I’m running the above headline essentially because I have no new poll to trumpet for the following assortment of bits-and-pieces. The latest addition is yesterday’s large-sample ReachTEL poll, which was a relatively good result for Labor taking into account the past lean to the Coalition in this series. Its inclusion caused a 0.6% shift in Labor’s favour without affecting the seat projection, mostly because the improvement was concentrated in Victoria where there are few marginal seats. This isn’t the first time recently that the addition of a ReachTEL result has caused BludgerTrack to move in Labor’s favour, which raises the possibility that the series is not as pro-Coalition as it used to be. If so, the addition of the result with out-of-date bias adjustments attached might be causing the present BludgerTrack numbers to flatter Labor slightly. There has apparently been, for the second evening running, a poll conducted overnight by ReachTEL which will have been unveiled on Seven Sunrise by the time most of you are reading this.
(UPDATE: A less good result today for Labor, and another good one for the Palmer United Party. Labor’s primary vote is down to 32.7% and the Coalition’s up to 43.6%, with the Greens on 10.0% and Palmer on 6.1%. Two-party preferred is 53-47 to the Coalition. ReachTEL also has a very ugly result for Labor from the Tasmanian seat of Bass, courtesy of the Launceston Examiner, with Liberal candidate Andrew Nikolic on 51.8% and Labor member Geoff Lyons on 26.6%.)
Now to those bits and pieces. First, I address what looks to be one of the election’s most significant imponderables: the share of the vote that will go to micro-parties in the Senate. Much hinges on the answer, given the tightness of the preference arrangements between micro-parties and the extremely limited value of polling as a guide to the smaller details of Senate voting patterns. Tim Colebatch of Fairfax has run reports over the past week based based on what Antony Green’s Senate election calcalators come up with when seemingly plausible vote share scenarios are plugged into them, which have been partly inspired by simulations conducted by Poll Bludger commenter Truth Seeker (who details them on his own blog).
One particularly headline-grabbing observation was that Pauline Hanson might succeed in her bid for a New South Wales Senate seat at the expense of Arthur Sinodinos, who has the number three position on the Coalition ticket in New South Wales. Since Labor, the Coalition and the Greens all have Hanson last on their preference order, this can only happen if she and the various parties feeding her preferences collectively amount to more than a quota (14.3%). Colebatch argues that this is highly plausible: “In 2010, 29 micro-parties won 14 per cent of the vote between them. This time there will be 41 of them, and disillusioned Labor supporters could swell their collective vote to 20 per cent – easily enough for a Senate quota.”
This appears to assume that collective vote share of micro-parties will continue to expand as more of them enter the field. Evidence from the last three elections, which provide a common footing in that the Democrats and One Nation had faded from minor to micro-party status, provides some support for this. Excluding the unusual circumstance of South Australia in 2007, when Nick Xenophon polled a full quota in his own right, there are 17 state-level observations for modelling the relationship between the number of Senate groups and the vote share for micro-parties (which I take to mean everyone other than Labor, the Coalition and the Greens). The model I have derived is 0.243+(0.283*A)+(0.681*B), where A is the number of Senate groups and B is the “others” vote in the House of Representatives from the state in question. This has an R-squared of 0.517 and a p-value of 0.006, which is to say that the model explains 51.7% of the variation in these 17 results and has a 99.4% chance of being better than no model at all.
With unprecedented numbers of Senate groups at this election ranging from 23 in Tasmania to 44 in New South Wales, this suggests “others” votes ranging from 12.9% to 20.5% (going off the BludgerTrack projections for the lower house “others” vote), which is well in line with Colebatch’s expectations. However, there’s a considerable theoretical problem with the model in that it presumes the relationship to be perfectly linear. If this were so, the major party vote would disappear altogether if only enough micro-parties took the field. In reality, the rate of increase has to taper off, and the meagre sample of observations available offers no insight as to point at which it does so. My own guess though is that it kicks in fairly sharply before we reach the stage where we can start talking of an aggregate micro-party vote approaching 20%.
