Commenters at the business end of the country inform me, via Lateline, that tomorrow’s Newspoll will be as you see in the headline (after a 56-44 result a fortnight ago). It is against my religion to read anything into one poll in isolation. Nonetheless, I am tempted to interpret this as the interest rate hike being cancelled out by what Matt Price describes as the government’s “potentially quite good bad news”, namely last week’s stock market dive.
UPDATE: Kevin Rudd’s lead on preferred prime minister has widened from 44-39 to 46-39.
UPDATE 2: The Australian reports Labor’s primary vote is down from 48 per cent to 46 per cent (equal lowest since February), with the Coalition steady on 39 per cent.
UPDATE 3: Graphic here, Shanahan here.
I hate to blow my own trumpet, but yesterday I argued that JWH would have to come with something BIG and wedge toward the left radically to win back the Howard Battlers who will decide the fate of this election. Here is what I said.
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STROP Says:
August 20th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
What Howard needs is a BIG shift in voter intent on a pet hate of the electorate. For example, he could come out and say,
“OK guys, we are taking over the HEALTH system, box and dice, there has been too much blame game politics associated with this fundamental human rights issue (shift radically toward the left ) and we, the Federal Government, are going to invest the bulk of the budget surplus in taking over health from the State Governments†. Notheless, I think the Coalition need something as ‘radically left’ as this to shift the electorate back towards the Coalition.
Guess what: Howard has announced a 20 Billion Dollar Pork Barrell which will swallow up promised 1% budget surplus. This pork barrel is BIG, huge. As reported in The Australian Newspaper this morning
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22279835-601,00.html which says
Projects could also cover areas of state government responsibility. This feature builds on Mr Howard’s recent push to defy traditional divisions of responsibilities between governments, as shown by his offer to provide funding to Devonport’s Mersey Hospital in Tasmania.
The telling thing for me is how close to what I speculated Howard could say was within the ball park of what he actually announced.
The response from Labor has been (as expected) a triangulation strategy. That is, we will do what you are proposing but in a fair and balanced way.
” Wayne Swan said Mr Howard’s pledge to retain 1 per cent of GDP as a surplus was a rip-off of Labor policy. But he said Labor’s infrastructure investment priorities would be set independently of government through its proposed Infrastructure Australia organisation.”
To win the election, Labor will now have to sell their “Infrastructure Australia” as a viable alternative to Howards ‘aspirational nationalism’ and one that dosent threaten to push up interest rates or wreak havoc on peoples hip pocket economy.
As Access Economics director Chris Richardson said, the Government will be under pressure to ensure election spending announcements did not add pressure to inflation.
In that post yesterday I also concluded that-
” Of course Howard won’t do that because then he would be very open to the accusation of being economically irresponsible and driving up interest rates in November and ’scaring the horses’ into beleiving Rudd is a safer bet on the economy”. I was wrong. Howard has done just that or at least put that notion in the minds of the electorate- big gamble, big gamble.
There you have it.
Which of the 2 can convince the electorate that (a) their policy will work and (b) wont make a mess of the economy by spending too much money, bumping up inflation, and wreaking havoc on the Howard Battlers hip pocket economy- Howards ‘aspirational nationalism’ with added income tax cuts or Rudd’s Infractstructure Australia policy with the repeal of Workchoices legislation that threatens wages and workers rights ?
Take your seats ladies and gentleman, and out with the binoculars- the horses have come around the corner and are heading down the straight.
$20 billion Porkfest= Last Gaspiration Howardista Nationalista.
Reminds me of PNG politics—cut out the bureaucracy and provinces and deliver the Pork direct. Throw in religion and hey presto, a new version of Cargo Cultism will be born.
First post. Like to make 2 points and appreciate any comments
1. it is likely that Labor will need 51% of the TPP on election night to prevail. Hence, their current buffer is only 4% not 5%. 4% is achievable, 5% alot harder.
2. Newspoll, as with most other polls, breaks up the “others” according to preferences at the 2004 election in terms of the TPP vote. Given there has been a large 8% swing to Labor since the last election, it is conceivable that this same swing may also apply to the second preference of these “other” voters. If this is correct, Newspoll is understating the Labor TPP by about 1% ( calculated as 8% of some 15% ).
The Shanahan response today (similar to Steven’s post) seems to be: “Har! Har! Rudd failed to blow Howard out of the water despite the interest rate rise.”
But that primary vote for the Libs is a bit of a worry.
“Coalition standing on economic management and the Prime Minister’s ability to handle interest rates, after a period without an interest rate rise and strong economic results, took a battering. ”
The Coalitions strong suit took a “battering” is the main point of this poll.
