Nielsen JWS Research marginals mega-poll (and Galaxy and Morgan)

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

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.

3,759 comments on “Nielsen JWS Research marginals mega-poll (and Galaxy and Morgan)”

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  2. TSOP, hopefully. our boys are a bit hit and miss. their bowlers rely heavily on english conditions for swing. wont get it down here.

  3. Evan forgot to mention, you are on the money with your Nauru question, I have a sneeky feeling Stephen Smith knows more than he is saying YET!! He is waiting until Sunday and I expect he will blow the Nauru crap wide open..just a feeling, but he is a very smart operator…in the scheme of things is not a biggie until after the election…I smell smoke in Nauru!!!

  4. [some weird crap getting talked about on here tonight.]

    we are just making stuff up because there is no new polls and nothing happening on the campaign

  5. [ Lee Rhiannon would be the downfall of the Greens ]

    I beg to disagree. However, I would be interested in knowing your thought process used in arriving at this “conclusion”.

  6. [I can’t believe it’s just about 36 hours to go before we finally get to find out what direction our country is going in…]

    Or, rather, 72 hours!

  7. SKA is a good chance for us, worth $billions in scientific investment. It may however go to SA as funding nations can classify as “aid”. down to a 2 horse race

  9. Lukas

    I think Macquarie will go. markus is an excellent local member – although i hate the hillsong – she did work to get equipment etc at my school (work) when we were in her electorate.

  12. [If Julia wins on Saturday, then the Libs really will have some problems. Who can match her in Parliament? Day after day she’ll tounce the opposition. And that will reinforce the decision made by the voters this Saturday.

    Plus the efficiency of Julia in government will see a string of big ticket items roll into action. It could be a very lean time for the Libs.]

    After witnessing the demise of the most popular PM in post war history in the space of just 3 years I will no longer think that my side will be in power beyond the current term.

  15. [I would think it great if we got the SKA here]

    It would be a great feather in our science cap. Not a star watcher myself, but always liked astronomy. APOD is one of my favourite sites. No human art can match the visual glories out there.

    •••

    [Mr Squiggle
    any result that keeps the ALP seat count below 80 will make Tony Abbott a hero]

    Way things are going, he might be one of your sides’ failures. The government holding its current number of seats is not an unreasonable prospect now.

    •••

    And thanks, PY.

  16. [TSOP, hopefully. our boys are a bit hit and miss. their bowlers rely heavily on english conditions for swing. wont get it down here.]

    I tell you though, if we don’t, and Ponting is still captain after the summer and a few of the dead weights (they know who they are) are still in the line-up, I am changing my cricket allegiance!

  18. I think Labor insiders would be rather relieved tonight – that townhall thing in Brisbane could have been a disaster for Gillard, but she outpointed Abbott in a format that supposedly suited him.
    Dare I hope that at least one or two serious journalists tomorrow might poke a rather huge hole in Sloppy’s and Mr Mogadon’s election costings?

  20. [Have not idea who the people driving the worm – or how they were selected – but if it was an unbiased sample it was a crushing loss to Abbott.]

    Hope that info is going into the twittersphere — give the newsmedia something to think about when they look at their own assessments.

    They poo-pooed the worm because it didn’t agree with them in the main debate. I wonder what they’ll say to rationalise their terrible assessments after the election?

    Oh, I forgot, the electorate gets it wrong — they should always vote Liberal.

  27. as a social progressive I’ve long wanted more from the Greens. Bob has been a fantastic leader, but i’m not sure those following in his footsteps can continue his work. they remind me a lot of the Dems. strong leader builds a small but growing base… next gen let it fall apart. for me its about party structure. say what you will about Labor factions, but they know how to organise and get the party moving as one. the greens are showing plenty of cracks regarding the strength of their ‘party machine’. the party needs to be self-sustaining. i’m not sure Bob is going to deliver that before he goes.

  28. [This looks very dodgy – how big were the samples in each seat?]

    They look more like the sorts of results you’d get off poorly conducted 200 vote samples than 400s done well. I think the Tassie marginals will all swing to Labor but while I’m expecting 2-3 points average, 9 points is ridiculous.

