Poll Roundup: 2022 Seat Poll Sludgefest

This is the second part of what was at first intended as a single roundup, and deals with seat polls and seat betting.  Any new seat polls will continue to be updated on this page until election day while a seat betting update will probably be added to a final roundup tomorrow night.

As a general comment, 2022 has seen a major change in the election seat polling landscape.  At previous recent elections, published seat polls were dominated (in public attention if not always in numbers) by major national players - YouGov, ReachTEL, the old Newspoll and so on, or at least by specialised pollsters who were distant from campaigns (JWS).  Often the seat polls still sucked.  In 2013 they skewed to Coalition on average (some firms more than others), in 2016 they were under-dispersed and in 2019 they did well at picking winners but badly when they sat on the fence (and they also skewed to Labor).  But at least they were neutral attempts by pollsters with skin in the national game.  

At this election YouGov has so far given seat polling the flick and instead switched to its MRP model (discussed too briefly in a previous edition).  The seat poll landscape has been dominated by uComms (a union-connected pollster with simplistic weightings and an ordinary recent track record), Redbridge (another campaign-focused pollster with often weird methods decisions and a remarkable ability to detect UAP voters), and to a lesser extent Utting Research and KJC/Telereach, neither of whom have had much public testing and the first of which is not an APC member, with publication of details rarely exceeding a single media article.  The overwhelming method of seat polling has been robopolling of often already saturated seats (one voter in Swan this week told me they'd been polled seven times).  Moreover, the two most commonly seen pollsters have been mostly conducting internal and campaign-adjacent polls rather than media-commissioned polls.   The seat polling landscape has been dominated by strategic or incidental releases of polling for campaigning purposes - mostly fed to journalists to get publicity and (in the case of teal independents in some seats) try to exploit strategic voting arguments.

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 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.

Rolling Poll Roundup And Seat Betting Watch: The Final Days

2PP Aggregate 51.5 to Labor (by last-election preferences) (-0.3 since last week)
51.1 with One Nation adjustment
Current seat projection approx Labor 79 Coalition 66 others 6 assuming polls accurate.

The end, it seems, is nigh.  If the (ludicrously herded) national polls are right, the Morrison government would need a huge amount of luck to survive a swing of somewhere around 1.3-2.3%, at an election at which it can afford perhaps two net seat losses.  If the polls on the whole are just modestly wrong in one direction, the Government's chances of survival improve greatly, but the other direction leads to a decisive loss.  The most likely path to survival is a Donald Trump style path - a combination of a modest national polling error and a fair amount of luck with the local breakdowns, but if it happens in this case, after everything, it will be very surreal.

Poll Roundup: Mixed Start To Year For Struggling Government

(17/2: Ipsos update added at the bottom. Also, Not-A-Poll added in sidebar: predict the next Newspoll 2PP)

2PP Aggregate: 53.7% to Labor (last-election preferences) (-0.4 since end of polling season last year)
53.2% to Labor with One Nation adjustment
Labor would easily win election "held now"
Government is now Australia's longest continually-trailing government in polling ever

Time for another roundup of the federal polling picture in the lead-up to an election expected to be held in mid to late May.  At the end of last year the Coalition's polling had been going slowly downhill after the initial recovery from the shock caused by the messy removal of former PM Turnbull.  Early this year there were some early signs things might be improving, but a bad Essential poll this week has somewhat muddied the waters.  In this article I'll just be discussing voting intention and leadership ratings as it is long enough without covering more.

This week has been a dramatic week in parliament and we still have to see how that plays out.  However, a change to laws affecting medical treatment of people on Manus Island and Nauru is not the same thing as an incident like the Tampa, the 2002 Bali bombings and the 9/11 attacks - all of which produced substantial poll movements.  The law change may lead to a major incident (perhaps orchestrated) which could affect polling, but here is how things stand for the time being.

Poll Roundup: 2018 Year In Review

2PP Aggregate: 54.2 to Labor (last election preferences) (+0.2 since two weeks ago)
With One Nation adjustment: 53.6 to Labor
Labor would easily win election "held now"
Labor won all 66 public and three commissioned national polls released this year

With the release of this week's Ipsos and Essential polls, the polling year has probably come to an end.  If there are any late polls I will edit this piece and update it accordingly.

For a government that currently looks as stuffed as a Christmas turkey, the end of the year cannot come soon enough.  As the final poll of the year, Essential offered some respite having the government only six points behind (47-53) but this should be treated with some caution as there is an ongoing difference of opinion between Newspoll and Essential as to just how bad the Morrison government's situation is.  Since Scott Morrison became Prime Minister, Newspoll has had the Coalition primary on an average of just 35% and the Labor primary on 40%.  Essential, however, has had the Coalition primary only narrowly behind (on average 36.9-37.2).  On a 2PP basis Newspoll has had an average reading of just 45.25% for the Government, while Essential has had 46.6% - and this is even though Newspoll's preferencing method is more favourable to the Coalition's than Essential's.  Currently, with Newspoll and Essential coming out in different fortnights, my aggregate bobs around a bit depending on which one is out, rather than based on the Coalition making substantial gains or losses.  If this continues into the New Year I may apply corrections to both.

Poll Roundup and Seat Betting Watch: National Poll Drought Edition

2PP: 50.3 to Coalition (same as end of last week, +0.5 in two weeks)
Coalition would probably win election if everyone voted now, probably with small majority (seat projection 78-67-5)

The 2016 federal election is underway! Prepoll voting has already started and we're just sixteen days away from the main game.  And yet, courtesy of a long weekend and perhaps media disinterest in splashing out on polls this time around, the evidence of what is going on in nationwide voting intentions is very limited indeed.  (We do have evidence of who is paying attention though.  Check out Morgan's very believable list of the most and least engaged electorates.)

For all that trendy stuff about how we're being swamped with polls, as I write we have just one national sample that is entirely less than one week old, and that will stop being true some time tonight.  Unless the overdue Morgan finally appears (which apparently it will sometime), we may be left with the infamously trend-averse Essential as the only poll with any data less than one week old until ReachTEL and Ipsos come along on Friday night.  The non-appearance of Newspoll this week makes this the first time since 1990 that the Newspoll brand has gone this late into a campaign before switching to weekly polling.

So if federal voting intention has changed significantly in the last week, we may well not even know. It doesn't seem like it has based on seat poll results and murmers from party insiders, but it's hard to tell which of these sources of knowledge is least reliable.

Polls ... you don't know what you've got til its gone! (I dislike that song, by the way.)