Covering the spread

Simon Jackman at The Bullring has done as I did in an idle moment a few weeks ago, deriving various measures of spread from an election’s worth of swing results at national and state level. If Jackman’s interpretation is correct, a state-level poll is little better than a national one as a pointer to a given seat result:

We see that there is less variation in swing within states than there is overall. But not that much less. The measures of spead of the swings (range, standard deviations, the mean absolute deviation around the mean) for each state are still quite large relative to corresponding national figure … There is still an awful lot of variability in swings out there, and I’d be reluctant to start applying uniform swing models within states.

However, he does add “just one caveat to all of this”:

It could well be that when average swings are large (or dare I say massive), there is greater uniformity or even less uniformity than when average swings are relatively small. I haven’t looked at data from previous election to know the answer to that, but it be helpful to know the answer to that.

Which is easily done if you have a spreadsheet full of swing figures, like I do. These three tables replicate Jackman’s for the 1996, 1998 and 2001 elections, two of which saw heavy traffic from one party to the other.

2001 Nat’l NSW Vic Qld SA WA
Mean 1.9 3.1 1.4 2.1 0.2 1.2
SD 2.4 2.8 2.0 2.4 2.3 1.4
MAD 1.8 2.2 1.5 1.7 2.1 1.0
Minimum -5.5 -4.0 -5.5 -3.3 -2.7 -2.4
Maximum 10.1 10.1 4.7 7.9 3.3 3.3
Range 15.6 14.1 10.2 11.2 6.0 5.7
N 142 45 37 25 11 15
1998 Nat’l NSW Vic Qld SA WA
Mean -4.8 -4.5 -3.2 -7.1 -4.0 -6.2
SD 2.9 2.2 2.3 3.2 2.8 2.7
MAD 2.3 1.9 1.8 2.4 2.2 1.7
Minimum -15.3 -10.2 -9.8 -15.3 -9.0 -11.1
Maximum 0.3 -0.3 0.3 -0.5 -0.2 0.0
Range 15.6 9.9 10.1 14.8 8.8 11.1
N 139 48 35 25 11 12
1996 Nat’l NSW Vic Qld SA WA
Mean 5.2 7.0 1.7 8.3 4.5 2.2
SD 3.3 2.4 1.4 2.5 1.3 1.4
MAD 2.7 2.0 1.1 2.0 1.0 1.2
Minimum 0.1 2.3 0.1 4.4 2.2 0.2
Maximum 14.0 12.0 4.9 14.0 6.5 3.9
Range 13.9 9.7 4.8 9.6 4.3 3.7
N 138 48 34 25 12 11

And what do you know. The last time there was a big swing and a change of government, the gap between measures of spread at state and national level was significantly higher than in 2004. However, this was not true of the 1998 election, which saw a substantial swing to Labor but no change of government. That might be due to the effect of One Nation in polarising the cities and the regions, most evidently in Queensland. The even messier picture from 2001 provides support for Jackman’s suggestion that a relative lack of state-level uniformity might be a phenomenon of status quo elections.

UPDATE: Geoff Lambert, who knows way more about these things than I do, offers a well-made point about the leptokurticity (here, use my hankie) of swing distributions in comments.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

587 comments on “Covering the spread”

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  1. Ave it

    I suppose coming second is a cause for celebration in modern england (ah remember the days of empire) The English Rugby Team should be arrested for crimes against rugby.The laws of probability say that one day within the next 3 years they’ll manage to score a try… No wonder you think the coalition are great…

  3. Ave it 07, yes “super England”. I left it forty years ago to live in Australia and have never regretted it for a single moment. England is a nice place to visit with its quaint old houses and anachronistic monarchy and over-crowded roads but I wouldn’t want to live there. I’d prefer Australia every time, even under a hard-line conervative Howard government.

  5. Yes I have seen the ABC bias too!
    If you listen carefully the ABC weather has clear code words such as tropical depression, storm front, low designed to influence the vote in favour of the Liberals.

    LOL – You guys are a scream!

