Labor Dominates In Recent Victorian State Polling

Recently two polls have shown that the Victorian Labor government of Daniel Andrews is currently crushing the Liberal opposition led by the recently returned Matthew Guy.  A Morgan SMS poll showing a 58-42 lead to Labor raised some eyebrows (mostly because SMS polling has in the past been volatile and trashy) but the first branded-as-such Newspoll for the term has reported the same 2PP.  In fact, the Morgan poll's primaries (ALP 43 L-NP 31 Greens 11 others 15) were even friendlier to Labor than Newspoll's (44-36-11-9) and but for the use of respondent preferencing the Morgan poll may well have come out 60-40.  This follows a Resolve poll in late October that had ALP 38 L-NP 34 Greens 10 IND 11 Others 7.  Resolve overestimates Independents, perhaps especially at Labor's expense.  I estimated the 2PP for that poll at 55.5 to Labor.  

Newspoll: More Off-The-Scale Leader Ratings

Newspoll has returned with a second round of the very welcome State Premier approval ratings first seen in late April.  I thought a brief (by my standards) post about the current round of Newspolls was worth putting up overnight as the results are already sparking discussion in Tasmanian politics.

In each case I give the Premier's net rating, followed by the change from April, followed by the satisfied and dissatisfied split.

Gladys Berejiklian (NSW) is on +42 (-4) (68-26)
Daniel Andrews (Vic) is on +40 (-18) (67-27)
Annastacia Palaszczuk (Qld) is on +24 (+8) (59-35)
Mark McGowan (WA) is on +79 (-4) (88-9)
Steven Marshall (SA) is on +52 (+5) (72-20)
Peter Gutwein (Tas) is on +82 (+9) (90-8)

And just for completeness, Scott Morrison (PM) is on +41 (+4) (68-27).

Why Better Prime Minister/Premier Scores Are Still Rubbish

Advance Summary

The "better Prime Minister" or "better Premier" score in Newspoll polling is a frequent subject of media focus.  This article explores the history of Newspoll preferred leader scores at state and federal elections and during terms and finds that:

* Better Leader scores are skewed indicators that favour incumbents by around 14-17 points at both state and federal level.

* Better Leader scores add no useful predictive information to that provided by a regression based on polled voting intention.

* If anything, Prime Ministers with high Better Prime Minister leads may be more likely to underperform their polled voting intention, but this is already captured in the relationship between polled voting intention and actual results.

* At state level, leading as Better Premier is a worse predictor of election wins or losses than leading on two-party preferred and having a positive net satisfaction rating.  This is because Better Premier is a weaker predictor of vote share than polled 2PP and is also more skewed as a predictor of election outcomes than either.