-on favourites do get beaten sometimes.

Rudd Replaces Gillard

"Being prime minister isn't a job you have a shot at and then you come back again if you think you've learned a lesson" - Gary Gray, Feb 20 2012.

Indeed not, Mr Gray.  The last egomaniac to pull that little trick off lasted only seventeen years the second time around.

This post discusses various polling history and projection aspects of the replacement of Julia Gillard with Kevin Rudd.  Of course, this major event has rendered a lot of poll-based projections that were premised on the idea of a Gillard prime ministership at the election void, and all over Australia psephologists are scurrying like spiders to repair their webs.

Historical Aspects

Kevin Rudd is the fourth Australian Prime Minister to recapture the role after losing it, after Deakin (twice), Fisher  (twice) and Menzies.  Fisher and Deakin played musical chairs in an era before majority governments were the norm (though Fisher later lost an election outright before winning the next one outright).  Menzies lost the support of his party and resigned, then led his party back from opposition.  Rudd is the first departed PM to return to the post without an intervening change of government.

Even at state level, the recapture of the top job (as opposed to the Opposition top job) is rare in the modern world.  It was common in the chaotic nineteenth and early 20th century state parliaments, such that NSW has had three five-time Premiers.   Since the 1950s, however, only Eric Reece in Tasmania (1972, recovering government against a short-term Liberal minority that collapsed during its term) and Don Dunstan in South Australia (1970, ditto).  So Rudd is the first leader at state or federal level for 41 years to lose his job and recover it, and has done so in difficult and unusual circumstances (albeit with a huge assist from the hung-parliament situation and the generally hapless self-marketing and trust problems of his successor's regime.)

Julia Gillard: Same-Sex Marriage Enemy #1

Advance Summary

1. This article addresses comments recently made by Prime Minister Julia Gillard concerning the Coalition's unclear statements on whether it will allow a conscience vote on same-sex marriage.

2. Gillard's comments are misleading in that she takes credit for ensuring a conscience vote on the issue, when in fact she did so in order to avoid all Labor MPs being required to vote for same-sex marriage legislation.

3. For this reason, Gillard's actions removed any chance of same-sex marriage passing last year.

4. Claims that a conscience vote for both sides is the determining factor in a successful push for same-sex marriage are misleading.  Comparisons with New Zealand and the UK show that in those cases, the personal support of leaders on both sides, and the overwhelming support of the main centre-left party, were essential.

5. Gillard's own statements on her reasons for opposing same-sex marriage do not stand up to scrutiny.

6. As I find both Gillard's claimed reasons and several other proposed explanations unconvincing, I suspect her motive is connected to internal ALP power plays.

7. Gillard's criticism of the Coalition on this issue, while warranted in isolation, is hypocritical.

The Abbott Factor Revisited: Abbott's Ratings and Labor's Decline

 Advance summary:

1. This article covers changes in the relationship between Tony Abbott's net satisfaction rating and Labor's two-party preferred status.

2. Until September 2012 both Abbott's standing and Labor's tended to decline at the same time, although this did not always happen.

3. In late 2012 there was a period in which Abbott's standing declined while Labor's improved, which has now reversed.

4. There is currently very little evidence that Tony Abbott's unpopularity is a significant barrier to the Coalition winning the next federal election.

Marginals Mayhem 2: Labor Losing The Lot?

 Advance Summary

1. A new JWS Research marginals robopoll has been reported as showing that Labor would lose all its 25 marginal seats, including Dobell.

2. The poll was partly commissioned by ECG Advisory Solutions, a firm with strong Liberal Party ties, but this was not disclosed in initial media reporting.

3. The poll uses demographic scaling to obtain a result from an on-average older voter pool.  However the breakdown by age of this poll is more credible than that of the previous poll.

4. Results of the poll are more Coalition-leaning than current national polling.  This may indicate inaccuracy, but could also be caused by an intensification of post-leadership-spill anti-Labor feeling, or by a very strong post-spill swing in Queensland.

5. The poll finds that 15% of intending Coalition voters (about 8% of the total sample) say they would support Labor if Kevin Rudd were Prime Minister.  However the claimed poll finding that voters want Labor to win is misleading.

