Poll Roundup: Budget Does Nothing As Per Normal

2PP Aggregate 51.1 To ALP (2022 preferences) (-0.1 since end of last week)

With One Nation adjustment 50.5 to ALP
If polls are accurate, Labor would most likely win election "held now" (probably in minority but with a significant chance of majority)

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This was intended to be a rolling Budget week poll roundup but over the Budget poll release weekend I was in Melbourne and too busy to write much, so it will have to be a retro one instead.  I was in Melbourne for primarily non-election reasons, staying in the electorate of Deakin with trips to several surrounding electorates.  I didn't see quite as much electoral activity as I expected at this early stage, though while on a bus through Warrandyte I did happen to look out the window and see the Member for Menzies at a fair.  

It's becoming better known in media circles that the once much anticipated "budget bounce" in polling is an elusive beast that is seldom sighted outside Coalition government election years, and there was less speculation about it this year than usual.  My own aggregate has found very little movement in the post-Budget polls, and such overall movement as it has found (Labor losing 0.1% since the end of last week) is because of the way it is responding to Morgan's recent strong results for Labor.  

Rolling National Poll Roundup: 2022 Final Days

2PP Aggregate: 53.5 to Labor (-0.6 since last week) (not a prediction)
Cross-poll average of polls released in last week: 53.0 to Labor 
(Weighted for time only, no house effects or quality weightings)
If the normal range of polling to result relationships applies, Labor remains very likely to win, probably outright

Historically, Labor has underperformed when it has leads in final week polling

This article covers national polling since the update from mid last week and House of Reps federal polls will continue to be added until a final roundup which I intend to post overnight on Friday following the final Newspoll.  The aggregates and averages in the heading will be updated as new national polls come out. (Ipsos is expected, I am not sure if there will be another Morgan, while the Resolve was described as "final" by Latika Bourke.)  I aim to issue a seat polling and seat betting roundup tomorrow, and Senate polling will soon be updated on my Senate prospects page. 

In the last two days three polls have pointed to some narrowing in Labor's lead, but all this has done so far is put Labor back in about the same position as it was in after the gaffe-ridden opening week and a half, reversing minor gains since.  All four polls out this week have shown smaller leads for Labor than their previous offerings, but only in the case of Resolve is the change substantial, and Resolve is hard to take completely seriously on account of its forced-choice methods and overly high Green vote.  

2021 Federal Polling Year In Review

 At the end of each year I release a review of federal polling results for the year.  See the 2020 edition here, or click the "annual poll review" tab for articles back to 2014. 

How many polls?

Again the business of counting poll results for 2021 has been complicated by Morgan releasing eight 2PPs as dots on a graph only, and by not yet having anything from Essential since mid-November. (Essential drops its voting intention results in a batch every three months though has said it will be releasing them faster as the election approaches).  

This year saw 16 federal Newspolls released, tying 2020 as the sparsest year since 1991.  Essential has so far released 23, with probably one more to come.  Morgan released 15 as full poll reports, plus another eight that have so far appeared solely as dots on a graph.  New player Resolve Strategic graced us with eight.  That's a total of 62 fully released and eight as 2PPs only, putting us up again to around a level of poll frequency last seen in 2018, but well below the years before.  

2021 Tasmanian State Election Guide: Main Page

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Header added 2 May: The election has been run and the Liberals are the largest party but it remains to be determined for sure whether they have a majority.  

Postcount threads are being unrolled:

Clark 

Windermere and Derwent

Bass

Braddon

Franklin (zzzzz)

Lyons

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Welcome to the main page for my 2021 Tasmanian state election coverage.  This page will carry links to all the other articles about the election that I write prior to the close of polling, and will contain general big-picture stuff and links to all the specialised articles (once these are written).  It will be updated very frequently.  Each electorate has its own guide page.  Note that these are my own guides and I reserve the right to inject flippant and subjective comments whenever I feel like it; if you do not like this, write your own.

