Not-A-Poll Reset: Andrews Resigns

After a brief appearance that there could be a challenge from Ben Carroll, Jacinta Allan has been anointed unopposed as the new Premier of Victoria, replacing Daniel Andrews who announced his resignation yesterday.  It's therefore time for another reset of the Next Leader To Go Not-A-Poll, voting for which has commenced in the sidebar.

Andrews has given little reason for resigning other than that he just felt that it was time to move on after nearly nine years as Premier and before that four as Opposition Leader.  Andrews led his party back to Government in 2014 in a single term after a narrow shock loss in 2010.  He was massively re-elected in 2018 despite polls that had a merely comfortable victory, and won again in 2022 with a modest swing against him and no net seat loss.  The opposition might not have beaten him in 2026 either and will be greatly relieved that he has gone.

Voice Referendum Polling: Nothing Has Stopped This Trendline

Two-answer estimate Yes trails 41.7-58.3 (rate of decline is slowing)
No still leads in every state in model but leads in Tasmania in recent tiny breakdowns
Estimate includes data to October 1

Major updates added at bottom: Morgan (Sep 25), DemosAU (Sep 28), Essential (Oct 3), YouGov (Oct 4), Morgan (Oct 5)

Key to colours: Green  - Newspoll, Dark Green - YouGov, Magenta - Resolve, Grey - Essential, Dark blue - JWS, Light blue - Freshwater, Black - Morgan, Red - Redbridge, Orange - DemosAU

This is my seventh Voice polling roundup; I expect there will be one more in the final week, but if polls are sparse over the next fortnight I will probably just add those that do arrive in that time to this article.  We have only three weeks to go til referendum day and remote voting has started as I write. 

Losing The Republic Like It's 1999: The Polling

The current Voice referendum with its rapidly declining support has brought back memories of referendums past.  Surprisingly, given that it's our most recent referendum, there has been little information available about the polling trajectory of the 1999 Republic defeat.  The received wisdom is that support for the Republic started off very high and ended up low, as happened with several other referendums (especially the 1988 quadruple failure) and as is so far happening with the Voice.

It turns out to be not so simple.  The story of the 1999 Republic referendum polling is one where only the last few months of data are all that usable, and in public polls at least, Yes was never all that much in front.

A summary of Republic polling is available in one paper available online but I thought, surely there was more?  I could not find any usable online archive of Republic referendum polling but what I did find, to my surprise, was some polling commentary in an article I published in Togatus April 1999.  1999 model me - not then a polling analyst so please cut some slack for misusing "push-poll" for a seriously bad polling question - wrote this:

"Poll results are confusing. In the last week of January the Age/AC Nielsen showed a national 41% yes vote, but Newspoll showed 58%.[*] The latter was a virtual push-poll because it included the statement 'this will most likely mean that the head of state will not be a politician' and ARM won't get even that simple message through to a thick republican public that mistakes an extra election with people-power."

[* 59% actually. This Newspoll wording was said to have been sourced from the ARM, and was roundly and rightly condemned by opponents as out of step with other polling at the time.]

In fact, question wording was a major issue in 1999 polling, and a case where public polling itself influenced the ballot paper design for the better.

Does Losing Mid-Term Referendums Help Australian Governments To Win The Next Election?

Short answer: there is no evidence it does.  

During the Voice referendum campaign a common view has emerged that a success for the No campaign will be bad news for the federal Opposition and its leader Peter Dutton for the next federal election.  The theory is that the Coalition's opposition to the Voice is already tying it to some strident political positions and that it will wear the blame for the defeat.  An example of this was a recent George Megalogenis article that initially claimed there was no precedent for an opposition leader taking down a referendum and winning the next election or the one after (which was edited after I and perhaps others pointed out Menzies winning in 1949 after defeating the Rents and Prices referendum in 1948).   Similar themes have also been present in the commentary of Professor Matt Qvortrup (who has incidentally long predicted that the Voice would lose, albeit recently with what looks like an optimistic Yes vote of 48 +/- 2.5%). Prof Qvortrup, who has great experience with overseas referendums, may well have evidence that referendum-defeat boost is a big trend overseas, though at a quick look I did not find any study to this effect.  

So, is there anything in this for Australia?  The paradigm case is supposed to be the 1951 defeat of the Communist Party ban referendum, in which Labor won the battle but lost the war: things said on the referendum trail made it easy for Prime Minister Menzies to tie them to Communism for many years after.  This narrative, however, seems simplistic to me, because the Opposition Leader (Evatt) not only said and did things on the referendum trail that made it easy to tie Labor to communism for campaigning purposes, but kept saying and doing such things forever after.

