2PP Aggregate: 51.3 to Coalition (-0.2 since last week)
Coalition would win election "held now" with much reduced majority
In this issue:
Voting intention and aggregation
Leaderships: Turnbull Goes Negative
Metapoll Or Metaparasite?
New England
Polls Fail In Brisbane
Other Polling (Includes worst poll of the week)
Betting Watch
After one of those days constitution junkies love, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull may have just started a 103-day countdown to a July 2 double-dissolution. We won't know for sure until we see whether the recalled Senate goes to water over the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) legislation, but the early noises from the crossbench are defiant. Should the crossbench indeed refuse to pass the bills, we're looking at at least eight weeks in which the election date will be absolutely clear, but perhaps a few more. We can also expect a 53-day formal campaign. Long campaigns have been in disrepute since Bob Hawke bored the nation into liking Andrew Peacock in 1984, but it was not always thus. Menzies called a long campaign in 1958 and the experience didn't scare him off doing it again three years later. (See Malcolm Farnsworth's tabulation of formal campaign lengths).
The government enters this new phase of the leadup in a reasonable but not stellar polling position. A rapid plunge in its standing in February shows signs of levelling out short of actually gifting Labor the lead. However, there's a fair bit of variation in the individual poll results. This fortnight we've seen 2PP scores for the Coalition of 53 from Ipsos, 52 from ReachTEL, 51 from Newspoll, two 50s from Essential and 49.5 from Morgan. The 50.5-49.5 lead to Labor in Morgan was the first time Labor has led the 2PP in any of the 55 polls taken since the removal of the previous PM Tony Abbott. Morgan has tended to lean to the Coalition since Turnbull took over, to a recently reducing degree, but the evidence of this result has caused me to now treat Morgan as neutral on average. Perhaps it will soon return to its old ways and start again skewing to Labor.
Showing posts with label attribute polling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label attribute polling. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 23, 2016
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
Poll Roundup: Whole Lotta Nothing Going On
2PP Aggregate: 51.8 to Labor (unchanged for last two weeks)
Labor would probably win election held "right now", in minority or with small majority
Yep, it's a no-change fortnight! For the first time since the Abbott government was elected, my aggregate has shown exactly the same reading three Tuesdays in a row.
This week's polls were a 52:48 Newspoll, a 52:48 Essential and a 52:48 Morgan (by last-election preferences; 53-47 respondent-allocated). The Newspoll and Morgan had effectively identical primaries (41-37 in the Coalition's favour with 13 for the Greens) while the Essential gave Labor three more points and the Greens three fewer, making the 52% 2PP look a little stingy. (The usual explanations doubtless apply.) I am still adjusting Morgan by one point based on evidence of its skew throughout this term (I don't yet assume that its apparent loss of most of that skew in the past few months is permanent) and so I aggregated these polls as follows: 51.1 for Morgan, 52.1 for Newspoll and 52.3 for Essential. None of them did much by themselves, and between them they did nothing. Here's the smoothed tracking graph:
This week's results are consistent with the Budget driving a small gain to the Coalition a few weeks back, but they don't exactly prove the Budget was the cause either.
For those who follow betting markets, there's been a move to the Government in recent weeks and months, with the probabilities implied by punters moving from more or less 50-50 to about a 62% implied chance of the Coalition being re-elected.
Labor would probably win election held "right now", in minority or with small majority
Yep, it's a no-change fortnight! For the first time since the Abbott government was elected, my aggregate has shown exactly the same reading three Tuesdays in a row.
This week's polls were a 52:48 Newspoll, a 52:48 Essential and a 52:48 Morgan (by last-election preferences; 53-47 respondent-allocated). The Newspoll and Morgan had effectively identical primaries (41-37 in the Coalition's favour with 13 for the Greens) while the Essential gave Labor three more points and the Greens three fewer, making the 52% 2PP look a little stingy. (The usual explanations doubtless apply.) I am still adjusting Morgan by one point based on evidence of its skew throughout this term (I don't yet assume that its apparent loss of most of that skew in the past few months is permanent) and so I aggregated these polls as follows: 51.1 for Morgan, 52.1 for Newspoll and 52.3 for Essential. None of them did much by themselves, and between them they did nothing. Here's the smoothed tracking graph:
This week's results are consistent with the Budget driving a small gain to the Coalition a few weeks back, but they don't exactly prove the Budget was the cause either.
