The accuracy of Australian seat polling has been an important topic lately, especially given the coming by-elections. By-elections are very difficult to forecast. Even after throwing whatever other data you like at them (national polling, government/opposition in power, personal vote effects, state party of government) they are less predictable than the same seats would be at a normal election. So it would be nice if seat polling would tell us what is going to happen in them.
Unfortunately single-seat polling is very inaccurate. I discussed this in a recent piece called Is Seat Polling Utterly Useless?, where I showed that at the 2016 federal election, seat polling was a worse predictor of 2PP outcomes than even a naive model based on national polling and assumed uniform swing. The excellent article by Jackman and Mansillo showed that seat polling for primary votes was so bad that it was as if the polls had one sixth of their actual sample size. It doesn't seem that seat polls are useless predictively, but we certainly can't weight them very highly.
Showing posts with label scaling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scaling. Show all posts
Monday, July 23, 2018
Monday, May 20, 2013
EMRS - Greens hit new low
EMRS: Lib 54 (-1) Labor 28 (+5) Green 14 (-4) Ind 4 (+1)
Interpretation: Lib 53 Labor 33 Green 11 Ind 3
Outcome: Comfortable Liberal Majority Win (Approx 14 seats)
The May 2013 EMRS poll has been released and the trend graph for the headline figures is here. The headline figures have a history of overestimating Green support so there is a possibility that this poll is pointing to an even worse result for the party than indicated.
During the last polling period the Tasmanian forestry peace deal passed parliament and the party split on this major legislation on the floor of the House of Assembly, with four members voting in favour of the version returned by the Legislative Council and Bass Green MHA Kim Booth, long the least Labor-friendly and forestry-friendly of the five, voting against.
The poll shows the Liberal vote largely unaltered from the soaring levels of the last two polls, but what is interesting here is that the Labor vote is up to its highest headline level since November 2010 (not that 28% is any great triumph) while the Green headline rate is the lowest of this term in office, at 14%. The core Green vote, counting only firmly supportive voters, is shown at a ridiculously low 9%. I cannot remember it being this low for a very long time and suspect it would be necessary to go back to the earliest EMRS readings from the late 1990s to find a similar figure.
Interpretation: Lib 53 Labor 33 Green 11 Ind 3
Outcome: Comfortable Liberal Majority Win (Approx 14 seats)
The May 2013 EMRS poll has been released and the trend graph for the headline figures is here. The headline figures have a history of overestimating Green support so there is a possibility that this poll is pointing to an even worse result for the party than indicated.
During the last polling period the Tasmanian forestry peace deal passed parliament and the party split on this major legislation on the floor of the House of Assembly, with four members voting in favour of the version returned by the Legislative Council and Bass Green MHA Kim Booth, long the least Labor-friendly and forestry-friendly of the five, voting against.
The poll shows the Liberal vote largely unaltered from the soaring levels of the last two polls, but what is interesting here is that the Labor vote is up to its highest headline level since November 2010 (not that 28% is any great triumph) while the Green headline rate is the lowest of this term in office, at 14%. The core Green vote, counting only firmly supportive voters, is shown at a ridiculously low 9%. I cannot remember it being this low for a very long time and suspect it would be necessary to go back to the earliest EMRS readings from the late 1990s to find a similar figure.
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