EMRS: Is Labor Finally Making Some Progress? / Hobart Poll Controversy

EMRS Lib 35 (-1) ALP 31 (+4) Greens 14 (=) JLN 6 (-2) IND 11 (-1) others 3 (=)
IND likely overstated, others likely understated
Liberals would be the largest party but Labor would make seat gains 
Possible seat estimate in election "held now" off this poll LIB 14 ALP 12 Green 5 IND 4

The final EMRS Tasmanian voting intention poll of the year is out and it provides some evidence that the Labor Opposition might be taking baby steps on the road back to government at last.  Labor is up four points, albeit from a poor base.  The Liberal government is at its lowest vote since it got down to 34% in December 2017 (a reading that I doubt was accurate given their rapid recovery months later) and the major party gap is also as low as it has been since then.  This said, Labor still hasn't been above 32% since the last "pre-COVID" poll back in March 2020 and if the ALP is going to make a serious push for government, at some point in the term it will need to break out of the very low 30s.  This is a movement in the right direction for once; let's see if it continues.  The poll comes following a quarter dominated by the Spirits of Tasmania fiasco that led to the forced resignation of Deputy Premier Michael Ferguson from Cabinet.  I suppose that yet again, as with bad polls following the 2023 defections, the Government might say that in it could have been worse.  

2024 Tasmanian Polling Aggregate

Aggregate of all polls (not a prediction) Lib 36.9ALP 25.3 Green 13.2 JLN 9 IND 12.7 other 3

Seat estimate for this aggregate 15-10-4-3-3.

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This article is part of my Tasmania 2024 state polling coverage.  Click here for links to my main guide page which includes links to seat guides and effective voting advice.  

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An attempt at aggregating the 2024 Tasmanian polls has been long-coming amid a very distracting and busy campaign, but for what it's worth here goes.  For the second election running I have doubts about the value of this exercise, but for entirely different reasons.  In 2021 there was very little polling and the only campaign poll to be publicly released appeared to (and did) have large house effects, which I determined using EMRS as a benchmark.  Despite me talking them down, both my house-effects aggregate and my no-house-effects aggregate somehow worked, with the former nailing the seat estimate and the latter recording voting share misses of 0.5% or below on all four lines.   I don't expect to be that lucky this time, however I hope the journey of how I try to come up with a what the polls are saying number will make some sense.

If any more public polls are released before 8 am Saturday a fresh aggregate will be included in the article covering that poll, or in this one.

Tasmania 2024: Yet Another Mystery Poll

This article is part of my 2024 Tasmanian state election coverage.  Click here for link to main page with links to effective voting advice and seat guides.

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UPDATE 22/3: The Mercury has revealed that this poll was by high-quality pollster Freshwater Strategy and taken about a fortnight ago, and the Fontcast has announced it was THA-commissioned,  New details are also that the Greens are on 13 and Independents 11 in Lyons, the Greens are on 10 in Bass (apparently leaving about 13.7 for independents and others), independents are on 10 in Braddon (leaving about 13.8 for Greens and others) and 28 in Clark (Greens on 20), and in Franklin the Greens are on 13 and independents on 17.  

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Original article

After a reasonably polling-rich start to the 2024 Tasmanian campaign, little polling has been seen recently, with the youngest public poll 16 days out of the field as I write.  This creates a fair amount of uncertainty regarding whether anything has happened with voting intention in what has been a noisy and bumpy campaign.  In particular, has the fact that the Liberals are ahead and are the only party that any poll has had within, say, 5% of a plausible majority result, caused any late bandwagon effect to their side?  (I should note that bandwagons to a party capable of forming majority government don't always happen.  The two elections where conspicuous bandwagons did occur were 2006 and 2018 but for both these elections other factors could be cited.)

Today Sky News has released some figures from a poll by an unnamed pollster and source and have said they have been asked not to name.  As is too often the case Sky have failed to report on the polling dates.  What we have is a purported seat breakdown probably by someone with not much of a clue about how Hare-Clark works (14-9-4-4-4) and primary votes for the majors and JLN only.

The primary votes reported are:

Bass Lib 40.28 ALP 25.87 JLN 10.2 (leaving 23.68)

Braddon Lib 49.24 ALP 14.65 JLN 12.28 (leaving 23.83)

Clark Lib 25.35 ALP 21.37 (leaving an enormous 53.28)

Franklin Lib 33.23 ALP 27.4 JLN 8 (leaving 31.39)

Lyons Lib 38.46 ALP 23.26 JLN 11.2 (leaving 27.18)

Mystery Poll: Why Are We Still Playing This Game?