6. The poll is consistent with many other polls that have suggested voters indicating a preference for Others in polling are often Rudd supporters and are opposed to both Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott.

7. The reported finding that Labor would lose all 25 marginals is unlikely to be correct as a few seats are at threshholds above or near the state swings and as swings are not uniform from seat to seat. 

8.  Nevertheless in an election "held now" Labor would lose most of its marginal seats and probably several others besides.

Yet Another Western Sydney Article

Advance Summary

1. The Western Sydney area has received great attention in commentary on the 2013 election although the widespread view that it will decide the election result is almost certainly wrong.

2. Recent ReachTEL polling of some Western Sydney confirms suspicions that very large seat swings are possible in the area.

3. The polling is also notable for returning much better results for Tony Abbott than national polls, and very bad results for Julia Gillard, including in comparison with Kevin Rudd.

4. The polling is not a post-event verdict on the Gillard Western Sydney visit as it was taken just before it.

5. Although voters voting for candidates/parties other than Labor, Liberal, Green in 2010 were Coalition-leaning, there is some reason to suspect (even from very small sample sizes) that self-styled Others voters in ReachTEL polling are less Coalition-leaning than Others voters from 2010.

6. In a quiet week of federal polling, an interesting if messy new development is a Morgan "multi-mode" poll with over 9000 respondents.  However, as this poll is impossible to benchmark for possible house effects because it is a new poll form from that pollster, it is difficult to make use of it yet.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2001: The Final Frontier

Advance summary:

1.  Combined results of all current polling suggest that the Gillard Labor government is now in a worse position than any past winning government - in terms of the amount by which it trails for the time remaining to the election - except for Howard's in 2001.

2.  If Labor does not have a 2PP position better than 46% by late March, it will fall behind Howard's 2001 recovery curve.

3.  It is also possible that very bad polling in the next few weeks would cause Labor to reach a position worse than that Howard recovered from in 2001.

4.  Being in a position from which recovery is without precedent or has few precedents does not mean a party cannot win an election.  However, it suggests they are unlikely to do so.

5.  This article also includes subjective waffle about Labor's current leadership and direction problems and the difficulty finding a clear and competitive way out of the mess the government has got itself into.

Update (25 Feb): It is now debatable whether even Howard's 2001 recovery is a valid precedent for recovery from the Gillard Government's current situation.

Morgan And The Myth Of Excessive Bouncing /The 1993 Analogy

Note added later: This article refers to a Morgan polling method that is no longer in use.

Advance Summary:

1. Face-to-face polls conducted by Roy Morgan Research are no more volatile than Newspoll.

2. In the case of both Morgan Face-to-Face polls and Newspoll, the level of bouncing from poll to poll is unsurprising, unsuspicious, and mostly explained by random variation.

3. Morgan Face-to-Face polls do however favour Labor, and this is especially true of their figures which allocate preferences according to results of the last election.  Morgan phone polls do not seem to favour one side or the other very much.

4. The current polling position and history of the Gillard Government is similar to that of both Keating governments.  Both became competitive about a year from the election, but continued to trail modestly for several months.

5. The first Keating government took the lead suddenly four and a half months from the election, while the second Keating government never managed to close down the Opposition's modest lead.

6. Recent articles by Peter Brent (Mumble) have repeatedly argued that a Gillard vs Abbott contest results in a certain or near-certain win for Abbott.

7. But an August 2012 article by the same writer sets criteria according to which the Keating polling situation was competitive throughout 1992, and then unfavourably compares Gillard's position then.

8. If the same criteria are applied, Labor under Gillard is competitive now.

Is the Silly Season Real?

(Admin note to readers: jumpbreaks poll closed - thanks to those who voted - outcome at bottom of post)

 Advance Summary

1. The view that a swing to the Coalition in the final Newspoll of 2012 was due to a general tendency for voters to "switch off" politics as Christmas approaches is disproven by historic evidence.

2. Comparisons between the December 2012 and December 2011 Newspolls on account of them having the same two-party preferred vote are simplistic and misleading because they fail to take into account surrounding trend data.

