Poll Roundup: Citizenship Chaos Sends Government To New Term Low

2PP Aggregate: 54.2 to Labor (+1 point in a week) - highest reading of term
Labor would win election "held now" with a large margin
Government has lost majority (for now) with two MPs recontesting their seats in by-elections

This week we've seen a highly unusual event in Australian political history: a federal government has lost its majority partway through a term.  This last happened in 1931.  The one-term Scullin government began its term with a robust 46 seats out of 75, but a by-election loss and defections to the opposition UAP and the Lang Labor split saw it whittled down to 35, following which it collapsed before the year was out.  What has happened to the Turnbull government, so far, is much less dramatic - two of its seats are vacant pending by-elections, and the government will recover majority status if Barnaby Joyce is returned, although it would then lose it again if John Alexander is defeated.

However, as the Section 44 eligibility issues continue to unfold (with the tabling of required evidence by December 1 expected to be the next step), we could well see more by-elections early next year in some much more difficult government seats.  The prospect of the government slipping into permanent minority, or perhaps even losing enough seats that it can no longer govern, is a real one.  There may also be by-elections in Labor and crossbench seats, but no incumbent government has gained a seat from an opposition in a federal by-election since 1920 so there would not be too much optimism regarding chances of gaining seats there.  My legally unqualified view, incidentally, is that the "hesitators" (those who filed to renounce UK citizenship too late for the process to complete by the close of nominations) are in trouble.  The references in previous cases to the taking of all reasonable steps as sufficient refer to a context in which a member cannot reasonably renounce an overseas citizenship, not one in which a candidate was needlessly slow about it.

How Accurate Was The Same-Sex Marriage Polling?

The abrogation of responsibility and waste of resources that was the Marriage Law Postal Survey has now concluded with a Yes vote of 61.6%, based on a very high turnout of 79.5%.  Every Australian poll on same-sex marriage in the last ten years has shown more voters supporting same-sex marriage than opposed, with the exception of a single fledgling ReachTEL in 2011, so this has been seen initially as another good result for Australian polls.  In contrast, non-polling "big-data" approaches based on social media analytics failed completely, with the EqualityPulse site mostly favouring the No vote until after the polls had closed and a Griffith University study bombing embarrassingly.  (Be wary of anyone who claims their methods predicted Trump would win - most who predicted him to win did so because they wrongly expected him to win the popular vote.)

This is being taken as another strong result for Australian polling, but the reality is not so snazzy, and more consistent with experience elsewhere.  Below are all the final poll results by each pollster that I could find.  (Some pollsters conducted several polls, typically finding little variation through the survey period.) The polls vary in methods - some asked about results based on those who had voted, some asked about the votes of those who intended to vote and some just asked a basic question about support or opposition to same-sex marriage.  One (Ipsos) appears to have asked about voting intention among those certain to vote only.  In many cases, inadequate public documentation means that it is not entirely clear what the pollster did.

Pembroke By-Election: Live And/Or Post-Count

CALLED: Reliable scrutineering reports on Sunday that Siejka (ALP) will win easily with Walker narrowly beating Chipman for 2nd.

Sunday

Analysis: Still awaiting margins for the two scenarios. As Brad Stansfield has said on Twitter, it's a bit much to be saying first that the Liberals' attack on Chipman wouldn't work at all, then after the result that it worked too well. But if working means getting near winning, it was only a pyrrhic success. It seems that far from generate a sympathy vote for Chipman, the tactic actually worked in driving votes away from him and to Walker, but at the cost of driving Chipman preferences (in droves as predicted by Pete Lawler on Twitter last night) and possibly primaries to Siejka. The Liberals needed to make the final two to have any on-paper chance, but did they cause enough voters to switch their preference from Chipman ahead of Siejka to the other way around to the extent that they caused Siejka rather than Chipman to win ? 

Not-A-Poll: Best Prime Minister Of The Last 45 Years: Round 3

"The Honourable Leader of the Opposition, Sir Billy Snedden, has broken his promise: the promise he made to me before the election. He promised not to tell any lies about me, if I didn't tell the truth about him."*

(image source, reuse subject to licence)

Two months ago I started a multi-round Not-A-Poll to determine this site's visitors' choice for the title of Best Prime Minister of the Last 45 Years.  The idea is that each month the Prime Minister in last place is eliminated and the rest continue until someone gets over 50% and wins.  There are rules permitting multiple exclusions in certain cases, to speed up the process a bit.  Each round runs for a month, so you can vote for different candidates from round to round if you want to. Multiple voting is in theory banned and adjustments may be made if I detect it, but there will probably be a lot of low-level multiple voting I can't detect or prevent. Comments about the merits of the contestants are welcome.

