Victorian Lower House 2022: Labor Well On Track Despite Federal Drag

Yesterday saw the release of the first Newspoll for Victorian state voting intention this year.  This is the first new public polling voting intention data for the state for over four months with the exception of a couple of Morgan SMS offerings, on which I can't place a lot of weight.  The release of a Newspoll with about three months til the election is a good time to launch my coverage of the Victorian lower house election, having not covered the Victorian lower house contest since the last Newspoll late last year.

The new Newspoll estimates Labor leading 56-44 (an effective 1.6% swing from the last election after accounting for the Liberals not contesting Richmond in 2018) off primary votes of Labor 41 Coalition 36 Greens 13 others 10.  These results are not wildly different to the 2018 election, with Labor down 1.9%, the Greens up 2.3% and the Coalition up negligibly.  For all the hype from some on the right about how hated he supposedly is, Daniel Andrews polls a rather strong +13 net rating (54-41) with the artist now known as Matt Guy on a not so flashy -17 (32-49).  A modest Better Premier lead for Andrews given the other scores and the way preferred leader scores skew to incumbents (51-34) does provide some support for the idea that Andrews is a polarising figure and the minority who dislike him tend to do so strongly.

Seat Model

What might this poll look like if realised on election day?  By uniform swing Labor would drop four of its 58 notional seats to the Liberals and Northcote (just) to the Greens, coming out just two down on its 2018 election result, but the uniform swing model is if anything potentially unkind to Labor's chances vs the Liberals in the 2PP seats.  There are two major reasons for this: firstly, personal vote effects from the 2018 massacre will make it hard for the Liberals to pick off Labor marginals, and secondly the Liberals have a lot of ultramarginals that are at risk from random variation unless they can get a more substantial swing.  They have nine seats on 1.5% or less (including occupied notional Labor seats) to Labor's four.  

Victoria 2018: Final Lower House Results, Poll Performance and 2PP Pendulum

LABOR 55 SEATS COALITION 27 GREEN 3 IND 3
There is no single method of calculating 2PP for this election.  The following are examples of possible figures:

57.57% to Labor (Uniform swing applied to Richmond - probably fairest method)
57.84% to Labor (Richmond treated as 100% to Labor)
57.30% to Labor (Richmond excluded)

With two-party results for all Lower House seats now available it's time to wrap up my Victorian election coverage for 2018, on a high because at least that's the one house where I can talk about the results without constantly losing my temper at the system.  The article again includes a 2PP pendulum.  While this will be of less use for the future than the 2014 one was, given that there is a major redistribution coming, I think it is still useful for looking at the results, and especially at whether the Coalition was lucky not to lose even more seats than it did.

2018 Victorian Postcount: Other Indie Challenges (Pascoe Vale, South-West Coast etc)

On this page - Pascoe Vale, South-West Coast, Geelong, Ovens Valley, Werribee, Mildura

Link to state tally and main postcount thread

Link to upper house coverage

I've already posted threads on the interesting post-counts in Morwell, Benambra and Melton.  There are more seats I could post threads of their own on but I shouldn't put too many on the front page!  This seat covers all remaining seats I am aware of where there are interesting issues involving independent candidates creating problems for either major party.  Often in election leadups this is spoken about as a factor but then most of the indie challenges fizzle.  In this case the Coalition's performance has been so bad that it has opened many doors to independents to either beat the Coalition on Labor preferences or beat Labor on Coalition preferences.  Suzanna Sheed has easily retained, Ali Cupper appears to have won Mildura (see below),  Russell Northe is in a fairly good looking position in Morwell, and there are a bunch of others who either can't be written off, or who can be written off but have come close.  Here we go then.  All seats will be updated from time to time unless I have already called them.

A Token Post About Modelling The 2018 Victorian Lower House

VICTORIA (ALP 45 COALITION 38 IND 3 GREEN 2)

Seat modelling on assumed 2PP of 53.4 to Labor currently gives estimate around ALP 47 Green 3-4 LNP 36 IND 1-2 
On current numbers Labor are very likely to win, but at some risk of doing so in minority

Contest badly lacks sufficient recent polling data so any modelling is unreliable

State opinion polling aint quite what it used to be.  At this stage of the 2014 Victorian state election, there had been twelve statewide voting intention polls by six different pollsters released in the previous two months.  This time it's four by either two or three (depending on how you treat Newspoll/Galaxy) and the most recent one was commissioned.  Over a million voters have voted already (including those whose votes are in the mail) and yet so far this month the only statewide poll we've had is a ReachTEL for the Victorian National Parks Association.  There may well be a flood of polling in the final days, but at this stage, those of us trying to predict what might occur have not a lot to work with.