(This is part of my 2024 Tasmanian election coverage.  For main page with links to all other pages go here.)

Today's Mercury carried a front-page report of a "phone poll" of Tasmania with a massive sample size of 4000 voters.  Unfortunately the newspaper report did not state who the poll was done by or for, making it impossible to immediately assess how useful it was.  I have been told (officially unconfirmed) that it is for the Tasmanian Hospitality Association and do not yet know the pollster, though the large sample size is most often seen with automated polls like uComms.  (I should also add that Community Engagement was reported in the field by some people early in the campaign, but the issues questions I was told about were different.)

Anyway, at the risk of sounding like a broken record or even more like a polling analyst with severe frustration management issues, it should be required by law for all media reports of polling to state the pollster and the commissioning source.  (Or if not known, all details should be published as this often makes the poll easy to identify).  Media frequently express frustration with governments that are not being transparent.  They must lead the way by reporting basic polling details better and refusing to allow sources to supply polls on the condition that the pollster should not be named.   This is especially so when they run Your Right To Know campaigns.   As for sources who try to prevent media from publishing the details of polls they supply, those should be classified as "juvenile career criminals". 

For what it's worth, this looks like neutral polling by someone who actually wants to know the answer, and not a loaded poll released for political purposes.  That doesn't mean it's necessarily good in quality terms, but it's worth checking out especially if we get clearer details.

Poll Roundup: Lockdowns And Rollout Problems End Morrison's Net Rating Streak

It's been a while since my last federal polling roundup and in that time the government's troubled vaccine rollout and the challenges polled by the Delta strain of COVID-19 seem to have put paid to government optimism about rushing off to an early election this spring.  Indeed, recent weeks have seen the government record its worst 2PP polling of the term so far, though by historic standards it is not yet in severe poll-based trouble.  

Voting Intention

Three weeks ago, four polls came out in quick succession:

* A Newspoll Coalition 39 Labor 39 Greens 10 One Nation 3 Others 9.  The published 2PP was 53-47 to Labor but Labor probably got lucky on the rounding here.  The average last-election 2PP for these primaries would be 52.5-47.5, and indeed when exactly the same primaries came out in early March, the 2PP was 52-48.  Given that this one rounded to 53, it must have been at least 52.5 prior to rounding.

* Essential Coalition 37 Labor 36 Greens 10 One Nation 4 Others 6.  After rescaling to remove undecided and get sum to 100, Coalition 39.8 Labor 38.7 Greens 10.8 One Nation 4.3 Others 6.5.  The published 2PP is 47-45 (=51-49) to Labor under Essential's 2PP Plus method using (mostly) respondent preferences, but by last-election preferences I get 52.1 to Labor.  

* Resolve Political Monitor Coalition 38 Labor 35 Greens 12 One Nation 4 "Independents" 7 Others 5.  Resolve does not publish a 2PP.  By last-election preferences these numbers come to about 52.0 to Labor if taken as published, but Resolve overestimates independents.

* Roy Morgan Coalition 39 Labor 37 Greens 11.5 One Nation 3 Others 9.5.  Morgan's published 2PP was 52.5 (respondent preferences); I get 52.0 (last election).  

In the last week two fresher polls have arrived:

* Another Newspoll with a 53-47 2PP to Labor, but this time with the Greens on 11 and Others on 8, which all else being equal suggests the 2PP this time was probably close to 53 prior to rounding.

* A Morgan with a 53.5% 2PP to Labor off primaries of Coalition 37 Labor 37 Green 12.5 One Nation 3 others 10.5.  I get 53.3 (last election).  This is the highest 2PP poll for Labor of the term except for some bushfire-era Morgans for which only 2PPs were back-released. 

Curiouser And Curiouser: Recent Queensland Poll And Poll-Shaped Objects Roundup

The Queensland election is six weeks away and there has been no mainstream polling for it since the Newspoll in late July showed the LNP leading 51-49.  There are, however, a number of minor polls flying around and it's time to round them up and put them in a box.  In at least one case, the lid should then be taped firmly shut.

