Morgan, which ended its recent poor run at the federal level with a 53.5-46.5 result on the eve of the election, has produced the first post-election poll on voting intention. It shows Labor enjoying a honeymoon boost to 58.5-41.5, with a primary vote lead of 49 per cent to 36.5 per cent. Newspoll will presumably return to the fold in the new year.
Barry thanks very much for the info – appreciated Ron
Adam,
On that bee you have in your bonnet over the September Newspoll breakdown that I did which seemed to drive a rather large chunk of your last commentary, well you’ll be pleased to know that I’ve repeated that “over analysis” using both the state swings from the election result, and the safe Coalition seat/safe ALP seat/marginal seat swings – the equivalent information that the quarterly Newspoll gives us.
The result is exactly 84 seats projected to fall – which is spot on the money.
It served its purpose – the national pendulum predicts 81 seats off the current ALP TPP vote.
I’ll throw it all up on the site tomorrow – the only difficultly I’m having is just how much to poke you with a stick in the process
Possum , you should show charity to Adam
and not threaten him with your “Howard baseball bat”
Say, William.
How is that we were up to post no. nearing 1000, and I was keeping count, for whatever my reasons, and now it is back to 810, as I post?
I have deleted a bunch of recent comments that were leading the discussion down a very unpsephological path. I ask those involved not to resume the discussion that has disappeared. Obviously I should have done the same with the Aurukun discussion, but I was in a more tolerant mood earlier today.
CW, my comment deletions came after you left your comment and do not explain what you describe, for which I can offer no explanation.
#
647
Peter Kemp Says:
December 11th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
Absolutely agree.
At the Declaration of the Solomon seat today, the outgoing member, David Tollner (CLP) denounced the Coalition election campaign for his loss. He stated that he tried to keep his communications with the local electorate to local issues because “the Coalition approach was at sixes and sevens”. He went on to say that he tried to distance himself whenever possible.
He also said he was not interested in NT Politics. Finally, Dave was being frank.
Somebody must have slipped him some truth serum before the Declaration was held.
I reckon he’ll run again next campaign.
God , is that the time, I mean yesterday (Tuesday).
Glen says:
“Oh and FG don’t worry because “we’re coming back” and when we do we’ll have to fix the economy after Rudd has blown all our savings and prosperity and once we do that the progressives of the country had better be on their best behaviours.”
You’re coming back? Oh really? My advice is not to eat the mushrooms Glen, they contain a particularly potent form of psychogenic. Able Seaman Nelson ate them once but he thinks he got away with it.
Ferny Grover at 627: Admire your perseverence in struggling on. I was unable to stand alongside you last night as the real world got complicated. Morning has broken.
Scaper at 634: Yes, I have come across you on Tim Dunlop’s site, scaper, and have made a few contributions myself. William runs a great site here too, but I must admit its a bit wilder at times! The shouting did surprise me.
GG at 663: This is what I said at 365: “Before you get too hysterical, GG and Ron, the point I was trying to make is that six of the nine “gang-rapists” were children at the time of the offence. So I ask you again, would you condemn your 12 year old child to 20 years to life for rape?”
You seem to be unable to address the question (which is not a strawman question, its an hypothetical), but I understand why. Its hard to look calmly at the possible consequences of your moral outrage. As to your pique at being put on the spot, well tough. My only mistake was not including Glen the executioner in that roundup of the hysterically outraged. And taking the “high moral ground”? Moi? LOL. I thought that was what you were doing GG.
Anyway I have said all I want to say on this subject, and William, thanks for being such a tolerant host.
I’m not sure whether this has been addressed yet… but has anyone noticed some seats on the AEC site have been ‘Declared’ and then have had the ‘Declared’ status removed?
I thought a seat was only declared once all the votes were counted? If that’s the case… why have so many seats changed status?
Some of the seats I’ve noticed change have been Perth, Cowan, Stirling, Leichardt, Fremantle, Isaacs, Dickson and Dennison although there were probably at least another 2.
Is it just a problem with the AEC website or is it demonstrating some flaw in their counting?
All war is terrorism. It’s just that the winner gets to define the history. Possibly (in modern history) with the exception of WWII, one side gives up when it reaches a level of terror it can no longer tolerate.
#805 – William, it’s getting like a Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Maybe it’s time to do a Groucho Marx.