To offer some historic guidance as to the sorts of numbers you should be punching into the Senate calcalators, the table below displays the vote for micro-parties of various kinds in each state. “Religious” includes the Democratic Labour Party, although they no doubt occupy something of a grey area. The “right” category is exclusive of the “religious” one. “Left” is defined broadly to incorporate the Democrats and all environmentalist concerns, even ostensibly conservative ones. There were also parties and independents that were deemed not to fall into any of these categories, so the “total” column is not simply an aggregate of the other three.
2010 Relig. Right Left Total NSW 3.63 5.55 3.37 13.82 Victoria 5.35 3.83 3.28 13.2 Queensland 4.31 7.59 3.61 16.43 WA 3.71 2.66 2.81 9.92 SA 5 2.65 2.55 11.11 Tasmania 1.69 2.24 0.66 5.36 TOTAL 4.16 4.81 3.18 13.13 2007 NSW 3.83 3.35 2.44 10.17 Victoria 3.77 1.24 3.16 8.72 Queensland 2.76 6.73 3.04 13.08 WA 3.57 1.1 1.84 7.04 SA 3.97 1.68 1.68 22.25 Tasmania 2.67 0.19 0.78 4.38 TOTAL 3.48 2.97 2.57 10.71 2004 NSW 3.17 3.73 3.88 12.17 Victoria 4.16 1.55 4.18 10.98 Queensland 3.37 9.34 4.09 18.05 WA 2.73 2.82 3.05 9.22 SA 3.98 1.53 3.95 10.02 Tasmania 3.03 0.16 0.82 7.04 TOTAL 3.42 2.93 3.84 12.22
Now to some scattered bits of news for around the traps that I have recently used to supplement the seat-by-seat election guide:
Indi (Liberal 9.0%):Liberals have been telling journalists of serious concerns for Sophie Mirabella’s hold on Indi, where she faces a well-organised challenge from independent Cathy McGowan. The Guardian reports on widespread opinion polling being conducted in the electorate; the Weekly Times reports that Labor are campaigning strongly to boost McGowan; and The Australian reports some in the Liberal Party have been urging Tony Abbott to visit the electorate. The contest is another source of friction between the coalition parties, with former state Nationals MP Ken Jasper among those who are throwing their weight behind McGowan.
Melbourne (Greens 6.0% versus Labor): The Greens have been spruiking a poll of 400 respondents conducted for them by Galaxy showing Adam Bandt’s primary vote up 4% since the 2010 election, with “as many as four in 10” Liberal voters in the seat planning to ignore the direction of their party’s how-to-vote card that voters should favour Labor ahead of the Greens in their preference allocation. This is actually in line with the 35% rate of leakage in inner Melbourne when the Liberals likewise directed preferences against the Greens at the 2010 state election, which nonetheless wasn’t high enough to win them any of the seats they were anticipating. But taken together with the purported primary vote swing, it suggests a very close result.
McMahon (Labor 7.8%): The Liberal candidate for Chris Bowen’s western Sydney seat, Liverpool area police superintendent Ray King, has been defended by a series of police figures and corruption investigators after Labor claimed he had a “close friend” in Roger Rogerson, the notorious detective who was imprisoned in 1990 for perverting the course of justice. The claim has been denied by Rogerson as well as King, with retired assistant commissioner Geoff Schuberg complaining of a “grubby, baseless smear campaign”.
Forde (Liberal National 1.6%):The Australian reports that Forde MP Bert van Manen, who is fighting off a challenge from Peter Beattie, was the half-owner and recently resigned director of a financial planning firm which owed creditors more than $1.5 million when it collapsed last year. The report says administrators KPMG had told creditors of “unreasonable director-related transactions” behind the collapse. A Liberal spokesperson was quoted saying van Manen had personally settled with the main credtior, Westpac, but no comment was offered on $325,000 owed to three further creditors.
Greenway (Labor 0.9%): The Sydney Morning Herald observes a “systemic” silence among Liberal candidates in Sydney, “with multiple examples emerging of candidates pulling out of events or interviews”. The low profile assumed by Greenway MP Jaymes Diaz has been particularly widely noted, after he failed to show for a candidates forum in Blacktown last week.