For those who follow betting markets, there's been a move to the Government in recent weeks and months, with the probabilities implied by punters moving from more or less 50-50 to about a 62% implied chance of the Coalition being re-elected.
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Poll Roundup: Terror Focus Improves Abbott's Ratings
2PP Aggregate: 51.5 to Labor (-0.4 on last week, very little change in past five weeks)
Election "held now" would be very close
This will be one of my longer fortnightly roundups, there is quite a lot to get through! I've decided to split the mass into two halves; this is the main part and the really wonky stuff (about aggregate methods, rounding, Newspoll black magic and such) is being split off into a separate Wonk Central supplement and released to mass critical excitement later tonight. I've made a small methods change to my aggregate, that will rarely if ever make more than 0.3 of a point difference and often make none at all. The change is documented on the methods page and all will be explained soon.
This week has seen a ramping up of anti-terrorist rhetoric and action centred on perceived threats from Islamist extremists connected to everybody's least favourite Sunni jihadists ISIL. Massive terror raids resulted in the arrest of a man accused (and entitled at this stage to the presumption of innocence) of conspiring to order the execution of a random non-believer, plus a few other charges. Security alert levels have been raised, military actions prepared, and a range of other measures (some of them contentious from a civil liberties viewpoint) introduced. There's even been some rhetoric from the PM about how Australians would have to sacrifice freedom for security, although polls this week suggest voters think we're sacrificing both, and like it.
Election "held now" would be very close
This will be one of my longer fortnightly roundups, there is quite a lot to get through! I've decided to split the mass into two halves; this is the main part and the really wonky stuff (about aggregate methods, rounding, Newspoll black magic and such) is being split off into a separate Wonk Central supplement and released to mass critical excitement later tonight. I've made a small methods change to my aggregate, that will rarely if ever make more than 0.3 of a point difference and often make none at all. The change is documented on the methods page and all will be explained soon.
This week has seen a ramping up of anti-terrorist rhetoric and action centred on perceived threats from Islamist extremists connected to everybody's least favourite Sunni jihadists ISIL. Massive terror raids resulted in the arrest of a man accused (and entitled at this stage to the presumption of innocence) of conspiring to order the execution of a random non-believer, plus a few other charges. Security alert levels have been raised, military actions prepared, and a range of other measures (some of them contentious from a civil liberties viewpoint) introduced. There's even been some rhetoric from the PM about how Australians would have to sacrifice freedom for security, although polls this week suggest voters think we're sacrificing both, and like it.
Saturday, March 8, 2014
ReachTEL: The Campaign Has Changed Nothing
ReachTEL: Liberal 47.4 Labor 23.6 Green 18.2 PUP 6.7 Other 4.1
Outcome if election was held now based on this poll: Liberal Majority (14-5-5-1 based on sum of individual breakdowns, though Labor would more likely get one more seat somewhere)
New aggregate of all state polls: Liberal 14 Labor 6 Green 4 PUP 1
My current forecast: Liberal 14 Labor 6 Green 4 PUP 1
In the three weeks since the last public opinion polling most of the formal 2014 state election campaign has gone by. People often expect events that happen during campaigns (such as campaign incidents or policy announcements) to affect the outcome, but the great majority don't have much impact. With the release of the most recent ReachTEL, taken just nine days from polling day and with prepoll voting already open, it doesn't look like this campaign period has offered any respite for a Labor government on the verge of being put out of its misery. Indeed, this poll is if anything a shade worse for the government than its predecessor (see ReachTEL: The PUP Surge Has Landed), which was also at the low end of Labor's recent form. Not so much because of the loss of a point of support (an insignificant difference), but because the distribution of votes between seats is even nastier.
