How Did The Super Saturday Seat Polls Go?

With final results for the Super Saturday by-elections now available, including preference flows, it is worthwhile reviewing the accuracy of the seat polling for these by-elections.  Recently I have posted a few times here about seat polling - see Is Seat Polling Utterly Useless? and Why Is Seat Polling So Inaccurate?  The preferencing results of the Longman by-election are also of special interest to the debate about Newspoll preferences, as the first test of Newspoll's changed methods at any federal election.

We can put that one to bed right away: the preference flow from One Nation to the Coalition in Longman was a massive 67.74%.  This should not be taken as a sign of quite how strongly One Nation preferences would flow nationally, since they did preference the LNP in this seat but would not necessarily do so in every seat, and since LNP preferences flowed strongly to One Nation in the area at the Queensland election even in the seat where the party preferenced Labor.  But it does show that it is entirely reasonable for pollsters to assume that 2016-election preferences can't be trusted in the case of One Nation.

Super Saturday By-Elections Live And Postcount

BRADDON: CALLED Keay (ALP) retain
LONGMAN: CALLED Lamb (ALP) retain
MAYO: CALLED Sharkie (CA) retain
FREMANTLE: CALLED Wilson (ALP) retain
PERTH: CALLED Gorman (ALP) is new MP, retaining seat
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Braddon Swings

Here is a graph showing the relationship between the vote for the independent Craig Garland and the 2PP swing in Braddon:

You can see maps of the Garland vote and the 2PP swing over at The Tally Room.  The Liberals did very well on 2PP swing on the West Coast, were smashed on King Island and the west end of the coast (Wynyard - Stanley area where fishing is important) and got small swings in Ulverstone and Devonport-Latrobe.

The Expected "Super Saturday" By-Elections

Today's four resignations from the House of Representatives following the Section 44 disqualification of Labor Senator Katy Gallagher is expected to trigger a day of at least five by-elections, or at least a cluster of by-elections close to each other.  The following seats are affected:

Braddon, TAS (ALP, 2.2%)
Fremantle, WA (ALP, 7.5%)
Longman, QLD (ALP, 0.8%)
Mayo, SA (Centre Alliance vs Lib, 5.0%; Lib vs ALP 5.4%)
Perth, WA (ALP, 3.3%) 

See The Tally Room for detailed histories of these seats.  Also see the Poll Bludger thread for Perth.  All seats will be contested on the old boundaries, irrespective of redistributions.

It's possible that given the strictness of the High Court's ruling, other MPs may come under pressure to resign or be referred to the High Court (note: as of Friday the media are suddenly all over the Anne Aly story, which has been known via Jeremy Gans' Twitter comments for months), though the Coalition may not be in any great hurry to hunt down any more and invite more scrutiny of its own remaining unclear cases.  The by-elections are not just a nuisance for Labor, but also for the Coalition, which must either throw resources into contesting them seriously or else chicken out and leave voters wondering what all the fuss was about.

Australia has never had a day with five federal by-elections before, so it would be quite a novelty.  Three were held on the same day in 1981 and 1984.  In 1994 four were held across three weekends following a cluster of resignations, but the resignations came on different days.  At state level, NSW has often held multiple by-elections on the same day.

Seat Betting Watch: The Last Few Days

I'll start a final poll roundup tonight with the release of Ipsos, and try to make a few coherent general comments about the state of the campaign then.  This separate piece continues my monitoring of the seat betting markets, because the predictiveness of betting markets is frequently a matter of discussion.  Seat betting markets performed indifferently at the 2013 election and it will be interesting to see if they do better this time around.  This election lacks the major challenge of the 2013 poll (a massive difference between national polling and seat polling) but there are new problems to make things challenging for people betting on the outcomes.  These include the large number of unpredictable minor-party challenges (especially in South Australia) and also the unclear impact of the Xenophon Team on the preference situation.

I had some interesting insight into the shallowness of some of the specialty betting markets (2PP, clean sweeps and so on) when someone contacted me about some of the odds and then threw money at them, resulting in substantial and rapid changes.  It would be interesting to have some information about how many people are actually betting on some of these markets; in some cases it is probably not very many.

 This is how things line up on the seat betting markets at present.  A seat is considered close if both parties are at $3 or less on any market:

Loss (Coalition to Labor): Barton*, Paterson*
Close Loss (Coalition to Labor): Solomon, Dobell*,  Eden-Monaro,  Macarthur,  Capricornia, Burt, Petrie, Page, Lyons
Close Loss (Coalition to NXT): Mayo
Loss (PUP to Coalition): Fairfax
Tied: Cowan (split markets)

ALP Close Holds: Batman (vs Grn), Greenway, Chisholm
Coalition Close Holds: Banks,  Gilmore, Macquarie, Cowper (vs IND), Brisbane, Flynn, Forde, Grey (vs NXT), Barker (vs NXT),  Hindmarsh, Braddon, Bass, Deakin, Dunkley, Hasluck, Swan

In the last week Lyons has moved into the Labor pile following a 45:55 ReachTEL (though on the public evidence I think Labor are still too short here).  NXT has become the favourite in Mayo and Cowan has moved to the fence.  Mark the Ballot has great detailed tracking of the Sportsbet odds; I can add that Batman has briefly been tied during the last week but hasn't stayed there for long.

