Poll Roundup: Recovery, Or Just Turbulence?

2PP Aggregate: 52.4 to ALP (-1.1 since last week)
Closest reading of 2017 so far
Labor would win election "held now" with a moderate seat margin

Five weeks since the previous edition, it's time for another roundup of the state of federal polling.  After some really bad readings from Newspoll in February and Essential in March, things seem to have settled down a little for the Turnbull government.  This week the government gained a 2PP point on both Newspoll (47 to 48) and Essential (46 to 47).  I aggregated the Newspoll at 47.8% and the Essential at 47.1%.  With a bit of help from the March Ipsos and (temporarily) last week's Essential falling out of the sample, these polls have improved the government's position on my aggregate by 1.1 points in a week, to 47.6% 2PP.

I normally show just the smoothed tracking graph of rolling averages, but here's the "spiky" graph of one-week end-of-week figures, because it has a story to tell.

Poll Roundup: Are Australian Voters Grumps?

2PP Aggregate: 52.1 to Labor (-0.3) - updated after Ipsos
Labor would win election "held now"

Another four weeks on since my last update on national polling and not much has changed.  We still have only two regularly active pollsters and their results continue to show a very gradual shift away from the returned Turnbull Government since the July election.  I'm expecting some improvement on the former front shortly, and may update this article should that occur.  As for the smoothed 2PP tracking, it looks like this:

Since last time there's been little variation in the released polls, all from pollsters that don't do a lot of variation anyway: two 53-47s to Labor from Newspoll, two 53s and two 52s from Essential.  I consider these two polls between them to have had a bit of form in skewing to Labor during the Turnbull phase of the previous parliament and so the current aggregate comes out at 52.4 to ALP. Before house effect adjustments, I've aggregated the recent polls at 52.7 and 53.0 from Newspoll and 52.5, 53, 53.4 and 52.6 from Essential.  However, the 53.4 currently isn't in the mix, because of the way I use only alternate Essentials at any one time.  Those who also follow BludgerTrack, which should be everyone reading this, may have noticed my aggregate is about 0.4 of a point more Coalition-friendly at the moment.  A fair slab of this is because I assume that all the pollsters know what they are doing with their 2PP calculations, though a lot of the time I have my doubts.

Since Essential started using the 2016 preference distributions for its 2PP figures, I have its average published 2PP as 52.2 for Labor, but the average 2PP derived from the published figures without any knowledge of decimals or state breakdowns would be 52.72.  So the Coalition has done better on the published 2PPs than would be expected from its primary votes, by about half a point.  In contrast, Newspoll has had a published average of 51.72 for Labor but its derived average would be effectively identical to the published figures at 51.84.  The differences in Essential's case could be caused by rounding, but rounding differences should be randomly distributed.  If this continues for another, say, ten polls it will be strong evidence that something unusual is going on - not necessarily an error, as state breakdown factors could be at play.

We're still not seeing any panic-stations 2PP polling, and the rate of change is slower than the last time the Coalition lost support in a more or less steady fashion over a few months (in late 2014).

Poll Roundup: The Wobbles Just Got Worse

2PP Aggregate: 51.8 to Coalition (-1.1 in a week, -2.5 in five weeks)
Coalition would win election "held now" with substantially reduced majority

Just over a week ago I noted that the Coalition had an attack of the February wobbles, a common pattern of government polling tanking around this time in an election year.  A shock Newspoll result this week has seen this get a lot worse, as the Turnbull government looks rattled and tired and above all confused about its own tax reform steps, and for the first time in a long time, Bill Shorten has a spring in his step.  A robotic spring, true, but a spring nonetheless.  Government polling seems to be in freefall and no-one really knows where the bottom might be if it doesn't snap out of its tax funk sometime soon.  I've started a Not-A-Poll for anyone with a view on when or whether in this term Labor might get its nose in front.

Poll Roundup: Turnbull Bounce Finally Peaks

2PP Aggregate: 53.4 to Coalition (-0.5 in a week)
Coalition would win election "held now" with similar majority to 2013

Almost three months since Malcolm Turnbull took over from Tony Abbott as Prime Minister, the massive surge in Coalition polling has finally hit its first speedbump.  The odd behaviour of a couple of pollsters compared to the rest has made it hard to say exactly when this happened, but my figures now have the Coalition peaking at a revised 54.0% two-party preferred at the end of the week before last.  On that basis I estimate that the Coalition gained 7.6 points over ten weeks.  I have this as the second largest polling surge in such a period in Australian polling history (the largest being at least ten points in a couple of months for the doomed Whitlam government during the lead-up to the 1975 dismissal).

