Optional Senate Preferencing: Not An ALP/Liberal/Green Stitch-Up

Advance Summary

1. This article welcomes the recent interim Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters report into the Senate voting system and generally supports its recommendations.

2. One important issue in Senate voting reform not yet adequately addressed is the calculation of transfer values for surplus votes. 

3. A recent article by Malcolm Mackerras claims that nearly all Senators elected in 2013 were elected by informed voter choice and that major parties are changing the system opportunistically while their vote is falling.

4. However, the Coalition's Senate vote only fell in 2013 because of defects in the current Senate system.

5. At least four and possibly as many as seven Senate outcomes in 2013 did not fairly reflect the will of the voters.

6. The idea that micro-parties combined should be entitled to seats in proportion to their total vote share assumes that micro-party voters very strongly prefer other micro-parties generally to the bigger parties.

7. Analysis of actual Lower House micro-party preference flows shows that any such assumption is false.

EMRS: No Honeymoon For Liberals

EMRS: Liberal 48 Labor 25 Green 21 PUP 3 Ind 3
Interpretation (provisional): Lib 48 (-3.2 since election) Labor 28 (+0.7) Green 18 (+4.2) PUP 3 (-2) Others 3 (+0.3)
Outcome of this poll "if election held now": Liberal majority government (approx 13-7-5)
Caution: Green vote suspiciously high, even considering house effects.

The first EMRS state voting intentions poll taken after the state election is up.  It shows the Liberals a few points below their state election result but still in majority government territory.  It also "shows" a massive surge to the Greens, at least half of which should be ignored given the pollster's long-term habit of overestimating the Green vote and underestimating Labor's. Although the poll shows Labor down on their election result, they are most likely at least level, perhaps even slightly up.

The tracker graph has been updated but here you need to be aware that some of those dots are not like the others; in particular the ones called elections do not have pollster house effects. Compared to the last poll before the election, this one purports to show the Greens significantly up (by 4 points), Labor insignificantly up and everyone else insignificantly down.

The Golden Age Of Studybludging

"[..] you are a playboy and a dilettante, with no real desire to ever work, to hold a job, to repay society for suffering your existence.  You are an opportunist.  You are irresponsible. You are a drone."

For the source of the quote, read on.

This article is just a shortish (by my standards) semi-flippant comment on something that interests me in the current Budget debates.

One of the most contentious Coalition decisions in the current Budget debate is a proposal to not allow unemployed people under the age of 30 access to unemployment benefits until they have been unemployed for six months.  The time for which benefits can't be accessed drops by one month for every year a person has spent in the workforce, although how this is calculated if a person has spent many years semi-employed, self-employed or intermittently employed is not yet clear.  Many, including me, have found this policy to be unbelievably nasty at first look.  On Twitter I described this policy as worse than everything else in this and many other budgets put together.

On that ABC program I rarely watch (because I dislike talking-head panel shows and bear-baiting in general) Treasurer Hockey was asked a direct question about what happens to someone who finishes their education, having not been in the workforce, and simply cannot get a job.  The questioner - who spoke very well indeed - assumed, as many would, that the result for such a person would be six months with no income.

Budget Blowout ... In Coalition Polling

Scroll to bottom for latest updates - updated through May and first week of June

Current aggregate: 54.2 to Labor (+0.3 since last week, +2.9 in five weeks)
Tracking graph (smoothed)

Advance Summary

After holding a slim and by no means election-winning polling lead for five months from November 2013 to April 2014, the Labor Opposition moved into a clear and widening polling lead in the weeks surrounding the 2014 Budget, and would easily win a hypothetical election "held now".  The polling position of the Coalition is roughly comparable to the two worst slumps of John Howard's first term, but many federal governments have recovered from similar, and in at least four cases worse, polling situations.

The federal budget is among the worst received in the last 27 years, second only to the 1993 "horror budget" in terms of its perceived impact on poll respondents and providing the worst ratings since the early 1990s in terms of perceptions of its impact on the economy.  Tony Abbott's personal ratings are among the worst recorded in one pollster's history (Nielsen), while in another's (Newspoll) they do not stand out so much, but are nonetheless the worst results he has recorded since late 2012.