Rudd has been fighting on Howards strength and he seems to be slowly winning.
Another disasterous poll for the Libs.
What did Dennis Shanahan’s wife think of him leaving Scores “With a beautiful woman”? Now that Journos are part of the story
Did anyone notice the subtly shift in the way that this poll has been presented in mainstream TV news this morning?
Have we seen the end of minor TPP movements in Govt’s favour being trumpeted as Howard claws back ground? It is interesting that the media seems to be treating 55-45 as the natural state of play and instead is focusing on movements away from Howard as better eco mgr etc.
riccardo,
I think that was code for being with his wife!
We should look back to the Labor years as described by Paul Kelly in End of Certainty. Colaition could have won in 1987, 1990 and 1993 due to pressure on living standards but lost due to their ineptitude and division. When living standards are under pressure govt.s are in trouble. Interest rates, Workchoices etc. are hurting Howard and Labor is a disciplined credible opposition.
Why on earth are the Liberals even bothering to put up any sort of candidate for Griffith? A waste of money and resources.
Rudd will piss it in again, with another increased majority.
As for the national picture: I’d never write off Howard, the rodent has a capacity for winning elections, and trying every dirty trick in the book.
Wait for the budget surplus to be whittled down substantially, and an orgy of pork barrelling in Coalition marginal seats.
What is amazing: if this country is so economically prosperous, why has the ALP consistently had a 10 point poll lead since January? The Libs should be miles ahead, surely?
Nathan the only thing Howard has up his sleeve is his arm!
Have a look at the historical Newspoll data on who would best handle interest rates at http://www.newspoll.com.au
Sept 1998 L NP 45 ALP 24
Sept 2001 L NP 45 ALP 22
Jun 2004 L NP 51 ALP 24
Aug 2007 Howard 34 Rudd 27
Question for the first three (which are the closest available to each election).
WHICH ONE OF THE (ALP, LIBERAL AND NATIONAL PARTY COALITION OR SOMEONE ELSE) DO YOU THINK WOULD BEST HANDLE INTEREST RATES?
In January 1996 it was L NP 39 ALP 31
Greg @ #62
I agree that people will be thinking abotu their debt, but what effect that has on their vote might be different to what you think. While some may think that they need the Coalition to manage interest rates (although I still don’t know why: the only ‘reason’ I have seen is that John Howard said they did a better job, well gee, there is a god arguement), there may also be plenty who think that the Coalition is to blame for the situation where they got into all of this debt in the first place…
Yawn. Once again “No change; ALP maintains lead of landslide proportions for 8 straight months” actually means “Coalition on track to win election comfortably”.
it sees to me that when a political event occurs (either pro labor or pro coalition) it never affects the very next newspoll , there always sees a lag. Perhaps the interest rate rise will affect later newspolls. Has anyone else noticed this?
What is the justification for starting the trend at the absolute nadir of the Coalition support? Why is this a natural ‘anchor point’ for the trend?
As I have remarked previously, since we do not expect the polls to read 60-40 again, we will be seeing a trend back to the government all the way to the election if we insist on using this as the starting point.
Do you accept that if you look for a trend from before or after this point then it essentially disappears?
On a more methodological point (so Possum, please chip in 🙂 ) why do we put any trust at all in these linear extrapolations into the future when we know that they are complete rubbish in explaining the past? Bryan’s trend suggests that the ALP 2PP must have been about 63-37 back in January. But of course we know that’s not true.
We have an asymmetry of information – we know that the linear regression doesn’t apply into the past, but we don’t know what the future will bring so it seems plausible that the extrapolation could apply there.
But the linear regression analysis itself must be time symmetric, so it seems to me that this is putting it end-up.
We know that the linear regression is increasingly inaccurate as a predictor when extrapolated beyond the data set into the past, so therefore we should conclude that the linear regression is increasingly inaccurate as a predictor when extrapolated beyond the data set into the future.
My pet theory, could be codswollop, is that interest rates will bite when people get a letter from the bank saying your new monthly repayment is $xxxx.xx
Or when they get their credit card statement.
Dennis asks,
“How could Labor’s support fall, dissatisfaction with Rudd grow markedly, the Coalition remain unchanged, and Howard’s rating go backwards all at once?”
Poor Dennis is so confused, he doesn’t know that each poll is an sample of voters, he still thinks each poll is an actual vote undertaken by 13,000,000 voters.
