BludgerTrack: 53.1-46.9 to Coalition

Poll aggregation suggests the momentum against Labor has slowed, but with the rocks now too near for the ship to be turned around. Their last hope: the polls are wrong.

Yesterday’s Essential Research release concludes what I’d normally regard in the off season as a weekly cycle of poll results, making this an appopriate moment for a situation report. News reports yesterday were full of talk of a shift back to Labor based on a three-point lift in their primary vote from Newspoll, which neatly encapsulates what’s wrong with mainstream journalism’s reportage of opinion polling. For all The Australian’s success in marketing it as the gold standard, Newspoll is not – and indeed, does not claim to be – any more immune to statistical noise than any other poll. This particular shift was undoubtedly more noise than signal, coming as it did off a below-par result in the previous week’s poll.

For a more meaningful read of the situation you should refer to a poll aggregate, of which the one most readily to hand is of course BludgerTrack. However, you can find much the same story being told by Julian King at Pottinger (who has the Coalition at 53.6%), Simon Jackman (53.5%), Mark the Ballot (52.7%), Kevin Bonham (52.3%) and the AFR’s Poll of Polls (51.8%) (with apologies to any I’ve missed, like Andrew Catsaras’s which only appears on Insiders). Much of the variation comes down to the weight given to Essential Research, which is excluded altogether by Mark the Ballot and downweighted by BludgerTrack for having gone off trend.

Mark the Ballot’s charts offer a better visual representation of what emerges from the numbers coming out of BludgerTrack, which is that the rate of Labor’s decline slowed this week. The current output of the BludgerTrack model has Labor down 0.4% since this time a week ago (note that this isn’t exactly the same thing as the “last week” comparison on the sidebar, which reflects the model’s result at that time rather than its current retrospective evaluation) compared with 0.7% in the week to August 17, 0.7% in the week to August 10 and 0.5% in the week to August 3. As Mark the Ballot and BludgerTrack concur, the rot set in around mid-July, perhaps a fortnight before the election was called.

Of course, it’s a little too late in the game for a mere slowing of the momentum against them to do Labor much good. It would take a black swan event to return Labor to parity in the 12 days still available to them, the potential nature of which is by definition impossible to foresee. Labor’s other hope of course is that the polls and the aggregates derived from them are fundamentally wrong. A favourite argument of those predisposed to this view is that the online polling of Essential Research is telling a different story from polls using other methods, having had Labor at a post-Gillard high of 50-50 for the past two weeks. Nate Silver, it is noted, gave online polling the highest collective score in his post-match report after the presidential election, finding an average error of 2.1% compared with 3.5% for live interview phone polls and 5.0% for “robopolls”.

However, I would observe that the pollsters at the top end of Silver’s list are a mix of live phone interview and internet polls, with the live phone interview average dragged down by a number of poor performers at the bottom end (the most spectacular example being Gallup). Given the strong performances of Newspoll and Galaxy at recent state elections, at least on two-party preferred, it would require a leap of faith to conclude that either belongs in the latter camp. If anything, the risk appears to be on the downside for Labor. Essential Research aside, the big anomaly of the polling picture is that national polls have been kinder to Labor than electorate-level ones, a phenomenon by no means unique to the robo-polls (and it should be noted that the disparity seems to be lower in the case of Galaxy’s automated polling, suggesting that “house” as much as “method” bias has been at work here).

Now to some observations on the state-level projections. Labor received a large bounce in New South Wales and Queensland after Kevin Rudd’s return, bringing them into parity with the 2010 election result in the former case and well in front of it in the latter. However, in Victoria the move to Labor was more subdued. Three weeks after the Rudd comeback, BludgerTrack had the Coalition’s national lead at 50.5-49.5 and pointed to swings in Labor’s favour of 0.6% in New South Wales and 2.4% in Queensland, while going 3.7% in the other direction in Victoria (remembering that the 2010 election gave Labor its best result in Victoria since the Second World War). So far as BludgerTrack is concerned, the decline in Labor’s fortunes since has been driven by New South Wales, where the swing has now caught up with Victoria’s. That being so, one could perhaps hypothesise that it’s the Daily Telegraph wot’s winning it.

As for Queensland, that 2.4% swing to Labor is still there as far as BludgerTrack is concerned, inconsistent as that may be with reports of internal polling, the weekend Newspoll showing Labor going heavily backwards across eight Liberal National Party marginals, and a series of grim results for Labor coming out of Griffith and Forde. I keep waiting for new data from Queensland to square the circle by showing the other recent results to have been anomalous, and it keeps not happening. Of the last nine data points available to me from Queensland, which go back as far as August 7, only one fails to show a swing to Labor. The one exception is the sturdiest result of the bunch – an 800-sample Galaxy poll conducted late in the first week of the campaign. The rest are sub-samples from national polls, some (but not all) with very small samples.