Poll Roundup: Turnbull Surge Alone Can't Explain Shorten's Problems

2PP Aggregate: 53.4 to Coalition (-0.2 in a week)
Coalition would easily win election "held now", probably with increased majority

(Updated on Friday to 53.8 to Coalition, then went to 54.0 to Coalition on weekly reset)

There are only two new federal polls and one state poll of federal voting intention to add so far this week, but there is still quite a lot to discuss.

Last week there was a sign of a possible Paris-attacks surge to the government in the 56:44 result from Ipsos, but this wasn't repeated by either Morgan or Essential.  The lack of replication from those two didn't mean a lot because Essential doesn't do dynamism and Morgan's behaviour under Turnbull has been strange, but this week Newspoll didn't play ball with Ipsos either.  I'm still inclined to wait to see what ReachTEL says before completely discounting it, but it looks likely that there wasn't really a Paris attack bounce in 2PP polling, and the Ipsos sample just had a couple of extra points of sample noise for the Coalition.  This week's Newspoll at 53:47 (which I aggregated as exactly that) and Essential at 52:48 (which I counted as 51.7 considering the primaries) have so far knocked two-tenths of a point off last week's result.  The smoothed tracking graph, however, does not yet show the surge as having peaked.

Poll Roundup: Coalition Equals Term High

2PP Aggregate: 52.8 to Coalition (+0.1 in a week, +0.4 in two weeks)
Coalition would easily win election "held now"
(Article also includes comments on the voting age)

Eight weeks into the Turnbull Prime Ministership, we're still yet to see any lasting reversal in the polling trend towards the Coalition.  This week Newspoll, which in its new Galaxy-run incarnation has displayed a slight Labor lean, came out with a headline 53:47 in the Coalition's favour, the Coalition's best Newspoll 2PP since November 2013.  We also had a 53 last week and a 52 this week from Essential and a 55 last week from Morgan (56.5 by respondent preferences).

After considering the primary votes and Morgan's current house effect, I counted the Newspoll as 52.9 to Coalition, last week's Essential at 52.8, this week's Essential at 51.9 and last week's Morgan at 53.1.  This took my aggregate from 52.4 ("Newspoll Smells The Coffee") to 52.7 by the end of last week, and then to 52.8 now. On the assumption that no more polls are released this week, that will be the equal high for this term.  (Early in the Abbott era I did release a figure of 53.1 at one stage, but it was later revised after more accurate preferences were available).  The figure after Newspoll, 52.9, was also the equal highest point the aggregate has reached partway through a week in this term.  Here's the smoothed tracking graph:

Poll Roundup: Investments Attack On PM Fails

2PP Aggregate: 52.5 to Coalition (+1.4 in a week*, +6.1 since Abbott)
(Highest value since Turnbull became PM*)
Coalition would comfortably win election held now

(* Changes based on revised figures for previous weeks)

This week we've seen three new regular polls plus a partial result from another, and I've made some new decisions on how to deal with the recent behaviour of Morgan polling, so it's time to update my assessment of how the Turnbull bounce is going again.  This was a week in which new Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was attacked over the failure of his large financial investments collection to entirely avoid connection to the Cayman Islands.  It was pointed out (among the fine details of the Cayman situation) that this was also true of investments held by Labor politicians, leaving it unclear what exactly Labor was saying other than that the PM is rich.

Whether it was seen as grubby class warfare as has been widely alleged, whether it was actually paying the PM's economic skills a backhanded compliment, whether no-one can actually follow it all or cares, whether maybe even Labor had some kind of point buried somewhere but the commentariat weren't interested - for whatever reasons the attack has done no immediate polling damage, with no net change in two polls and what looks like an extremely good result in a third.

Poll Roundup: Turnbull Popular, Size Of Lead Less Clear

2PP Aggregate: 51.3 to Coalition (-1 in a week, +4.9 since final under Abbott)
Coalition would easily win election "held now"
(Aggregate updated from 51.5 to 51.3 following Essential)

Four weeks since Malcolm Turnbull rolled Tony Abbott, it is clear that the change is being well received.  Polls continue to show strong approval for the change, strong personal ratings for Turnbull and massive leads for Turnbull over Shorten as preferred or better Prime Minister.  What is less clear is how voting intention is travelling, and the uncertainty is coming mainly from the strange behaviour of a single pollster (Morgan), together with a shortage of data from others.