2020 Federal Polling Year In Review

 At this time I normally release a review of the year in federal polling that, among other things, states the number of federal polls released that year.  See the 2019 review here. Things have got so weird in Essentialville and Morganland that for 2020 I can only report on how many have been released so far (since others with 2020 data are likely to belatedly appear next year), and in both cases, "released" becomes a stretch in the case of 2PP readings that have no public existence beyond a dot point on a badly labelled graph.  Such is life in the days after the 2019 polling failure.

How many polls?

This year saw 16 federal Newspolls released, the fewest since 1991.  Essential released 13 "2PP+" results (see my comments on this method here) as figures, and a further sixteen as dots on a graph. Morgan provided this mess:

* five polls for which it issued polling reports

* two further polls on its voting intention table

* at least one further poll result where the poll was not published but the 2PP can be inferred based on the stated poll to poll changes

* fourteen graph dot points (giving the impression of being weekly breakdowns from fortnightly polls) that include:

- eight readings that align exactly in time with four polls for which fortnightly 2PPs were public

- two consecutive readings that are out of whack with one of the public 2PPs by a week

- four readings that don't align with any of the otherwise public polls. 

Thus the total number of Morgan 2PP readings of which some kind of evidence was available publicly is at least 22 (to date) but this includes at least four double-counts.  

Applying a minimum standard that a pollster must publish a 2PP (and not just by reference to changes from a previous poll) to be included, there were 16 Newspolls, 13 Essentials and seven Morgans, for a total of 36 polls.  If this figure is used it continues the downward trend in the number of published polls per year.  However the number of 2PP readings compiled by the pollsters but not published other than as dot points is considerably higher; there might be as many as 63 independent readings, with others still to be (maybe) retro-released.

The mess created by Morgan in particular does no favours for the image of polling and I hope the new Australian Polling Council will recommend to its members standards that will avoid and discourage ad hoc decisions about when to retro-release polling data.  If a pollster wants to release voting intention polls in batches, as Essential are doing, that is one thing, but the pollster should then at least be transparent about when they will poll and ensure that all the readings are retro-released, not just some.

Queensland 2020: Rolling Final Days Roundup

I'll be covering the Queensland election here on election night and in detail throughout the postcount, though on some days I may be busy with other things during the day.  

Another Queensland election count is a day and a bit away and there's a distinct lack of data for the usual polling aggregation/modelling type game, so I've decided to start a rolling roundup article which will cover a number of possible themes.  When new polls appear - assuming they do - new sections covering them will be posted at the top of the article. I also have a new article in The Guardian.  I should clarify that I didn't speak to any of the nameless insiders personally, and was going off other media reports.  There were reports since I filed that one that unnamed Labor insiders were more confident yesterday because internal polls had supposedly shown an uptick following one of those debates that nobody much watches.  This narrative was gleefully and even gullibly snapped up by Sky, perhaps because it was useful for attacking Gladys Berejiklian.  The NSW Premier will doubtless be scapegoated in the event of an LNP loss even if there is nothing special in the early/late voting history to justify such a charge.

NT Election Final Roundup

Counting night approaches for the 2020 Northern Territory election, which I will be covering with live comments here in a separate post and follow-up comments on that thread through the post-count as required.   Normally here for an election I have paid a lot of attention to I would be posting a final polling roundup, but for the NT there's usually precious little to report in that department.  However there are a number of other things that can be commented on in setting the picture.  You can also check out the Tally Room podcast I appeared in today with Ben Raue and Duncan McDonnell.

Polling

Almost everything I had to say about polling and this election was said in my earlier piece Divergent Polling In The Northern Territory.  I contrasted a very detailed Territory Alliance internal poll by Mediareach with a lobby group commissioned poll by uComms and found that whereas the former predicted a chaotic parliament with no party likely to be near a majority, the latter was most consistent with a Country Liberal resurgence, Labor retaining a majority, and little joy for the Territory Alliance.  I did not asset that either poll was accurate (though uComms have a mostly good track record) - the truth could be much closer to one than the other, or somewhere in between, or more extreme in some direction than both polls.  Since the article was written, expectations and betting seem to have converged towards the uComms result, but that doesn't necessarily mean that's what's going to happen.