  7. 151 – ah yes the empire – I remember it well – we spread civilisation to the whole world…. As I recall we did score a try in the final……

    153 – I don’t recall missing your presence in England LOL

  10. 154 – this twoliner thing is quite good fun isnt it – we dont have that in England yet….

    Super Howard leader of the free
    Rudd down the drain as you will see

  12. LOl – v.funny GG.

    What about Medicare Gold for weatherperson?

    “We’ve issued orders through the administrative committee for the storm front in Melbourne to be dissipated by 6pm tonight”

  13. Glen said:

    ShowsOn, what you fail to understand is that building nuclear power stations will inevitably prevent our nuclear scientists from going overseas to work. It will give first hand experience to our scientists and students in the nuclear field in their home country and probably lead to enrichment facilities, a crucial element in weapons production. I know we’ve signed the NPT but the NPT technically allows everything bar building weapons.

    ShowsOn i bet if i asked someone if China hypothetically was going to invade us would it be better if we have atomic weapons to defend our nation, i bet most would support my position,

    So its okay to ignore the Nuke Proliferation Treaty if you feel threatened by an aggressive nuclear armed nation?

    So you agree with what North Korea tried to do and Iran is supposedly going to? I wonder if you’ll be featured on the front page of the Tehran Daily Mail under the headline – Australian Liberal Party Stooge Says We Should Build The Bomb

    Methinks the party will be putting Glen in a very dark soundproof box any second now. Please give Turnbull our regards, Glen.

  16. 161 HAHAHAHA some people getting a little excited and desperate now!

    Ah the cool leadership of the English – leading the world to civilisation!

    Howard – he’s civilised too!

  17. ESJ….The libs have been making Agrade buffoons of themselves re ABC bias your years. Alston’s list of incidents of bias was probably one of the most imaginatively comic documents ever produced by someone who wasn’t in show business. Hope you were equally as amused as we were….

  18. And the majority appears to desire ‘er something else’ … (perhaps it’s because they’ve decided that freedom, Howard style, is so festered with paradox and distortion that they’d rather take a punt on Rudd’s Bonhoeffer-lite).

  22. # 112 Misty Says: November 7th, 2007 at 10:16 am

    Given the state of the global economy this is a good election to lose, one could argue.

    That’s just not the case. In spite of the global outlook for inflation, the fact remains that Australia has resources that other countries want, and could only dream of having, and they are going to need to pay for access to them. So higher interest rates means a higher dollar, more money for investment in the country, and cheaper imports. I truly feel for our farmers, as they are the hardest hit by a high dollar. But even the prices for their products are sky-rocketing.

    The reforms of the late-80’s and early-90’s have stood us well. We now have a huge economy, and our biggest challenges are education, and the infrastructure to deliver resources. We also need more education and skills development so that the products we sell are value-added, something our existing government has been woefully bad at. These are exactly the things that Labor governments are good at.

    Unlike the last time Howard was in power, at least he hasn’t completely ruined the economy. The GST, the last real policy that the government actually implemented, is also good for our economy too, regardless of the method in which it was implemented.

    We have about nine wasted years, and some problems that need to be fixed. But just about every government in the world would gladly trade economic conditions with Australia.

  27. Also on Skynews They showed Kevin Mitchell the union official getting stuck into Rudd and Gillard – of course Robb and the Skynews announcer was all over it but McLelland said they’ve got the wrong end of the stick – its a positive message for Labor because the unions are criticising Labor for NOT bowing to union demands (after they’ve given them $400000 for the campaign) – if he was devious, he would have thought their was a Labor consiracy to set it up – if so, Robb was taken in hook, line and sinker!!

  29. I remember reading an interview with Fran Kelly and she was very much pushing the line that her strong point was her objectivity and ability to see both sides of an issue. I wonder if, putting this together with some quite odd things she’s coming out with lately, the lady protests too much and is trying too hard to prove to someone that she’s not pro-Labor, perhaps someone at the ABC holds stereotypical views about lesbians. I’m still happy she’s doing the job – it must be one of the hardest on radio to be informed, eloquent and personable at 6am Mon-Fri – but I wish she’d relax and go back to being more genuinely objective.

