EMRS March 2020: Liberal 43 Labor 34 Greens 12 Others 11
Interpretation scores not used because of change in EMRS methods
Result "if election held last week" on these raw numbers 13-10-2 (no change), next most likely 13-9-3
Better Premier White 41 leads Gutwein 39 - similar situation to White vs Hodgman
A new EMRS poll of Tasmanian voting intention has been released via the unusual avenue of a FontPR podcast. (Recommended listening for a lot of new insights into how EMRS operates). This is the first EMRS poll to be publicly released since the July 2019 poll, but in the meantime there were two other polls that were not previously released, in November (very early November - pollster was reported in the field on 31 Oct) and unusually December. These have now also been released (full report of last three polls here.) It is unfortunate the earlier polls were not released at the time as they would have usefully informed discussion about the retirement of Premier Hodgman.
The podcast reveals that EMRS have made significant methods changes in recent months, including ensuring at least 35% mobile coverage in their phone polls and making changes to weighting (though this does include the rather risky inclusion of past vote - a partial cause of the 2019 polling failure, but perhaps more justified in Tasmania where it is harder to be confident a sample is even close to representative.) Based on the late-2019 polls together with this one it looks like this has fixed the pollster's long-standing problem of severely overestimating the Green vote, and at times the Others vote as well.
Showing posts with label Hodgman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hodgman. Show all posts
Monday, March 16, 2020
Thursday, December 20, 2018
EMRS: Some Respite, But Labor At Nine-Year High
NOTE: Coverage of the EMRS federal poll will be online here at 9 am Saturday.
EMRS: Liberal 39 Labor 35 Greens 14 Ind/Other 12
Interpretation: Liberal 42 Labor 37 Greens 11 Ind/Other 10
Estimated seat breakdown if election "held now" - majority status touch and go with 12-13 Lib, 10-11 ALP, 2 Green
Three months ago Tasmania's second-term Hodgman Liberal government received a rather nasty wakeup call in the form of the largest poll-to-poll crash in local pollster EMRS's history. As commented at the time, the timing of the poll was especially unlucky for the government, which was afflicted by fallout from the federal leadership change, unpleasant headlines in the Angela Williamson saga and more criticism of health services.
But in a way that poll belonged to a simpler age for the government, as it was rocked in November by its renegade Speaker Sue Hickey crossing the floor many times over transgender rights amendments. The government, which had brought in legislation to rectify gender-change divorce anomalies following the passing of same-sex marriage, ended up voting against its own Bill as Labor, the Greens and Hickey added amendments expanding anti-discrimination law in the already-included area of gender identity, making the recording of gender on birth certificates optional and removing surgery requirements for the recording of a gender change on a birth certificate. Questions were asked about the government's stability but Hickey reasserted her support on supply and confidence, and at this stage remains a member of the party.
Hickey has since crossed the floor again to much less fanfare, and has continued to criticise her own party for underestimating her and not giving her a ministry. The government is doing its best to route around the problem by blaming Labor and the Greens each time it happens, but it's an ongoing nightmare for them all the same.
So in the circumstances, had someone offered the government a three-point lift as a mark to end the year on, I think they would have taken it, meagre as it appears. It could be taken as some suggestion of a little bit of random error in the previous result as well. All the same, the government's lead over Labor is an anaemic four points, lower than all but two polls in the previous term.
Labor Scales The Heights! (Well, slightly ...)
The bad news for the government is that its gain comes at the expense of Greens and Others, and not at the expense of the Labor Opposition. The ALP recorded a one-point lift that, while deeply insignificant statistically, still takes them to a nine-year high of 35%. Labor last polled 35% in August 2009 and was last above that level in May 2009 when it polled 43% during then-Premier David Bartlett's honeymoon phase.
The other good news for Labor is that Rebecca White continues polling well personally although the party didn't get near winning this year's election. White continues to lead Will Hodgman 46-40 as preferred Premier. Hodgman himself wasn't found to be unpopular when his personal ratings were measured during the election campaign, and I doubt that much has changed. It seems that White's persistent leads here are something unusual - a case where an Opposition Leader is much liked by voters without the incumbent or his party being badly on the nose.
The Clark Conundrum
EMRS's stocks as a pollster have recently been bolstered by a remarkably good reading of the Hobart City Council election, an extremely difficult race to poll correctly (see here and scroll down to "Well Done EMRS!") So I am not inclined to cast aspersions at where it has the major parties. But it does have a long history of having the Greens vote too high, sometimes much too high, in pre-election polling. Also although its record with independent/other voters is more accurate, its readings for them seem to blow out between elections, possibly as voters engage in wishful thinking about who might be on their ballot paper. Finally, at recent elections it has tended to underestimate the primary of the incumbent government, more so than any specific major party.