Commentators like 10esp are clutching at straws. Looking across all the polls (watch ‘Insiders’ on Sundays), the positions of both parties have virtually flatlined now at 55-45. The Rudd ‘strippergate’ affair will have no significant effect on Labor other than to give Rudd a small boost as those who thought he was too nerdy now realise he can a bit blokey. Interest rates will continue to damage the government as the election comes closer. The cost of money has risen for Australian lenders and we can expect some increases in rates (separate from RBA) for those borrowers who are mortgaged to the non-bank lenders who are vulnerable to the US market exposure.
That’s a perfectly respectable opinion, but the probnlem is that the evidence doesn’t justofy it.
As pointed out, the ALP won a number of elections in the 1980s when considered to be overall inferior economic managers.
So if ‘superior economic management’ was not decisive in those elections why muyst it necessarily be decisive in this one?
Lefty E’s point is a good one. People will not necessarily vote for ‘superior economic management’ if they feel that they personally will not be better off under this management.
I agree with ruawake about the interest rate rise biting when people start forking out extra money.
Analogous to the argument put out by Costello and some commentators here back in May that the effect of the tax cuts would not appear until July when people started getting more money in their pay packets. That doesn’t seem to have made much of an impact though.
“it’s the economy stupid” – steve
You’re so right, which is why the Government will be re-elected. They are still – even considering this poll – way ahead on economic management. Indeed, the Coalition’s own research has them much further ahead on that score and has the parties’ primary votes much closer, too.
According to your logic Steven, the goverment is way ahead in economic management, however the gap is closing as shown by the latest newspoll. Howard should call the election right now as soon as possible.
Lets see who wins.
cortexvortex, yes it does seem to be the case. The effect in this poll was the handling of the economy. John Howard’s reputation has been diminished but the voting hasn’t changed. What the interest rate increase and the Peter Costello revelations have done is merely consolidate the votes as they are. They have strengthened the ALP vote but have not diminished the Coalition vote. The fact is the current voting position has been extremely stable for months, mainly because the campaign has been in full swing for months. I very much doubt if you will see any wild swings this side of the election announcement. During the thirty odds days of the election proper there will be apparently wild swings because the attention of the people is actually focussed on the campaign, rather than it being somewhat peripheral to their lives. It probably has hurt John Howard having a very long campaign as it has forced him to use up much of his “ammunition”. I am sure he and Alexander Downer would much preferred to have dropped the Kevin Rudd strip club saga during the campaign itself but were probably worried that the interest rate rise and the Costello “I can win, he can’t” story were hurting too much and would cause too much of a dip in the polls.
It’s remarkable to see how close to the polling is this time to 1996 but in reverse. I see a couple of betting houses have closed up shop on betting on the election. They probably didn’t want to lose any more money.
My betting is that the last 24 hour tail flip, which you so often see, will go Kevin Rudd’s way and get him over the line.
The it’s time factor and the age of the government will probably be decisive.
I note the night club owner said Kevin Rudd behaved like a perfect gentleman and asked to leave even before they had finished their beers.
Dropping these stories is very dangerous for the Coalition as a lot of ghosts can come back to haunt them if they persist with mud.
Two sides can play at that game and at least one innocent person, the injured party, will get hurt if character assassination dominates the campaign. Please note Liberals.
“Did anyone notice the subtly shift in the way that this poll has been presented in mainstream TV news this morning?
Have we seen the end of minor TPP movements in Govt’s favour being trumpeted as Howard claws back ground? It is interesting that the media seems to be treating 55-45 as the natural state of play and instead is focusing on movements away from Howard as better eco mgr etc.” – AB
Give us a break. The vast majority of “journalists” in this country are Howard-haters and always strive to spin things Labor’s way ( and are left with their own heads spinning when the PM wins election after election ). Here’s a particularly vile example at Bigpond taken from the ABC, reporting on today’s Newspoll:
“A new opinion poll shows the interest rate rise announced by the Reserve Bank at the start of the month is hurting Prime Minister John Howard and the Coalition….Labor’s primary vote has slipped by two percentage points to 48 per cent while the Coalition has remained steady on 39 per cent.” A complete misrepresentation of Labor’s primary vote, and if the Government has remained steady how could they have been hurt by the interest rate rise? Unprofessional and utterly contemptible.
Asanque the fact that you blindly trust Wayne Swan to continue to deliver economic growth, budget surplus’s, low unemployment and low interest rates puts little weight to any of your arguments…
When handing out how to vote cards Liberals only need to ask people…Do you really want Wayne Swan running the books?
That’d be enough to change people’s votes…the Rooster is a liability for the ALP and i hope Costello exploits this!