The samples are smaller still for Western Australia and South Australia, although there are enough of them that it would be hoped that aggregating them would get you fairly close to a real world figure. On this basis, Labor’s once promising position in Western Australia relative to the 2010 result seems to have deteriorated significantly. In South Australia, Labor is rating a little better than media chatter (not to mention the weekend’s Hindmarsh poll) suggests they should be, though not to the extent of indicating an improvement on the 2010 status quo in terms of seats.

One final thought. With Labor holding 72 seats out of 150, it seems very likely that they will need a swing in their favour if they are going to win the election. Out of 17 national and 39 electorate-level polls conducted during the campaign (not counting a small number of electorate polls involving Greens or independent sitting members), not a single one has shown such a thing.

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.

1,322 comments on “BludgerTrack: 53.1-46.9 to Coalition”

Comments Page 2 of 27
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  1. [somewhat disingenuous to discount Essential due to union ties, whilst lauding NewsPoll with its Murdoch ties.

    I don’t laud Newspoll.]

    praps the truth lies between these bookends. Morgan? No…Nielsen…hmmmm

  2. meher baba

    People are gullible to the media , there is no reason at all to vote for abbott
    he has no new ideas, will not make the country better

    He is still living in 2010 and even worse he wants to govern like those did in the past

  3. [quote]For the record, Essential Research’s final poll in 2010 had it 51-49 to the ALP, and 38% to the ALP on primary and 43% to the Coalition ie almost exactly the final result
    [/quote]

    For the record, newspoll was closest last election. It predicted 50.2% of the vote would go to Labor, and 50.1% did. Morgan and essential were next, but imo, Morgan is more accurate (internet+mobile+face to face, which is slightly left leaning.) And importantly, Morgan is confirming what newspoll and nielsen came out with last week. So, the rogue is essential atm.

    And no, sprocket, I’m not lauding newspoll I’m just stating a fact.

  4. meher baba

    People are gullible to the media , there is no reason at all to vote for abbott
    he has no new ideas, will not make the country better

    He is still living in 2010 and even worse he wants to govern like those did in the past

  5. MB. Labor winning Melboune makes no difference, because Bandt was supporting them. Likewise Denison.

    I know you struggle to understand this, but -if Labor were to win Melbourne, Denison and Dobell but the Nats pick up Lyne and New England, and no other seats change hands, Tony Abbott will be PM as long as Katter supports him (and I took Katter’s comments on Australian Story last night to mean he certainly would).

  7. meher baba
    Posted Tuesday, August 27, 2013 at 8:24 am | PERMALINK
    Tony Abbott will be PM as long as Katter supports him

    —————-

    You realise, abbott said there will be no Abbott minority government

  9. Breaking news!!!
    The missing Abbott daughter has been found. Louise Abbott “is busy this year progressing the policies/aims of the current Australian Labor Government and the Minister for Foreign Affairs Sen. Bob Carr, as an Executive Assistant with the Permanent Mission to the United Nations Office at Geneva.”
    And there’s a picture to prove it. No wonder Tony refuses to so much as say her name these days.
    http://northcoastvoices.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/australian-federal-election-2013-wheres.html

  10. [quote]Bob Katter is preferencing Labor in all its seats[/quote]

    Bob Katter is preferencing Labor in a few of the seats in QLD. He’s also preferencing Palmer and the Libs. It depends where you go.

    Libs aren’t happy because they are important, marginal seats that Katter is helping Labor in

  11. David Wirrapanda, former Eagles player is a Nationals Senate candidate in the seat of Durack.

    The second person on the ticket is David Eagles.

    I found that amusing.

  13. [quote]Breaking news!!!
    The missing Abbott daughter has been found. Louise Abbott “is busy this year progressing the policies/aims of the current Australian Labor Government and the Minister for Foreign Affairs Sen. Bob Carr, as an Executive Assistant with the Permanent Mission to the United Nations Office at Geneva.”
    And there’s a picture to prove it. No wonder Tony refuses to so much as say her name these days.[/quote]

    It’s not newsworthy. Kevin Rudd’s brother can’t stand him. Peter Costello’s brother can’t stand him. Etc etc etc

  15. When I was in Brisbane last week I saw, on the tele, a promotion in which some supporters poured blue milk in one vessel and red milk in the other. This was as to depict the proposed preference flow.It was 70%:30% to LNP.