After adjusting for all of these things I take it that an election "held now", but unaccompanied by months of cash-splashing from third-party forces, might yield something along the lines of this:
The exact level of house effect corrections required might be contested, but on an even swing from the state election result, only one seat would be close to flipping, and that is the Liberals' second seat in Clark (formerly Denison), which is now the most marginal of the thirteen seats they hold. As in the previous term, it is possible the Liberals could stay in office even with a primary vote lead as low as 5-6%, because of the size of their margins in all the seats they won in 2018.
On an even swing the second Liberal Clark seat would be very close to falling (depending on the vote breakdown within the party) and might fall to a third Labor candidate if Labor had someone good enough. However the 2022 race for Clark is going to be greatly complicated by the question of what to do about Sue Hickey.
At the moment there is a perception that Sue Hickey won't be re-selected for the Government given that she not only seized the Speakership but has also crossed the floor and criticised the Government's tactics and elements within it (also unhelpfully implying it is "right-wing", which is more true of some of its members than of others). Indeed, Hickey probably would have been kicked out of the party by now except that doing so would make the government a minority government (placing pressure on the Premier to quit) and might even result in a mid-term change of government. The best case for the Liberals might be that Hickey retires at the next election, but even then they will lose her personal vote and her appeal to left-Liberal voters. If Hickey runs again as an independent, then it will be much harder to hold two seats in Clark, whether she wins or not.
A lot will change between now and the very far-off 2022 election, and current polling cannot mean a lot predictively. A change of federal government is likely next year, and a Labor federal government might be gearing up for its first defence or even into its second term by the time Tasmania goes to the polls again. State governments seldom lose while the opposite party is in power federally. However, possible 2022 state election scenarios might be in the background as the parliament again considers restoring the House of Assembly to 35 members. A parliamentary committee set up to consider the matter will be deliberating in 2019 and reporting by August. (On current polling, it wouldn't help the government - it would win 16 or 17 seats only in a 35-seat House).
Note that I am still not running a Tasmanian polling aggregate, but intend to resume one once there are data from other pollsters.
EMRS: Liberal 39 Labor 35 Greens 14 Ind/Other 12
Interpretation: Liberal 42 Labor 37 Greens 11 Ind/Other 10
Estimated seat breakdown if election "held now" - majority status touch and go with 12-13 Lib, 10-11 ALP, 2 Green
Three months ago Tasmania's second-term Hodgman Liberal government received a rather nasty wakeup call in the form of the largest poll-to-poll crash in local pollster EMRS's history. As commented at the time, the timing of the poll was especially unlucky for the government, which was afflicted by fallout from the federal leadership change, unpleasant headlines in the Angela Williamson saga and more criticism of health services.
But in a way that poll belonged to a simpler age for the government, as it was rocked in November by its renegade Speaker Sue Hickey crossing the floor many times over transgender rights amendments. The government, which had brought in legislation to rectify gender-change divorce anomalies following the passing of same-sex marriage, ended up voting against its own Bill as Labor, the Greens and Hickey added amendments expanding anti-discrimination law in the already-included area of gender identity, making the recording of gender on birth certificates optional and removing surgery requirements for the recording of a gender change on a birth certificate. Questions were asked about the government's stability but Hickey reasserted her support on supply and confidence, and at this stage remains a member of the party.
Hickey has since crossed the floor again to much less fanfare, and has continued to criticise her own party for underestimating her and not giving her a ministry. The government is doing its best to route around the problem by blaming Labor and the Greens each time it happens, but it's an ongoing nightmare for them all the same.
So in the circumstances, had someone offered the government a three-point lift as a mark to end the year on, I think they would have taken it, meagre as it appears. It could be taken as some suggestion of a little bit of random error in the previous result as well. All the same, the government's lead over Labor is an anaemic four points, lower than all but two polls in the previous term.
Labor Scales The Heights! (Well, slightly ...)
The bad news for the government is that its gain comes at the expense of Greens and Others, and not at the expense of the Labor Opposition. The ALP recorded a one-point lift that, while deeply insignificant statistically, still takes them to a nine-year high of 35%. Labor last polled 35% in August 2009 and was last above that level in May 2009 when it polled 43% during then-Premier David Bartlett's honeymoon phase.
The other good news for Labor is that Rebecca White continues polling well personally although the party didn't get near winning this year's election. White continues to lead Will Hodgman 46-40 as preferred Premier. Hodgman himself wasn't found to be unpopular when his personal ratings were measured during the election campaign, and I doubt that much has changed. It seems that White's persistent leads here are something unusual - a case where an Opposition Leader is much liked by voters without the incumbent or his party being badly on the nose.