Voice Referendum Polling: How Low Can Yes Go?

Two-answer estimate Yes trails 42.3-57.7 (as of last data September 8)

Yes still behind in every state.  Fourth state now behind national average

(Update added at bottom for Resolve September 11)

 

Key to colours: Green  - Newspoll, Magenta - Resolve, Yellow - Essential, Dark blue - JWS, Light blue - Freshwater, Black - Morgan, Red - Redbridge.  

Time for another Voice roundup following a flurry of polls in the past week.  In the three weeks since the previous edition there's been another chance for the trend line to do something, anything, other than simple accelerating decline, and again this hasn't happened.  

This week's offerings have been the first Pyxis Newspoll at 38-53-9 (yes-no-undecided), a Redbridge forced choice at 39-61, a Freshwater poll at 35-50-15 and 41-59 forced choice, and Essential at 42-48-10.  The field dates for Freshwater were Sep 2-5.  

Australian Polling Denial And Disinformation Register

Introduction (Sep 2023)

Following a Newspoll finding the Indigenous Voice to Parliament Yes side trailing by a horrendous if not all that surprising 38-53 this week, the website arguably still known as Twitter has been even more awash with polling denialism than at other stages in the Yes side's slide down the slippery slope.  The number of people recycling and reciting the same unchecked viral false claims has become so large that it is almost impossible to manage a response to them.  Inspired by the AEC's electoral disinformation register, I have decided to start a register of commonly encountered false claims about polling that are spread on social media, mostly from people claiming to be on the left.  A few right-wing claims are included too, but I don't see those so often at the moment.  (I do see a lot of right-wing electoral disinfo, especially the "3 out of 10 voted Labor" preferential-voting denial.)

Voice Referendum Ticks And Crosses Beatup

I thought I should make some quick comments on the matter breaking yesterday (following a Sky News interview) regarding the use of ticks and crosses in the Voice referendum.  There was sudden outrage on various right-leaning outlets and from politicians including the Leader and Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party when it was noticed that the AEC's ballot formality guidelines advise that ticks in referendums are treated as formal votes for Yes while crosses are treated as informal.  This has led to a fairly large outbreak of clueless wheel-reinvention and simple-minded outrage on social media.  It is doubtless worse on talkback.

I should note clearly near the top that the ballot paper will instruct voters to vote "Yes" or "No", and they will also be instructed thusly verbally if they are voting in a booth.  This debate only concerns the tiny minority who fail to follow the instructions.

EMRS: Government Polling Steadies After Crossbench Defections

EMRS: Liberal 38 (+2) Labor 32 (+1) Green 14 (-1) IND/Other 16 (-2)
Election held now would deliver some kind of hung parliament
Jeremy Rockliff retakes slim Better Premier lead

This is just some quick comments at this stage about the August EMRS poll which has just been released.  The last poll came in the wake of the shock defection of Liberals John Tucker and Lara Alexander to the crossbench, and saw a six-point hit to the Government's vote.  The government has had a bumpy ride in the Parliament ever since, losing several votes on the floor and frequently having proceedings held up by tactical motions, but there has so far been no threat to confidence and supply.  It seems nobody much wants an election at this moment and if one is to happen this year that would probably be a result of some kind of standoff gone wrong.  The stadium controversy has abated for now and while there are plenty of others taking its place (most recently Marinus cost blowouts and mass Hobart bus service cancellations) the latest EMRS poll suggests that the damage is at least not getting worse.  In fact the government has gained two points, though the gain is not statistically significant.  There was a chance here for the rot to set in in public views of the Government, but it clearly hasn't occurred in this quarter.  

Voice Polling: The Sleeping Double Majority Curse

Yes trails about 45.0-55.0 in aggregated public polling (as of 13 Aug, pending new data)

No now leading on aggregate in every state, but Yes still ahead of national total in four states

Time for another Voice polling roundup.  There has been relatively little new data in the four weeks since the last update and this article includes some historic analysis that suggests that the current state polling picture for the Voice is actually highly unusual.  At the moment the state polling picture is irrelevant because No is ahead nationwide, but a benign state distribution is one thing Yes does have going for it should the national picture improve or if polls are underestimating Yes for some unprecedented reason.  What I find here is that it is almost unprecedented historically for the state picture not to be a drag, so it will be interesting to see if that holds up.  Is the double majority a sleeping curse that will wake up in the months to come or in the final results, or is it really going to be a non-issue this time around?  It turns out that if it is a non-issue, there's a reason for it, and that reason is Queensland.