Herbert (Liberal National 2.2%) and Dawson (Liberal National 2.4%): Sid Maher of The Australian identifies marginal seats on the central Queensland coast as the main targets for the Coalition’s promised curtailing of marine protected areas, a pitch at commercial and recreational fishers. A similar promise before the 2010 election was “credited with delivering the seat of Dawson”, by persons unidentified.
Yes the only thing going on here is Clive. The rest is all MOE, and suggestive evidence there might not be all that much going on.
We’ve never had daily tracking polls before! Do we get another one on Friday?
Thanks Kevin.
Arrnea – the worry being people moving to Palmer and then following his HTV cards
A Labor party scandal run in the the Daily Telegraph LOL
Re: womble @ 53
There *is* that concern, but I don’t think there’s going to be many people who do that.
Kevin,
If Reachtel is now in line with everyone else could it mean everyone now has a coalition bias rather than Reachtel no longer having a coalition bias?
Re: Edi_Mahin @ 55
There is always that risk with polling, yes.
Robb at Lib fundraiser as he stands to look over crowd, quoted on ABC : “I’m looking over a million dollar view”.
Clive Palmer wins his seat, we get a hung Parliament and he does a deal with everyone so that he becomes PM 🙂
Glenn Lazarus could be a Senator?
The brick with eyes maiden speech should be enlightening.
It’s ABC’s vote compass, but some info re undecided voters:
– They tend to be younger than those who already know whom they are voting for.
– They tend to be women.
– They are less engaged.
_ The economy rates as the most important issue for them.
– They are leaning towards voting Labor and Greens much more so than the coalition.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-05/vote-compass-undecided-voters/4935680
Edi_Mahin@55
That is unlikely. It’s more normal for a single pollster to move relative to the rest – especially if it is slightly out of whack with the others – than for all pollsters to move except one.
I noticed Mark the Ballot yesterday had Newspoll at about 0.6 to Coalition compared to average, and ReachTEL slightly less. But that average includes Morgan which partly contains a method known to skew Labor, so I wouldn’t regard Newspoll as skewed on that basis.
Goodnight all! 😛
Thank you Kevin.
Guess it means there is really no hope for Labor and an early in the night result Saturday. The Senate is going to be the real point of interest.
Is Palmer’s party an affiliate of the 3rd International or do he and the brick have no sense of history. http://www.foxsports.com.au/league/nrl-premiership/glenn-lazarus-will-vie-for-a-seat-in-the-federal-senate-after-joining-clive-palmers-united-party/story-fn2mcuj6-1226644551976#.UierecsaySM
The Daily Bullshit just doing Rupert’s dirty work.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/national/18789096/preferences-aid-palmer-in-wa/
Morning all. At this stage I would not base wild optimism on uncertain preference flows in one poll. Still, if it has tightened to 48/52, that is not a rout.
The ABC voter compass now has over one million responses, and should not be ignored. This morning Antony Green is discussing the nature of the undecided voters:
The issues of interest to them are also significant. Economy ranks low, so talk of costings will not matter. Talk of cuts to education would matter a lot. Labors cut to unis in the May budgt may be the single most fatal error made this year. So far there has only been talk of a review – no promise to fix it.
For the last time Labor, focus on the young while you still can, the old have already made up their minds.
Have a good day all.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/labor-should-have-stuck-with-julia-gillard-instead-of-a-discredited-kevin-rudd-says-fairfax-chairman-20130904-2t3x5.html#ixzz2dxoBomAJ
Internal polling, FWIW
Snap confessions, re Vote Compass.
Mark Scott @abcmarkscott 1m
There has to be a push for Senate voting reform after this election doesn’t there? Last night’s PM explains. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-04/senators-question-fairness-of-complex-preference/4936052 …
Kate Ellis will lose in Adelaide.
I think, one way or another, it’s going to be very vindicating to finally know how Palmer and Katter preferences break down after election day.
It’ll be nice to jettison the 60/40 rule for them in favour of something backed up by more than a guess.
