2025 Federal Election Pollster Performance Review

Oh no, not again ...

On the day after the 2019 federal election I did the most media interviews I have ever done in one day, eleven.  Eight of those were entirely about the same thing: the polls being wrong.  That day and in the coming days journos from as far afield as Japan and from vague memory Switzerland wanted to know how Australia had gone into an election with Labor unanimously ahead about 51.5-48.5 and come out with the Coalition winning by the same amount. Was this part of a global pattern of polls being increasingly broken and underestimating the right?  (Answers: no and no - it was just a shocker by Australia's high standards).  

The day after the 2025 federal election it was obvious something had gone astray with polling again, and by something near the same amount, but the media reception was muted.  I think I did only one interview where the polling was even part of the report's initial focus.  The ABC did an article about the polling, but it was so quarter-arsed that it omitted four final polls, initially got the 2PPs of four others wrong, and even when "corrected" continues to this day to contain errors about what the final poll 2PPs were.  There were a few other articles that were better.

Making Seats "Marginal" At By-Elections Is Meaningless

Last night saw the Labor government get the good end of the stick in the Dunkley by-election, easily retaining a seat that was precariously above the long-term average swing for government vacancy by-elections.  It's no disaster for the Liberals who have got a modest swing with some mitigating factors but they (especially Jane Hume) were out in force last night spinning the outcome as a triumph.  Together with the usual nonsense about first-term governments not in recent decades losing seats and governments not losing by-elections caused by deaths (both based on trivially small sample sizes) I heard a lot about how they had turned Dunkley marginal and they were coming for the seat.

Marginal seat status where a seat is retained is determined by general election results not by-elections (so Dunkley is no more a marginal seat than it was before), but this made me wonder, does getting a seat inside the marginal range at a by-election predict anything at all?  I've found that such seats have historically almost always been retained by the government at the next election, although on average the election-to-election swing has been worse than the national average in such cases.  The idea that the Liberals have put Dunkley in serious danger next time with a swing that is not even bog-average for a government vacancy by-election has no basis.  

2022 House Of Reps Figures Finalised

Yesterday the 2022 House of Representatives figures were added to the archive of election results, making lots of the usual preference flow goodies available. Although all the preference throws had been completed and uploaded in rough form some time ago, the final figures importantly include the two-party preference flows by party and two-candidate preference flows by party per seat.  As well as this piece I will also be putting out a full analysis of polling accuracy, I expect within the next few days.

Some of the ground that I normally cover in this article was already covered in Two Party Swing Decided This Election (Plus Pendulum).  That article showed that Labor won the election on normal two-party swing in classic Labor vs Coalition seat contests, with changes in the seat share for the major parties pretty much exactly matching historic patterns, and that the groundbreaking defeats for the Coalition at the hands of six new teal independents and two Greens were nonetheless a sideshow in terms of explaining how the election was won.  

The 2022 Pendulum Only Slightly Favours The Coalition

 With redistributions in Victoria and Western Australia complete, the AEC has gazetted new boundaries.  Antony Green has released an estimated pendulum for the next election, now looking most likely to be held in 2022 rather than 2021.  There were some slight differences between Antony's initial estimates and those of William Bowe and Ben Raue, and I expect many of these would still apply to the final version.  Furthermore the AEC will release its own estimates later.  But pending the AEC estimates I thought I would use Antony's estimates as a starting point for a look at the 2022 pendulum and how much it helps or harms each side based on what we know so far about candidates.  This article is fairly mathsy and has been rated 3/5 on the Wonk Factor scale.  

There are three questions I am most interested in here:

1. All else being equal, what national two-party preferred (2PP) vote does the Coalition need for a better than even chance of a majority?

2. All else being equal, what 2PP vote does each side need for a better than even chance of winning more seats than the other?

3. All else being equal, what 2PP vote does Labor need for a better than even chance of a majority?

2019 House of Reps Figures Finalised

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The 2019 House of Representatives results have been finalised, a joyous event that tends to arrive unheralded two to three months after every federal election.  Although all the preference throws had been completed and uploaded some time ago, the final figures importantly include the two-party preference flows by party.  Normally I say that this is very useful for assessing the performance of polls.  At this election the polls failed dismally, mainly because of failures on the Coalition and Labor primaries (except for Ipsos which failed on the Greens primary instead of Labor); nonetheless there will be a final review of them here fairly soon.  This article is a general roundup of other matters regarding the House of Reps figures.

Preference Shifting

The final 2PP result is 51.53% to the Coalition and 48.47% to Labor, a 1.16% swing to the Coalition.

There was a very large shift in the preferences of Pauline Hanson's One Nation.  One Nation preferences flowed only 50.47% to Coalition in 2016 but 65.22% to Coalition in 2019 (even more than the 60-40 split believed to have been assumed by Newspoll after considering state election results).  Overall, preferences from parties other than the Greens and One Nation also flowed more strongly to the Coalition by a few points (53.93% compared to 50.79%) but this was caused by the United Australia Party flowing 65.14% to the Coalition.  Excluding the Greens, One Nation and UAP, Others preferences (50.7% to ALP) were 1.5 points stronger for Labor than in 2016.  It is also interesting that Katters Australian Party preferences flowed 14 points more strongly to the Coalition, very similar to the shift for One Nation.