LegCo: Rosevears and Huon Live and Post-Poll Discussion

Rosevears: CALLED. Kerry Finch (IND) re-elected. 
Huon: Armstrong (Ind) defeated Hodgman (Lib) on preferences

The most recent comments are below the dotted line with the opening post - some parts of which have been a tad discredited by the results (!) - at the bottom.

TEC Huon Results
TEC Rosevears Results

Nice results maps at The Tally Room.
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Monday 8:10 pm: Sorry for the slow updates; Monday's my chess night.  Anyway it's all over; Armstrong has smashed Hodgman on Smith's preferences winning 57.7% of them; Hodgman with 17.8% couldn't even beat exhaust.  Final result is a whopping 57:43 to the Huon Valley mayor, but the real margin was his survival at the Smith exclusion by under 3% of the total.

Is Campbell Newman Actually In Trouble?

Updated in May and June - scroll to bottom of article.

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Life isn't easy for conservative state and territory leaders anymore.  Of the five who came to power during the Rudd/Gillard years, Barry O'Farrell, Ted Baillieu and Terry Mills all failed to make it to the next election, and Colin Barnett won re-election comfortably but his polling has been on the skids (see Unpopular Premiers Have Dire Historic Fates).   Now, the future of Campbell Newman, whose government must go to an election by the middle of 2015 and is likely to go to the polls a few months earlier, is also attracting speculation.

Newman's position has always looked dicey because of the nature of the seat he holds, Ashgrove. Newman's electorate had been held by Labor for 26 of the previous 29 years at the time he won it, and it typically runs about six points above the state average for the ALP.  So, all else being equal, the Coalition would only win this seat in years when they recorded about 56% of the two-party preferred vote statewide.  

Nielsen: Greens 17: What Is This?

This week's AC Nielsen poll has created a bit of a flap with a primary reading for the Greens of 17%, and that is not the only unusual thing about it.  This result is a national record - the highest vote polled by the Greens in any reputable national opinion poll.  Ever!  Their previous highest results were recorded during a purple patch surrounding the 2010 election - 16% in Newspoll in late May that year, 15% in Nielsen the week later, 15% in Galaxy in late July, and two 15s in Morgan that September. 

The state breakdowns in the Nielsen (in a preliminary version the PUP row was mistakenly labelled "Independent") are especially interesting because they show the Greens on 27% in WA, compared to only 20% for the ALP, despite the two-party-preferred in that state being 52:48 to Coalition.  I've modelled the implied 2PP from the Senate poll as 53:47, so 52:48 in WA is about what we'd expect. Of course, the sample size for WA is tiny, so we shouldn't take too much notice of the figure.  All the same, might such things as a national Greens vote of 17% really be true?

JSCEM Comes To Hobart

Just a quick note that the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters will be holding hearings into the 2013 Federal Election this Wednesday morning in Parliament House.  Here's the star-studded lineup:

The hearings are open to the public, unless the Committee grants a request from a witness to go in camera so they can disclose sensitive information.  They are also expected to be broadcast on the Parliament House website (I'm assuming this is the federal one).

WA Senate Take Two: Preview, Live Comments And Post-Count

Seats Called: 3 Lib 1 ALP 1 Green 1 PUP

Summary and general comments (edited to update as required):

Liberal Senators David Johnston and Michaelia Cash, ALP candidate Joe Bullock and Greens Senator Scott Ludlam are all elected based on party quotas.  Palmer United Party candidate Zhenya Wang is close to quota and will be elected on micro-party preferences.  Liberal candidate Linda Reynolds (who would have won in the first election had it not been annulled) and Labor Senator Louise Pratt were contesting the final seat as of election night.  Both Labor and the Coalition have little over half a spare quota in their own right and the outcome will be determined by the preferences of other parties including the surplus votes of the Greens and, once they cross the line, PUP.

The hope for Labor in the post-count was that the pattern of postal votes relative to ordinary votes would be different to how it was in the 2013 federal election, when the Liberals performed nine points better on postal than ordinary votes.  In particular, it might have been thought Labor's dire final week (with constant bad publicity surrounding Bullock) would have meant that its vote before the last week had been higher.  Postal votes in so far are very consistently showing that the Liberals' performance relative to booth voting is at least as strong as in 2013, possibly stronger, and for this reason Reynolds will win.