It would, however, be very consistent with my finding in the previous piece that "federal drag" theory (the idea that being of a different party to the one in Canberra helps) is a thing in the NT just as it is in the states.  As bad as the NT economy has been during the present term, a majority government thrown out after one term while the same party is in opposition federally would be a very unusual result from that perspective.  

Seat Betting As Bad As Anything Else At Predicting The 2019 Federal Election

Advance Summary

1. Seat betting markets, sometimes believed to be highly predictive, did not escape the general failure of poll and betting based predictions at the 2019 federal election.

2. Indeed, seat betting markets were significantly worse predictors of the result than the national polls through the election leadup, and only converged with polling-based models to reach a prediction that was as inaccurate as the national polls at the end.

3. Seat betting predicted fourteen seats incorrectly, but all of its errors in Labor vs Coalition contests, in common with most other predictive methods, were in the same direction.

4. Seat betting markets did vary from a national poll-based outlook in several seats, but their forecasts in such cases were about as often misses as hits.

5. This is the third federal election in a row at which seat betting has failed to show that it is a useful predictor of classic (Labor vs Coalition) seat-by-seat results in comparison with simpler methods.  

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With all House of Representatives seats now declared, it's time for a regular post-election feature on this site, a review of how seat-by-seat betting fared as a predictive method.  I have been interested in this subject over the years mainly to see whether seat betting contained any superior insight that might be useful in predicting elections.  In 2013 the answer was a resounding no, in 2016 it was a resounding meh, and surely if seat betting could show that it knew something that other sources of information didn't, 2019 would be the year! Even if seat betting wasn't a very good predictor, if it was not as bad as polling or headline betting this year, that would be something in its favour.

2019 saw the first failure in the headline betting markets since 1993, but it was a much bigger failure than that.  In 1993 Labor were at least given some sort of realistic chance by the bookies, and ended up somewhere in the $2-$3 range (I don't have the exact numbers).  This year the Coalition were $7.00 to Labor's $1.10 half an hour before polls closed - just an implied 14% chance -  and Sportsbet had already besmirched itself in more ways than one by paying out early (which I think should be banned when it comes to election betting, but that's another story).  The view that "the money never lies" has been remarkably immune to evidence over the years, but surely this will be the end of it for a while.

Election Eve: Final Newspoll and Seat Betting Roundup

2PP Aggregate (Final): 51.6 to Labor (Last-election preferences)

(51.3 with One Nation adjustment)

Seat projection assuming polls are accurate 79 Labor 66 Coalition 6 Others

The final Newspoll marks the end of my poll aggregation for this term (barring any late offers) though in the last few weeks, I really needn't have bothered.  Aggregation is most useful when polls are bouncing around, when they have marked house effect differences relative to each other or when there is something happening that is causing voter intention to move.  In the last few weeks, almost nothing has happened and seventeen consecutive polls have landed their 2PPs somewhere in the range 51-52.  There's really nothing for an aggregate to do!

Rolling Poll Roundup And Seat Betting Watch: The Final Days

2PP Aggregate 51.5 to Labor (by last-election preferences) (-0.3 since last week)
51.1 with One Nation adjustment
Current seat projection approx Labor 79 Coalition 66 others 6 assuming polls accurate.

The end, it seems, is nigh.  If the (ludicrously herded) national polls are right, the Morrison government would need a huge amount of luck to survive a swing of somewhere around 1.3-2.3%, at an election at which it can afford perhaps two net seat losses.  If the polls on the whole are just modestly wrong in one direction, the Government's chances of survival improve greatly, but the other direction leads to a decisive loss.  The most likely path to survival is a Donald Trump style path - a combination of a modest national polling error and a fair amount of luck with the local breakdowns, but if it happens in this case, after everything, it will be very surreal.

Poll Roundup And Seat Betting Watch: The Polls Are Getting Closer (To Each Other)

2PP Aggregate 51.8 to Labor (2016 preferences) (-0.1 since last week)
51.4 to Labor (with One Nation preference adjustment)
Current seat projection assuming polls are accurate c. 80 Labor 65 Coalition 6 crossbench (+/- lots!)
Polls appear to be "herded" which can increase risk of error

Time for another instalment of the week in polling and seat betting, delayed slightly by an interstate trip.  As of last week the United Australia Party were going through a bit of a purple patch, polling 5% in Newspoll and above their 2013 result in a bunch of seat polls.  This hasn't lasted; all their poll results this week have been in the 3-4% range, and in three WA YouGov-Galaxy seat polls they did worse than their 2013 results (in one case much worse; the other two only very slightly.)

