Beautiful Losers: Australia's Leading Anti-Bellwether Seats

After the 2018 FIDE (chess) elections, a member of the English delegation told me that his nation had kept alive their proud tradition of always supporting the losing side.  Having voted for various opponents of the long-term FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, England had switched to Ilyumzhinov's replacement Georgios Makropoulos just in time for the incumbent regime to be booted.  Perhaps this comment was distantly in my mind a couple of weeks ago when someone tweeted a comment referring to Bass as a bellwether seat.  Bass, I thought, is not a bellwether seat at all; it's more like a seat that hits the incumbent over the head with a bell no matter what is going on nationwide.  Then I thought, how about anti-bellwether seats?  Seats that have a history of nearly always voting for the party that loses?  I hope to have the time and energy for more central things in the coming week but for now I present some findings on this little amusement.

Bellwether or litmus seats (where there is a long history of whoever wins always or nearly always forming government) are much discussed, the idea being that since they have a history of being predictive they might contain some special insight into where a campaign is going.  Past champions have included Macarthur (voted for the winning party 23 times in a row 1949-2004) and Eden-Monaro (15 in a row 1972-2013).  The current leader is Robertson (14 in a row, 1983-present).   In theory, a bellwether is a perennial marginal seat that is a good microcosm of the nation, though in practice bellwether streaks involve a great amount of luck.   It might be possible to find a better predictive measure of 'as goes seat X, so goes the nation' than winning streak - some combination of average 2PP lean and correlation with the national swing, for example.

Horse-Race Overview And Betting Roundup: Are Labor Too Long?

(Note: This post was actually released 23 June, not 18 June as for some strange reason stated!)

It's just about time to rule a line under the rolling poll roundup that I ran through the last several days and write something new about the overall horse-race picture.  A new rolling roundup will be started when there is a new national poll (most likely ReachTEL on Friday night).

The national polling data that we have on this election at the moment all dates from Sunday or earlier.  Only Newspoll is even dominated by data from last weekend.  The two-party picture is persistently close, and the Coalition's advantage in seat projections is not massive, but betting markets offer headline odds that imply it's almost a done deal.  Many people have suggested to me over the last few weeks that Labor are way too long, and that odds of $3 or $4 might be understandable, but surely not $6 and upwards as has been seen at times.

My own polling aggregate (which, I should restate, describes the state of play at a given time - it is not by itself a prediction) has found the Coalition to be in a winning position at all times since Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister.  The Coalition has sometimes slipped below 50% two-party-preferred, but has never yet fallen below 76 seats on my projection of what would happen in an election "held now" at the time.  However, it hasn't had a big lead for a long time.