  30. Much as i would love it to be true, there is NO WAY that even Tony Abbott would be STUPId enough to have his mortgage financed by Nauru. Given their announced policies and how much Nauru stands to benefit from an Abbott victory, he just would not be that much of a moron, and i KNOW how brave a statement that last is.

  31. [Dare I hope that at least one or two serious journalists tomorrow might poke a rather huge hole in Sloppy’s and Mr Mogadon’s election costings?]

    I had a quick squiz at the costings. Looks neatly arranged etc. If there are holes they will become very quickly apparent.

  32. [How do you get a shit eating Grin Face?

    Watch Tony Abbott’s concession speech.]

    Mine would be to go to the newsagent’s next morning & see the headline: “Julia wins election in landslide” 😀

  34. BH,

    [Isn’t it good to realise that the blogosphere actually caused Galaxy and Sky to reassess their tactics. If twitter and bloggers hadn’t caused a stink then Julia would have had a stacked audience again tonight.

    A big one up to the alternate media.]

    That is one of the most insightful comments I’ve read in PB during the whole campaign.

    It goes to show that Australia’s MSM is not as egregious as the USA’s— FoxNews would have stacked it the forum even worse second time around and brazened it out.

  36. David: I’m sure that either Stephen Smith OR Rudd(if he takes over as Foreign Minister) would deal very swiftly with Nauru, assuming they’re reelected.
    What’s laughable is that the media have left the Liberals get away with violating the conventions of an election campaign!
    The Nauruan Government too have allowed themselves to become participants in another country’s election campaign.

  40. Any chance we’ll see ‘Town Hall’ style encounters in the run up to future elections? It seemed like Tony’s big circuit breaker to get a knockout blow on Julia – so it is hard to imagine a future OL beinng so deperate to try this again.

    Can’t help but think Tony would never have tried the Town Hall stuff if he was against a male PM.

  41. Has anyone seen the ALP Melbourne leaflet? It features endorsements from a number of community members, including a gentleman from one of the Horn of Africa communities.
    I was advised last night that Adam Bandt had rung this bloke and really abused him for endorsing Cath Bowtell.
    IMHO this is absolutely outrageous for 3 reasons:
    1/. No politician has the right to abuse a member of the public for participating in the electoral process.
    2/. Even worse to treat recent refugees from politically unstable lands in this way. They are used to far worse intimidation and deserve much better.
    3/. Disgraceful for the Greens to do this, when their entire purpose is supposedly about raising the standard of politics, not dragging it to a new nadir.
    FWIW, I have known my source, who is in an excellent position to know, for over 20 years, and they had absolutely no reason to lie to me about it. More to the point, they are as honest as the day is long.
    Demonstrates the hypocrisy of some of the Greens, including the extremists who have been trying to ‘take over’ the greens since at least the mid 1990s, as evidenced by Bandt’s comments elsewhere on the web.

  42. [until freys day]

    FRIDAY- From “Frey’s Day. ” Frey was a male god who gave his sword to a mortal (Skirnir) who lost the sword – so Frey could not battle in Ragnarok (that was the final battle or twilight of the gods)

    … yup kinda cryptic – but google solves all

  44. [as a social progressive I’ve long wanted more from the Greens. Bob has been a fantastic leader, but i’m not sure those following in his footsteps can continue his work. they remind me a lot of the Dems. strong leader builds a small but growing base… next gen let it fall apart. for me its about party structure. say what you will about Labor factions, but they know how to organise and get the party moving as one. the greens are showing plenty of cracks regarding the strength of their ‘party machine’. the party needs to be self-sustaining. i’m not sure Bob is going to deliver that before he goes.]

    If Lee Rhiannon gets up in NSW, she with Dean Mighell ETU money will rule the party.

    Bye, bye Greens as environmental party, hello Greens as a very public Communist Party. The inverse watermelon.

  47. [The Nauruan Government too have allowed themselves to become participants in another country’s election campaign.]

    A very serious diplomatic mistake.

  49. [The Nauruan Government too have allowed themselves to become participants in another country’s election campaign]

    depending on what source you use-nauru is

    a a rogue state
    b technically bankrupt
    c a tax haven for ahem laundered money
    d the basketcase of the inner pac rim
    e all of the above

    f the fibs great hope
    g e+f

    ie the pacific solution

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