Ditching Two-Party Preferred Won't Resolve Australia's Polling Problems

Resolve: Coalition 38 Labor 33 Green 12 One Nation 6 IND 8 Others 3.

My 2PP Estimate 50-50

Alternative Estimate 51-49 to ALP

A new federal polling series has been launched and what we have before us is a mixture of the good, the bad and the interesting.  Such is my initial reaction to the launch of Resolve Political Monitor, a new poll by Resolve Strategic for the SMH and The Age.  Many of the reporting decisions around this new poll appear intended to keep it on a similar footing to the Nine stable's former Nielsen and Ipsos polls.  The poll will run monthly, and excitingly will include bi-monthly state polling for NSW and Victoria, something there has been a deplorable lack of in recent years.  

Australia - So What The Bloody Hell Was That?

For the fourth term in a row, the Australian Prime Minister following the previous election has failed to survive the term without being removed by their own party.  This is quite a streak given that in the previous 41 terms only two PMs have been deposed in the same way.   However this week's removal of Malcolm Turnbull has had a novel outcome, with the PM replaced not by his initial challenger Peter Dutton, but by a supporter, Scott Morrison.

Among the many takes that I think needs more careful analysis is the claim that Dutton failed to become Prime Minister just because that side of his coup attempt was tactically botched.  For sure, the Dutton camp frequently seemed to have a bad grasp of both numbers and tactics, whinged when faced with a reasonable request to prove support for another meeting so soon after the first, and were not helped by their man's recycled 17-year-old ALP thought-bubble of removing the GST from electricity.  Dutton's erratic demeanour didn't help either.  But I think there has been too much attention on how badly the Dutton plotters played their hand and too little on it being a weak hand to begin with.  It was a weak hand on two fronts: parliamentary stability and potential electoral impact.  

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.

Turnbull Challenges Abbott

This post should have a very short shelf-life indeed, so I'll try to make it short!  Communications Minister and former party leader Malcolm Turnbull has today resigned and challenged Prime Minister Tony Abbott for the party leadership, and by implication his position as PM.  Many reports are suggesting the Turnbull camp believes they easily have the numbers although I have seen one contrary report that they are less confident than a few hours ago.  There may be a fair amount of foxing going on.  Julie Bishop is believed to be running with Turnbull, and Scott Morrison to be supporting Abbott and doing his numbers (but not running for deputy).

Poll Roundup: Coalition Polling Improves, Abbott's Doesn't

2PP Aggregate: 54.6 to Labor (-1.1 since last week)
Labor would win election "held now" with a massive majority

Quite a lot has happened in federal politics in the last fortnight.  Shortly after the last round of polls (most of them disastrous for the Coalition) were released, there was a leadership spill attempt which Tony Abbott survived by the unconvincing margin of 61-39, even without any declared challenger.  This was followed by various declarations from the PM that he would be changing his spots, and then a steady flow of medium-level gaffes and leaks that mostly suggested otherwise.  None of this shows any sign of stopping, with new revelations about internal problems in the party (often arising from the Loughnane/Credlin conflict of interest) now arriving more or less daily.

Abbott was even the subject of a major article in The Australian, alleging that he had informally proposed sending 3500 Australian troops into ground combat against the so-self-labelled "Islamic State" in Iraq - an allegation that at this stage hasn't been verified by any named source.  Abbott's denials of the claim seemed somewhat coded, but maybe Abbott just wanted to be sure he didn't deny saying something he might have said in jest or as a brief thought-bubble. The polling fortnight ended with Abbott again focused on terrorism issues ahead of a major statement yesterday.

This week's polling

This week has seen a substantial improvement in the Coalition's 2PP polling.  When the Newspoll result (53-47 to Labor compared with 57-43) came out many observers, including me, expected that the change was almost entirely random poll-to-poll noise, but while the size of the shift back to the government wasn't replicated by other polls, its existence was.  Essential moved one point from 54:46 to 53:47 and Morgan moved two from 57:43 to 55:45 (by last-election preferences).  Considering that Morgan leans to Labor by about 1.5 points (my own estimate of the average gap has now come down to 1.3), that makes its result quite similar to the other two.

So we have a bunch of 53-ish results a fortnight after a bunch of results in the 54 to 57 range, which in turn came after a period of sparse polling.  This is a rather volatile polling picture and my aggregate still gives a lot of weight to the nasty stuff from 2-3 weeks ago compared to the three milder results this week.  But the combined weight of a 4 point 2PP swing in Newspoll, a 2 point swing in Morgan and a 1 point swing in Essential is enough to knock 1.1 points off Labor's lead.   There's very likely a large random-noise element in the Newspoll shift (with last Newspoll being a bit high for Labor and this one likely to be lower than reality) but to assume it is all random noise is not supported by the behaviour of other polls.  Here's the smoothed tracking graph:

Before I move on to some issues specific to Newspoll, let's assume this is strong enough evidence of at least a probable shift in voting intention back to the Coalition from two weeks ago and consider why it is occurring.

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.

The Gillard Bounce Barely Existed - What About The Spill Cliff?

Advance Summary

1. Kevin Rudd was in an improving and apparently election-winning polling position when deposed as Prime Minister in 2010.

2. Although it is considered that Labor received a bounce upon Rudd's replacement by Julia Gillard, a published aggregation of polls shows that that bounce was actually small (about a point) and short-lived.

3. The recent Labor leadership spill (called but not contested) was another event expected to produce dramatic changes (this time negative) in the party's polling but the results of polls conducted since the spill have been mixed.

4. Two polls (Essential, Galaxy) have measured no meaningful change in voting intentions, one (Morgan) has returned a significant but not massive change and one (Newspoll) has recorded a very large change.

5. The six-point swing in Newspoll is probably produced by a combination of the swing, the previous Newspoll having been below trend, and this one being above trend.  

6. The current Newspoll is in many ways among the worst Newspolls for the Government and best for the Opposition in this term.

7. Continuing support for Kevin Rudd from voters open to voting for Labor, despite the issue being apparently internally resolved, is likely to present a problem in building enthusiasm for the party's struggling re-election attempt.