The Clark Conundrum
EMRS's stocks as a pollster have recently been bolstered by a remarkably good reading of the Hobart City Council election, an extremely difficult race to poll correctly (see here and scroll down to "Well Done EMRS!") So I am not inclined to cast aspersions at where it has the major parties. But it does have a long history of having the Greens vote too high, sometimes much too high, in pre-election polling. Also although its record with independent/other voters is more accurate, its readings for them seem to blow out between elections, possibly as voters engage in wishful thinking about who might be on their ballot paper. Finally, at recent elections it has tended to underestimate the primary of the incumbent government, more so than any specific major party.
After adjusting for all of these things I take it that an election "held now", but unaccompanied by months of cash-splashing from third-party forces, might yield something along the lines of this:
The exact level of house effect corrections required might be contested, but on an even swing from the state election result, only one seat would be close to flipping, and that is the Liberals' second seat in Clark (formerly Denison), which is now the most marginal of the thirteen seats they hold. As in the previous term, it is possible the Liberals could stay in office even with a primary vote lead as low as 5-6%, because of the size of their margins in all the seats they won in 2018.
On an even swing the second Liberal Clark seat would be very close to falling (depending on the vote breakdown within the party) and might fall to a third Labor candidate if Labor had someone good enough. However the 2022 race for Clark is going to be greatly complicated by the question of what to do about Sue Hickey.
At the moment there is a perception that Sue Hickey won't be re-selected for the Government given that she not only seized the Speakership but has also crossed the floor and criticised the Government's tactics and elements within it (also unhelpfully implying it is "right-wing", which is more true of some of its members than of others). Indeed, Hickey probably would have been kicked out of the party by now except that doing so would make the government a minority government (placing pressure on the Premier to quit) and might even result in a mid-term change of government. The best case for the Liberals might be that Hickey retires at the next election, but even then they will lose her personal vote and her appeal to left-Liberal voters. If Hickey runs again as an independent, then it will be much harder to hold two seats in Clark, whether she wins or not.
A lot will change between now and the very far-off 2022 election, and current polling cannot mean a lot predictively. A change of federal government is likely next year, and a Labor federal government might be gearing up for its first defence or even into its second term by the time Tasmania goes to the polls again. State governments seldom lose while the opposite party is in power federally. However, possible 2022 state election scenarios might be in the background as the parliament again considers restoring the House of Assembly to 35 members. A parliamentary committee set up to consider the matter will be deliberating in 2019 and reporting by August. (On current polling, it wouldn't help the government - it would win 16 or 17 seats only in a 35-seat House).
Note that I am still not running a Tasmanian polling aggregate, but intend to resume one once there are data from other pollsters.
Tuesday, September 4, 2018
EMRS: What Goes Up, Must Come Down
EMRS: Liberal 36 ALP 34 Greens 16 Other 14
Interpretation: Liberal 39 ALP 36 Greens 13 Other 12
Estimated seat breakdown if election "held now" - probable hung parliament with about 11-12 Lib, 11 ALP, 2 Green, 0-1 Ind/other
Six months ago the Tasmanian Liberal government of Premier Will Hodgman snapped a run of increasingly mediocre polling with the largest poll-to-poll gain in EMRS' history. This came just before an election at which the government outperformed even that polling and was re-elected, and the returned government was travelling OK a few months later. But now that's over, and the government is back to almost where it was last year after chalking up the pollster's largest ever poll to poll loss. It's almost as if the election never happened.
Interpretation: Liberal 39 ALP 36 Greens 13 Other 12
Estimated seat breakdown if election "held now" - probable hung parliament with about 11-12 Lib, 11 ALP, 2 Green, 0-1 Ind/other
Six months ago the Tasmanian Liberal government of Premier Will Hodgman snapped a run of increasingly mediocre polling with the largest poll-to-poll gain in EMRS' history. This came just before an election at which the government outperformed even that polling and was re-elected, and the returned government was travelling OK a few months later. But now that's over, and the government is back to almost where it was last year after chalking up the pollster's largest ever poll to poll loss. It's almost as if the election never happened.
Sunday, March 4, 2018
2018 Tasmanian Postcount: Franklin
Franklin 2 Liberal, 2 Labor, 1 in doubt between Green and Liberal
Re-elected: Hodgman (Lib), presumably Petrusma (Lib)
Returns to parliament: D O'Byrne (Labor)
New MP: Standen (Labor)
Contest between parties: Woodruff (Green) vs Street (Lib) - Woodruff has won by 226 votes.
