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.
triton,
I think you are right.
Danks could have recommended team circumcision as a performance enhancing procedure and Hird would have got on board with “modern thinking”.
I’m surprised Rudd hasn’t taken more advantage of Abbott’s absolutely idiotic handout for getting a job.
It would be a perfect opportunity to point out that creating jobs is where its at, and you don’t do that if you run austerity programs and dont care about infrastructure
[On Monday, Mr Abbott said that in the first 100 days of a Coalition government, he would ensure all Australian victims of terrorism overseas, past and future, would be eligible for victims-of-crime compensation of up to $75,000 each.]
A cynic (me! no never!) would suggest this latest tax-payer funded expensive promise was simply so the Oz could run today’s hagiographic pieces about Abbott being at Bali during the bombing. These have a bloke who looks like a liberal member claiming abbott ‘saved his life’ and sat with his injured wife. Abbott said he was there “‘virtually’ all day” – which I expect just as his his ‘weeks’ with remote aboriginal communities run for at least three days, means he must have sat with her for almost an hour, maybe longer if she had sex appeal.
He obviously feels he didn’t kudos for being a hero at the time (this is the first time I’ve heard of this heroism, which seems odd – has anyone heard of this before? I did a google and found no previous reference to it) and has decided to boost the story with a payment to victims.
according the wikipedia, he also claims that as a student he saved a kid being dragged out to sea and saved a bloke from a burning building, but ‘walked away before being properly thanked’.
masked avenger or delusional wanker? you be the judge.
abbott back on the spending spree. this guy just keeps wipping out the cheque book. now he is going to pay 15k to the unemployed. it is going to be worth quiting your job to pick up this cash. economic illiteracy at its best.
briefly:
It’s probably all academic anyway. Are people still listening to the government?
sf
I am going with w@nker with a capital W
@Briefly/1100
I think he can because he directly refers to International affairs, where a number of times Abbott has stuffed up in Opposition on policy and statements.
And its still not too late for Labor heal some of the damage to its brand, point out that far from being “the worst government of all time” its actually given good governance, succeeded in lots of ways that most people have forgotten, such as the murray basin plan, build 10x more railways, and so on and so on.. Just a very long list of their achievements to cut through the noise out there saying they havent done anything.
And specific ads pointing out how successful BER was. And so on.
Hmmm…, thinking the world markets are turning bearish…
as they say, Watch Under
Go directly to the issue of competence is what Im saying. That’s where labor should be leading.
Apologies Mick77 u are right across it. U ever make any money. I did. Lost more. Need a scheme to protect problem options traders. Texting Wilkie now.
ABBOTT
[On Monday, Mr Abbott said that in the first 100 days of a Coalition government, he would ensure all Australian victims of terrorism overseas, past and future, would be eligible for victims-of-crime compensation of up to $75,000 each]
Sounds like the Coalition’s PPL. Are they all pregnant?
When was the last terrorist strike on Aussies overseas? Hey Abbott? Was that a dogwhistle I heard out there in the cold night?
Better watch out for them Muslims trying to get in by the boatload. Let’s fear them more than the filth you want to protect in your religious quirk, Catholicism.
Abbott. Damn hypocrite. Damn fearmonger. Unfit to be a leader of anyone.
triton
Hird had a duty of care to his players. He seriously failed that duty.
sf:
Wasn’t Abbott among those Liberals who opposed compensation to the stolen generations?
Kevin Sheedy come on down.
CTar1 – Actually Abbott will be to the right of Obama on foreign policy, remember he supported the Iraq War which Obama opposed and Obama has been hesitant about action on Syria without UN approval.
Other candidates with a cardboard cut out of Jaymes Diaz after his no show @ local community forum #ausvotes #auspol pic.twitter.com/VviMrCqL24
https://mobile.twitter.com/Ricky_Ricardo82/status/372320603853705216/photo/1
[Make people picture the national embarrassment of Abbott at such meetings.]
