Poll Roundup: Abbott, Shorten Racing To The Bottom

2PP Aggregate: 52.5 to Labor (+0.2 in a week, highest for ten weeks)

Labor would almost certainly win election "held now" with small to modest majority

This week has seen the debut of the new Galaxy-run Newspoll, a hybrid robopoll and online poll with a sample size of over 1600.  There's also been another Fairfax-Ipsos, the usual Essential and far too many dodgy skew-polls, so there's more than enough for another poll roundup.

Not much changed in as week in the media issues mix, with the government sinking further into the mire of internal confusion on both same-sex marriage and, of all things, Q+A.  The week has seen an open clash between frontbenchers Abetz and Pyne over Abetz's controversial same-sex marriage comments (for my own, entirely critical, view of which see here).  

Same-sex marriage is not an issue that normally drives voting intention, but it may be one that discourages people from changing their vote when they otherwise would have done so (for "Republicans" there read "Liberals" here in Harry Enten's take on the US situation)  . It's also one that can cause damaging public schisms on both sides of the chamber.  The PM's own tactics on the issue are mysterious - it seems he will at least go through the motions of opposing it, but opinions vary wildly as to whether he is doing his utmost to prevent it from passing, or trying to secretly engineer its passage.  Some within the Coalition are totally fuming about the latter possibility, but as Paula Matthewson points out, if it is true, what can they do?  

Abetz, Mushrooms And Shaky Same-Sex Marriage Polling

Advance Summary

1. Recent comments by Senator Eric Abetz opposing marriage equality should be taken in the context of Abetz's historic opposition to repealing "anti-gay" sex laws, and his use of much the same thin-end-of-the-wedge argument style then as now.

2. The anti-equality group Australian Marriage Forum is receiving substantial publicity but media have not examined whether this group has a formal membership structure or substantial membership.

3. Claims by the Ambrose Centre for Religious Liberty that support for same-sex marriage drops when respondents are asked to support changing the Marriage Act ignore the likelihood that some respondents would support achieving it through distinct legislation.

4. Many other findings in the Ambrose Centre's study are unreliable because of the extent to which respondents have been primed through the emphasis on one side of the story.

5. The Ambrose Centre study does, however, reveal that most voters who oppose same-sex marriage would still do so even if it did not cause significant social change and even if studies showed there was no impact on the wellbeing of children.  

6. Australian Marriage Forum's own report on polling is awash with unsound conclusions, and the amount of priming involved in their question designs means that little of use can be drawn from it.

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This very long and in places rambling article covers some dodgy polling by opponents of same-sex marriage, but also some dubious recent comments by fellow Tasmanians on the issue.  There's also an irrelevant diversion about mushrooms.  Feel very free to just read whatever bits of it, if any, interest you.    As stated before I completely support allowing federal same-sex marriage and regard the arguments against it as lacking even the slightest shred of merit.  This then will not read like an unbiased article, but when it comes to polling I am careful to criticise bad (and praise good) polling practice by both sides of any debate, whatever I think of the views of those involved.

[An update re the irrelevant mushtoom diversion was added in 2025.]

Poll Roundup: Shorten's Struggles Aren't Shifting Votes

2PP Aggregate: 52.3 to Labor (unchanged since end of last week)

Labor would probably win election "held now" with small majority

It's been another fortnight of sound and fury, dominated by speculation over Bill Shorten's leadership (amid worsening personal polls, unflattering reflections from The Killing Season, and concerns about aspects of his union background), still more anti-terror laws and another overheated culture war about some goose let loose on QandA.  Yet in this week's voting intention polls, very little has changed.

A ReachTEL late last week came out with a 52:48 to Labor headline, followed by a 53:47 by last-election preferences (53.5:46.5 respondent-allocated) from Morgan and a 53:47 from Essential.  The latter broke the run of seven consecutive 52s, as Essential finally caught a touch of the Green surge being seen by all other pollsters.  There was no Newspoll as the brand is in transition to operation by Galaxy.  (Meanwhile former Newspoll staff have started Omnipoll, which doesn't look like it will be doing regular voting intention polling, but which will continue many of Newspoll's other operations in an online format.)

