Recent Newspolls Do Not Prove That A Hung Parliament Is Likely

Today's Australian reports claims by federal Greens Leader Adam Bandt that recent Newspolls suggest Australia is headed for another minority government situation similar to that which occurred (for the first time in many decades) in 2010.  It's a typical case of using polls for a purpose for which they are neither intended nor fit.  

The most relevant quotes:

"The Greens leader used ­research from the parliamentary library to argue that Labor’s only chance of forming government, based on the past six months of Newspoll, is to gain the support of the Greens and independents on supply and confidence.

The research, based on a uniform swing in each electorate, predicts Labor would have reached 75 seats on its two best polls this year – one seat short of a majority government.

“The maths just says we are heading towards a power-sharing parliament; (there) is a swing against the government,” Mr Bandt told The Weekend Australian. “It shows Morrison being pushed out of majority government but not enough for Labor to win in its own right.”

How Many Lower House Seats Can The Xenophon Team Win?

Note: For links to updated analysis re NXT written since this article, scroll to the bottom.

I have had a fair few questions about the Nick Xenophon Team (NXT) and their seat prospects for the Lower House in South Australia, because my seat projection nationwide still shows only four seats for Others.  This rather dry and mathsy piece (about Wonk Factor 3/5) explains my initial attempts to model what sort of vote NXT needs in South Australia, all else being equal, to win one or more of the 11 Lower House seats in the state.  These are very broad-brush attempts that don't take account of candidate factors, because until there is specific seat-polling we don't know anything objectively about how well (or badly) specific NXT candidates are going to campaign or be regarded.  Comments based on detailed local knowledge are welcome.

In summary, I estimate that NXT probably need a statewide vote in the very high teens to win seats.  Once they get well over 20 they start to win multiple seats, and something in the mid-20s could result in spectacular seat gains that would make a national hung parliament quite likely.  However there's no reason yet to believe those higher votes will actually happen, based on what little current public polling of the NXT vote exists.

What Kills State Governments: Age Or Canberra?

Note (2020): An updated sequel to this article has been published, see Age And Canberra Are Still Killing State Governments

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Advance Summary:

1. This article examines the influence of two factors on the fates of state governments at elections: the age of the state government and whether the same party is in office federally.

2. Results since 1969 show a moderately strong influence of which party is in office federally, but only a very weak impact of age of government.  A state government that is of the same party as the federal government is generally strongly disadvantaged.

3. In the 1970s and 1980s two very old state governments were repeatedly re-elected.

4. Since 1989, both the age of a state government and whether or not the same party is in office federally have been strongly connected to state results.  

5. It is rare, perhaps increasingly rare, for a state government that is the opposite party to the federal government at the time to lose.  When this happens there are very strong reasons for it, with leadership instability a common factor.

6. The strength of the impact of federal politics on state politics can predict otherwise surprise results like the 2014 South Australian election win by Labor.

7.  Furthermore, if the federal government is of the same party as the state government then there is a strong relationship between the popularity of the federal government and the fate of the state government.

8. Even without any knowledge of events or polling in this parliamentary term, models based on the history of these two issues still imply that a change of government in Victoria is likely.

Tasmanian Senate Seat Goes To The Button - Lambie (PUP) Wins

(Admin note to commenters: I have just done a cleanout of duplicate comments (where people submitted multiple copies of a comment).  If you get an email saying your comment was deleted, please don't feel rejected! One comment from a few months back was rejected for being off-topic but there will be a thread on the matter it relates to soon.)
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This is the thread where I will post the result and details of the preference distribution that determines the last Tasmanian Senate seat.  The thread that has been following the late Senate count and attempting to model the outcome has been extremely popular but has also become far too long and I want to keep the analysis of (i) the known result, once it is known (ii) any recount action that might be necessary, separate.

My thanks to the AEC for their very quick provision of preference distribution information.