Why, will Abbott also say that the Chinese ratf***** him?
Rudd is a fake, and the swinging voters don’t buy him any more; Abbott is very flawed but a least he’s genuinely flawed.
[1099…Fran Barlow]
I dunno, FB. Modest ex gratia payments as expressions of public sympathy for the victims of random political violence….works for most people, I’m sure. Considering that political violence is intended to make a general statement against Australians as a group – as a class or people – victims can certainly feel they’re the unfortunate delegates of all those who were not caught in violence. And then there is survivor guilt – the feeling that others have carried a loss that was intended, indiscriminately, for us all.
Perhaps you are among those fortunate enough to have never been the object of violent attack, and cannot imagine what it is to be thus split.
[ When was the last terrorist strike on Aussies overseas? ]
the one that happened just after Howard attended a security meeting which failed to pass on the same warning to Australian citizens that had been given to US citizens
[I’m surprised Rudd hasn’t taken more advantage of Abbott’s absolutely idiotic handout for getting a job.]
Economically… how is it idiotic?
[Other candidates with a cardboard cut out of Jaymes Diaz after his no show @ local community forum #ausvotes #auspol pic.twitter.com/VviMrCqL24]
the cut out will be smarter than the original.
@Mick77/1118
There is a difference between trying to be fake, and is a fake, Abbott being the latter.
How the hell did Jaymes Diaz get through the net in the first place? it surely has turned a tough ask for labor into very much winnable now.
Maybe he is the libs best and brightest. Gawd help em.
fess
[Wasn’t Abbott among those Liberals who opposed compensation to the stolen generations?]
They don’t count. They subjected themselves to terrorism of the superior white terrorists who single-handedly took over their land.
Their kids weren’t as badly done by as the poor white females who had their children forcibly removed. And deserved an apology from a bloke who’d actively turned his back on a child he thought he’d fathered.
For the state to bring up. Or some lucky couple.
Abbott has never had any integrity. Never will.
I do not want him anywhere near the seat of power. He has no sense of right or wrong. He’s unfit to be the premier of this country.
Sean Tisme
Posted Tuesday, August 27, 2013 at 10:07 pm | Permalink
I’m surprised Rudd hasn’t taken more advantage of Abbott’s absolutely idiotic handout for getting a job.
Economically… how is it idiotic?
——————————————————–
Australian gross public debt will be 27.6% of GDP by the end of this year. This is the second lowest among the 30 advanced economies monitored by the IMF, above only tiny Estonia. Fully two-thirds of the advanced countries the IMF monitors have gross public debt more than twice as large as Australia’s.
Germany is the best performer among the large G8 economies. Its 2013 gross public debt is slated at 80.4% of GDP, almost three times Australia’s. The comparable figures for the UK and the US are 93.6% and 108.1%. Japan’s gross public debt will be a stratospheric 245.4%.
Australia today is a very low public debt country.
The facts speak for themself
Diaz and Diaz
Posted by admin in Community, NSW, Politics on 30 May, 2013 12:14 pm / 11 comments
Blacktown mayor Len Robinson is a strata manager by trade and so it is noticeable that local land is being resumed at a skyrocketing rate to build high rise apartments. Peter Wicks reports.
‘A few weeks ago, I wrote an article after attending a protest outside Blacktown council.
Residents were furious at council plans to kick them out of their homes, take their land and homes by compulsory acquisition and leave them out on the street. That way, the council could put up high-rise apartments and make a tidy profit.
Also questionable is Liberal Mayor Len Robinson, who has been pushing this sudden rush to up the ante on high-rise apartment development. Len Robinson’s business arrangements are quite hard to track down, as he seems to have been involved in several companies, all of which involved Strata Management. As a result, I have referred this matter to ICAC in the hope that they may be able to get the straight answers residents haven’t yet received as to his business practices since being on council.
At long last, however there is some good news from the council regarding this action.