After adjustments for the primaries and Morgan's house effect, I aggregated the ReachTEL as 48.2 to Coalition, the Morgan as 48 and Essential as 47.3, and the net impact is diddly-squat: a 0.1 point improvement for the Coalition on two weeks ago:

I should note that while the different aggregators have been pretty close together in recent weeks, PhantomTrend now has it at just 51.5, from which the "model's best guess" is an Abbott-Katter coalition. Mark The Ballot has 52.2 and I'll add in BludgerTrack when it's updated (update: it's 52.0, with a projection of 77 seats for Labor).  Labor's lead might look pretty solid but when translated into seat terms, it's a sliver.

Singh Dumped To Fourth On Senate Ticket

Summary Of Where We Stand (As Of 30 August)

With more figures coming through from this ballot I thought I should put a summary of some of the claims that have been made and their status:

CLAIM 1: That a factional deal caused Lisa Singh to lose preselection for a winnable spot. 
STATUS: False.  (Whether a deal existed or could have caused Singh to lose is beside the point. Factions voting for their own preferred candidates, and Singh not having enough primary votes, explain the outcome without any such deal being taken into account).

CLAIM 2: That had only the rank and file voted, Singh would have been preselected third instead of fourth, meaning that Singh was effectively demoted by union delegate and state conference voters against the will of the rank and file.
STATUS: Apparently true.

CLAIM 3: The outcome was determined by the preferences of rank-and-file voters.
STATUS: Misleading, since it was only the presence of other votes in the ballot that caused rank-and-file preferences to be distributed before Lisa Singh could win the third place.  

Also, this article maintains that the choice of quota for the ballot was incorrect.
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Today Labor in Tasmania announced the remainder of its federal preselections.  None of these came as any surprise, but the one attracting by far the most attention is the dumping of sitting Senator Lisa Singh to the stereotypically "unwinnable" fourth position on the party's ticket.

While there was grassroots party involvement in the preselection via a state vote of members, it did not shift a long-expected outcome: the other sitting Senators Anne Urquhart and Helen Polley retained the first two positions and the Manufacturing Workers Union state secretary John Short was placed in the third position occupied by Singh at the 2010 election.  While it was widely claimed Singh was the victim of a left-right factional deal in which in return for Short being supported for the third position, the Left agreed to encourage its members to support Polley, the real cause of Singh's demise seems to be the Left supporting Short ahead of Singh, and Singh basically just not having enough primary support to withstand a preference flow from Anne Urquhart to Short as a result of that.  (See the detailed comments by Adam Clarke below, although I am not currently as of 30 August convinced that the result would have been the same based only on the rank-and-file votes.  I have also made some comments about the voting system.)

Could A UK-Style Mass Pollster Fail Happen In Australia?

Advance Summary

1. Recently all major final polls and the vast majority of analysts failed to predict the UK election correctly.

2. Random sampling error, "shy Tory effect" and late swing probably did not make major contributions to this outcome.

3. More likely causes include herding (although this has not been conclusively shown to have happened), the difficulty of estimating turnout, and the abundance of essentially non-random "panel polling" methods.

4. Australian elections are easier to poll for because almost everyone votes and because there is very little tactical voting in the Lower House.

5. Despite this there is a greater risk of high average polling errors at the next federal election because of a rapid turnover of polling ownership and methods, which will make it more difficult for pollsters to detect issues with their methods.

6. Potential for Labor support to be soft even in very late polling also appears at this very early stage to be likely to be higher than normal.

Poll Roundup: Hockey Gaffe Breaks The Monotony

2PP Aggregate: 52.4 to Labor (+0.6 in a week)
Labor would probably win election "held now" with small majority

Finally we have some movement at the station.  After four consecutive weeks of 51.8% to Labor my polling aggregate has finally moved on, with a modest step in Labor's direction.  The move is not large enough to be completely certain it is real, and there is enough going on to be unsure what is causing it if so, but it's most likely Treasurer Hockey's remarks on housing affordability (and some faltering and ill-judged attempts by his colleagues to put that genie back in its bottle) have contributed to a small-scale revival of perception that the government is out of touch.