This week's action in the minor party primaries came from the Greens who polled 14% in Ipsos, 11 in Morgan, 12 in Essential and 9 in Newspoll.  Ipsos (especially) and Morgan have form for exaggerating the Green vote and Essential's reading of the Green vote lately has been quite volatile, but even so the party doesn't seem to be in too bad shape, with the issues mix at this election helping it (that is an understatement.) That said, the Greens have finally struck the candidate problems that have hitherto affected everybody else.

Poll Roundup: Make Newspoll Preferences Great Again!

2PP Aggregate: 51.9% to Labor (last election preferences) (-0.5 since last week)
51.6% with One Nation adjustment
Labor is still winning, but at present polls imply only a modest majority (c. 80 seats) 
Betting markets don't think it's that close

I didn't put out a Poll Roundup last week because there were no major polls.  This week there is a lot more to discuss, starting with United Australia.

UAP Surge - Is It Real?  

After languishing at around 1% in those polls that included them until not long ago, Clive Palmer's United Australia Party has made major inroads in polling in the last month, helped by problems for One Nation, which is not running in every seat anyway.  At the current level, team yellow (unless you're in Tasmania where there are two team yellows) isn't threatening to win Reps seats, but it looks very competitive for the Queensland Senate at least.  That said, media are overplaying the value of the very useful Coalition preferences there, since the Coalition might not get that much over two quotas given the added competition from UAP, and only 30% or so of its voters will follow the card anyway.  The surge is being linked to Newspoll switching to including UAP as a distinct option in its results, which is being interpreted as the party being added to the readout (something which has been thought to overestimate minor party votes).

Poll Roundup And Seat Betting Watch: Ellis Impersonator Edition

2PP Aggregate 52.5 to Labor (unchanged)
On most recent polling Labor would win a majority if election held now, with around 83 seats.

There have not been many polls in this week of an Easter-fragmented campaign, and the one national poll that has come out hasn't changed the national picture all that much (except for One Nation).  Essential will be polling over Easter (more likely to work for an online than a phone pollster), Newspoll probably won't, and we'll have to see what else we might get.  It's been a scrappy start to the campaign with both major parties losing candidates from uncompetitive seats (after some dumpings foreshadowed tonight, the Coalition will have lost six!), and gaffes by both sides including some troubles for Bill Shorten on superannuation policy and climate change policy costs, while Scott Morrison can get away from any question he doesn't like by just declaring it to be "bubble stuff".  I don't know if anyone's paying attention to any of this at the moment out there in voter-land.

Poll Roundup: Well-Received Budget Yields A Kitten-Sized Bounce (Maybe)

2PP Aggregate: 52.5 to Labor (2016 preferences) (-0.5 in a week)
(51.9 with One Nation adjustment)
Labor would win election "held now", with seat tally around the low 80s

Equal best polling position for Coalition under Morrison so far
Budget reception among the best ever in some regards, but not all
Weak evidence that there may have been a "Budget bounce" of around half a point, but impossible to confirm

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The 2019 Budget has been delivered with the election expected to be called sometime in the next week.  This year's budget was in most ways well-received, although the voters have not bought the Government's attacks on the ability of the Opposition to deliver the same thing.  There was remarkably little polling in the leadup to the Budget, so it's hard to say for sure if we have seen that rare creature the Budget bounce or not, but if we have seen it, it's probably only a little one.  We can't yet reliably conclude that the modest move to the government this week is caused by the Budget at all as opposed to other factors.  As it isn't statistically significant, it may even just be random noise.

NSW 2019: Final Day Roundup

SUMMARY: Polls imply likely Coalition victory, but if so, majority status is still touch and go.

This thread will cover anything I think is of interest re Saturday's election, starting with a pre-Newspoll look at where things might stand (but there is some weird stuff going on, so who knows) and followed up with anything I want to add once Newspoll (or any other late polls) come out.  I'll be working in the afternoon, so don't expect updates between about 11 am - 6 pm.