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

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

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

Final vote share results

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

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

Uneducated Preferencing: NTEU/UMR Robopoll

Wirrah Award For Fishy Polling (image source)

This article initially covered the report in the Examiner today of a poll commissioned by the National Tertiary Education Union and said to show first-term incumbent Andrew Nikolic trailing in the federal seat of Bass.  However it has since become clear that this poll is part of a national bulk robopoll of 23 marginal (and in some cases not so marginal) electorates and raises enough issues that I've deemed it necessary to rewrite the article and give it a national focus.

The NTEU is not a slavish supporter of the ALP (for instance endorsing independent Andrew Wilkie at the last election) but it is obviously an opponent of the current government's education proposals.  The poll was conducted by UMR, which is best known as the Labor Party's standard pollster for internals (yet is described by the NTEU as "independent"), as part of a large series of national seat robopolls. The NTEU has now published a full data set for all seats (download from link).  The poll claims to find an average 2PP swing of 11% to Labor in the 23 surveyed seats, from 52:48 to Coalition at the election to 41:59 now.   Simultaneously the NTEU has released a message testing poll taken nationally via online panel sampling also by UMR and taken in late May to early June.  The 2PP in that sample is given as 56% to Labor.

2013 Federal Election: Best And Worst Pollsters

Ideally I would have written this article a few weeks after the election, while debates about the quality of polling before the election were still fresh in everyone's minds.  It seems a world away now but earlier this year there were actually plenty of people arguing that the day of the landline was done, that online and mobile polling were the way to go and that Palmer and Katter supporters would preference Labor in droves thus making the election much, much closer than all those pesky polls said.

But now ...

This was, in general, a pretty good election for the pollsters (most of them anyway) and a bad election for those who wanted to outguess them.  

For basic information about the different polls and their methods, and a lot of general stuff about polling methods and debate surrounding them, you may find the recently updated Field Guide To Australian Opinion Polls useful. 

I'll consider pollster quality in three categories:

Seat Betting Favourites Watch - July 3

This is a series that may run on here sporadically from now til the federal election, the date of which is now unknown but considered most likely to be in either late August or late October. At this stage I'm thinking of posting an update in a fresh article weekly around the middle of the week, but the posting time will vary according to my other commitments.  Also it may well be that someone else starts covering the same thing better, in which case I may just link to them and leave them to it.

Following the first week of Rudd-return polling, six polls by five companies have shown Labor somewhere in the range of 48-51% two-party preferred, with five of the six showing the government just behind.  Seat models point to a very close election if the an election was proverbially "held today".  The re-fired Bludgertrack projects 74-73-3 (ALP first), Mark the Ballot gives a uniform swing (or lack thereof) at 73-75-2 and Pollytics reports "My election simulation produces a similar result 76 seats to the ALP vs. 72 to the Coalition, with 2 Independents." (This is not the same as the 77-71-2 simulation I questioned as a slightly unsound extrapolation from its given data at the bottom of my previous post, and I assume it incorporates more data.)

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.

Marginals Mayhem 2: Labor Losing The Lot?

 Advance Summary

1. A new JWS Research marginals robopoll has been reported as showing that Labor would lose all its 25 marginal seats, including Dobell.

2. The poll was partly commissioned by ECG Advisory Solutions, a firm with strong Liberal Party ties, but this was not disclosed in initial media reporting.

3. The poll uses demographic scaling to obtain a result from an on-average older voter pool.  However the breakdown by age of this poll is more credible than that of the previous poll.

4. Results of the poll are more Coalition-leaning than current national polling.  This may indicate inaccuracy, but could also be caused by an intensification of post-leadership-spill anti-Labor feeling, or by a very strong post-spill swing in Queensland.

5. The poll finds that 15% of intending Coalition voters (about 8% of the total sample) say they would support Labor if Kevin Rudd were Prime Minister.  However the claimed poll finding that voters want Labor to win is misleading.

6. The poll is consistent with many other polls that have suggested voters indicating a preference for Others in polling are often Rudd supporters and are opposed to both Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott.

7. The reported finding that Labor would lose all 25 marginals is unlikely to be correct as a few seats are at threshholds above or near the state swings and as swings are not uniform from seat to seat. 

8.  Nevertheless in an election "held now" Labor would lose most of its marginal seats and probably several others besides.

Mayhem in the Marginals? JWS and Early Seat Betting

UPDATE (March): Many have found this article while looking for information on the second JWS Research poll.  The article below is still relevant in many ways but my comments on the more recent poll can be found here:

Marginals Mayhem 2: Labor Losing The Lot?

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Advance Summary

1. A recently released JWS Research poll of 54 marginal seats has been reported as projecting a loss of 18 Labor marginal seats.

2. The poll results should be treated with caution because the poll is commissioned by a source with links to the Liberal Party, and because it is unlikely that the Coalition would have such a large lead in all "marginal" seats while holding only a modest lead nationwide.

3. Even assuming the poll results are extremely accurate, it is not correct to interpret them as projecting a loss of that many marginal seats.

4. The reason it is not correct is that there is variation between states in the polled fate of marginal seats, which would enable Labor to better withstand the swing than if it was uniform.

5. On this basis, the poll does not show Labor as being likely to lose more marginal seats than would be expected based on national swings or other state swing data.

This article also includes brief comments about the Sportsbet seat betting odds released this week.

Oh, and pictures of wirrahs.