Polls "reported" recently have been:

Australian Institute for Progress (statewide)

YouGov (Currumbin, Redlands and Mansfield)

Omnipoll (Ipswich, Keppel, Mackay, Thuringowa)

Lonergan (Maiwar, McConnell, South Brisbane)

A further poll by AskAustralia Market Research has been reported in field but no results have yet been seen.

Do-It-Yourself Issues Polling Due Diligence

You've probably seen the kind of thing before.  A poll commissioned by a group with an obvious stake or bias on an issue has found, surprise surprise, that their position is widely shared by the population in general.  This "result" is reported by a newspaper which reports the group's claims uncritically as if the group has "found" some fact about public opinion, without any cautionary note or comment from anyone experienced in analysing polls.

I call these things poll-shaped objects (by analogy with piano-shaped object, an instrument that looks like a piano but plays horribly, whether because of poor quality or subsequent abuse and/or decay). At times these PSOs appear faster than I can take them to the tip.  After briefly becoming scarce or rebadging themselves as "surveys" following the 2019 federal election polling failure, the new year sees PSOs back in force, with several doing the rounds already on issues including Australia Day, climate change, coal mines in Tasmania and apparently (though I haven't seen it yet) forestry.  

Commissioned uComms Tasmanian State Poll

uComms (commissioned by Australia Institute): Liberal 39.0 Labor 29.4 Green 16.8 Ind 11.7 Other 3.1. 
Tasmanian state polling overstates votes for Greens and this poll is likely to overstate "independent" vote
After adjusting for likely skews, poll would be borderline in majority/minority terms for government in an election "held now" (seats c. 13-9-3 or 12-9-4)
Poll is difficult to interpret because of high "independent" vote, inadequate transparency and lack of uComms track record
Poll taken on October 22
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“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
- Douglas Adams

I often feel like Arthur Dent when it comes to finding the most very basic details of Australian commissioned polling.  The Australia Institute Tasmania's uComms poll from nearly a month ago first surfaced in the form of a uselessly skewed result about support for a Tarkine National Park.  Voting intention results were withheld from publication at the time, apparently because releasing them would have diverted media attention away from the supposed Tarkine findings, and it is only this week, 27 days after the poll was conducted, that they have finally been released.  Not prominently though - after seeing more uncritical media reporting of another issues question (regarding the proposed repeal of medevac legislation), I was finally able to find the voting intention results lurking unheralded in a PDF linked off a release of the medevac findings on the TAI website.

TAI claim to be in the business of research, but depriving the audience of the data needed to analyse polls closer to the time they are released suggests they are more interested in using polling to make political points than in allowing their data to be critically examined at the time at which it is current.   For an organisation that claims transparency as one of its interest areas, and makes over 100 references to transparency on its website this is, to put it mildly, hardly a consistent way to operate.

One might ask why look at Tasmanian polling at all in the wake of the national polling failure.  But the national polling failure was in a marketplace with a history of exceptional performance, and the error was one that involved having one major party a few points too high and the other a few too low.  In Tasmania, such errors have always been common, and the nature of Hare-Clark is such that they're not the difference between one side winning outright and the other doing so.

How Can Australian Polling Disclosure And Reporting Be Improved?

Australian national opinion polling has just suffered its worst failure in result terms since 1980 and its worst failure in margin terms since 1984.  This was not just an "average polling error", at least not by the standards of the last 30+ years.  The questions remain: what caused it and what can be done (if anything) to stop it happening again.

A major problem with answering these questions is that Australian pollsters have not been telling us nearly enough about what they do.  As Murray Goot has noted, this has been a very long-standing problem.

In general, Australian pollsters have taken an approach that is secretive, poorly documented, and contrary to scientific method.   One notable example of this was Galaxy (it looks like correctly) changing the preference allocation for One Nation in late 2017, and not revealing they had done this for five months (in which time The Australian kept wrongly telling its readers Newspoll preferences were based on the 2016 election.)  But more generally, even very basic details about how pollsters do their work are elusive unless you are on very good terms with the right people.  Some polls also have statistically unlikely properties (such as not bouncing around as much as their sample size suggests they should, either in poll to poll swing terms or in seat-polling swing terms) that they have never explained. 

Batman Bits And Pieces

There are a few points of interest I thought were worth commenting on quickly following Labor's drubbing of the Greens in the Batman by-election.