Polls over last three weeks

Since the previous roundup (Turnbull Shift Puts Coalition Back In Front) we've seen two weekly Essentials, one Morgan and one Newspoll.  A third Essential will be out tomorrow but because of work commitments I've decided to release the roundup now and update it for Essential sometime tomorrow night.

The two Essentials both had headline rates of 52:48, but for the first one a weekly 2PP of 53.5:46.5 was released, suggesting that last week's sample was probably around 50:50.  The Newspoll this week is at 50:50.  Last week's fortnightly Morgan, however, came out with an off-the-scale result of 55:45 to Coalition by last-election preferences (56:44 respondent-allocated).

Poll Roundup: Turnbull Shift Puts Coalition Back In Front

2PP Aggregate: 51.3 to Coalition (+4.9 in a week)
Coalition would easily win election "held now"

It's one of those weeks where we start things off with the graph (and especially notice the far right side of it):

So far we've had five voting intention polls since former Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull neatly disposed of Tony Abbott and became Australia's 29th Prime Minister.  ReachTEL came out with a 50:50 2PP immediately after the change.  Galaxy last week and the Galaxy-run Newspoll this week came out with 51:49 to Coalition.  Morgan in its usual fashion when something happens, threw an outlier, 53.5:46.5 by last-election preferences (though given the primaries, that was generous to Labor), and Essential put out a one-week sample at 50-50.

Poll Roundup: Bad Bishop Off The Board

2PP Aggregate: 52.8 to ALP (+0.2 since last week, highest for 14 weeks)
Labor would win election "held now" with small to modest majority

It's been a week for obvious chess analogies.  In the wake of the richly deserved end of a dreadful appointment, commenters have been scrambling to decide whether Bronwyn Bishop was "captured", "sacrificed" or "gambited".  However, I'm here to do more justice to this theme.  Chess players are well aware of the concept of a Bad Bishop - a piece that is unable to develop and interact with the opposition properly, stuck behind its own lines mingling with its own pieces all game.  Heck. I've had some that have spent the first 28 moves chatting to their king and queen in the party room, and now, every time this happens to me again, I'll be unable to look at the damn thing stuck there on c8 without thinking "Bronwyn".   Some bishops are even so bad that we just call them big pawns.

Poll Roundup: Silly Lefties Oppose Senate Reform

2PP Aggregate: 52.9 to ALP (+0.2 since last week, +0.5 in three weeks)

Labor would comfortably win an election "held now"

With the release of a new ReachTEL plus regular offerings from Morgan and Essential, and also a rather striking Morgan leadership phone poll, there's enough new content for another roundup of federal polling.

The Morgan phone poll didn't include a released 2PP figure (they sometimes include them and sometimes don't) so there are three new polls to add.  The ReachTEL taken on Thursday had a rounded 2PP of 54:46 and Essential's was 53:47.  However in both cases the released primaries pointed to the rounding having been in Labor's favour, and I aggregated them at 53.6% and 52.8% respectively.  

Last week's Morgan was 54:46 by last-election preferences; after adjusting for the primaries and the lean to Labor in Morgan's multi-mode series that one went in at 52.3.   The Morgan was unusual in that respondent-allocated preferences only gave an outcome of 53:47 to Coalition.  This was the first time in this whole term that respondent preferences have been a point worse for Labor than the published 2PP; they have been half a point worse four times with the last of those just over a year ago.

In all my aggregate shows a slight, but not yet statistically meaningful, drift back to Labor over the past three weeks.  This is best shown this week on the spiky (non-smoothed) graph of aggregate readings, noting that the ReachTEL has been back-inserted into last week's reading.

Liberal Spill And Poll Roundup: The Trouble With Political Jokes

2PP Aggregate: 55.8% to Labor (+3.2 points in three weeks, highest reading of term)
(updated following Newspoll and Morgan)
Labor would win election held now with a massive majority.

The Coalition is now in its worst polling position of the current term

(NB Scroll to bottom of article for updates for polls and other events added from Sunday 8 Feb on)

I've just returned from a week and a half on remote field work, and was going to put out my first poll roundup for the year on Tuesday.  However, all sorts of things might happen by then, so the data might very well be redundant.  I've decided to catch up on the mass of recent polling data first, and then follow up on the early week polling when it comes out.  But first, time for a look back at how (in my view at least) we got here.  My own contribution to the narrative-writing about what is going on now is rather long, so some may wish to skip the next two sections.