Welcome to another postcount thread that I will update through the next two weeks, this one for Franklin. And this one could be very close.
In Franklin, the Liberals' remarkable minimisation of the swing against them has kept them in the hunt for a three-seat result. However, with Labor rebuilding to over two quotas, it has turned out to be the Greens' Rosalie Woodruff who is in danger of missing out.
Re-elected: Hodgman (Lib), presumably Petrusma (Lib)
Returns to parliament: D O'Byrne (Labor)
New MP: Standen (Labor)
Contest between parties: Woodruff (Green) vs Street (Lib) - Woodruff has won by 226 votes.
Welcome to another postcount thread that I will update through the next two weeks, this one for Franklin. And this one could be very close.
In Franklin, the Liberals' remarkable minimisation of the swing against them has kept them in the hunt for a three-seat result. However, with Labor rebuilding to over two quotas, it has turned out to be the Greens' Rosalie Woodruff who is in danger of missing out.
Thursday, January 18, 2018
New Commissioned Tasmanian Polls
Tasmanian state election season is heating up with regular policy announcements (at least from the government) and rumours that the election could be called this weekend for March 3 (what, not the same day as South Australia again? Surely too good to be true!)
I expect we will have some public polling before too much longer so we can see if the Liberals have recovered from an utter stinker from EMRS late last year, but in the meantime the shady forces of commissioned polling are out there doing their stuff. This week Tasmanians were treated to not one but two rounds of robo-bombardment. A diabolically odd anti-pokies question left many scratching their heads (especially pokie opponents) while reports of the warm fuzzy niceties of the other poll on offer sparked Twitter responses like this:
OK, there was actually only one response like that, but this poll even asked voters if they liked Tasmanian political leaders as human beings! It also asked if voters thought Jacqui Lambie was good at her job, which came as a surprise to me, because I didn't know she had one anymore.
MediaReach Liberal Poll
Anyway, the long and cuddly robopoll has seen the partial light of day first, and what this is is a MediaReach internal poll commissioned by the Liberals, with a sample of a whopping 3,000. Methods details are bereft - I've seen a claim it only canvassed landlines, but I constantly see the same claim about other pollsters who ceased doing so years ago - so there's not much more to say about it yet.
Now, I'm not sure if ReachTEL weren't available (they're prim and proper about refusing dual commissions if they have a conflict in a market) or if the Liberals just don't trust them anymore, but MediaReach was a novel selection indeed. This pollster hasn't been seen in Tasmania before and its only previous testable public results have been in the NT, where it was out by about five points 2PP in an electorate poll and a territory election poll. So what do we know about its accuracy in the Tasmanian or indeed any similar context? Diddly-squat. Add to that that it's a commissioned poll that wouldn't have seen the light of day had the Liberals not liked the result, and the only weight I can aggregate it at is zero. Still, it will be fascinating to see how it scrubs up on election day.
Actually, if I did aggregate this poll it wouldn't make much difference anyway. Oddly giving results to two decimal places (not that there is anything actually wrong with that) the poll has the following results:
Liberal 41.12
Labor 34.29
Green 12.81
Lambie Network 6.19
leaving 5.59 for others.
Friday, July 22, 2016
EMRS: Hodgman Government Would Lose Majority
EMRS July 2016: Liberal 37 Labor 32 Green 17 "Independent" 12 Others 2
Intepretation: Liberal 38.5 Labor 35.5 Green 14 Others 12
On this poll Hodgman government would clearly lose its majority
Seat projection 11-10-4 (Liberal-Labor-Green) or 12-10-3.
No seats are projected to fourth parties/independents as no prominent fourth parties are yet known to be running
Also now released EMRS May 2016: Liberal 41 Labor 29 Green 21 "Independent" 8 Others 1
Interpretation: Liberal 43 Labor 31 Green 18 Others 8
On this poll Hodgman government would have lost its majority in May as well
Seat projection for May 12-10-3
Aggregate of all recent polling 12-10-3 (no majority)
Intepretation: Liberal 38.5 Labor 35.5 Green 14 Others 12
On this poll Hodgman government would clearly lose its majority
Seat projection 11-10-4 (Liberal-Labor-Green) or 12-10-3.
No seats are projected to fourth parties/independents as no prominent fourth parties are yet known to be running
Also now released EMRS May 2016: Liberal 41 Labor 29 Green 21 "Independent" 8 Others 1
Interpretation: Liberal 43 Labor 31 Green 18 Others 8
On this poll Hodgman government would have lost its majority in May as well
Seat projection for May 12-10-3
Aggregate of all recent polling 12-10-3 (no majority)
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