Do I gather from his post #802 that Possum is claiming credit for correctly predicting the election result two weeks after it has happened? That is an achievement indeed. Us old-fashioned psephologists were trying to predict the result before the election. Silly old us – we should have waited, then we could have got it exactly right as Possum has done. I take it the 30 September table showing Labor winning 112 seats was just a dry run?
LETP #811 The declaration of the poll is entirely at the discretion of the DRO. They don’t have to wait for all the votes to be counted. The Batman DRO could have declared Batman on the Monday morning after the election, but they usually wait a week or so. I’m not sure why a seat would be “undeclared.” Maybe the DRO was over-ruled by the state director, or maybe the AEC website was wrong – it has happened before.
Neophyte at 417: I said at 431 that I would get back to you with a link to the AEC submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters on postal vote applications that are processed through political party offices.
Here is the link: http://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/australian_electoral_system/JSCon_EM.htm
Scroll down to “Inquiry into the Conduct of the 1998 Federal Election” and go to the first submission No 88 of 12.03.99. Its a pdf file so you have to find part 8.6 for the material on PVAs. The last paragraph 8.6.31 summarises as follows:
“…the AEC recognises that it is unlikely that the major political parties would agree to a reversion to the pre-1993 situation where postal voting was entirely managed by the AEC. However, the JSCEM is asked to recognise the fundamental changes to voter behaviour that may be occurring in response to the mass distribution of unsolicited postal vote applications; the significant risks of disenfranchisement that are developing; and the detrimental impacts on the efficiency of AEC operations, and to consider whether this is the direction in which the federal electoral system
should be evolving.”
Graceless Grace,
I said it was a terrible crime, a terrible process and a terrible outcome.
I said the punishment should be appropriate.
I said I am more concerned with the victim than the perpetrators.
Summarising, generally, I said your arguments defending the system that produced this result are “tosh”.
I did not say lynch them and I have not said they should be locked up for twenty years. They are your words so you own them. Disagree with me as much as you like and as loud as you like, but don’t fit me up with your lies and prejudices.
I am not interested in your strawman arguments or your hypotheticals. I simply want to see this matter dealt with properly and justice for the little girl.
My dose of common sense seems to be catchy as Anna Bligh, Jenny Macklin and other noteworthies buy in to this matter. Just because a matter is treated sensationally by the tabloids does not negate its importance or lessen the sense of outrage that is being shouted all over the country.
Adam , I have asked Possum some questions re what I feel are flaws in 3 of the 4 Pollsters polls vs the weekend prior to the Election & have yet to get a reply.
I have put it down to either he is busy or my queries themselves may be flawed but I’ll persist
BUT your #913 comment misunderstood what Possum said at #802.
He is saying he has found new stat ratios that applied when to the Sept News poll and show consistency between them and the same ratios when applied to earlier Newspoll polls despite the headline poll varying……..
and if then applied on those Sept newspoll as a seat predictor would produce a predicted election result of 84 seats…ie a 100% accurate seat forcast
William you should host a live ‘show-down’ between the world famous Possum and Adam, perhaps sell tickets (my cut will be very small).
We have to do something until the next election starts in between 8 months and 24 months. That could be a lot of waiting.
jasmine, that might be funny, but your buildup reminds me a little of the selling point of the NZ drink L&P: “World famous in New Zealand”. Not that I’m casting dispersions on the talents of either esteemed gent 🙂
Greeensborough Growler justice is a concept that is much larger than one case and involves the accused as well as the alleged victims.
Any sense of justice must be weighed up for both parties in a single case dependent on the outcomes that are to be achieved. As I’ve said once before, I know next to nothing about the facts of the specific case and choose not to comment on it… but surely you understand that a justice system is more involved than dealing out punishments.
Overall, it seems you have a very simplistic view of the justice system. Your opinion on the individual case may be valid, but some of the statements you make don’t work in a general sense.
From the chilly winds of Kamchatcka (and as an objective observer on this point) may I say:
Adam was right
Possum was wrong.
Statistical determinism is no means to determine an election outcome and ignores historical precedent and form hence the wildly inaccurate claims of the possum.
Got to go now – not much power left in the wind up generator.
In what sense are you using ‘wind up’ ESJ?
GG #825
agree.
The flood of our opponents yesterday to the contention that the Judge got it grossly wrong has now become a little trickle because the facts we presented are
now universally accepted.