3. Although there has been a now clear and significant move to a substantial Coalition lead since early November, Labor's polling position in mid-December 2012 is not as bad as at the same time in 2011.

4. Leads similar to the Coalition's current lead have been held by many losing Oppositions five or six months prior to elections.

5. Whatever intuitive or subjective views different commentators hold, informed by data or otherwise, there is no known valid scientific basis for predicting the result of the next federal election at this stage, nor even for declaring a very strong favourite.  This applies no matter who the leaders are.

Do Voters Care About AWU? A Review Of Polling

Advance Summary

1. The AWU "scandal" involving Prime Minister Julia Gillard's former links to a union-related "slush fund" recently dominated the news cycle and resulted in accusations of criminality by Opposition members including Tony Abbott against the PM.

2. Current polling shows that a movement to the Labor Party over the course of several months appears to have, at least temporarily, halted and probably slightly reversed.

3. Although the AWU debate may have contributed to the slowing of momentum towards Labor, there is insufficient evidence that it has caused damage to Labor's vote.

4. Questions surrounding the AWU affair by three pollsters show varying levels of design quality, and many are unsatisfactory.

5. Those polls that have produced the worst results for the Prime Minister are typically the worst designed, while the better designed polls show that the PM's handling of the issue is fairly well approved of.

6. At the height of Parliamentary debate about the issue, both the Opposition (for its handling of the matter) and its leader recorded very bad ratings, without pro-Coalition voting intention being affected.

7. The impact of the issue upon the standing of the Opposition Leader is not yet clear because of insufficient evidence.

8.  Comparisons between this issue and the Ozcar/Utegate blunder by Malcolm Turnbull in 2009 are simplistic as there are many differences in the nature of the issue and the existing popularity of those affected.

The LegCo's Claimed Reasons For Rejecting Same-Sex Marriage

(See also Legislative Council Voting Patterns since the last state election.)

Advance Summary:

1. Analysis of the speeches of the eight Legislative Councillors who recently opposed the Tasmanian Same-Sex Marriage Bill 2012 shows that at most five spoke against the concept of allowing same-sex marriage at this time in general.  These five were Tania Rattray, Dr Vanessa Goodwin, Adriana Taylor, Ivan Dean and Rosemary Armitage.  (Of these, in Rattray's case the evidence is arguable and limited.)

2. The remaining Legislative Councillors to vote against (Paul Harriss, Jim Wilkinson and Greg Hall) did not indicate an explicit view for or against federal marriage equality, but expressed reservations about the concept of state-based legislation and/or its delivery.

3. The defeat of the bill cannot therefore be interpreted as a rejection of the concept of marriage equality by the Upper House, and represents only the rejection of a given state-based proposal.

4. Every MLC arguing against the bill argued that it was a federal issue, and every MLC arguing against the concept generally supported the idea of marriage as being only between a man and a woman.  

5. Other common arguments against the bill included the risks, success chances and costs of a High Court challenge, the bill being a second-rate version of the concept, that the bill would not end discrimination, and that the State Government lacked a mandate.

6. Some MLCs voting against the bill made extremely unsound arguments about public opinion.  This suggests a need for politicians to be better briefed on how to (and especially how not to) understand and measure public opinion.

As Gillard recovered, so can Abbott?

Advance summary:

1. The view has been advanced that since Julia Gillard has become much less unpopular, then so can Tony Abbott.

2. This view does not automatically follow, because Gillard and Abbott occupy different positions and became unpopular for mostly different reasons.

3. The record since the late 1960s shows that the average recovery in net satisfaction for both Prime Ministers and Opposition Leaders between their worst rating and the next election is about 20 points.

4. However, very unpopular Opposition Leaders are usually removed, and those who make it to elections have so far lost them even if they had ceased to be unpopular by election time.

5. There is one case of an Opposition Leader recovering from a rating worse than Abbott's to a positive net rating within two months, but without winning the election.  (Andrew Peacock, 1984)

6. However, the general historical trend is against the likelihood of Tony Abbott recovering to a positive or even near-zero rating before the next election.