Upper Hunter By-Election Live And Post-Count

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UPPER HUNTER (National, 2.6%)

By-election caused by resignation of Michael Johnsen

2019 primary votes Nat 34.0 Labor 28.6 SFF 22.0 Greens 4.8 LDP 4.4 SA 2.2 AJP 2 CDP 1.9  

Seat called win to Nationals at 8:24 pm Saturday (final swing to Nats 3.26%)

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Saturday: Final 2PP 55.82 to Nationals (+3.26)

Monday: 2PP now at 55.7 after a strong performance for the Nats on initial postals more than cancelled out a comparatively weak performance on iVotes.  

Sunday 8:00 Good performances in the other prepolls have the Nats up to 55.4 now.  Still no sign of the iVotes.  

Sunday 2:20 Muswellbrook prepoll has come in dropping the live 2PP to 54.5.

Sunday 1:10 The 2PP in the live count is now sitting at 56.8.  Labor has stopped the rot in a couple of prepolls today and the 2PP will come down when Muswellbrook prepoll is added.  My projection has dropped to 54.6 but I believe that's on the low side.   Still no sign of the iVotes but I believe they're coming today.  

What Might 2PP Voting Intention Have Really Looked Like In The Last Federal Term?

(An update was added to this article on 2 July 2020 - scroll down.  The original text has not been revised.)

The 2016-2019 parliament saw Australia's worst failure of national opinion polling since the early 1980s, a failure that was not just a combination of normal errors and a reasonably close election.  Aggregated polling had the Coalition behind for the entire term, at no stage better than 49% two-party preferred, and yet the Coalition won with 51.53% of the two-party preferred vote.

The view that the polls were in fact right all along but voters changed their minds at the last moment (either on election day, or on whatever day each elector voted) fails every test of evidence that it can be put to.  The difference between voting intention for voters voting before election day and on election day is similar to past elections, and if anything slightly stronger for the Coalition.  There was no evidence in polling of change in voting intention through the final weeks, as would have been expected as voters who had already voted reported back their behaviour if the polls were at all times accurately capturing the intentions of the person being polled.  Also if those who had already voted had shifted towards the Coalition as they made their final decisions while those who had yet to vote were yet to do so, there would have been polling gaps of several points between those who had already voted and those yet to do so; this was not the case in the released evidence either.  

2018 Ehrlich Awards For Wrong Predictions

"Labor Senator Murray Watt says Barnaby Joyce shouldn't be Acting PM. Who the hell is Murray Watt? Barnaby will be Acting PM next week. Murray should worry about acting as a real Senator. Like see actual constituents & be relevant. At the moment its Watt by name, who by nature."

George Christensen kicks off this year's Ehrlich Awards for Wrong Predictions with the above piece of banter dated 15 February.  In fact, Barnaby Joyce took leave for the week following the comment, and was not Acting PM, and soon after stood down as Nationals leader and Deputy PM as well.  This one sets the tone for a year in which a common theme was Coalition MPs or sympathisers expecting that pretty much anything would go right for their side of politics.  I'd include more left-wing failed predictions for balance, but this year I just haven't seen that many.  Feel free to add more examples I have missed in comments.

Wentworth Live: Majority On The Line Again (Plus Post-Count)

WENTWORTH (Lib vs ALP 17.8%)

Dave Sharma (Lib) vs Kerryn Phelps (IND) (16 candidates total)

GAIN by Phelps (IND) - margin will exceed 51:49

Government to lose majority and seat held almost continuously since Federation.

The swings involved, while among the largest, are not an all-time record of any kind. (Not even if you discount Wills 1992)

Oh Yes We Do Have Strategic Voting In Australia (Sometimes)

On Wednesday Alex Turnbull, who has been campaigning for voters to evict the Liberal Party from his father's former seat of Wentworth, switched his support from Labor to independent Kerryn Phelps on strategic grounds.  Amusingly, Turnbull jnr justified his support by reference to a popular American text called "Gaming the Vote" by William Poundstone, and posted a colourful excerpt explaining how the squeezing out of a centrist candidate who finishes in third places can lead to "unpalatable, Wizard-or-Lizard dilemmas".  After Clinton-vs-Trump, or even the utter farce that has been the present term of Australian parliament, wizards and lizards are both sounding pretty good at the moment.

The idea here is very simple: if Kerryn Phelps makes the final two she is more likely to beat Dave Sharma (Lib) on preferences from Labor (which will include some votes originally for the Greens and minor candidates), than Tim Murray (Labor) is to beat Sharma on Phelps' preferences should he make the final two.  Phelps is (mostly) seen as the more centrist candidate in an electorate that has never elected a Labor MP.  There will be voters who want to send a protest vote against the Liberals for disposing of that other Turnbull or whatever other reason, but who cannot bring themselves to vote Labor.

Poll Roundup: The Current Polls Aren't All That Meaningful

2PP Aggregate: 54.2 to Labor (-0.6 since last week) by 2016 election preferences
53.6 to Labor with One Nation preference adjustment 
Labor would win election "held now" with a large majority
(scores and text, but not graph, updated for Essential)

This week Newspoll, which has so far produced the worst readings for the Coalition since Malcolm Turnbull was replaced by Scott Morrison, came down two points on the two-party preferred vote from 56-44 to Labor to 54-46.  Taking into account the primary votes, the Coalition's gain was probably slightly greater.  Indeed this Newspoll had a slightly smaller gap (0.7 points) between the expected last-election preferences off the primaries and the published 2PP with Newspoll's adjustments of One Nation preferences than has usually been the case lately.

Australia - So What The Bloody Hell Was That?

For the fourth term in a row, the Australian Prime Minister following the previous election has failed to survive the term without being removed by their own party.  This is quite a streak given that in the previous 41 terms only two PMs have been deposed in the same way.   However this week's removal of Malcolm Turnbull has had a novel outcome, with the PM replaced not by his initial challenger Peter Dutton, but by a supporter, Scott Morrison.

Among the many takes that I think needs more careful analysis is the claim that Dutton failed to become Prime Minister just because that side of his coup attempt was tactically botched.  For sure, the Dutton camp frequently seemed to have a bad grasp of both numbers and tactics, whinged when faced with a reasonable request to prove support for another meeting so soon after the first, and were not helped by their man's recycled 17-year-old ALP thought-bubble of removing the GST from electricity.  Dutton's erratic demeanour didn't help either.  But I think there has been too much attention on how badly the Dutton plotters played their hand and too little on it being a weak hand to begin with.  It was a weak hand on two fronts: parliamentary stability and potential electoral impact.  

Spill!

(This article will serve as rolling coverage of spill-related polling and other items.)

Tuesday morning

It's on! Turnbull vs Dutton.  Unfortunately because they are already in the party room, we don't get the wonderful drama of retinues of supporters walking the corridors behind their leader and so on.

Turnbull has defeated Dutton 48-35 but generally a margin that small is not sufficient to ward off a future challenge, which in this case could well happen soon.

Julie Bishop has been retained unopposed as Deputy Leader.

It is worth bearing in mind that with the exception of Malcolm Fraser (who was unsuccessfully challenged by Andrew Peacock) no Prime Minister who has faced a spill has remained in the job until the next election.  (Fraser lost).  Other PMs who have been challenged have all failed to make it to the next election: Gorton, Hawke, Rudd, Gillard and Abbott.  In four of these five cases it took two goes to get rid of the incumbent (it is little-known that Gorton was unsuccessfully challenged after winning the 1969 election with a disappointing margin).

Poll Roundup: Here We Go Again?

2PP Aggregate: 52.8 to Labor (+1.2 since last week) by last election preferences
52.2 to Labor with One Nation adjustment
Labor would comfortably win election held "right now"

That escalated quickly ...

Last night's Ipsos poll has produced a big blowout in my polling aggregate, wiping out all the Coalition's gains since June. However, Labor had already made modest gains in the wake of the Super Saturday results even before that.

Normally I put out a Poll Roundup every second Newspoll.  Last week's Newspoll had some points well worthy of comment so I was considering bringing this one forward (but got distracted by another issue).  Now with this extreme Ipsos result hitting the stands, I think it's worthwhile going one week early - especially with the noises being made in media and a feeling about that leadership problems could blow up into a challenge quickly.  Whether or not that happens, at the least we have another round of serious leadership speculation, and even if the Ipsos was twaddle it will probably turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Events have developed quickly, with the PM shelving emissions targets in the National Energy Guarantee on Monday followed by news of possible Section 44 issues for Peter Dutton, which it seems the Dutton backers are intent on ignoring.  As I write the word is that Dutton backers think they have enough support and are deciding whether to go right away or wait until September.  In the past these things have often come to a head very quickly.

Poll Roundup: National Narrowing As Super Saturday Approaches

2PP Aggregate (2016 Preferences): 51.7% to ALP (-0.5 since last week, -1 in six weeks)
With One Nation preference adjustment 51.1% to ALP
Closest position since October 2016
Labor would probably still win election "held now" but it would be close

Even psephologists have trouble with counting to big numbers sometimes. Like two.  Normally I release a new post in this series every second Newspoll week, but two weeks ago on Newspoll Monday I had an inconvenient distraction.  By the time I'd got through that and a couple of days of work my mind was so much elsewhere that I had forgotten it was time for another Poll Roundup.

Anyway, another Newspoll week has come and gone and all the current streaks noted on my Newspoll records page have continued.  These streaks are: the Coalition for most 2PP losses in a row (now at 36), Malcolm Turnbull for most Better PM wins in a row (now 56), Bill Shorten for most negative netsats in a row for an Opposition Leader (now 69) and Malcolm Turnbull for the third-most negative netsats in a row for a PM (now 47, and he has overtaken Julia Gillard for second place for longest stay in negativeland by time.)

Poll Roundup: Unwanted Records On Both Sides

2PP Aggregate: 52.3 to Labor (last-election preferences) 
51.8 with One Nation adjustment 
Coalition has improved 1.2 points in last eight weeks and now in best position since late 2016
However Labor would still almost certainly win election "held now"

It's been a little while since the last federal poll roundup (highlighting the major issue of Newspoll preferencing changes); I meant to do one in Budget week but was simply too busy with other things.  In the last five weeks the Turnbull government has kept the modest improvements in national polling that it made during April, but there has not been clear evidence of anything more.  Despite a lot of media excitement about the possibility of a quick election off the back of some possible success in the Super Saturday by-elections on July 28, we are so far not seeing anything in aggregated polling to get so excited about.

The recent national polls have been:

* Two Newspolls with headline figures of 51-49 then 52-48 to Labor.  As the previous article notes there has now been official confirmation that Newspoll is using a preference distribution for One Nation that is derived from recent state elections.  My aggregate's headline figure uses last-election preferences, and on that basis I aggregated these at 52.1 and 52.9 to Labor respectively.  The 51-49, as with the previous 51-49, was off primaries that would have normally come out to 52.4 by last-election preferences, but the fact that the published 2PP was 51 again suggested something a bit closer.  (An alternative view is that Newspoll might have changed methods twice, but we can't conclude that reliably off just two polls if so.  Also, this week's difference between the two methods was "only" 0.9).

Newspoll Number 30: Rolling Comments

"The one thing that is clear about our current situation is the trajectory. We have lost 30 Newspolls in a row. It is clear that the people have made up their mind about Mr Abbott's leadership"

- Malcolm Turnbull, Sep 14, 2015

Normally I am now doing federal polling roundups every second Newspoll (here's the latest) but the event that is very likely to happen demands its own thread.  In polling history, this is something very novel - a Prime Minister who seems about to meet the same standard of polling failure that he used as a justification for removing his opponent.  Judge for yourself from the link above how central a justification it was, but I reckon it was more than an aside.

Once we have the Newspoll result I will update this article and there are likely to be comments on various claims that are made as a result.  One remarkably silly false claim circulating on social media is that Abbott's 30 Newspolls plus Turnbull's 30 Newspolls will equal 60 consecutive Newspoll losses.  Turnbull did not start losing every poll immediately; his losing streak commenced 21 polls in.

Poll Roundup: Number 29

2PP Aggregate: 53.3 to ALP (-0.3 since last week)
Labor would easily win election "held now"

This week's federal polling coverage was dominated by Malcolm Turnbull slipping another Newspoll closer to the dreaded number 30.  Although there may be minor signs of improvement, it would be highly surprising to see the Coalition's 2PP jump to 50% in two or three weeks' time.

Since the last poll roundup, we've had two Newspolls (both 53-47 for Labor), three Essentials (53-54-52 for Labor), and two ReachTELs, one in late February and one today.  The ReachTEL was 54-46 by respondent preferences, but I estimated 55.5-44.5 by last-election preferences, which made it the single worst poll of this government's term in my aggregate (though not by much).  The March ReachTEL was also 54-46 but in this case I got 54.2-45.8 as a last-election estimate.  Oh and there's also, to my great surprise, been a Morgan, and that gets a section of its own below.

Poll Roundup: Barnaby 1, "Momentum" 0

2PP Estimate By 2016 Preferences: 53.3 to ALP (same as end of last year)
With historical One Nation adjustment: 52.8 to ALP
Labor would win election "held now"

With six new federal polls released in 2018 so far it's time for another federal Poll Roundup, a series which I issue roughly every second Newspoll.  As noted in a piece I did about second-term Opposition Leaders, the year began with widespread predictions of a painful year for Opposition Leader Bill Shorten and many people reading a lasting Coalition recovery into, well, a single Newspoll really.  However it has taken the Coalition just two weeks to hit another speedbump in the form of a multi-faceted scandal involving Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce.  The scandal, involving both his relationship with a staffer and various arrangements arising from it, escalated into an exchange of insults between the Prime Minister and his Deputy late last week.

In all this Joyce's behaviour has been that of the ultimate entitled politician, who has even claimed that he himself would never comment on Liberal Party leadership matters when in fact he's been doing so, and frequently, for years. Some of Malcolm Turnbull's comments in response to Joyce's situation have agitated Joyce into retaliating and encouraged Tony Abbott supporters to do their usual thing.  However, the idea that Joyce's lack of moral standards and spectacular political hypocrisy should cause the Liberals to replace their own leader with someone better able to work with such a person is ridiculous.

2017 Ehrlich Awards For Wrong Predictions

Welcome to the sixth annual Ehrlich Awards for Wrong Predictions.  I have to say from the outset, what a right bunch of wallies we have lined up this year for your amusement.   Around the start of each year here I obtain and provide cheap gratification by outing the most amusingly, instructively or staggeringly foolish calls that I observe in or relating to the previous twelve months, in any field of interest to this site.  The Ehrlichs are named for Paul Ehrlich, who not only lightened his bank balance when losing his famous bet with Julian Simon, but also lightened his credibility by making poor excuses for his defeat.  For the groundrules see the first edition and for previous years click the Ehrlich Awards tab.  A fairly common theme this year involves statements that can be taken literally as simply false claims of fact, but that also imply certain predictions about what will or won't happen down the track (in an election post-count for example).

Poll Roundup: Citizenship Chaos Sends Government To New Term Low

2PP Aggregate: 54.2 to Labor (+1 point in a week) - highest reading of term
Labor would win election "held now" with a large margin
Government has lost majority (for now) with two MPs recontesting their seats in by-elections

This week we've seen a highly unusual event in Australian political history: a federal government has lost its majority partway through a term.  This last happened in 1931.  The one-term Scullin government began its term with a robust 46 seats out of 75, but a by-election loss and defections to the opposition UAP and the Lang Labor split saw it whittled down to 35, following which it collapsed before the year was out.  What has happened to the Turnbull government, so far, is much less dramatic - two of its seats are vacant pending by-elections, and the government will recover majority status if Barnaby Joyce is returned, although it would then lose it again if John Alexander is defeated.

However, as the Section 44 eligibility issues continue to unfold (with the tabling of required evidence by December 1 expected to be the next step), we could well see more by-elections early next year in some much more difficult government seats.  The prospect of the government slipping into permanent minority, or perhaps even losing enough seats that it can no longer govern, is a real one.  There may also be by-elections in Labor and crossbench seats, but no incumbent government has gained a seat from an opposition in a federal by-election since 1920 so there would not be too much optimism regarding chances of gaining seats there.  My legally unqualified view, incidentally, is that the "hesitators" (those who filed to renounce UK citizenship too late for the process to complete by the close of nominations) are in trouble.  The references in previous cases to the taking of all reasonable steps as sufficient refer to a context in which a member cannot reasonably renounce an overseas citizenship, not one in which a candidate was needlessly slow about it.

Not-A-Poll: Best Prime Minister Of The Last 45 Years - Round 2

PRIMARY VOTE LEADER FROM ROUND 1: Whitlam
EXCLUDED IN ROUND 1: Turnbull, Fraser
Rudd continues only because of irregular voting patterns for Abbott

Round 2 voting open in sidebar til 6 pm AEDST, 31 October

A month ago I started a multi-round Not-A-Poll to determine this site's visitors' choice for the title of Best Prime Minister of the Last 45 Years.  The idea is that each month the Prime Minister in last place is eliminated and the rest continue until someone gets over 50% and wins.  There are rules permitting multiple exclusions in certain cases, to speed up the process a bit.  Each round runs for a month, so you can vote for different candidates from round to round if you want to. Multiple voting is in theory banned and adjustments may be made if I detect it, but there will probably be a lot of low-level multiple voting I can't detect or prevent. Comments about the merits of the contestants are welcome.

Technical note: If you wish to vote on a mobile, switch to "View web version" at the bottom of an article.

Poll Roundup: The Clock Strikes Twenty

2PP Aggregate: 53.6 to ALP (+0.2 since last week)
Labor would easily win election held "right now"

This will be a rather brief Poll Roundup by my standards, because apart from same-sex marriage polling (covered in a separate rolling post) there isn't all that much around to see!  We're five weeks on from my previous roundup, and in terms of the prospect of the government recovering before the next election, that's another five weeks down the drain.  Predictively, that doesn't mean a lot, but it is bad news for one particular member of the Coalition: the PM.  He edges another two Newspolls closer to matching the metric of 30 consecutive Newspoll 2PP losses that he used to justify the removal of Tony Abbott.  Just ten to go ...

Precisely what happens if these ten are all lost and the Coalition are still down the tube nobody knows.  Would the whole "thirty Newspolls" thing take on a life of its own in public perception of Turnbull's fate, contributing to even worse Newspolls, or would it only be of interest to the beltway and political junkies, and shrugged off as irrelevant by everyone else?  For it to be game over the very same week, while logical and fair, would seem too obvious, too artificial.  These bad polls seem so set in, and the Galaxy-run Newspoll so remorseless, that it's hard to see just what would end it.  A personal triumph on same-sex marriage? Worth some bounce surely, but enough for 50-50 after such weakness on the issue? War with North Korea? Maybe, though whether the more likely mechanism there is a rally round the flag or Newspoll being hit by an errant missile meant for Guam is not clear either.

Not-A-Poll: Best Prime Minister Of The Last 45 Years

(Round 1 has closed.  For results see Round 2.)

Round 1

Now and then we see newspaper polls rating the best PMs of the last few decades, or in the case of one Essential poll last week, the best government of the last ten years.  John Howard is a persistent "winner" of the first class of polling, but I've always believed he has an unfair advantage.  He tends to get a very high share of the Liberal vote with other Liberal PMs hardly getting any, while the Labor vote tends to be split up more between Hawke, Keating, Whitlam, Rudd and Gillard.  For that reason it's not clear whether Howard would beat all the Labor PMs on a head-to-head basis, although it looks like he probably would.

I've decided to run a similar Not-A-Poll exercise here in the sidebar just for fun over a period of several months.  The basic rule is that we keep going eliminating one PM at a time (perhaps more) until someone has over 50% at the end of a month.  The more complicated rules are:

Poll Roundup: Newspoll Moves! It Is Alive! (includes same-sex marriage polling)

2PP: 53.5 to Labor (+0.3 since last week)
Labor would win an election "held now" with a large majority

Time for another roundup of the state of play in federal polling.  This week's exciting development was that Newspoll, after a record six consecutive 2PPs of 53-47 to Labor, finally moved by a whole point to 54-46!  I am especially excited by this because had this week's result been another 53-47, I was going to lead off with a mock Death Certificate, and now I do not have to.

This briefly took my aggregate to an equal term high 53.8 to ALP (I tweeted this as 53.9 but later found a very small error) but then Essential moved back a point the other way after two 54s, and the primaries in YouGov didn't do a lot, so I currently have it at 53.5 to ALP. That was the Coalition's winning lead in the 2013 election, and also just shy of what Labor had when Tony Abbott was removed.  

The strange 2PP results of YouGov continue to baffle - this week it has the Coalition with a 51-49 lead off primaries that would normally imply something like 53.1% to Labor.  I discussed this issue last time, and the average difference between YouGov's 2PPs and the last-election 2PPs for their primaries is now running at a massive 2.9 points.  As noted last time, it's possible that the current last-election 2PPs are overstating Labor's lead, especially because of One Nation issues, but it's highly unlikely that they're doing so by three points.  Much more detail on the YouGov mystery from William Bowe here.