Outcome if election was held now based on this poll: Liberal Majority (14-5-5-1 based on sum of individual breakdowns, though Labor would more likely get one more seat somewhere)
New aggregate of all state polls: Liberal 14 Labor 6 Green 4 PUP 1
My current forecast: Liberal 14 Labor 6 Green 4 PUP 1
In the three weeks since the last public opinion polling most of the formal 2014 state election campaign has gone by. People often expect events that happen during campaigns (such as campaign incidents or policy announcements) to affect the outcome, but the great majority don't have much impact. With the release of the most recent ReachTEL, taken just nine days from polling day and with prepoll voting already open, it doesn't look like this campaign period has offered any respite for a Labor government on the verge of being put out of its misery. Indeed, this poll is if anything a shade worse for the government than its predecessor (see ReachTEL: The PUP Surge Has Landed), which was also at the low end of Labor's recent form. Not so much because of the loss of a point of support (an insignificant difference), but because the distribution of votes between seats is even nastier.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Rogues, Recoveries and Irrelevant Portents
Admin note for Tas readers especially: this month I am running Not-A-Poll: Best Tasmanian Premier of the last 30 years.
Please vote (on right) if you have an opinion! Readers may be
surprised to see the Premier of one of Tasmania's least popular
governments ever (ie the current one) challenging for the lead, as well
as the big lead for the Labor premiers over the Liberal ones, but there
are actually quite a few reasons why this might occur. When the
not-a-poll is finished I'll post some comments about the exercise and
what it means. Of course, the results are not representative of the
general population - and that's even assuming nobody stacks the thing!
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Advance Summary
1. Following a very turbulent week in federal politics, this week's polls on average show a small move to the Coalition.
2. The Newspoll showing a result of 56:44 to the Coalition is unrepresentative and probably exceeds the real figure by at least 2 points.
3. The Newspoll reading is probably not, however, a "rogue poll".
4. Over-calling of supposed "rogue polls" is a very common problem in the online poll-watching community. This article provides many cautionary notes about use of the term "rogue" to describe a poll result.
5. The Government's polling position is now worse than that of the Keating Government in 1992-3 was at the equivalent or any later stage.
6. There are possibly still as many as six cases of governments recovering from worse polling positions than Labor's current position (with the time to go until the election factored in), however in three of those cases the data are very limited and at least one of the others is probably an invalid comparison.
7. Claimed evidence that either the declaration of the election date well in advance, or the chosen election date itself, are bad portents for Labor is not valid.
8. This article concludes with some discussion of contradictory voter attitudes to the economy, which may be posing a major problem for Labor at the moment.
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Advance Summary
1. Following a very turbulent week in federal politics, this week's polls on average show a small move to the Coalition.
2. The Newspoll showing a result of 56:44 to the Coalition is unrepresentative and probably exceeds the real figure by at least 2 points.
3. The Newspoll reading is probably not, however, a "rogue poll".
4. Over-calling of supposed "rogue polls" is a very common problem in the online poll-watching community. This article provides many cautionary notes about use of the term "rogue" to describe a poll result.
5. The Government's polling position is now worse than that of the Keating Government in 1992-3 was at the equivalent or any later stage.
6. There are possibly still as many as six cases of governments recovering from worse polling positions than Labor's current position (with the time to go until the election factored in), however in three of those cases the data are very limited and at least one of the others is probably an invalid comparison.
7. Claimed evidence that either the declaration of the election date well in advance, or the chosen election date itself, are bad portents for Labor is not valid.
8. This article concludes with some discussion of contradictory voter attitudes to the economy, which may be posing a major problem for Labor at the moment.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Attitudes To Attributes (Not Great News For The Greens)
Advance summary
1. Recent polling on voter views of the importance of a list of issues, and which parties are best trusted on those issues, shows that many voters regard a range of parties as having policy strengths in different areas, rather than assuming their preferred party is always right.
2. Party trust scores, when weighted by the perceived importance of issues, produce surprisingly accurate predictions of party vote share over the last two and a half years.
3. The Greens' current mediocre polling position, especially compared to before the 2010 election, is probably connected with the party neither "owning" key issues as strongly as it used to, nor being able to convince voters that those issues are important.
1. Recent polling on voter views of the importance of a list of issues, and which parties are best trusted on those issues, shows that many voters regard a range of parties as having policy strengths in different areas, rather than assuming their preferred party is always right.
2. Party trust scores, when weighted by the perceived importance of issues, produce surprisingly accurate predictions of party vote share over the last two and a half years.
3. The Greens' current mediocre polling position, especially compared to before the 2010 election, is probably connected with the party neither "owning" key issues as strongly as it used to, nor being able to convince voters that those issues are important.
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