Rudd despite appealing to the electorate as a fiscal conservative had still in voters
minds not deserted the core ALP values of equity and compassion.
Rudd demonstrated this to voters by saying without qualification that
‘the decision was appalling”.
The conservative Howard would not have done so because MOST of the judiciary is one of the pillars of conservatism and there lies the
ideology difference
Nice to see Edward is doing well at the Political Re-Education Centre. I trust his studies in Chairman Rudd Thought are coming along despite the frostbite. If he applies himself he might be out by 2010.
Joe’s still coming back: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/12/12/2116601.htm?section=justin
My reading of Possum’s analysis was that it was NOT a prediction of the election outcome but a snapshot of voting intentions AT THAT TIME, that is September. Adam and others created a strawman by suggesting that Possum was predicting the election result and then proceeded to attack the strawman, and still seem to be doing it.
Even now, Possum is not making some kind of weird retrospective prediction of the election result, as Adam is suggesting. He was trying to demonstrate that his METHOD of analysis is sound, that is, it works better than the pendulum when it comes to translating polling results into actual seat losses and gains.
Ron and Greensborough Growler
A big thumbs up to both of you, thanks for being a breath of fresh air and as Min would say “Big Hugs”
Seems to me that the lawyer and lawyer loving types here just hate it if any of us “great unwashed” average Joes dare to make an unfavourable comment about the justice system.
We end up with condesending little inane remarks aimed at us,
eg: ignorant, hysterical, losing the plot or in GG’s case have blatent lies told of what he actually says.
Howard and Downer would be proud of these folk, same attitude, they are always right (in their own minds anway)
Main difference between Adam and Possum is the same as that between a clerk and an accountant.
No arguments that Adams site is terrific for research into past elections and contains a wealth of data.
However Possum is more directed at interpreting the polls and other data in trying to predict and determine elections and trends, in doing this of course there will be times when the forecasts don’t match the results.
Want to know the price of a tin of tuna, ask the clerk, want to know how many tins you will sell or may sell in the next 12 months aks the accountant.
I did not create a straw man in relation Possum’s 30 September predictions. When I questioned him as to whether he himself actually believed that there would be swings in the order of those shown by his table, he replied:
“For any given safe government seat, an argument can be made as to why it wont fall. We don’t know exactly which of the safe government seats are guaranteed to topple, what we do know is that there is an average 11.6% swing against the government in its safe seats. For that to be wrong, thousands of people would have had to be telling lies to Newspoll over a 9 month period, which I simply do not believe. So for every safe government seat that swings less than the average amount, others in the same category will swing more, even though an argument can be made for nearly every single one of them as to why they shouldn’t fall.”
So, he did predict a swing of that scale in safe Coalition seats. I said that no such swing would occur. He was wrong and I was right. These are simply facts. I’m not trying to be nasty about it, I have a lot of respect for Possum’s work, as I have said many times. But in this case he erred by placing too much faith in statistics and not enough in other forms of understanding electoral behaviour, and this led him into error.
Not really vera. Some people just have differing perspectives on the issue and think the view offered by Ron and GG is very shallow. In some ways they use very Howard-like arguments, which seek to inject emotion into an issue in an attempt to negate differently considered responses as elitist. You do it yourself by deriding people who think otherwise as lawyers or lawyer-loving types (as if this is meant to be something to be ashamed of). In a very Howard way they assert that you have to condemn the actions of the judge otherwise you are supporting rapists.
What’s going on … ALP only behind now by 60 votes in Bowman.
… We’re coming back!
Adam has produced an interesting, readable, slightly polemic post-mortem of the election.
Worth a read, but I did feel the need to come to the defense of the PollBludger forecasts which are somewhat maligned in his article.
Adam says:
“Thus of 148 Pollbludgers making a prediction, only 23% underestimated the scale of Labor’s victory, while another 27% got it approximately right. Fully half the Pollbludgers overestimated Labor’s victory, some wildly so – 17 predicting that Labor would win 100 seats or more.”
I think Adam was a little harsh on the Pollbludger’s forecasts. By my calculations the forecasts can be summarized as (rounded to the nearest seat):
Mean forecast:87 seats (arithmetic average)
Medium:86 seats (1/2 above, 1/2 below)
Mode: 80 seats (most common forecast)
Standard Deviation (11 seats)
The median forecast is probably the best aggregate measure as it is less affected than the mean can be effect by extravagant forecasts.