The Liberal Councillors, including Federal candidate Isabelle White and Jess Diaz – the father of Federal candidate Jaymze Diaz – have heard the cries of the residents, listened to the pleas of the community, and acted in a manner they deemed appropriate.
The bad news is they have now decided to take the local Aquatic Centre as well. Just for good measure’.
Lots more if you would like to read the article.
that card board cut out of diaz would know the six point plan.
Link. Blacktown.
http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/politics/blacktown-council-sells-off-the-deep-end/
bryon
[Apologies Mick77 u are right across it. U ever make any money. I did. Lost more. Need a scheme to protect problem options traders. Texting Wilkie now.]
Thanks, I wouldn’t say I’m right across options pricing but I made a heap of money on SPI futures; however unfortunately it wasn’t for me personally! You can try Wilkie but he might be working on a scheme right now to protect lone independents in the HoR.
Essendon and Hird getting a massive hammering on local talkback.
[Sure, Abbott is an outburst in waiting. But I wonder if KR can get away with tagging Abbott on temperament. It seems foolish to me.]
An attack line that needs to be handled very carefully.
Might actually be a difficult attack for Abbott to neutralise because there is a serious truth underlying it, that the voters have long suspected about Abbott.
Rudd is a fake – no arguement. Abbott has been phoney for the past four years. so at the end of the day you have to go with policies and track record. Labor has delivered despite the rantings from the LNP/Murdoch media. they did save us from the GFC – all credible economists concede that fact. they did bring in a carbon price in a way that adequately protected people and most businesses (I think refrigeration mechanics are the only ones who fell through the cracks because of the liabilities on fugitive emissions of gases and that is being addressed); the carbon price is working – emissions from power falling by 7% and has set up funding for investment; NDIS; a world class NBN; Education reform; murray darling plan; marine parks; more equitable taxes for massive windfall profit from common wealth owned resources; etc etc.
has it ever been explained why John Howard never passed on the US warning to citizens re Bali nightclubs in 2002?
Briefly
[Perhaps you are among those fortunate enough to have never been the object of violent attack, and cannot imagine what it is to be thus split.]
It has nothing to do with compassion or empathy. As long as any resource is in short supply, a rational person draws up priorities on a non-arbitrary basis — or tries to. Doing this in the middle of an election campaign is simply disingenuous — and might even be insulting to actual victims.
As I said, I’m all for them getting whatever support they need to have a dignified existence, but I’d say that of anyone who had been injured through criminal violence or untoward happenstance.
I’m not sure why they need monetary compensation beyond what, for example, someone mugged in the street by some thug would need. Maybe some might, but I’d want a pretty good explanation more than a decade down the road.
1027
CTar1
Sorry to hear it. Has also touched my family.
Sort of consequences to be expected of a society that routinely demonises and humiliates people in that position.
Zoidlord
[There is a difference between trying to be fake, and is a fake, Abbott being the latter.]
I put your words into google translate and it came out as follows:
هناك فرق بين محاولة لتكون وهمية، وغير وهمية، أبوت كونها
which actually makes more sense to me than your original statement
Im looking forward to Kevin rat f**cking Labor…
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/27/us-australia-election-murdoch-idINBRE97Q0CK20130827?irpc=932
Julian Disney, chairman of the Australian Press Council, has written to editors of major newspapers following complaints from the public and the industry over newspaper election reporting.
Disney reminded editors of guidelines issued in 2009, which stress the need to distinguish news from editorial opinion, although the Press Council says newspapers have the right to hold a political opinion and favor particular candidates.
“Newspapers that profess to inform the community about its political and social affairs are under an obligation to present to the public a reasonably comprehensive and accurate account of public issues,” Disney wrote.
“As a result, the Council believes that it is essential that a clear distinction be drawn between reporting the facts and stating opinion. A paper’s editorial viewpoints and its advocacy of them must be kept separate from its news columns.”
kezza:
Abbott is a disgrace.
@Mick77/1137
I see you doing a Mod Lib true deflection here.
