Going The Distance: Federal Seats That Do And Don't Make It To The Final Two

Recently I had this question on the website formerly known as Twitter.  

I thought this was a very interesting question because while whether a seat comes down to the final two or not doesn't have much to do with how close the seat is, it's something we don't think about much in federal elections.  Every vote is thrown by the AEC to the final two candidates, but in some cases it doesn't reach the final two until after the seat has already been decided because a candidate has crossed 50%.  Indeed, in a rapidly reducing number of seats the contest is decided on primary votes and the preference throw is entirely academic to the result.

Contests don't get thought about in these terms so much because every vote is present in a notional final two soon after it is counted via the notional two-candidate preferred.  This gives a single indication of the margin of victory.  It obscures the nuance that a candidate who finishes on 54% of the final two-candidate preferred might have even crossed 50% before the last exclusion then done badly on the last lot of preferences, while another candidate might have needed a trickle of preferences to get over the line yet got so many preferences that they finish up with a 2CP of 68%.

Poll Roundup and Seat Betting Watch: Newspoll Uber Alles

(Note for Tasmanian readers and anyone else interested: my piece on the Colbeck demotion appears below this one, or click here.)

2PP: 50.6 to Coalition (-0.7 since two weeks ago) - updated from 50.5 following Essential
Closest margin since Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister
Seat projection off this 2PP: 80 Coalition, 66 Labor, 4 Others 

After five weeks of reasonably static polling with the Coalition's 2PP at just above 51%, the past week saw another dip that was widely attributed to the government's unsuccessful and apparently half-hearted attempt to convince State Premiers to support state-based income taxes.

Newspoll especially got a lot of attention by finding Labor to be ahead of the Coalition (51:49) for the first time since Malcolm Turnbull took over as PM.  Much reporting - with the ABC alas the worst culprit that I noticed here - treated Newspoll as if it was the only poll in town.  In fact Morgan was the first poll to have the Coalition ahead on 2PP (two weeks earlier but not in the current week), and reputable aggregates all still show the Coalition with a slim 2PP lead.

The attention on Newspoll in the political classes to the exclusion of most others has long been disproportionate but may be becoming even more so.  As evidence that the Turnbull government was in trouble, a single 49:51 result was very flimsy. given especially that: