Victoria: Final Results, Poll Performance And 2PP Post-Election Pendulum

With results well and truly finalised here's a final wrap-up of various matters from the Victorian election.  This article includes a 2PP pendulum.  I've decided to publish one as a complement to Antony's 2PP pendulum here and I've done so for a reason.  In coverage of the Queensland election it's been common to see estimates of seat gains that are read off non-2PP pendulums, without considering who the seat contests are between.  I can't stop people wrongly concluding that a smallish swing to the Liberals will win them Richmond and Brunswick, but at least it won't be my fault.

I already covered a number of big-picture issues about the Victorian result in my day-after wrap.  This article covers all those aspects that depend on the final results.

Final vote share results

The final primaries for the Lower House were Coalition 41.99%, Labor 38.10, Green 11.48, Others 8.43.  By 2013 election preferences, this would have been a 2PP result of only about 50.7% to Labor, but the 2PP result ended up being 52%. (Officially, 51.99% - that 0.01 will matter a lot to some of those who betted on the 2PP range).

Many pollsters (including the final Newspoll, ReachTEL and Galaxy) got the 2PP more or less spot on (52) by last-election preferences in their final poll.  However as with the 2013 federal election this was a case of errors cancelling out: they had the Coalition primary too low but the preference flow to Labor strengthened markedly.  In all Labor went from getting about 64% of all third-party preferences to about 69.5%. (Ipsos respondents said they would gave Labor about 75%).

Victorian Election Postcount: Lower House

Seat Total ALP 47 L-NP 38 Green 2 Ind 1
(Green win of Prahran subject to recount)

This post (work in progress) will follow the remaining Lower House seats that are of interest.  In all of them the lead is currently substantial and I do not expect any of the leads to be overturned on late counting, but maybe one or two will.  The most interesting seat is the three-cornered contest in Prahran which has its own post (Postcount: Prahran).

Note that Pollbludger has some figures on number of remaining votes.

In the other seats there is probably a perception that large leads on Saturday night could be pulled down on post-poll counting given the vast number of prepolls and the tendency for postal voting to favour the conservatives.  The flaw in this logic is that many of the postals are already counted so on average the postcounts should be more similar to the main game than usual.  But we are already seeing some surprising differences to 2010, and also that the differences are varying by seat.

Victorian Election Postcount: Prahran

 

(Correct prediction posted to tallyroom.com.au . Notice date.)

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UNDECIDED SEAT: Prahran (Lib, 4.7%) 
SUMMARY: Contest between Clem Newton-Brown (Lib) and either Neil Pharaoh (ALP) or Sam Hibbins (Green)
RESULT:  Hibbins (Green) wins seat - awaiting formal declaration

This article followed the post-count in the undecided seat of Prahran, won by the Greens (subject to official confirmation) on preferences from third on primaries after eleven days of counting, including a recount.

The original (after reworking) article appears at the bottom of the post with updates scrolling to the top.  However, there was a surprise in the prepoll count - Labor did much better than projected on within electorate prepolls, which I'm told they targeted heavily - so much of the original modelling for questions 1 and 2 soon became irrelevant.  The modelling for question 3 turned out to be slightly pessimistic for the Greens compared to the reality.

The results of the three key questions, after recounting, are being reported unofficially as:

1. Does Pharaoh stay ahead of Hibbins?  Hibbins knocked out Pharaoh by 31 votes.

2. If the final count is Newton-Brown vs Pharaoh, who wins? Newton-Brown led by 25 based on the quick throw.  This margin remains to be confirmed (and is presently irrelevant.)

3. If the final count is Newton-Brown vs Hibbins, who wins?  Hibbins has won by 277 votes thus apparently winning the seat.

Assuming these results are now officially confirmed, Hibbins has won the seat for now.  It is possible that there will be a court challenge, but even if there is one Hibbins will be able to sit in parliament until such time as a court might decide otherwise.

The result is a major success for the Greens, who have unseated a Liberal in a single-seat electorate for the first time in any Australian state or federally, who have won both lower house seats they targeted, and who will hold more than one seat in an Australian parliament elected under a single-seat system for the first time.  Indeed, they have only previously won four seats in single-seat elections (one of them twice) and two of those wins were in by-elections.

Victorian Election Wrap: Federal Drag Strikes Again

Expected seat tally: ALP 47 L-NP 38 Green 1 Ind 1 (1 unclear)
Unclear seat: Prahran (Lib vs ALP vs Green)
Seats in minor doubt: Morwell (Nat leading ALP), South Barwon (Lib leading ALP), Bentleigh, Frankston (ALP leading Lib), Brunswick (ALP leading Green by large margin), Melbourne (Green leading ALP), Shepparton (Ind leading Nat by large margin)

Note: Following this article more serious doubts developed about Melbourne because of changes in vote totals (counting errors most likely).   The seat is now close but if 2010 patterns of non-booth voting are repeated the Greens will still win.  I've also put Shepparton in the "minor doubt" category because of the unusual nature of the campaign and the slim possibility the Independent candidate (now leading with 53.5%) will do very poorly on non ordinary votes.

I have a separate thread on Prahran.

Victorian Election Live Election Day Thread

SUMMARY 

SEATS APPARENTLY WON ALP 47 L-NP 38 GRN 1 IND 1 
(Seats included in tally with very low levels of doubt: Bentleigh,  Frankston (ALP),  Morwell (L-NP), Melbourne (Grn))
Seriously unclear seats (1):
Prahran (three-cornered, depending on exclusion order)

Labor has won the election
Summary last changed 12:45 pm

Victorian Election: Final Aggregate And Seat Model

 Live analysis here on a new thread from 6 pm on election night. 

2PP Aggregate using 2010 preferences: 51.7 to Labor
Polls point to highly likely but not certain ALP victory, general picture of modest swing and minimal to low seat turnover
Seat Projection: ALP 47 Coalition 41
(A very small number of these seats may be won by Greens or independents, but there is not enough objective evidence to back such wins.)

Going into the main voting day for the Victorian election, I have to say it's a bit different to elections I've devoted major modelling efforts to on this site (the 2013 federal election and this year's Tasmanian state election) in that there is still some room for doubt about who will win.  Although Labor has led in almost every poll in the last year and a bit, including 15 or 16 (depends how you count 'em) of the 17 polls released in the last six weeks, their lead is not much, and sitting-member effects left over from the last election make the deck a slightly unfriendly one.

The polls suggest that probably Labor will get home with a seat tally in the high 40s, but other still-plausible scenarios (in decreasing order of likelihood) are a fairly comfortable Labor win with around 50 seats (just maybe if the polls have herded a few more), a scraped and very lucky Coalition win, or some kind of tied or otherwise hung parliament.  Anything else (eg a Coalition win where they win the 2PP as well, or a really lopsided Labor win) would be a serious surprise.

Victorian Poll Roundup: Endless 52-48 Edition

2PP aggregate: 51.8 (-1.4) to ALP by last-election preferences (52.6 expected preferences)
Current seat projection based on aggregate: 48-40 to Labor

This is probably the second-last of my posts on Victorian polling prior to the main day of polling for the election on Saturday.  I will be out on a field trip in the day on Friday.  Another post is expected either overnight Friday or Saturday morning - once I am satisified we have the results of all the major polls we're going to get.   Then it will be on to the live coverage on Saturday night from 6 pm.  I cannot promise you fancy graphics or dancing swing charts but I hope my live blogging will be of some interest.

(Speaking of things of some interest concerning Victorian elections, a plug for Adam Carr's page on early Victorian elections 1851-1864!)

This week's polling

Lately we've had new state polls from Morgan (twice), Essential and Galaxy.  The first Morgan SMS poll taken from 21-24 Nov and with a sample size of 1152 produced a 52:48 2PP off primaries of 39.5 to the Coalition, 33.5 to Labor, 17.5 to the Greens and 9.5 to others.  This series had favoured the Greens by an average of at least five points compared to other pollsters (indeed 17.5 was its lowest reading for them so far), so it was hard to tell whether this result signified that trend waning slightly, or that it was actually a not so good sample for the party.  The series also clearly skews against the ALP compared to other pollsters.

Victorian Poll Roundup And Seat Betting Watch: Sandbelt Edition

2PP aggregate of recent Victorian state polling:  ALP leads 53.2-46.8

"Nowcast" seat estimate based on this 2PP: ALP 49 Coalition 39

It's taken a while for enough polling to build up to justify another Victorian pre-election roundup to follow last fortnight's, but that point has been reached with the belated release of results for the Fairfax-Ipsos poll taken last weekend.  Why it has taken the Age until Friday to get this data out there is anyone's guess, but at least we have it now.

If you followed the media comments about the unreliable mutterings of both parties about internal polling and the like, you'd have seen claims from both sides that things have tightened up through this week.  These claims always need to be treated with caution, since the side in the lead has an incentive to make them to discourage complacency, while the side trailing has an incentive to make them to discourage despair.   They might turn out to be true, but with no data fresher than Monday, we'll need to wait for more polling to be sure.

Based on where things stood early this week, there would have to be a lot of improvement to make a serious difference to the picture of a very likely change of government.  At that stage the gap was, if anything, widening slightly, but the broader picture is a lack of any major change for quite a while. 

Victorian State Election: Late October Polls And Seat Model

2PP aggregate of recent Victorian state polling:  ALP leads 52.6-47.4

"Nowcast" seat estimate based on this 2PP: ALP 48 Coalition 40

After a week buried deep in the Hobart City Council count I've finally found time to get stuck into the Victorian state election.  This thread starts with a roundup of recent polling, then goes into the early version of a seat-probability model similar to my one that picked 93% of seats correctly at the 2013 federal election.  The federal election version was whipped up very quickly in the shadows of the post; I have much more time to work on this one so it will probably do much worse.

The new polls

Six polls have been released in the last week or so, by a range of methods.  Two of them have had suspiciously high Green votes.  For the Morgan SMS poll it also had a suspiciously high Green vote in late September, so I'll assume this is systematic.  The Ipsos poll is the first of its kind, and their federal poll published today hasn't shown any skew to the Greens, so I'm assuming for now that their methods are no more prone to green skew than the four more established pollsters.  Anyway in aggregating these six polls at the bottom I've pinged the Greens 0.9 of a point in every poll except Morgan SMS, for which I've applied a very lenient deduction of four.  For more information on this decision see my new blog header.