This week's polls

Four polls have come out so far this week.  Fairfax-Ipsos opened procedings with a 53:47 to ALP (by 2013-election preferences, 54:46 respondent-allocated), which was interesting because Ipsos has usually thus far leaned to the Coalition by about a point.  There was some scepticism about it based on a premature perception that Ipsos is very bouncy (see below).  However the Ipsos result was more or less totally backed in by a 2.5 point move to Labor in Morgan, to 54.5 - bearing in mind that Morgan skews to Labor.  2-0 for the proposition that Hockey had really put his foot in it, but this was contradicted by a 51:49 Newspoll, while Essential did as Essential usually does (ie very little) and stayed at 52:48.

Would Proposed Senate Reforms Increase The Risk Of A Blocked Senate?

Advance Summary:

1. A previous article on this site showed that proposed Senate reforms to eliminate preference-harvesting disadvantage only preference-harvesters.

2. There apparently remain concerns that the proposed new system would lead to an increased chance of a blocked Senate with the Coalition (or the Coalition plus clearly right-wing crossbenchers) holding half the seats when Labor came to power.

3. Preventing the election of micro-parties off very small shares of the vote does increase the chance for either "side" to from time to time win exactly half of the seats.

4. However, if such a situation does happen, it would be very unlikely to persist beyond a new Labor government's first term.

5. Furthermore, it is only likely to arise in the first place in a case in which Labor is thrashed at one election then wins narrowly at the next (a situation that cannot apply to Labor if it wins the next election narrowly, because of the crossbenchers elected in 2013).

6. Based on the actual votes cast at elections, Labor would actually have had an easier road to passing legislation during its 2007-10 term under the proposed new system than under the current system.

ReachTEL: Liberals Consolidate, But Who Should Lead Labor?

ReachTEL (state) Liberal 48.5 Labor 29.9 Green 15.8 Other/Ind 5.8

Interpretation: Liberal 48.5 Labor 32.9 Green 13.8 Other/Ind 4.8

Result based on poll taken as read: Probable Liberal majority (about 13-9-3, with 12-9-4 or 13-8-4 also possible)

Result based on adjusted interpretation: Liberal Majority (13-10-2)

Not long since the last EMRS poll suggested the Hodgman Liberal government was emerging from a period of disappointing polling, The Mercury has commissioned a large-sample ReachTEL that has recorded an even stronger reading for the party.  Indeed, this ReachTEL is not very much different from the only other one taken since the last state election (see ReachTEL: Liberals With Solid Lead).  It provides some very useful electorate-by-electorate data, the first since September, and also some very revealing polling on who should be the state Labor leader.

Poll Roundup: Whole Lotta Nothing Going On

2PP Aggregate: 51.8 to Labor (unchanged for last two weeks)
Labor would probably win election held "right now", in minority or with small majority

Yep, it's a no-change fortnight!  For the first time since the Abbott government was elected, my aggregate has shown exactly the same reading three Tuesdays in a row.

This week's polls were a 52:48 Newspoll, a 52:48 Essential and a 52:48 Morgan (by last-election preferences; 53-47 respondent-allocated).  The Newspoll and Morgan had effectively identical primaries (41-37 in the Coalition's favour with 13 for the Greens) while the Essential gave Labor three more points and the Greens three fewer, making the 52% 2PP look a little stingy.  (The usual explanations doubtless apply.)  I am still adjusting Morgan by one point based on evidence of its skew throughout this term (I don't yet assume that its apparent loss of most of that skew in the past few months is permanent) and so I aggregated these polls as follows: 51.1 for Morgan, 52.1 for Newspoll and 52.3 for Essential.  None of them did much by themselves, and between them they did nothing.  Here's the smoothed tracking graph:

This week's results are consistent with the Budget driving a small gain to the Coalition a few weeks back, but they don't exactly prove the Budget was the cause either.

For those who follow betting markets, there's been a move to the Government in recent weeks and months, with the probabilities implied by punters moving from more or less 50-50 to about a 62% implied chance of the Coalition being re-elected.