Sean Tisme
Posted Tuesday, August 27, 2013 at 10:07 pm | Permalink
I’m surprised Rudd hasn’t taken more advantage of Abbott’s absolutely idiotic handout for getting a job.
Economically… how is it idiotic?
——————————————————–
The GFC
So, was the Rudd Government brilliant, lucky, or reckless?
My reading is: brilliant. For sure, they had a lot of other factors supporting the economy that many other countries did not have: a central bank with the decisiveness, and room, to slash interest rates; a major trading partner (i.e. China) enacting a massive stimulus of their own; and a very flexible exchange rate.
They also arguably “played it safe” by following advice from Treasury and the International Monetary Fund.
But two things merit the term “brilliant”. One: the resolve to use overwhelming fiscal force, particularly in the face of political opposition; and two: the sophistication to understand the importance of shoring-up the banking system through deposit guarantees (announced in October, 2008).
Together these gave Australians confidence that we would weather the crisis. That confidence prevented the kind of expectations death spiral from which the US is still battling to recover.
have any estimates been made of the number of Aussie lives that might have been saved if John Howard had passed on the US warning re Bali nightclubs in 2002?
Both Rudd and Abbott are dickheads.
We know Abbott is a dickhead and he is very clear that he is so.
Rudd meanwhile is a dickhead who is fradulently pretending not to be a complete dickhead. This makes him an even bigger dickhead.
@Sean/1144
Devil we know vs Devil we don’t.
[1135….Fran Barlow]
I agree, the politics leave a foul taste in the mouth. In WA victims of crime may apply for cash compensation, running to a maximum of $75,000 (I think). Claims are heard by a tribunal. Of course, this only applies to crimes that have occurred in WA.
In a political context, Abbott’s promise is inescapably sordid, but I suppose a lot of people will approve just the same.
…and abbott has no credible or costed promises and everybody knows he is lying about the largess he claims he’ll rain upon us all. he will cut. he will attack all progressive voice in australia – he is a cultural warrior and fanatic and he will seek to destroy his opponents. If he wins the senate I suspect he’ll move to limit union donations to political parties as way of wiping out labor. he will sell the abc. he will stop government funding to any group that has been critical of right wing causes. he will limit access to fertility control and no fault divorce. he will revisit workchoices to minchin’s requirements. he will abolish federal environmental departments and do nothing on AGW. and he will cut any program that does not give him political advantage.
Abbott’s got nothing that tells you his is fit to be a leader. Absolutely nothing.
He’s flippant on the one hand,about the ability of his male colleagues, but also deferential, in an unseemly obsequious manner, as if he has no authority.
With women, he’s incorrigibly paternalistic/patronising. He still sees women as he always did, not up to scratch either intellectually or physically,and when it all boils down to it, just an adornment of some sort.
Fu*ckable or not f*ckable, seems to be Abbott’s sole measure of the worth of women, which he packages as ‘sex appeal.’
As a woman, who has fought long and hard for women’s rights, and as a mother who has fought long and hard for her sons to appreciate equality, and they do, it is an anathema to me that Abbott is even standing for the job of PM.
I detested Howard. He was a mingy, measly little man who had no vision. But at least he had respect for one woman, his wife.
Words cannot convey my contempt for Abbott.
I’ve met Wilkie in superficial social situation and he seemed pretty straight up. He doesn’t get the praise that Windsor does, but the same amount of criticism. I think the independents that put themselves out there into the middle ground deserve a lot of support, even if we don’t quite support their views because they must cop a lot of sh_t. Of course there are many others who knowing pander to people who need edukatin and deserve nothing but distain
another sunny day (nsw at least) in republic of oz
kev is in fine public spirits – perhaps naval base was no brainer waiting to be said – like airport – like HSR
i like lateral ideas, and i think UN should occupy that prime harbour site – time to rotate from NY and cold war
now what to do with macquarie street (and o’farrell)?
Kev?