GhostWhoVotes reports Galaxy has electorate-level polls from 10 marginal seats in New South Wales and Victoria, collectively painting a grim picture for Labor. There is also a Newspoll survey of 502 respondents showing Peter Beattie trailing by 54-46 in Forde (a swing to the Liberal National Party of about 2%), from primary votes of 38% for Labor (37.4% at the 2010 election), 48% for the Coalition (44.1%) and 5% for the Greens (12.2%). The Galaxy poll has apparently targeted 550 to 600 respondents per electorate for a margin of error of 4%. (UPDATE: These turn out to be automated polls, and not live interviewer polls like Galaxy normally does.)
In the Sydney seats:
Lindsay. A 54-46 lead to the Liberals, a swing of about 5%.
Banks. A 52-48 lead to the Liberals, a swing of 3.5%.
Werriwa. A 52-48 lead to the Liberals, a swing of 9%.
Reid. A 53-47 lead to the Liberals, a swing of 6%.
Greenway. A 51-49 lead to the Liberals, a swing of 2%.
Parramatta. 50-50, a swing of about 5.5%.
Barton. Labor ahead 52-48, a swing of 5%.
In Victoria:
La Trobe. The Liberals lead 51-49, a swing of 3%, from primary votes of 36% for Labor and 45% for the Liberals.
Corangamite. The Liberals lead 56-44, a swing of slightly over 6%.
Chisholm. Labor leads 52-48, a Liberal swing of 4%.
Today also brought a Lonergan automated poll of Kevin Rudd’s seat of Griffith, which remarkably showed him trailing Liberal National Party candidate Bill Glasson 52-48 on two-party preferred, from primary votes of 38% for Rudd (down six on 2010), 47% for Glasson (up 11% on the LNP vote in 2013) and 11% for the Greens (down four). Either in anticipation of or in reaction to the inevitably skeptical response, the company’s principal Chris Lonergan penned a rather informative piece on methodology for The Guardian.
UPDATE: The bit below has been amended to account for the fact that the Galaxy polls were automated, which means there is actually very little basis for comparing automated and live interview electorate polls.
Which makes this a timely juncture to consider how polling of various kinds has performed during the campaign. The table below shows the number of polls conducted for each pollster and poll method together with the average Labor swing, at both electorate and national level. There follows, for your convenience, basic results for every electorate-level poll of the campaign barring a small number which did not involve Labor-versus-Coalition contest, together with the swings – not a single one of which is in Labor’s favour, emphasising the point that electorate-level has been much worse for Labor than national polling. However, since nearly all of this polling has mostly been of the automated phone variety, the question arises of whether this it to do with polling method, the particular challenges of electorate-level polling, or the peculiarities of the electorates being polled.
The only live interview electorate polls featured have been two from Newspoll, which makes their performance relative to automated phone polls hard to compare. However, there is a very large gap of 4.3% between national and electorate polls for automated pollsters. Non-phone methods, which have only been employed at national level, appear to have been more favourable for Labor, although there haven’t been very many of them (note that the two-party result being used from Morgan is the previous-election measure).
ELECTORATE POLLS # Swing Galaxy 10 5.1 ReachTEL 8 7.25 JWS Research 8 6 Lonergan 3 11.3 AUTOMATED 29 6.6 Newspoll (live interviewer) 2 4.5 TOTAL 31 6.5 NATIONAL POLLS # Swing Newspoll 2 3 Nielsen 1 2 Galaxy 2 1.5 LIVE INTERVIEW 6 2.2 ReachTEL 2 2.5 Lonergan 1 2 AUTOMATED 3 2.3 Essential 2 0 AMR Research 1 0 ONLINE 3 0 Morgan Multi-Mode 2 1.75 TOTAL 13 1.7 ELECTORATE POLL RESULTS Sample ALP Swing Griffith Lonergan 21/08/2013 958 48 10 Werriwa Galaxy 20/08/2013 575 48 9 Reid Galaxy 20/08/2013 575 47 6 Parramatta Galaxy 20/08/2013 575 50 4 Lindsay Galaxy 20/08/2013 575 46 5 La Trobe Galaxy 20/08/2013 575 49 3 Greenway Galaxy 20/08/2013 575 49 2 Forde Newspoll 20/08/2013 502 46 2 Corangamite Galaxy 20/08/2013 575 44 6 Chisholm Galaxy 20/08/2013 575 48 8 Barton Galaxy 20/08/2013 575 52 5 Banks Galaxy 20/08/2013 575 48 3 McMahon ReachTEL 15/08/2013 631 47 11 Macquarie JWS Research 15/08/2013 710 45 4 Lindsay JWS Research 15/08/2013 578 39 12 Kingsford Smith ReachTEL 15/08/2013 610 48 7 Greenway JWS Research 15/08/2013 570 51 0 Forde Lonergan 15/08/2013 568 40 9 Forde JWS Research 15/08/2013 1160 40 9 Deakin ReachTEL 15/08/2013 619 47 4 Corangamite ReachTEL 15/08/2013 633 44 7 Corangamite JWS Research 15/08/2013 587 47 4 Brisbane JWS Research 15/08/2013 607 46 3 Blaxland ReachTEL 15/08/2013 636 52 10 Bennelong ReachTEL 15/08/2013 631 35 12 Banks JWS Research 15/08/2013 542 47 4 Aston JWS Research 15/08/2013 577 37 12 Lindsay Lonergan 14/08/2013 1038 36 15 Dobell/RobertsonNewspoll 11/08/2013 505 46 7 Forde ReachTEL 08/08/2013 725 46 3 Griffith ReachTEL 05/08/2013 702 46 4
Oh. Essendon.
Updated aggregation: http://bit.ly/1560DOn