Poll Roundup: 2014 Year Review

2PP aggregate: 53.7 to ALP (+0.3 since last week)
ALP would easily win election "held now"

We're just about at the end of the federal polling season, an end which for the government can't possibly come soon enough.  If last year's polling is any guide, we may get one more ReachTEL at the end of this week and then that would likely be it until Morgan and Essential started up again in mid-January with the rest following a few weeks later. I thought I'd summarise some stats about this polling year, but first a quick look at this week's polls so far.

I should note first that a significant event this week - the Martin Place siege - could affect voting intention to some degree, and that incident was not reflected in any of this week's polling.  The past history of this government is that its polling improves temporarily and modestly when national security is in the spotlight.  Because of the scarcity of polls over the holiday season there may not be a lot to look at by way of evidence, and it remains to be seen whether this disturbing incident will be perceived as a terror issue as much as a run-of-the-mill failure of the domestic justice system. 

Poll Roundup: One Year Behind

2PP Poll Aggregate: 53.4 to ALP (+0.4 in a week)
ALP would easily win election "held now"
Coalition has trailed on smoothed aggregate for one year

Usually this would be an "off week" for the poll roundup series as it is not a Newspoll week, but the presence of Ipsos and Galaxy justifies squeezing in an article amid all the postcount chaos going down in Prahran and Fisher.  Another reason for putting something up now is that this week the Abbott federal government celebrates an unwanted anniversary.  It is one year since it lost the 2PP polling lead to the Labor opposition. 

Aggregates have now and then fleetingly shown the government back in front or nearly so.  My own showed it leading narrowly (50.3%) for a single week in mid-February, and Bludger Track has produced a weekly reading of exactly 50:50 three times (mid-Feb, early April, early October).  But when any kind of smoothing is applied to weekly figures to tone down the effects of the odd stray inaccurate poll, these blips have disappeared.  Both the smoothed version of Bludger Track and my own more primitive smoothed version now show the Coalition to have been behind for one year.

Poll Roundup: One Year On / The Magic Of Newspoll Rounding

2PP Aggregate: 51.7 to ALP (+0.1 since last week after no change in previous week)

The Government's First Year In Polling

This week's polling marks the end of the Abbott Government's first year in power.  In summary, the Government has spent most of that year behind in the polls.  Of the seven first-term governments for which polling exists, it is the first to spend most of its first year trailing in the 2PP vote, and only the second known to have been behind at all.  However, it ends its first year in arguably better shape than the Whitlam government did.  At the end of its first year the Whitlam government trailed 43-50 on primaries (equivalent to about 46:54 2PP) in a single Morgan poll, and while there was probably a bit of bouncing in that particular poll, it had been behind for a couple of months prior to that too.  Less than six months later, Whitlam's government went to an early election and was returned.

Turnbull PM: Not Likely Any Time Soon (Poll Roundup)

2PP Aggregate: 53.1% To Labor (-0.9 since mid-May)
This article will be updated through late June to about mid July.  Scroll to the bottom for the latest additions.

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Just enough results of interest have accumulated to start another roundup of the federal polling information that is out there.  But there is still not a vast amount to look at since the previous instalment, so this article doubles as my thoughts on something else that was causing rather a lot of media flutter last week.  First, the basic polling:

Is The Government Recovering?

This week's polls might be taken as some mild sign that the government is starting to recover from the bad polling recorded following the federal budget.  Newspoll is back a point to 53:47 and this week's Morgan sample (54.5 by last-election preferences, 55.5 respondent-allocated) is similar once due allowance is made for Morgan's house effect.  Essential failing to move (it's still on 54) of course means very little.  (In passing, I note that it is interesting to see the massive 17% support for Others in this Newspoll being described as "support for independents and micro-parties".  Palmer United are certainly not a micro-party anymore, and much of the Coalition's recent loss of primary support seems to be going directly to PUP.)

Nielsen: Greens 17: What Is This?

This week's AC Nielsen poll has created a bit of a flap with a primary reading for the Greens of 17%, and that is not the only unusual thing about it.  This result is a national record - the highest vote polled by the Greens in any reputable national opinion poll.  Ever!  Their previous highest results were recorded during a purple patch surrounding the 2010 election - 16% in Newspoll in late May that year, 15% in Nielsen the week later, 15% in Galaxy in late July, and two 15s in Morgan that September. 