Until the ALP take over as the best economic managers then ill be worried…and i doubt this will happen…
SK, I have no idea who you are, but one thing I know is that someone like you is never privy to internal party polling. That sort of polling is only for the eyes of the absolute elites in the party structure. The absolute elite does not come on to these blogs spruiking internal party polling results, they tend to keep it very close to their chests.
Indeed. This also explains why the coalition won the 1987, 1990 and 1993 elections.
Oops!
Yes, and the last few public polls suggest that any such liberal internal polling was wrong in any case.
Glen obviously voted ALP in 1996 rather than give control of a booming economy to an inexperienced barrister who had never run anything of substance in his life.
Didn’t you Glen?
The real question is: who is better capable of running the international economy, since most of our major trends originate there.
Huh? What do you mean ‘neither’?
My family is very close to the labor candidate for Page, Janelle Saffin, she doesn’t even know the internal party results for her own electorate, other than they a ‘very encouraging’ which could mean anything.
I wrote about the issues of economic management and national security, a few weeks ago.
You can find it here:
http://www.ozelection2007.info/forums/viewtopic.php?id=148
Steven: I’m still waiting for Dennis “Howard-Hater” Shanahan, to note that the Liberals are stuffed because his preferred indicator, being the preferred Prime Minister has Howard dropping.
I’m not sure whether you are deluded or simply ignorant by your allegations the mainstream media are ‘Howard-haters”.
It is will known that most New Corporation papers are Pro-Howard, let alone the Government Gazette.
However, you know Howard is in trouble when even Andrew Bolt has turned.
This still leaves Albrechtsen, Shanahan and Ackerman as the crazy right wing media commentators that don’t appear to be “Howard haters”.
I think some people are over-estimating the economic credentials aspect of this election.
Almost any Liberal government, anywhere, at any time, wil out-poll the ALP on economic matters (and national security). If they started falling behind on these issues, their strengths, they might as well concede defeat.
The ALP, in turn, will almost always out-poll the Coalition on health, education, industrial relations, and environment. These things are not necessarily a matter of ‘reality – after all, Howard has nothing to do with RBA interest rises, or stock market crashes in the US. Nonetheless, the perceptions of each party’s strengths seem almost unshakeable, in spite of any evidence to the contrary.
Glen obviously voted ALP in 1996 rather than give control of a booming economy to an inexperienced barrister who had never run anything of substance in his life.
Didn’t you Glen?
Actually Martin B….
The ALP had failed for decades to maintain the economy, so i thought a barrister could have done better than a bloke who said “This is the recession Australia had to have” and had unemployment at 10% and interest rates at 17% how worse could they have gone under Costello a fiscal conservative…thats why i voted Liberal and many still do because the economy aint broke why risk it with Swan…
Glen:
A blind monkey can manage the Australian economy when its in the middle of the mining boom.
John Howard with his pork barrelling is doing exactly what you fear the ALP will do. Which is spend indiscriminately to try to win the election.
Do we want Swan running the books?
I know who I don’t want running the books and that is Howard.
From his lavish accommodation and trips overseas and to Kirribilli together with his extravagant wastage of taxpayer money. Howard is treating your tax dollars as his private treasure chest. Remember, last time Howard left power as treasurer he left a hidden $9 billion black hole.
Expect more crazy policies from Howard once he is sure he will lose, and it will take decades for us to recover. That’s what you get for voting in lying scumbags.
Martin at 112,
Simple linear extrapolations, or even simple non-linear extrapolations based on polynomials aren’t good predictors for polling.
What they can be useful for (and are) is in describing the shape of long term trends (by long term I mean years rather than months). For instance, there has been a steady linear decline in the Coalitions TPP vote since the last election, and a cubic time trend explains the shape and most of the underlying movement of the the two major parties primary vote estimations since 1996.
But predictive and descriptive are two key words here that need to be differentiated.Descriptive measures describe the underlying behaviour of the data that polling volatility has historically been centered around.
Predictive, or forecasting is a different kettle of fish, as those underlying long term trends may (or may not) be easily extrapolated but its the volatility around those trends that ALSO needs to be accounted in the forecast.You need to account for both the structural influence (the long term trend) and the variance issue (the short term volatility).
Also remember that (and this is a bit counterintuitive) linear regression doesn’t necessarily mean “a straight line”.The modeling could be based on a linear combination of variables producing far from a straight line.
Short term movements (as in polling movements over a few months) is best done (in a pure methodological sense) with variance analysis using the longer term, more rigid time trends as a baseline than trying to project linear trends by arbitrarily choosing a point from which to start the analysis and projecting into the future.