    I can’t remember if it was a KAP or PUP promotion.

  17. Morning all,

    Most of the way to work already, early start today

    Labor is behind but it ain’t over. PPL is biting and we still have a whack of costings to come, will they get them right???

    Most people won’t focus until towards the end

    lots of talk here last night about public servants double doing on ppl, what about all those from private firms that do??? How many companies on the asx wouldn’t have a ppl scheme???

    Bring on the health debate, have a great day all

  18. River – On primary votes Newspoll had it ALP 36.2%, ER 38%, the ALP actually got 37.99%. So ER was closer to the ALP primary vote and the fact ER has had two 50-50 polls in succession would suggest this one is not a rogue on their calculations. Newspoll has a good record, but ER’s record was also quite accurate in 2010 so it cannot be dismissed

  19. Morning all.

    Thanks for that, leone. I too have been wondering what happened to the third daughter. Now that we know she is embarking on a professional career of her own, it’s even more bizarre that Abbott never mentions her.

    Of all the things he could spruik about his children that would appeal to most women (esp those my age) is that he and Margie thoroughly support their daughter who is living independently pursuing a career overseas. Instead we have these two, presumably unemployed daughters who literally hold his hand wherever he goes, which isn’t natural, and hardly a picture of a contemporary family.

    I’d love to know just why Louise is NEVER mentioned. Perhaps it’s because Tony really does think that only young women who wait around at home on the shelf until they get married are worth worrying about.

  20. Abbott announces compensation for Bali victims this morning. Asked why nothing was done during his time as a minster.

    Response

    “I suppose we were perhaps a little past our prime back in those days”

    This man is a buffoon

  22. The missing Abbott daughter has been found. Louise Abbott “is busy this year progressing the policies/aims of the current Australian Labor Government and the Minister for Foreign Affairs Sen. Bob Carr, as an Executive Assistant with the Permanent Mission to the United Nations Office at Geneva.”

    It’s not newsworthy. Kevin Rudd’s brother can’t stand him. Peter Costello’s brother can’t stand him. Etc etc etc
    =========================================================

    there’s always a sibling more clever than the others

  23. victoria

    Posted Tuesday, August 27, 2013 at 8:37 am | Permalink

    Abbott announces compensation for Bali victims this morning. Asked why nothing was done during his time as a minster.

    Response

    “I suppose we were perhaps a little past our prime back in those days”

    This man is a buffoon
    =========================================================

    So that “past our prime” covers 2003, 2007, 2010 elections.

    And Abbott still has most of the same “past our prime” front bench.

    His words, they must be well past their prime now. They are very much “on the nose”.

  24. [
    Abbotts $6500 to get a job

    Related Links

    : Don does hard yards
    : Policies held back
    : Costings on hold
    : FULL COVERAGE

    Long-term unemployed people will be offered bonuses up to $6500 if they find a job and keep it, under a coalition policy aimed at young voters to be unveiled today.

    The $75 million plan would give 18 to 30-year-olds who have been unemployed for a year or more a $2500 bonus if they get a job and stay off welfare for a year.

    The jobseekers would get another $4000 if they kept the job for two years.]
    http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/newshome/18667740/abbotts-6500-to-get-a-job/

    As I’ve said many times before, Abbott’s first response to any problem facing government is to throw open the taxpayers’ cheque-book.

    How much debt is this man willing to get the country into in order to fund his ridiculous ideas? Boat buy back, unemployed person buy back. What next? Drug buy back to get rid of illicit drugs from our communities?

    The man is nuts!

  25. [quote]On primary votes Newspoll had it ALP 36.2%, ER 38%, the ALP actually got 37.99%.[/quote]

    You don’t get elected on primary vote. Newspoll was closest where it mattered.

    [quote]So ER was closer to the ALP primary vote and the fact ER has had two 50-50 polls in succession would suggest this one is not a rogue on their calculations.[/quote]

    Being consistent doesn’t mean you’re not rogue. It just means you’re consistently rogue 😛

    But being serious for a minute. No poll is infallible, they are all as likely to be wrong as the other. However, when you have newspoll, niesen poll, morgan (favours Labor and is online) poll, galaxy poll all saying one thing and essential saying another, the safest assumption to make is essential is rogue and the other 4 are not.

    But we’ll see. I have a funny feeling this time around they won’t be anywhere near the top 2 polling wise.

  26. AA

    Abbott is playing populist politics. Precisely what Howard. Did. What happened to the budget emergency?