The 34% swing that wasn't

It has been widely reported that the Northcote West booth swung to Labor by 34 points.  This is incorrect; the actual two-party swing in that booth was 9%, which was still one of the largest in the electorate.  It was quite obvious based on the primary votes that the AEC had accidentally transposed the Labor and Green 2PP figures during data entry.  This kind of thing happens now and then and it is best to check cases where one booth says something off the scale before commenting further.

New Commissioned Tasmanian Polls

Tasmanian state election season is heating up with regular policy announcements (at least from the government) and rumours that the election could be called this weekend for March 3 (what, not the same day as South Australia again?  Surely too good to be true!)

I expect we will have some public polling before too much longer so we can see if the Liberals have recovered from an utter stinker from EMRS late last year, but in the meantime the shady forces of commissioned polling are out there doing their stuff.  This week Tasmanians were treated to not one but two rounds of robo-bombardment.  A diabolically odd anti-pokies question left many scratching their heads (especially pokie opponents) while reports of the warm fuzzy niceties of the other poll on offer sparked Twitter responses like this:

OK, there was actually only one response like that, but this poll even asked voters if they liked Tasmanian political leaders as human beings!  It also asked if voters thought Jacqui Lambie was good at her job, which came as a surprise to me, because I didn't know she had one anymore.  

MediaReach Liberal Poll

Anyway, the long and cuddly robopoll has seen the partial light of day first, and what this is is a MediaReach internal poll commissioned by the Liberals, with a sample of a whopping 3,000.  Methods details are bereft - I've seen a claim it only canvassed landlines, but I constantly see the same claim about other pollsters who ceased doing so years ago - so there's not much more to say about it yet.  

Now, I'm not sure if ReachTEL weren't available (they're prim and proper about refusing dual commissions if they have a conflict in a market) or if the Liberals just don't trust them anymore, but MediaReach was a novel selection indeed.  This pollster hasn't been seen in Tasmania before and its only previous testable public results have been in the NT, where it was out by about five points 2PP in an electorate poll and a territory election poll.  So what do we know about its accuracy in the Tasmanian or indeed any similar context?  Diddly-squat.  Add to that that it's a commissioned poll that wouldn't have seen the light of day had the Liberals not liked the result, and the only weight I can aggregate it at is zero.  Still, it will be fascinating to see how it scrubs up on election day.

Actually, if I did aggregate this poll it wouldn't make much difference anyway.  Oddly giving results to two decimal places (not that there is anything actually wrong with that) the poll has the following results:

Liberal 41.12

Labor 34.29

Green 12.81

Lambie Network 6.19

leaving 5.59 for others.

Fishy Prospects In The Seat Of Lyons

ReachTEL Lyons: Lib 42 Labor 30.4 Green 12.4 Lambie Network 10 SF+F 2.7 Others 2.5
ReachTEL polls in Tasmania have in the past skewed against Labor and to the Greens
Seats that would be won based on this poll: Liberal 3 Labor 2 (status quo)

The Australia Institute has released a large-sample ReachTEL of the state seat of Lyons.  Lyons has long looked like the most crucial seat in determining whether the Hodgman Government can maintain a majority at the next state election, as on a more or less uniform swing to Labor, the third Lyons seat is the third to fall.  Polling has long appeared touch-and-go as to whether the party is likely to hold three seats there or lose one to the Greens or maybe someone else.

The commissioned ReachTEL also covers fish farms, which are seen as a significant environmental issue in the leadup to the next election.  I am satisfied that the poll has not been selectively released and also that ReachTEL have a good record in not letting commissioning sources tweak the primary vote polling design.  So while all commissioned polls are to be treated with some caution, and all seat polls always require special care, I'll have a look at what the data from this poll suggest.

As usual with ReachTEL the data require a lot of unpacking.  ReachTEL use a different format to most other polls, by initially giving voters a set of options that includes "undecided", and then allowing those who are "undecided" to say which party they are leaning to.  However the "undecided" in ReachTEL polls would be included in other polls' headline figures, while the truly undecided voters (those not even leaning to any party) are excluded, as they are by other pollsters.

All Polling On The Plebiscite Has Problems

In the last few weeks we've seen some new polling results concerning the Coalition's proposed plebiscite on legalising same-sex marriage (or as it is more accurately described, marriage equality).  It is extremely well-established in polling that a clear majority of voters support legalising same-sex marriage, but whether voters support deciding the matter by plebiscite or parliamentary vote has been less obvious.  The very inconsistent results from various polls on this subject are causing a fair degree of interest and confusion.

In this article I suggest that the range of results we are seeing on the question of a plebiscite vs a parliamentary vote is largely a result of differences in design between different polls.  Which poll is right and which poll is wrong?  My view is that all of them are suspect.   The question is a difficult one to poll and none of the polls offered thus far have even got close to a design that accurately reflects the choices the parliament, voters and activists face.

Poll Roundup: Attack Of The Poll-Shaped Objects

2PP Aggregate: 52.8 to Labor (-0.8 since last week)
Labor would comfortably win election "held right now"

This week has been a confusing week for many poll-watchers, and an amusing week for those of us who watch the antics of the poll-watching partisans.  Newspoll was eagerly anticipated following its 55:45 to Labor three weeks ago, and widely expected to come out with more of the same if not then some, but pulled up at only 52:48.  Oh well, the line went, maybe it was never 55:45 to begin with, after all Essential had only got out to 53s and the odd 54.  But then Essential jumped to 55:45, so two polls not usually noted for volatility had delivered it not just in spades but also in opposite directions.  At the moment we don't have a third opinion, since the others are very inactive lately.

In trying to decide between these competing figures, it is worth bearing in mind that Newspoll is now administered by Galaxy.  Galaxy was the best pollster of the 2013 election, and the Galaxy/Newspoll stable triumphed again in 2016.  Essential was poor in 2013, and while its final poll in 2016 was very good, its tracking performance suggests it was probably lucky or herding.  So my aggregate comes down more on the side of Newspoll, crediting Labor with 52.8% 2PP.

Anyway, that is a recovery of sorts, but we have seen false dawns before.  Here's the smoothed tracking graph:

For anyone with an interest in my input values, this Newspoll went in at 45.1% for the Coalition after considering the primaries, and the last three Essentials have been 46.9 (published 47), 46.7 (47) and 45.2 (45).

GetUp! National And Centrelink Poll Reporting Is A Trainwreck

GetUp! ReachTEL (undecided redistributed) Coalition 37.1 ALP 35 Green 9.8 PHON 10.6 
Published 2PP 54-46 to Labor
2PP by 2016 preferences 52.1 to Labor
Verdict: Go back to sleep

[Updated 24 Jan with fresh Essential polling on Centrelink issues]

My little eyes lit up when I saw in my Twitter stream that I had somehow missed the release of a national ReachTEL at about midnight last night.  There has not been a national ReachTEL since before the July election. Given the relative paucity of polling data since then, and the Centrelink and ministerial "entitlements" issues currently affecting the Turnbull Government, new data concerning where the government was standing could be quite interesting.

Unfortunately it turned out that this was not a new Seven or Fairfax ReachTEL, but rather one commissioned by the lobby group GetUp!  Moreover, the level of immediate publication of the poll's details has been abysmal.  Rather than it being promptly released with full details either on GetUp!'s website or the ReachTEL site, what seems to have happened is that it has been sent (in part or full, who knows) to a range of media agencies who have then presented us with a partially digested dog's breakfast of the findings.

Wilderness Society Tasmanian ReachTEL

Yesterday the Tasmanian Government announced a substantial restructure of the government business entity Forestry Tasmania, which recently announced another financial loss.  FT will be renamed "Sustainable Timbers Tasmania" in what might be seen as furthering a pitch for certification and a positive image, but can also be seen as a deliberate trolling riposte to the rampant misuse of the word "sustainable" by environmentalists in recent decades. (If the latter then I strongly approve.)

The business will be downsized (again) and attempts will be made to bring forward logging in land originally reserved under the now defunct "forests peace deal".  The latter change came as a complete and not entirely welcome surprise to some within the industry.  The changes are being seen as making the forests industry a major issue at the 2018 state election. If passed, they will do nothing to end the great Tasmanian sport of Ritual Forest Conflict between pro- and anti-forestry campaigners, and will provide the government with ample fodder for trying to wedge the ALP based on its record when in government. But first we will have to see if the government can get the reopening of deferred land through a now finely balanced Legislative Council, or if this is yet another episode of forestry-related culture-warring for show but not for result.