Section 44: Could Parry Peril Unelect McKim?

Warning:  Section 44 has now reached Wonk Factor 5/5.  

The Section 44 citizenship crisis affecting the Federal Parliament has reached a new level of electoral law murkiness today with the news that a Tasmanian Senator, Senate President Stephen Parry, is investigating whether he may be a UK dual citizen by descent.  Parry's father was born in the UK but moved to Australia as a child.  If it turns out Parry is ineligible, he is expected to resign from the Senate immediately, and following a referral the High Court would presumably follow the precedents set in Re Canavan regarding Barnaby Joyce and Fiona Nash and give him the flick.

That might all be the straightforward end of proceedings.  The possibility of a special count for Parry's seat (a recount of all votes as if the departing Senator had died before the poll) creates new problems in dealing with the replacements for ineligible Senators.   The reasons for this concern two unusual features of the Tasmanian Senate count: the very high rate of below-the-line voting and the extremely close result for the final seat.  Incumbent Nick McKim (Green) held off Kate McCulloch (One Nation) by just 141 votes.  McKim should have been re-elected easily but the Greens vote was damaged by the successful campaign to save Lisa Singh, who had been dumped to a normally unwinnable position by her party.  

New England By-Election: Prospects And Polls

Seat: New England (Nat vs Ind 8.5%, Nat vs ALP 16.5%)

By-Election 2 Dec 2017

Incumbent: Barnaby Joyce (Nat)

Main opponents likely to include Rob Taber (IND) and ALP candidate

Former incumbent and 2016 opponent Tony Windsor (IND) not contesting
Outlook: High chance of comfortable Nat retain

With the date of the New England by-election set it's time for a general prospects and polls post that I will update through the campaign as opportunities arise.  I may be pretty slack about this as Queensland will be a higher priority and I have a lot of other stuff on at the moment.  I won't be doing live coverage on the night because of previously booked air travel, but there will be a postcount thread if it is needed.

Circumstances and history

The New England by-election follows the disqualification from office of incumbent Deputy Prime Minister and National Party leader Barnaby Joyce, who was found to be in breach of Section 44 of the Constitution because he was a dual citizen of New Zealand by descent, despite having been born in the electorate of New England.

Section 44 Strikes, But The Government Hasn't Lost Its Majority Yet

Many news sites have now claimed that, in light of today's dramatic Section 44 disqualification of Barnaby Joyce from Parliament by the High Court, the beleagured Turnbull government has now lost its majority.

This is an exciting claim, but it isn't actually correct.

Pending the holding of a by-election for the seat of New England, the government will, when the House of Representatives next sits, hold 75/149 seats, with one vacant.  74 seats will be held by other MPs.  75 is larger than 74.  75 is larger than half of 149.  75 divided by 149 is 0.5033557... .  It is more than 0.500000.

The government's new and very temporary position is no different mathematically to that of the Cook Liberal government in 1913, which won 38/75 seats.  The Cook government is widely referred to as having had a one-seat majority.

Glenorchy: What Happens If Most Of A Council Quits While It's Suspended?

Welcome to Glenorchy City Council.  You can be checked out any time they like, but you can never leave.

That was the vibe following recent developments in an already strange and long-running Tasmanian local government dispute, one that is daily creating newer and more exotic flavours of political-law popcorn for electoral ambulance-chasers like me.  My sympathies are with the poor ratepayers of Glenorchy, who are becoming literally poorer ratepayers as they are required to support this niche entertainment as it drags on into season after season.

To begin partway through about book six of Glenorchy Game of Thrones, the GCC has long been wracked with factional strife and hackery (which has often crossed state party lines in odd ways) despite having, at times, some very well regarded Mayors.  The 2014 election saw a team headed by then one-term alderman Kristie Johnston run on an agenda to "clean up Glenorchy and clean out the council".  They were endorsed by Denison federal independent MP Andrew Wilkie - not normally one to put his name to anybody else's bid - who denounced the existing Councillors in no uncertain terms.

Fifth anniversary!

Today is the fifth anniversary of me, as one observer had it, "ragequitting" Tasmanian Times and starting this site.  This Blogger site was something I set up just to make sure I had a new home right away, but as it's turned out, as basic as Blogger is in some regards, I haven't seen a compelling reason to move.

Sometimes people ask me why this site just bears my name, rather than being called something snazzy like "The Poll Bludger" or "The Tally Room".  I have simply not come up with any alternative name that I am happy with.  At one stage I was tempted by "The Morning Mist", after a fantastic old quote from Sir Joh about polls that "come and go like a morning mist".  But it occurred to me that people would then start unkindly calling it The Morning Missed whenever I got something wrong, and besides the name would have at least one unsavory connotation in German.