The super-sample poll published by Fairfax, covering 22,000 voters in 54 seats (about 400 each), turns out to have been conducted not by Nielsen, but an outfit called JWS Research whose automated phone polling on the weekend were widely noted at the time. The Sydney Morning Herald sells its managing director John Scales as “a renowned pollster” who was director of Morgan from 1992 to 1995, and research director at Crosby Textor from 2002 until earlier this year. However, its methodology is untried, at least in the Australian context: presumably pollsters go to the expense of hiring interviewers for a very good reason (UPDATE: Lukas in comments points to the assessment of legendary US polling analyst Nate Silver, that “there’s not really convincing evidence about whether IVR polls [robopolls] are inferior to regular ones”). Nonetheless, the general tenor of the results is in keeping with polling overall, give or take a few surprises. Taken together, the results point to 79 seats for Labor and 68 for the Coalition with three independents – curiously, the poll did not cover Melbourne.
Queensland. Labor to lose Brisbane, Bonner, Petrie, Leichhardt, Forde, Dawson, Flynn and Dickson, but hold Moreton, Longman and Herbert.
New South Wales. Labor to lose Lindsay, Bennelong, Macarthur and Robertson while gaining Paterson and Cowper; Labor to hold Greenway, Dobell, Page, Eden-Monaro, Gilmore and Macquarie.
Victoria. Labor to gain McEwen, La Trobe and Dunkley, but lose Corangamite.
Elsewhere. Labor to gain Boothby, lose Hasluck and Swan, and hold Solomon.
We also have Galaxy polling another 800 voters in four Queensland marginals – Bonner, Forde, Herbert and Longman – and found happier results for Labor than the Queensland sample from the weekend’s super-survey, with a swing of 3.5 per cent rather than 5.4 per cent. Morgan has also published small-sample polls from Bennelong (300) and La Trobe (200) conducted just this evening, which respectively have the Liberals leading 50.5-49.5 and Labor leading 53-47.
UPDATE: And now state-by-state breakdowns from the past two weeks of Newspoll, both of which had the national result at 52-48. The state two-party are results are 52-48 to Labor in New South Wales (a 1.7 per cent swing), 52-48 to the Coalition in Queensland (2.4 per cent swing), 55-45 to Labor in Victoria (0.7 per cent swing to Labor), 56-44 to Labor in South Australia (3.6 per cent swing to Labor) and 57-43 to the Coalition in Western Australia (3.7 per cent swing to the Coalition).
UPDATE 2: Recent state-level polling results in terms of Labor swing:
| TOTAL | NSW | VIC | Qld | WA | SA | ||
| JWS Research | -1.1 | -2.1 | 2.4 | -5.3 | -0.5 | -1.6 | |
| Galaxy marginals | -1.7 | -3.1 | 1.6 | -4.3 | -2.1 | 0.0 | |
| Newspoll (2 week) | -0.7 | -1.7 | 0.7 | -2.4 | -3.7 | 3.6 | |
| Nielsen (2 week) | -1.7 | -2.7 | 3.0 | -3.4 | -2.7 | 0.6 | |
| Essential (2 week) | -1.7 | -5.7 | 0.7 | -3.4 | 0.3 | 1.6 |
No sign of Hartcher on Lateline.
Anyone else watch INSIDERS earlier on SBS?
If the QLD voters they featured are representative of Queenslanders as a whole, then Abbott will win maybe 8 seats on the boat people scare campaign.
Why that issue bites so much North of the Tweed is beyond me.
Something to keep in mind. No matter how the debate/non-debate goes tomorrow Gillard still has the last word at the press club on Thursday. That will be such an important event and I’m expecting her to shine brighter than ever before. Finally the inane questioning from the hacks will be put aside and the smart, well credentialed journalists will get to ask her the questions.
Sertse – I am also a ‘user’ but have learnt to ‘keep it real’.
52 would just about cover even those who might fall in a non uniform swing.
Just excluding those with a 20% + margin
[Poll of Marginal Seats shows ALP leading LNP 79 seats to 68. 28,000 voters polled.]
So i was right it was 54-46. Go to you know where Bilbo. 👿
Robin – Holy asylum seekers, Batman, what will we do with Tony’s phone thing?
Batman – Patience, Robin, I’m still loading the data into the Bat Computer. If only we had faster more reliable connection to Gotham City Police Headquarters!
[Sounds like a phone poll. Must be automated??]
Dunno, not enough information yet, all we have is very big sample from Nielsons.
Dont know when it was done, could be all cumulative results so far or all done on the weekend
Dont know how it was done, proper phone, robo phone, online panel
Dont know sample selection/method…
[Maxine is a fatuous windbag who has been thoroughly unimpressive]
[Boy it was sweeeeet seeing her stick the knife into the rodent… something I’ll remember for a long time]
😆
Hear, hear!!
possibly a combination of both automated and phone interviewing.