Preview

On Wednesday at about 10 am the AEC's computer system will be commanded to perform a complete distribution of preferences for the Tasmanian Senate.  Liberal Senators Richard Colbeck and David Bushby, Labor Senators Carol Brown and Catryna Bilyk and Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson will be re-elected.  Unless all modellers modelling this count have somehow missed something surprising and important, Labor Senator Lin Thorp will lose her seat, which will go to one of Palmer United Party candidate Jacqui Lambie, Liberal candidate Sally Chandler or Sex Party candidate Robbie Swan.

Modelling the Tasmanian State Election off the Federal Election

Note Re Tas Senate Counting: An erroneous claim was published today (18 Sep) on Tasmanian Times that the Sex Party has won the last Tasmanian seat.  This is untrue (at this stage) - the count is still going, and the Sex Party would not win on current figures - the ABC Calculator is a rough model only.  Senate count intricacies can be followed in the post below.

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Advance Summary

1. Claims have been made that the result of the federal election, if repeated at the state election, would produce a hung parliament with the Palmer United Party holding the balance of power.

2. These claims are incorrect.  If the federal election results were repeated at the state election, the result would be a Liberal majority government with 13 seats.

3. The claims are also irrelevant as the Liberal Party has been tracking at a much higher level in state polling than in federal polls taken by the same pollster at the same time, and it is necessary to adjust for this.

4. A model based off the federal election results but with appropriate correction for state/federal polling differences projects a Liberal majority government with 13-14 Liberal, 8-10 Labor and 2-3 Green seats.  It does not at this stage project any seats for other parties.

5.  Despite this, the Palmer United Party has laid a strong base in Tasmania with its result in the Tasmanian election.  If it can keep its act together up to the state poll then it is capable of increasing its vote share and winning seats.

6. A very large increase in PUP vote share would be necessary on current polling to prevent the Liberals winning majority government.  It seems that actually the party most threatened if PUP performs competitively could be the Greens.

2013 Federal Election Late Night Wrap

This is my quick late night summary of where we stand after a more interesting election night than I was actually expecting!  The Coalition has won the election decisively, but it has been a middling win in 2PP terms and only a moderately heavy one in seat terms.  Note that the exact 2PP vote will change from now to the final tally in late counting and may end up being slightly more Coalition-friendly than what we have now.  It was not the rout that many were expecting following the 54:46 Newspoll and Nielsen and the astonishing seat betting plunge in the final days.

As usual a number of seats are in doubt and we will have to see how late counting goes in these to see exactly where Labor finishes up.  Currently 11 specific seats are gone (Bass, Corangamite, LaTrobe, Deakin, Braddon, Robertson, Page, Hindmarsh, Lindsay, Banks and Lyons).  Labor trails but is within striking distance in Dobell, Eden-Monaro, Reid and Petrie.  Labor leads but is not yet home and hosed in Barton, Capricornia, McEwen, Lingiari and Parramatta.  In 52 of its own seats Labor leads by more than 51:49, and indeed the first seat up from there is Coalition-held Solomon (NT), where Labor's internal poll that had them narrowly winning doesn't seem to have actually been far out.  So at the moment it looks like a loss of around 15 seats, but we will need to wait to see how late counting pans out and whether these close seats tend to fall on one side of the ledger or the other.  Usually they'll split fairly evenly.

Saturday (Final!) Federal Election Projection Model and Seat Betting Roundup

Note: I will be at themercury.com.au on election night.  A pointer to the coverage will be here.

PROJECTION 10 AM SATURDAY(FINAL)
COALITION WINS ELECTION (probability >99%)
SEAT TOTAL PROJECTION 95 COALITION 52 LABOR 3 REST
(This is an approximate projection only.)

Finally the time is reached for pollsters to release their final polls, modellers to release final projections and politicians to make final attempts to woo the "undecided vote" (which is usually, in real terms, a lot smaller than a lot of people think.)

