Those who get exasperated at the deluge of opinion polling that normally accompanies election periods should be enjoying the Western Australian campaign, which has gone an astonishing 10 days without a single published poll. The drought is broken today with the Sunday Times’ second Market Equity survey for the campaign. Although its small sample of 420 is not much to go on, the results are consistent with the Poll Bludger’s expectations in that Labor leads 41.1 per cent to 38.4 per cent on the primary vote with a rough two-party split of 51-49. The paper also features what to my knowledge is the only attempt to predict individual seat outcomes other than my own, courtesy of Colleen Egan and Grahame Armstrong. The layout of the web article is hard to follow, and the contributors are indecisive in some cases, but our respective assessments basically stack up as follows:
| Egan | Armstrong | Bludger | ||
| Albany | LIBERAL GAIN | LIBERAL GAIN | LIBERAL GAIN | |
| Alfred Cove | Independent retain | LIBERAL GAIN | Independent retain | |
| Bunbury | LIBERAL GAIN | LIBERAL GAIN | LIBERAL GAIN | |
| Cent. Kimb.-Pilb. | LABOR GAIN | LABOR GAIN | LABOR GAIN | |
| Churchlands | Independent retain | Independent retain | Independent retain | |
| Collie-Wellington | Labor retain | Labor retain | Labor retain | |
| Geraldton | Labor retain | Labor retain | Labor retain | |
| Girrawheen | Labor retain | Labor retain | Labor retain | |
| Joondalup | LIBERAL GAIN | LIBERAL GAIN | Labor retain | |
| Kalgoorlie | Liberal retain | Liberal retain | Liberal retain | |
| Kimberley | Labor retain | Labor retain | Labor retain | |
| Kingsley | LABOR GAIN | Liberal retain | Liberal retain | |
| Mindarie | Labor retain | Labor retain | Labor retain | |
| Murray | LIBERAL GAIN | LIBERAL GAIN | Labor retain | |
| Riverton | LIBERAL GAIN | Labor retain | Labor retain | |
| Serp.-Jarrah. | Liberal retain | Liberal retain | Liberal retain | |
| Swan Hills | LIBERAL GAIN | Labor retain | Labor retain | |
| Wanneroo | LIBERAL GAIN | Labor retain | Labor retain | |
| Yokine | Labor retain | Labor retain | Labor retain |
The Sunday Times article neglects to spell out for its readers what these predictions ultimately amount to, so the Poll Bludger can exclusively reveal that Armstrong is predicting a one-seat Labor majority, an outcome also allowed for by Egan who nevertheless inclines slightly towards a Coalition minority government. Peter Brent at Mumble says Labor by 11 seats; I reckon five.
UPDATE (20/2/05): The above statement about the Sunday Times article was based on the online version. The hard copy spelled out very clearly their respective predictions – ALP 29, LNP 27, IND 1 for Armstrong, LNP 28, ALP 27, IND 2 for Egan. This has enabled me to infer their predictions where only ambivalent comments were included in the article, so the "uncommitted" entries are now filled in.