Here's the colour-coded tracker:

Key to colours:

Dark blue - Coalition favoured in all markets
Light blue - Coalition favoured in some markets, tied in others
Grey - seat tied, or different favourites in different markets
Pink - Labor favoured in some markets, tied in others
Red - Labor favoured in all markets
Dark green - Green favoured in all markets
Orange - NXT favoured in all markets

While the Coalition has lost one net seat in which it is favourite, it has regained ground on my "close seat adjusted" total.  Mark the Ballot's graph of the sum of seat probabilities as perceived by the market (with longshots chopped out) shows Labor shedding about five seats over the past few weeks.  All this is consistent with the markets gradually adjusting to a small shift in national polls that began in the second week of June.

The various totals markets are expecting about the same thing.  The William Hill banded seat market expects 79 seats with 76-80 the shortest range.  The William Hill exact seat market expects 77.6 seats on average with 79-80 seats as joint favourites at $12.  Oddly the Centrebet exact seat market has 77 seats favourite at just $3.50 (and if you think Labor will win outright and can get the margin right, that's good for at least $100) - the average there comes to 78.3.  The Sportsbet 2PP market has finally fallen into line with other markets with 50-51 now the favourite range.

At the last election we saw a lot of media reporting of Monte Carlo models where people ran, say, 10000 runs of the seat-betting probabilities in the different seats and on that basis concluded that Labor had no chance of winning majority government. The same exercise gives the same result this time. I haven't seen so much of that this time around but I should point out that while such exercises are fun they provide no useful information about what markets are thinking, or indeed about anything at all.

The reason is that they depend on the assumption that seat probabilities are independent, so that, for instance, the Coalition winning Lindsay doesn't change the Coalition's chance of winning Banks.  But in reality if you know the Coalition wins a given seat, this makes it more likely that its national 2PP is good, and hence increases the chance of it winning others.  If there is a national swing or a national polling error then this changes the correct odds in almost every seat, and punters know there is a chance of this.  Such models don't even show that the chance of one side winning is such-and-such if there isn't a national swing in the last few days (or a polling error), because if we knew we had the 2PP right we could be far more confident about more seats.  The way to determine what markets "think" the seat tally will be, and with what spread of possible outcomes, is to look at markets that are directly about seat tallies.

Seat Poll Model

My seat poll model (limited to objective information as it is, but with some subjective calls regarding weightings) currently largely agrees with the betting markets - it expects about 78 Coalition seat wins based on current national polling.  If the national polling changes then so does the seat estimate.  It has Labor favourites in the following Coalition seats: Barton, Paterson, Dobell, Petrie, Capricornia, Lyons, Solomon, Cowan (which it thinks is extremely shaky, and so do the markets and so do I) and Burt.  It disagrees mildly with the markets about Macarthur (where it has a 53% Coalition retain chance assuming no further 2PP change) and Eden-Monaro and Page (neither of which have had a neutral seat poll; if I add commissioned seat polls then both flip.)  Although it has the Coalition favourite in 83 seats, I am currently overriding Mayo based on seat-polls combined with my NXT modelling attempts.  Of the rest it thinks there are enough shaky Coalition seats for the Coalition to be expected to lose about five of the seats in which it is favourite, and to pick up about one seat from Labor.  However the shortage of data about ALP seats is so severe that the model cannot single out any specific seat with a very high chance of going against the flow.  It just says it will probably happen somewhere.

The problem with the national polling my model is based on is that yet again it is all several days old.  If things have changed in the final week we will not get a hint until tonight, and will then need more polls to confirm, by which time it will all be over!

Updates or extra detail, especially re notable betting movements (if any) will be added to this site tomorrow and tomorrow night.  If you see a seat "flip" in betting, feel free to let me know.

Updates:

Split Market In Batman: As of 4 pm Friday Bhathal (Green) has become favourite in Batman on at least one market but not yet all of them.  Also the seat of Melbourne Ports is tightening with the Liberals in to $4.50 from $7 a few days ago.  (The problem in Melbourne Ports is that Michael Danby is being targeted by the Greens, who could push him into third, at which point they might struggle to get enough preferences given Danby's anti-Green stance.)

Libs Favourite In Cowan: Betting markets now favour Liberal Luke Simpkins in Cowan, making the Coalition favourite in 80 seats.

Murray: I've pretty much ignored this intra-Coalition contest but the Nationals have hit the lead.

Cowper Flips: As noted in comments, Cowper has flipped and Rob Oakeshott is favourite at $1.75 Sportsbet $1.65 Crownbet while William Hill have pulled the market on it.  That means the current list of seat favourites has Coalition 79 Labor 64 and Others 7.