    This mob are beyond useless

  27. victoria:

    I think the only conclusion we can draw from the fact that Abbott never mentions her he really doesn’t approve of her pursuing a career.

    Why else would he not speak approvingly of her in all his efforts to address his women problem?

  30. AA

    If the Howard govt was past its prime back in 2007. It is wayyyyyy past it in 2013.

    So If I were the ALP, I would be telling the likes of Abbott, Pyne, Robb, Talculm. JBishop, BBishop, SMirabella, PDutton, and now MBrough to get on their bike. If they were past their prime in 2007, they are at the mummified stage now!!!

  33. [quote]Imagine if one of Rudd’s kids was estranged from their family?[/quote]

    You’re hammering this rumour pretty hard. Normally one would at least wait for confirmation before going full bore at something.

  34. River – Indeed, we will see, at the moment ER seems the outlier, but if it tightens in the final two weeks in other polls that will look rather less so

  36. [ “No Debate” At White House That Military Response Against Syria Necessary, CBS Says

    Just out from CBS’ chief White House correspondent:

    BREAKING. @MajorCBS says that at a Saturday White House meeting there was no debate that a military response against Syira is necessary.

    — Charlie Kaye (@CharlieKayeCBS) August 26, 2013

    Well, if that’s the case, then why hasn’t the US “liberated” the Syrian chemical weapons yet? Does it perhaps have to do with Putin’s very much “debatable” response? ]

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-08-26/no-debate-white-house-military-response-against-syria-necessary-cbs-says

  37. Windsor had a chance to end the Abbott dream (release the phone messages) but didnt take it.

    reading between the lines, he hates Rudd as much. How ironic that if Gillard was still PM he may have done so? Not sure.

  38. River

    I actually dont give a stuff that Abbott’s daughter does not share his Political leanings. She is an independent person and is entitled to her own views.

    I can only imagine though if Rudd’s daughter and sons were in the same situation, what the fibs would do with that

  39. Andrew
    Posted Tuesday, August 27, 2013 at 9:02 am | PERMALINK
    Windsor had a chance to end the Abbott dream (release the phone messages) but didnt take it.

    ————————-

    Maybe he rather watch abbott cryingin 2013 like he did in 2010

  41. [quote]I actually dont give a stuff that Abbott’s daughter does not share his Political leanings. She is an independent person and is entitled to her own views.

    I can only imagine though if Rudd’s daughter and sons were in the same situation, what the fibs would do with that[/quote]

    Well, the first thing I expect Abbott would do is wait for confirmation less he looks like a turkey. I read the newspaper you linked to and I observed the word ‘RUMOUR’ in it. I’ve also looked around and could find nothing else corroborating this story.

  42. [It would seem that Louise does not share the political leanings of her father]

    It would.

    I don’t share the political leanings of my father, yet it doesn’t stop him speaking about my successes to anyone who cares to listen.

    It’s hard to imagine Team Credlin have overlooked the value of Abbott’s independent, career-minded daughter has to his campaign for the women vote. Which makes me wonder whether she has been told Louise is a no-go area for some reason, and if so, what?

  43. victoria

    Posted Tuesday, August 27, 2013 at 8:53 am | Permalink

    AA

    If the Howard govt was past its prime back in 2007. It is wayyyyyy past it in 2013.

    So If I were the ALP, I would be telling the likes of Abbott, Pyne, Robb, Talculm. JBishop, BBishop, SMirabella, PDutton, and now MBrough to get on their bike. If they were past their prime in 2007, they are at the mummified stage now!!!
    —————————————————

    Tell them to get their behind zimmer frames or on their goffers, doubt any could ride a bike they are so far past their prime.

  44. at least this campaign we are talking about costings. This could be decisive for Labor, but Abbott will not release the full costings, and the spending cuts will be outlined so late as to have no impact. With the Hewson-GST campaign, all the figures were out there

  47. Abbott made a very sexist remark to a female employee yesterday. Appears to have sunk without trace. And to think this man is our next PM

  49. ‘fess

    [Which makes me wonder whether she has been told Louise is a no-go area for some reason, and if so, what?]

    If the rumour is correct the daughter is an APS employee so public involvement in politics is a no-no.

  50. [quote]I never linked any article re Abbott’s daughter. I dont remember who it was, but it was not me[/quote]

    Righto, my mistake.

    It really isn’t an issue. Bob Katter’s gay brother repeatedly lashes Bob in the media but nothing’s made out of it. Politicians are despicable people. I think the public takes it as given that they will also be hated by their own family *shrugs*

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