I agree with Shanahan’s analysis. The insight and logic that comes from a senior political writer for a serious broadsheet, is what makes his commentary so worthwhile. I look forward to it every fortnight.
So here is what I take out of his analysis: With another disastrous poll like this one, Labour is doomed and come election they are cactus! With every newspoll Howard is getting further and further ahead and consolidating his win. Unless Rudd makes drastic changes to all his policies and throws everything but the kitchen sink at Howard, he is cactus. With every newspoll, Rudd’s options and chances are further diminished and they look like cactus. And time is well and truly running out for him. His last and only chance to avoid becoming a cactus, would be to defect to the winner’s side – the Libs!
Shana is a guru and has all the wisdom of cactus on his side.
Ah Glen you disappoint me. There I was thinking that you were a dispassionate analyst interested in the facts, but you turn out to be a partisan cheerleader.
Even if the ALP was responsible for the early 90s recession – which given that it was a worldwide phenomenon seems extraordinary – that in no way suggests that this was the ALP’s record “for decades”.
Even senior Liberals, not to mention the consensus of the nation’s major economists, agree that the Hawke-Keating government ALP modernised the Australian economy, brought interest rates down from previous highs, had a strong record on job creation, broke inflation for the forseeable future and initiated the recovery from the 1990s recession.
But don’t let these minor facts get in the way of your story.
The news from this poll is a trend to Rudd as PPM, a slump in Howard’s approval rating, and a big slump in Howard’s economic management credentials. It’s a little odd that the vote didn’t change in Labor’s favour, but it can certainly be assumed that the events of the last 2 weeks have reinforced the Labor vote. There is correlation between PPM and actual vote, so, if the PPM trend continues towards Rudd, the actual vote will also move at slower pace towards Labor.
Dennis has outdone himself. This poll, apparently, is a worry for the ALP. He obviously thinks being 10 points behind and the coalition having a primary vote of 39% is a good result. Hell, these are polls ALP supporters used to dream about and this far out from an election too. He seems to think this is not wiping the floor with the coalition. I suppose with polls like this, as with coalition supporters here, anything to ease the pain is grabbed onto, even to the extent of jumping on a small drop in Labor’s primary vote for solace which is within the M of E and does not translate into even 1% of gain on the coalitions primary vote. Desperate stuff.
“Yes, and the last few public polls suggest that any such liberal internal polling was wrong in any case.” – Lefty E
Internal polling is very different to the increasingly unreliable scattershot public polling we see on a weekly basis. Election campaigns – winning campaigns – are structured around the findings of the Government’s research.
Thats right BPG!
The only bright spot for Rudd, with Howard looking so dominant in the poll, is that a small protest vote may go his way.
Oh, and General Wenck is coming. And the Americans are nowhere near Baghdad, their forces have been anhiliated, there is no invasion, more imperialist lies, all hail another glorious victory.
Lord D – “There is correlation between PPM and actual vote, so, if the PPM trend continues towards Rudd, the actual vote will also move at slower pace towards Labor.” Certainly that is the argument put forward By Shanahan and the head of Newspoll. Where’s that theory today by these people?
“broke inflation for the forseeable future” – Martin B
Yeah, by plunging the economy into recession!
Centrebet is putting up individual electorate prices – has all of QLD up now
I’d also like to add, hopefully in a way that people can easily get, the nature of inertia in polling volatility and how that affects what looks to be “trends” to the naked eye.
Polling is very inertial in the medium term, but very anti-intertial in the short term.
In the medium term, polling is more often than not like those software based graphic equalisers you get in things like Windows media player.When you grab a slider representing a frequency with your mouse and push it up in the software, the surrounding sliders move with it to create a little hump.Over the medium term – polling is very much like that more often than not, and those medium term humps might last a few months.But over the longer term, those humps just move around a longer term trend.
In the short term, as a result of the margin of error in polling, the change in the polling estimates from poll to poll are more likely than not to be in the opposite direction.
For instance, if in one poll the ALP has 46 as a primary and in the next poll they get 48.It is more likely than not that in the following poll they will get less than 48.That’s simply a consequence of the true polling result being randomly more or randomly less than the reported result by an amount within the polls margin or error.Strangely enough, that short term issue also holds for month by month aggregate data on newspoll (in a highly statistically significant way) and morgan (in a marginally statistically significant way) – although to a lesser strength than poll by poll relationship.
Did Paul Keating also plunge the USA, the UK and New Zealand into recession?
Possum could you unpack that last sentence and explain its implication for the interpretation of the month to month aggregate data?