Yesterday morning the Wilderness Society put out a press release spruiking a poll (PDF link) it had conducted on Monday night.  I must commend the Society for promptly releasing the full results including all questions asked.  One really cannot ask for more from a commissioning agency.  However, it does appear that the Society has gone off half-cocked and been outmaneuvered as a result.  The poll was released on the morning of Resources Minister Guy Barnett's announcement of the planned restructure, which goes further than the poll design seemed to anticipate.  Also, as usual with commissioned issue polls, the issue questions have major design problems, and the interpreter can hence make of the results pretty much anything they like.

At least, however, the poll gives us some fresh Tasmanian voting intention data!

Federal Election 2016: Best And Worst Pollsters

It's been a long time coming but the recent finalisation of the 2016 House of Reps election results means it's time to present my in-depth review of how the various pollsters did.  At the 2013 election there was a widespread belief that the polls might be totally wrong, but it turned out they were accurate.  Since that election there has been a massive turnover in Australian polling methods and companies (such that only two pollsters went to this election doing the same thing as last time) and there were more reasons for concern, but the miracle has continued.  Australian national opinion polls have again proved highly accurate.  However, the picture in individual seat polling was not such a pretty story.

As usual I will present my awards in three categories.  This article is quite numbery of course, and is rated 3/5 on the Wonk Factor scale.

Horse-Race Overview And Betting Roundup: Are Labor Too Long?

(Note: This post was actually released 23 June, not 18 June as for some strange reason stated!)

It's just about time to rule a line under the rolling poll roundup that I ran through the last several days and write something new about the overall horse-race picture.  A new rolling roundup will be started when there is a new national poll (most likely ReachTEL on Friday night).

The national polling data that we have on this election at the moment all dates from Sunday or earlier.  Only Newspoll is even dominated by data from last weekend.  The two-party picture is persistently close, and the Coalition's advantage in seat projections is not massive, but betting markets offer headline odds that imply it's almost a done deal.  Many people have suggested to me over the last few weeks that Labor are way too long, and that odds of $3 or $4 might be understandable, but surely not $6 and upwards as has been seen at times.

My own polling aggregate (which, I should restate, describes the state of play at a given time - it is not by itself a prediction) has found the Coalition to be in a winning position at all times since Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister.  The Coalition has sometimes slipped below 50% two-party-preferred, but has never yet fallen below 76 seats on my projection of what would happen in an election "held now" at the time.  However, it hasn't had a big lead for a long time.

Poll Roundup And Seat Betting Watch: Fear Of A Hung Parliament Edition

2PP Aggregate: 50.2 to Labor (unchanged)
Seat projection for this 2PP: probable narrow Coalition win, not necessarily with majority (estimate 76-69-5)

As usual, this roundup is quite long so feel free to just read whichever bits interest you.

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It may as well be a recorded message: for the eighth (!) week in a row national 2PP voting intention has been around 50:50 and there has been no significant movement in the 2PP at all.  Excitable noises are made about moves of 1-2 points this way or the other in this poll or the other (typically by the media those polls are associated with) but it is all meaningless babble as nothing has actually happened.

This week Newspoll came out at 50:50 following four weeks of 51:49 to Labor.  Ipsos, which has tended to lean slightly to the Coalition but is bouncy because of its smaller sample size than other pollsters (and lack of artificial bounce-retardants, I suspect) raised the odd eyebrow with a 51:49 to Labor (by both kinds of preferences).  Essential went to 50:50 after being 51:49 to Coalition last week and ReachTEL went to 50:50 as well.  The two-point move in ReachTEL was mostly caused by volatility in their respondent-preference sampling; by last-election preferences the Coalition improved by only 0.7 points.

Poll Roundup And Seat Betting Watch: Neutrally Geared Edition

2PP Aggregate: 50.0-50.0 tie (-0.3 for Coalition since last week)
Coalition would probably just win election "held now" (seat projection 78-68-4*)
* see note re Greens below

So far a quietish week on the polling front, with Morgan and Essential the only national polls expected or seen.  However there are lots of polling snippets to deal with, plus the belated appearance of actual colour in the betting section, so here goes.

The week saw a fairly comfortable audience-scored win to Bill Shorten in a "people's forum" debate watched by hardly anyone, which commentators generally called a draw.   With the audience for debates screened on Pay TV basically containing no-one but political addicts, it's doubtful these debates have much influence on voting intention unless something really out of the box occurs.  The week-to-week shifts in voting intention so far this campaign (and the mock campaign before it) are so small they could be explained by anything ... or nothing.  A campaign about little of consequence meanders along in search of some defining Events.