Final (2am election day):

Loss (Coalition to Labor): Barton*, Paterson*, Dobell, Solomon
Close Loss (Coalition to Labor): Eden-Monaro,  Macarthur,  Capricornia, Burt, Petrie, Page, Lyons
Close Loss (Coalition to NXT): Mayo
Close Loss (Coalition to IND): Cowper
Loss (PUP to Coalition): Fairfax
Tied (ALP vs Green): Batman (split markets)

ALP Close Holds:  Greenway, Chisholm
Coalition Close Holds: Robertson, Gilmore, Macquarie, Brisbane,  Grey (vs NXT), Barker (vs NXT),  Hindmarsh, Braddon, Cowan

Key to colours:

Dark blue - Coalition favoured in all markets
Light blue - Coalition favoured in some markets, tied in others
Grey - seat tied, or different favourites in different markets
Pink - Labor favoured in some markets, tied in others
Red - Labor favoured in all markets
Dark green - Green favoured in all markets
Orange - NXT favoured in all markets
Purple - Ind favoured in all markets

Total of favourites: Coalition 79 Labor 64.5 Green 1.5 Ind 3 NXT 1 KAP 1 
Close seat adjusted: Coalition 79.6 Labor 63.6 Green 1.5 Ind 2.7 NXT 1.6 KAP 1

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.

Rolling Poll Roundup: ReachTEL vs The Rest?

2PP Aggregate: 50.3 to Coalition (ended last week at 50.6, week before 50.3)

Seat projection for this 2PP: probable Coalition majority (estimated 77-67-6)
(at time of starting this rolling roundup, aggregate was 50.7)

2PP aggregate tracking graph.  Last updated 21 June

As foreshadowed at the end of the previous session I've decided to put out a rolling poll roundup thread to cover the time from the new polls out on Friday night until at least the expected release of Essential on Tuesday.  Updates will be added at the bottom as new polls arrive.

As I write a difference between one poll, ReachTEL, and the other most recently released polls (Ipsos, Morgan and Essential) has developed.  ReachTEL had the Coalition at 50-50 2PP last week and 51-49 this week, using respondent allocated preferences, but if last election preferences are used both polls come out to about 52-48 to Coalition.  Meanwhile Ipsos, Morgan and Essential have all issued headline rates of 51:49 to Labor.  ReachTEL had the Coalition primary on 42.7 last week and 43.5 this week while Ipsos had it on 39 and Essential on 41.  We're still looking for Morgan's primary results and expect to find them somewhere between the black box of MH-370 and the sign that reads "Beware of the Leopard", but the Coalition was probably on 40 or less with them too.

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.)

Poll Roundup And Seat Betting Watch: Fear Of A Hung Parliament Edition

2PP Aggregate: 50.2 to Labor (unchanged)
Seat projection for this 2PP: probable narrow Coalition win, not necessarily with majority (estimate 76-69-5)

As usual, this roundup is quite long so feel free to just read whichever bits interest you.

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It may as well be a recorded message: for the eighth (!) week in a row national 2PP voting intention has been around 50:50 and there has been no significant movement in the 2PP at all.  Excitable noises are made about moves of 1-2 points this way or the other in this poll or the other (typically by the media those polls are associated with) but it is all meaningless babble as nothing has actually happened.

This week Newspoll came out at 50:50 following four weeks of 51:49 to Labor.  Ipsos, which has tended to lean slightly to the Coalition but is bouncy because of its smaller sample size than other pollsters (and lack of artificial bounce-retardants, I suspect) raised the odd eyebrow with a 51:49 to Labor (by both kinds of preferences).  Essential went to 50:50 after being 51:49 to Coalition last week and ReachTEL went to 50:50 as well.  The two-point move in ReachTEL was mostly caused by volatility in their respondent-preference sampling; by last-election preferences the Coalition improved by only 0.7 points.

How Many Lower House Seats Can The Xenophon Team Win?

Note: For links to updated analysis re NXT written since this article, scroll to the bottom.

I have had a fair few questions about the Nick Xenophon Team (NXT) and their seat prospects for the Lower House in South Australia, because my seat projection nationwide still shows only four seats for Others.  This rather dry and mathsy piece (about Wonk Factor 3/5) explains my initial attempts to model what sort of vote NXT needs in South Australia, all else being equal, to win one or more of the 11 Lower House seats in the state.  These are very broad-brush attempts that don't take account of candidate factors, because until there is specific seat-polling we don't know anything objectively about how well (or badly) specific NXT candidates are going to campaign or be regarded.  Comments based on detailed local knowledge are welcome.

In summary, I estimate that NXT probably need a statewide vote in the very high teens to win seats.  Once they get well over 20 they start to win multiple seats, and something in the mid-20s could result in spectacular seat gains that would make a national hung parliament quite likely.  However there's no reason yet to believe those higher votes will actually happen, based on what little current public polling of the NXT vote exists.