54 seats are all the seats that the AEC rates as marginal i.e. under 6% margin
just over 500 a seat – from memory the Galaxy poll was 200 a seat?
Gusface.. 147 you dag 🙂
TSOP – Boothby will fall, I’m almost certain… latest news from up the road in Sturt?
The other important question: WHEN was this poll conducted?
With 54 total seats polled, we have 28000/54 = 518 voters per seat.
Okay, so most of us probably remember Neilson’s embarrassing 57-43 result on election eve 2007. But could somebody please remind me how accurate they were in 2004?
drake,
Could someone please remind me what happened to John Howard and who did it to him?
stevet – Good question.
Rocket
I dont know why tony the tech head is bothering with a boatphone, surley a giant searchlight with a boat on it is sufficient
@ Rocket Rocket
Can’t get enough of those boatphone gags 🙂
Sorry, but it’s Nielsen and they’ve shot their “accuracy” bolt as far as I’m concerned. All we know is it’ll be close.
[TSOP – Boothby will fall, I’m almost certain… latest news from up the road in Sturt?]
Well I am confident just from the momentum and how much the Libs have been scrambling to protect a seat that they hold by just under 1%
Either way, I believe it will be one of those seats that will go down to the postals.
It was reported that a lot of residents in the marginals were receiving automated phone calls over the weekend and early in the week. The recipients all claimed not to know who was conducting the poll. It appears we have an answer..
[Robin – Holy asylum seekers, Batman, what will we do with Tony’s phone thing?
Batman – Patience, Robin, I’m still loading the data into the Bat Computer. If only we had faster more reliable connection to Gotham City Police Headquarters!]
Here’s the picture:
http://www.groupthink.com.au/2010/08/16/boatman-and-robin/
My gripe isn’t on the amount per seat, it’s on the amount of seats. Anyway, I’ve said my view on a poll of this magnitude, I’ll move on.
I hope at about 8.30pm on the 21st we will be satisfied.
BB,
You, of all people, falling for the media spin?
gloryconsequence,
We can only hope pyne gets sacked from sturt
Sounds like we may have a Galaxy QLD marginal seat poll tomorrow as well!! Anyone know anymore about this?
To quote Grog on Twitter to young Mumble the Sellout 🙂
BB, we dont enough about the methodology or timing, but it is the biggest marginal seat poll with the biggest no of voters per seat we have seen. A more than worthwhile exercise
Lord D @166 – Very good point. I wouldn’t trust a market research company with my parking meter change. Without looking at any of the details I instinctively write this poll off as MR hype with a good dose of bizarre.
The seat of Melbourne was NOT polled.
Several of those will fall ALP on the night – so I’m looking good for my no net loss prediction (not counting notionals), 83 seats.
Gus.. all things are possible in an infinite universe, but frankly anything over 83 will have me bouncing off the walls.. Point is 83 or more will be seen as repudiation for Abbott.
3 more days to go and the anxiety ends. The we can find out which of these predicted poll anomalies will come true and which are myths (“female bradley effect” etc)
[The seat of Melbourne was NOT polled.]
Greens don’t stand a chance is why 🙂
Yep. More “mine’s bigger than yours” crapola.
So if it’s 79-68 does that mean they are giving Melbourne to the ALP? If so (and with any basis) it would be very interesting to see their figures for that seat, assuming it was one of those polled.
I’m sceptical of the currently short odds on Bandt. Has there been any polling of Melbourne released at all?
[The seat of Melbourne was NOT polled.]
Probably because it has no bearing on who will be in government.
Quite a few polled in Paterson including me. If they’re including Paterson as close I’m happy.
Grog – please keep on to Speers re the Dorothy Dixer questions to Abbott.
Dagget I think smoke signals would be fine.
Still hoping for Sturt, Corangamite, Swan and Hasluck. Dont think Dunkley will fall. 8 losses in Qld might not eventuate. I still think Labor will do better than this.
BOATPHONE POLL ?
Big means accurate and more reliable?
Nah The Age will want to have a separate poll on Melbourne for later in the week. Consistent with their attempt to elect the Greens there….
lefty e@184
Agreed, as for Hasluck – BIG mistake sending Howie to Midland Gate – that;’s the heart of the State seat of Midland which is rock solid Labor.
[Guy
Posted Tuesday, August 17, 2010 at 10:52 pm | Permalink
Net -2 in NSW!! Woohoo!! Like I said a couple of nights ago – time to excise qld and then we can set up a regional processing centre there]
…yeah hopefully that will stop all the redneck old dickheads from NSW and VIC from moving up here to the rate of 1500 per week.
It will improve the unemployment rate also as real Qlds will be able to get a job easily and Qld businesses will make money from the $1b that will be spent on the processing centres.
Hate to be super pessimistic but if this is a phone poll do we need to correct by adding a swing to the LNP and if so how much if it is a) 500/seat and b) not morgan
Assuming (BIG asumption) it’s correct, 79-68 leaves three non mainstream party seats, of which Melbourne would NOT be one.