So, from a distance of a month from the election the median forecast was within 2 seats of the actually outcome. The median estimate was significantly lower than the number of seat implied by the polls at the time. In other words most bloggers were forecasting a narrowing and overall nailed it to within 2 seats – which, by any reasonable analysis, is very accurate.
The other key statistic is the standard deviation of 11 seats. Without getting too technical, this means the forecasts were all over the shop. In many cases forecasts were a form of wishful thinking (Ashley 146), an act of bravado (Tabitha 0) or an emotional hedge (LETP 68). The accuracy of the “consensus” forecast is even more remarkable given this level of noise.
The analysis confuses the high level of variability (which is true) with a high level of bias (which is false).
Looking at the updates on the AEC site. Robertson and Dickson have both been removed from the close seat category and declared. Congratulations to the very deserving Belinda Neal!
The remaining seats in the close category are Swan, Flynn, McEwen, Bowman and Herbert.
For what it is worth the AEC site analysis of declaration votes in all but one of these seats suggests that the number of votes to be counted (I presume these are votes over which there is some debate and will require the ROs’ decision) is only a handful.
The exception is Bowman where Lamming’s lead is now 60 but where the uncounted votes number 1412 (449 Absent, 834 Provisional, 170 prepoll and -41 postal). Does anyone know how accurate this is – I presume it is fairly accurate as the analysis of declaration votes in the seats that have been declared shows no discrepencies in the count, while those that are not declared continue to show missing votes.
820 ESJ- I was disappointed to see you use the term statistical determinism in the context you did. The more correct term is statistico-determinism as it refers to the INABILITY of any system to correctly predict any future outcome due to a combination of chaos theory (where sensitive dependence on initial conditions takes place) and quantum theory in which all events are only probabilities until they are measured. A statistico-determinist knows that the future can only be predicted with a limited degree of success.
LTEP
After reading your negative posts all the way through the election, pretending to support Labor when all the time your aim was to throw a bucket of cold water over the hopes of Labor supporters, nothing you say IMO has any merit to it.
How hypercritical are you by the way,
“Some people just have differing perspectives on the issue and think the view offered by Ron and GG is very shallow.”
then you have a rant at me for
“deriding people who think otherwise”
so it’s OK for you to deride us(oh master let me tug my forelock”) but how dare we have a different opinion to you!
Adam, I can’t speak for Possum. I can only give my understanding of his analysis of the polls back in September. And at no point did I come away with the idea that Possum was making a rock-solid prediction of the election outcome, and that includes the quote you have just posted.
As it is always the case with polls, it is only ever a snapshot of what is happening in the electorate at that time. We ALL know that future events and issues can turn up that might change the final outcome, and Possum understands this.
Your point about the need to take into account factors other than polls when predicting the election result is obvious, but valuable. I agree, completely. BUT there is a difference between extrapolating polling data to predict the result versus bringing together lots of possible factors, such as local knowledge of seats and individual candidates. The former is always prefaced with the disclaimer that IF an election were held TODAY, then X might be the result. And IF nothing much changes between now and the election, then these poll results might hold up to election day. There are always conditions. But the latter approach tries to take into account all these conditions, or rather, all the possible IFs and THENs in order to formulate a prediction.
Both approaches are fine and valuable. But I think that you have fallen into the trap of overlaying your approach onto Possum’s, and therefore misreading the aims and value of his analysis. You both seem to talk at cross-purposes for much of the time.
Dammit!, lets have this out either at Possums or Adams, its too confusing trying to follow the argument in three differant places.
Vera ,
LEP says he view offered by Ron and GG is very shallow
It was the view of our PM Rudd % our Anna Bligh ! We simply defended them.
Vera, we won the debate because no one now disputes the facts we presented
to prove the decision was appalling (nor indeed did LEP even try to !)
LEP merely used “Howard speak” ie. talk ..& never acknowledge you’re wrong
My blog was intended to take the discussion to the core ideology difference between the Partys which Rudd’s unqualified ‘appalling’ statement highlighted.