There will be live coverage here on election night from 6:00 pm and going through til very late, and the live thread may be started earlier in the day if there is anything of special interest going on.

Poll Roundup: 2018 Year In Review

2PP Aggregate: 54.2 to Labor (last election preferences) (+0.2 since two weeks ago)
With One Nation adjustment: 53.6 to Labor
Labor would easily win election "held now"
Labor won all 66 public and three commissioned national polls released this year

With the release of this week's Ipsos and Essential polls, the polling year has probably come to an end.  If there are any late polls I will edit this piece and update it accordingly.

For a government that currently looks as stuffed as a Christmas turkey, the end of the year cannot come soon enough.  As the final poll of the year, Essential offered some respite having the government only six points behind (47-53) but this should be treated with some caution as there is an ongoing difference of opinion between Newspoll and Essential as to just how bad the Morrison government's situation is.  Since Scott Morrison became Prime Minister, Newspoll has had the Coalition primary on an average of just 35% and the Labor primary on 40%.  Essential, however, has had the Coalition primary only narrowly behind (on average 36.9-37.2).  On a 2PP basis Newspoll has had an average reading of just 45.25% for the Government, while Essential has had 46.6% - and this is even though Newspoll's preferencing method is more favourable to the Coalition's than Essential's.  Currently, with Newspoll and Essential coming out in different fortnights, my aggregate bobs around a bit depending on which one is out, rather than based on the Coalition making substantial gains or losses.  If this continues into the New Year I may apply corrections to both.

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.

2018 Tasmanian State Election Guide: Main Page

The election has been won by the Liberal Party. Go here for postcount links:

Bass
Braddon
Denison
Franklin
Lyons

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Welcome to the main page for my 2018 Tasmanian state election coverage.  This page will carry links to all the other articles about the election that I write prior to the close of polling, and will contain general big-picture stuff and links to all the specialised articles (once these are written).  It will be updated very frequently.  However, one thing I am doing differently from my 2014 guide is that each electorate has its own guide page.  Note that these are my own guides and I reserve the right to inject flippant and subjective comments whenever I feel like it; if you do not like this, write your own.

If you find these guides useful, donations are very welcome (see sidebar), but please only give me money if you can afford to.

Recent Polling On The Same-Sex Marriage Postal Survey

The national ABS postal "survey" on whether the law should be changed to allow same-sex marriage in Australia is now in its second week.  A number of pieces of polling have been published or alluded to since my last general polling update, but what do they really tell us about the outcome and how reliable are they?  At this stage there is still much that we do not know.  It is too early to be certain Yes has it in the bag, but the widespread narrative that support for Yes is crashing rapidly and that this is another Trump or Brexit coming is so far not that well supported by the evidence.

Public Polling: Ipsos

Firstly, the public polling.  Last week saw an Ipsos poll which buoyed some worried Yes supporters with a 70-26 Yes response, one of the highest Yes votes ever recorded in a poll in Australia.  Indeed, as far as I'm aware, this score has only been exceeded in a few commissioned polls and one Morgan-SMS (a suspect polling method) which did not use an undecided option.  The Ipsos also found a 70% Yes response among the 65% of voters who rated themselves as certain to vote, and found a gender gap with 72% of women and 59% of men saying they were certain to vote.

ReachTEL: Bob Brown Foundation Peddles A Poll Porky

ReachTEL (commissioned) Liberal 41.2 Labor 33.3 Green 13.1 PHON 4.4 Ind/Other 8.0

Interpretation Liberal 41.2 Labor 37.1 Green 10.4 Other 11.3

Most likely seat result based on this poll 12-10-2 plus one seat undecided between the three main parties

Disclaimer: Polls are snapshots not predictions.

I may get taken off their media mailing list for saying it, but the Bob Brown Foundation have released a grossly deceptive claim concerning their current ReachTEL poll to the Tasmanian press.  Question two of their poll and its results are as follows:

The question design is a bit odd, but I think it is OK.  The results are 38.3% support, 44.7% oppose and 17.1% don't know/not sure.