    I always look forward to a Uhlman inteview. He’s relentless and doesn’t complacently accept spin. If I were a pollie I wouldn’t like to be interviewed by him.

  30. 175
    Ave it 07 Says:
    November 7th, 2007 at 10:53 am

    173 – Super Queen Elizabeth II – your ruler (plus Howard of course)

    Not for much longer…..!

  33. The government can try and spin it whichever way it likes, but there is no way on mother earth interest rates going up can be a positive for them. If I was them I’d be trying to move the media narrative onto something else, pronto.

    This is a government which is clearly behind in the polls and needs to WIN votes back. The best the coalition can hope for is a week of bad headlines relating to interest rates and no net change in their polling. That then leaves them less than 2 weeks to save their necks.

  35. Is it possible that we stop feeding the troll. I’m sure he’s got some rain soaked bedsitter in birmingham to rest his aching head. No need to do it here.

  37. Jude – agree with everything you say.
    Fran frustrates me, but mainly because I like her. If I didn’t like her I’d be less worried about her bias. It concerns me that I might like someone who displays liberal tendancies (other than Glen and ESJ of course).

    M

  43. Fran was a young journalist in 1993 on ABC’s PM.
    She went in very hard against Hewson and copped some flak for it.
    Maybe she is over compensating.

  46. The question is whether you would rather be in Team Howard’s position or Team Rudd’s position after the rate rise is now reality? Not some gaffe, not some smear, not some campaign promise (copycat or new), not some cheerleader spin artistry in the faux newspapers or tabloid tv, but the reality of $40 (average per month on $250K mortgages) pain added to the previous 5 x $40 per month pain. Many economists are warning of the eventual flow-on pain for renters, but that’s not an immediate reality like that letter from the bank with the sad news.

    The political fallout from mortgagees (and from potential new home buyers?) is down to the parlous state of housing affordability, the real % of the family’s take-home income needed to pay the mortgage, which is akin to the affordability levels of some of the worst years in the Hawke/Keating era. Not too mention some of the worst years in the Fraser/Howard era.

    Little wonder that Team Howard are praying that, overall, the electorate will believe that if your head is in an extremely hot oven, but your feet are in a bucket of ice, then on average, you’re feeling like you “never had it so good”. Alternatively, that voters will trust Howard/Costello’s “safe hands at the tiller” to stop the rate pain from getting any worse.

    As for the right-wing media, “Shanahanian”, spin that the Newspoll figure of ONLY 12% will blame Mr. Howard for the rate rise is actually good news for the Coalition, this is a strategy that the best defense is a strong offense. It ignores the problem that if at least one fifth of this 12% or 2.4 % reside in marginal seats (a high majority of which are in aspirational voter mortgage belts), then how does Team Howard build the momentum to claw Two Party Preferred in marginal seats back to near parity?

    Assuming that “battlers” in marginal seats are by far the biggest losers from this rate rise, then perhaps Team Howard could find itself the ones turfed out after winning a national popular vote through meaningless positive swings in its safe wealthy Coalition seats, a mirror image to Kim Beazley’s fate in 1998. Of course, in that case, Team Costello (Howard having shot through like a Bondi Tram) might be lucky enough retain its Senate majority. Not predicting, just saying.

  49. sean (117) – You are so correct regarding ABC bias, particularly on radio.

    For example this morning we had an extended interview on AM, following another extended interview with Costello yesterday. Extracts from the Robb interview were the lead item on the 9.00 am news, with no balancing comment from Labour.

    Before that we were sunject to the most aggressive, insulting and over the top interview with the NSW community services minister about the death of a toddler in Sydney, with Trioli making all sorts of unwarranted assumptions about the poor girl’s death and continually hectoring and interrupting the minister.

    She must have got a few complaints, because she claimed that she was simply a believer in ‘ministerial accountability’.
    Yeah right Virginia, except when it’s a Federal minister.

    The double standards displayed by the ABC at the moment, particularly on radio, are really beyond a joke.

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