Late And Final Polls

Essential was first of the regular pollsters to release what seems to be its final result, a 52:48 based on 1035 interviews from Sep 1-4.  If the result for Labor is benign or even an improvement compared to current polling by other sources, Essential will look very good, but if election day is a rout then there will be questions asked about going too early, using a smallish sample and the pollster's trending behaviour relative to others. Galaxy has released what seems to be a pretty safe 53:47, again showing statistical properties more akin to an aggregate than a poll; most likely if they're wrong at all it won't be by much (I am unsure if that's their final offer.)  ReachTEL is providing useful daily tracking and finals from Newspoll, Nielsen and others will arrive later today.  Morgan has released a multi-mode with respondent preferences at 53.5:46.5 (54:46 by last election); they will have a final poll tonight. (Update: this turned out to be just extra data for 54.5: 46.5)

ReachTEL (State): The North Remembers

Yesterday's article Tas Federal BaByLon Still Falling? covered the Sunday Examiner's large sample-size ReachTEL of Bass, Braddon and Lyons, three at-risk federal electorates.  The poll showed Labor trailing in all but within striking distance in Bass and Lyons.  This poll challenged a widespread view that the return of Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister had fixed things in the state and that Labor would now retain most or all of its seats here.

The Examiner also asked a state voting intention question - just primaries and nothing else.  Below are the results with undecided voters removed, with the June results of the Mercury statewide ReachTEL shown in gray, and the swing from the June poll shown as well.

Poll Roundup and Seat Betting Watch July 16

2PP Aggregate (Tuesday 16 July): 50.0 TIED (+0.2 for ALP since last week)
Individual Seat Betting: Labor favourites in 63 seats (+2 this week - Lingiari, Brisbane)
Seat Total Market: Labor 68 seats (+2)

This is instalment three in what seems to be becoming a regular weekly series in the leadup to the election.  The first Seat Betting Watch is here and last week's Poll Roundup and Seat Betting Watch is here.  As stated before, the aim of this exercise is not to claim that seat betting markets have predictive value, but to test whether they do, and to see which of the markets and the aggregated polls see the ultimate outcome of the election first.


This Week's Polls

As well as the 51-49 to Labor from AMR late last week, we've now had a 50-50 from Nielsen, a 52-48 to the Coalition from Essential and a 51.5-48.5 to Labor by last-election preferences from Morgan Multi-Mode.  (I did cop an "AGGGGHHH!!!!" and a "stupid" on Twitter for continuing to prefer last-election preferences to respondent-allocated but I'll believe KAP voters have turned into lefties only when data show they have.)

The net impact of these on my aggregate has been small and I currently have the two parties dead level on two-party-preferred vote share.  Essential and Morgan don't seem to be behaving the same way compared to other pollsters as they did before Rudd was reinstalled, and Mark the Ballot has a nice wrap of what a pain in the neck this all is for modellers here. (Also see the comment by Julian King on that article.)  Fortunately, the probably false assumption that neither has a significant house effect results in them largely cancelling each other out in my very simple model, but it's a bigger problem for those who take Morgan's large sample size into account.  It may turn out that either of these pollsters has struck it lucky and all the rest are too high or too low, but I'll keep assuming that that isn't the case.  Something to keep an eye on here is that Rudd is doing very well with young voters, and young voters are the most difficult to sample accurately for conventional polls, even with scaling.

Prospects for the Tasmanian Senate Race

Note: This is a pre-election article.  Of all the wild scenarios entered into below, the one that never came into consideration was that one of the apparent micro-parties would poll seven percent!  This is what has happened with the last-week rise of Palmer United.  A post-count thread dealing with the Tasmanian Senate spot will be added soon.

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Updated Summary 24 August:

* While Julia Gillard was Prime Minister, an outcome of 3 Liberal, 2 Labor, 1 Green for the Tasmanian Senate was overwhelmingly likely.  This is still the most likely outcome, but at times since the return of Kevin Rudd, other outcomes have seemed reasonably plausible.

* Polling since the return of Kevin Rudd has suggested the Green vote is softening and a Green seat is no longer guaranteed (though in my view likely).

* A very good above-the-line preference allocation for Family First gives them a chance of taking the third Liberal seat should the Liberals fail to poll three quotas (42.8%) in their own right.  Some other micro-parties are also in remote contention. 

* With declining national polling the chance of Labor retaining three Senate seats in Tasmania appears to be very low.