Howard & Costello & Nelson would not have done so. Hawke & Keating would
I’m with Adam. Track back through elections, and 2007 has produced a very normal looking result. As often occurs, one state stuck out against a trend, in this case WA. The swings were all pretty evenly distributed, with obvious stand outs like Dawson, Leichhardt and Wentworth. Most of the outliers fall under the category ‘circumstances’ to my eye. Bennelong was very close to the national swing. The election was decided in the marginal seats, and in particular, it was seats on the edges of the major cities with a higher than average proportion of home buying young families. That’s an area that has been for most changes of government since 1945. There is evidence of good sitting MPs being able to depress the swing in their seat, but this wasn’t in the most marginal seats.
What isn’t there is any evidence of marketing nonsense like “Doctor’s wives”. I hope it is the last time we hear of that term. Nothing odd happened in North Sydney, Higgins, Goldstein or McPherson.
I’m with Adam about some of Possum’s statistical analysis. On one or two occassions I said he was doing things to the Newspoll data that should only be done by consenting adults in private, though it was dodgy reading rather than anything Freudian that caused me to refer to him as Possum Coitus on that occassion.
I also think a few people over-cooked census data and fell into ecological fallacy, assigning attributes to individual voters from aggregate attributes of electorates. One in particular comes to mind, suggesting a big swing in Bennelong and Wentworth based on the above average proportion of young voters.
vera, there’s a difference between saying someone’s argument is shallow and deriding them by suggesting they support rapists. One attacks an argument, the other a person… a very simple distinction.
On your first point I won’t bother responding to that attempt to throw in something else to derail a completely unrelated line of argument. I’d say something of your posts through the election if I remembered them. Unfortunately…
Ron, I’ve stated a few times that I have no knowledge of the decision beyond media reports so I will not comment. My posts were merely in defence of Grace, who I think has been unfairly attacked.
However, I do believe Howard would’ve said the decision was appalling. I don’t think there’s a clearly distinguishable difference between the parties on the issue. One thing I did like though, was Ms Bligh’s comments on the 7.30 Report last night on the need to respect the separation of powers… something you seem to have rejected on at least one occasion.
Am I right in assuming Rudd made his comments in response to questioning? Howard would’ve made it unsolicited, therefore seeking to gain political capital from it.
Since it’s turned into a cat/dog-fight here, see yas later. I preferred the election stuff.
Ron at 822 said:
“The flood of our opponents yesterday to the contention that the Judge got it grossly wrong has now become a little trickle because the facts we presented are
now universally accepted.”
What self delusional rubbish. You have not presented ‘facts’; you have merely passed on what you picked up in the media and added your own hysterical intepretation to it. Nor has your interpretation of these matters been “universally accepted” – unless you inhabit a different universe. The original contention that the PM passed comment on the case in reliance only on what he heard in the media still stands (yes Ron, I know you argue that he was fully briefed prior to his comments but he wasn’t. I checked. Read the transcript.
There are other reasons why the likes of me have not commented further that have nothing to do with ‘acceptance’ of your position. Here’s 3:
1. Sleep makes it hard to correspond legibly
2. Work is an annoying but necessary distraction from this site
3. William has asked us to drop this topic.
So I will.
Robertson disappears from Close Seat radar screen, declared to be a Labor seat (50.11%).
Congratulations to Belinda Neal.
Grace at 814 – thanks for the link; I will get myself there as soon as some work commitment (too bad about the real world) are out of the way. Thanks again.
I am puzzled – why aren’t we discussing here ‘the significant risks of disenfranchisement’ through postal votes that Grace at 814 and earlier has highlighted?
Well I’m not sure which risks she’s talking about.
Seldom has any candidate had to put up with the relentless denigration and rubbishing that Belinda Neal has been subjected to. I still can’t find out exactly what is supposed to be so terrible about her except that she belongs to the NSW ALP Right and is married to John Della Bosca – such terrible crimes. Well, she has knocked off a Howard government minister in a difficult seat which is demographically trending away from Labor, so she has the last laugh. Stick it to ’em Belinda.
Neophyte, I’m not sure why the AEC is concerned that the political parties would not be in favour of a return to the system where the AEC handled all postal votes. Frankly, I’m not in favour of the fox guarding the chickens and I don’t much care if this view upsets the fox. The current system is wide open for interference and must be stopped. The AEC is the only body to handle the voting process. Allowing the parties to do so is indefensible.
Agree FG -and I’d even go so far as bringing the whole HTV election procedures under AEC control so that we don’t get hoodwinked and harrassed on polling day. Other countries do it without the mayhem.