The state breakdowns in the Nielsen (in a preliminary version the PUP row was mistakenly labelled "Independent") are especially interesting because they show the Greens on 27% in WA, compared to only 20% for the ALP, despite the two-party-preferred in that state being 52:48 to Coalition.  I've modelled the implied 2PP from the Senate poll as 53:47, so 52:48 in WA is about what we'd expect. Of course, the sample size for WA is tiny, so we shouldn't take too much notice of the figure.  All the same, might such things as a national Greens vote of 17% really be true?

Abbott Fastest Ever To Lose Poll Lead

Note: updates after Monday 16 Dec may or may not be slow for a while - other commitments.

 Advance Summary:

1. Following the recent Newspoll, the new Abbott Government has lost the two-party preferred polling lead.

2. This does not necessarily mean the government would lose an election if one was held now.

3. The Abbott Government has lost the 2PP polling lead much faster than any other new government elected from Opposition in federal polling history.

4. Tony Abbott has also recorded negative personal ratings much faster than any new PM elected from Opposition in federal polling history.

5. While polling taken at this stage has very little if any predictive value, governments that have lost the lead very early in their terms have a historically greater risk of defeat at the next election.

6. Bill Shorten's polling as Opposition Leader appears good, but is nothing unusual by the standards of other Opposition Leaders at the same stages of their careers.

7. Furthermore the strength or otherwise of an Opposition Leader's personal polling after only two months in the job has no relationship with their success at later elections.
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Rudd Replaces Gillard

"Being prime minister isn't a job you have a shot at and then you come back again if you think you've learned a lesson" - Gary Gray, Feb 20 2012.

Indeed not, Mr Gray.  The last egomaniac to pull that little trick off lasted only seventeen years the second time around.

This post discusses various polling history and projection aspects of the replacement of Julia Gillard with Kevin Rudd.  Of course, this major event has rendered a lot of poll-based projections that were premised on the idea of a Gillard prime ministership at the election void, and all over Australia psephologists are scurrying like spiders to repair their webs.

Historical Aspects

Kevin Rudd is the fourth Australian Prime Minister to recapture the role after losing it, after Deakin (twice), Fisher  (twice) and Menzies.  Fisher and Deakin played musical chairs in an era before majority governments were the norm (though Fisher later lost an election outright before winning the next one outright).  Menzies lost the support of his party and resigned, then led his party back from opposition.  Rudd is the first departed PM to return to the post without an intervening change of government.

Even at state level, the recapture of the top job (as opposed to the Opposition top job) is rare in the modern world.  It was common in the chaotic nineteenth and early 20th century state parliaments, such that NSW has had three five-time Premiers.   Since the 1950s, however, only Eric Reece in Tasmania (1972, recovering government against a short-term Liberal minority that collapsed during its term) and Don Dunstan in South Australia (1970, ditto).  So Rudd is the first leader at state or federal level for 41 years to lose his job and recover it, and has done so in difficult and unusual circumstances (albeit with a huge assist from the hung-parliament situation and the generally hapless self-marketing and trust problems of his successor's regime.)

Mayhem in the Marginals 3: Mayhem Everywhere

Advance Summary
1. A new multi-seat poll by JWS Research again provides seat loss projections for Labor that are above what is expected based on national polling and the assumption of uniform swing.  The poll projects losses of 32-35 seats, while national polling points to a loss of around 26.

2. State-of-seat issues may have some influence on this difference, but it is unclear whether the main finding of about six expected extra seat losses is sound, or whether it may result from the polling method having a slight house effect.

3. The pollster's claim that "marginality analysis" adds another three expected seat losses for Labor is unsound as it is based on false assumptions that seats within a given bracket would swing uniformly.  

4. In particular, the firm projects the loss of five Labor seats within the 6-9% bracket by very small margins.  In practice, it is more likely that some of those seats would fall and some not.

5. The poll's findings that voters do not want Kevin Rudd to challenge for the Labor leadership do not demonstrate whether voters want Kevin Rudd to become Labor leader, because the question design is flawed and too restrictive.

6. The poll's core finding that seat losses will be worse than modelled by a "uniform swing" (national pendulum), or by assumptions of uniform swing at state level, is consistent with results from other polling sources.

7. However all of the polling sources producing this finding are open to a similar range of reservations.