Interesting Socrates – if the undecided voters are mostly young and female, based on all the polls, they should favour the Greens and Labor
ReachTEL still hasn’t updated their website
Looking to be a chance Clive could share the BOP in the senate – I don’t think people will be ignoring him now. I haven’t seen it yet but apparently there is a must see interview with Karl Stefanovic from this morning
They are leaning towards voting Labor and Greens much more so than the coalition.
That’s actually a DISADVANTAGE for Labor, as silly as that sounds. The reason is because when pollsters ring these undecideds, they will reply with the party they are leaning towards. So, all those undecideds that are leaning towards Labor are already counted in the polls as voting for Labor. The risk is that Labor may lose these votes (because they are undecided.)
Re: womble @ 75
http://video.au.msn.com/watch/video/palmer-shocks-today-host-with-accusations/xkmk9sn
There’s the interview.
here is a link
http://video.au.msn.com/watch/video/palmer-shocks-today-host-with-accusations/xkmk9sn
The economy ranks as the most important issue for undecided voters.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-05/vote-compass-undecided-voters/4935680
My reforms to the Australian election system:
1. Raise the deposit for nominations to $100,000 for a House candidate and $1m for a Senate ticket. This would be refunded to candidates or tickets that poll 1% of the vote.
2. Specify that no-one can be elected to the Senate unless they are part of a ticket that polls 25% of a quota on the primary vote.
3. Require that all candidates be on the electoral roll.
Re: Psephos @ 80
I would have to vehemently disagree with your first suggestion. While I do agree that there is a problem with how many people are on the ballot paper, I don’t think erecting higher and higher paywalls around it will achieve anything but to further concentrate political access in the hands of the super-rich.
http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/09/04/mirabella-scrambling-as-polling-puts-indi-on-knife-edge/
Surely this is a requirement already!
ninemsn
VOTE
Do you predict a coalition victory?
YES -793192
NO – 794419
No it’s not. Assange is not on the roll.
William will you be giving a seat prediction tomorrow ?
Not at all. Any party or candidate with genuine support can poll 1% of the vote, and will be able to raise or borrow the deposit. The effect would be to filter out bogus and frivolous candidates.
Then this is an obvious need for reform which can be addressed, and straightaway.
ruawake
Posted Thursday, September 5, 2013 at 5:41 am | Permalink
Seems today is dodgy costings day. $40 billion in savings, $34 billion in spendings means a $6 billion windfall?
Except where is the forgone CT and MRRT revenue in these figures?
———————————————–
The figures are even more questionable as they are counting PPL will be +$1 billion
ReachTEL has updated
http://www.reachtel.com.au/blog/7-news-national-poll-4september13
Labor 32.7
Liberal 40.5
Nats 3.1
Greens 10
Katter 1.6
PUP 6.1
Other 6
Some fascinating numbers
I’m sticking with my prediction of the worst defeat ever for the ALP.
It’ll be huge.
Psephos:
I think Antony Green’s suggestions should be implemented as a starting point:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-29/green-senate-ballot-system-threatens-more-than-our-eyesight/4921966
In 2010 there were 32 party tickets on the NSW Senate ballot, plus 5 ungrouped candidates. Of these, only six parties polled 1% of the vote. The others had no real support at all, and should not have been on the ballot.
ReachTEL released their figures and I have done the following 2PP calculations based on them:
==============================
Major Party Primary Votes
ALP 32.7
LNP 43.6
==============================
Minor Party Prefs
w/ Nielsen Assumptions
==============================
GRN 10.00 (ALP: 08.60)
KAP 01.60 (ALP: 00.88)
PUP 06.10 (ALP: 03.78)
OTH 06.00 (ALP: 03.00)
ALP 2PP 48.96 (49)
LNP 2PP 51.04 (51)
==============================
w/ Usual Assumptions
==============================
GRN 10.00 (ALP: 08.00)
KAP 01.60 (ALP: 00.64)
PUP 06.10 (ALP: 02.44)
OTH 0.600 (ALP: 03.00)
ALP 2PP 46.78 (47)
LNP 2PP 53.22 (53)
==============================
Such a difference preference flows make.
‘Seems today is dodgy costings day. $40 billion in savings, $34 billion in spendings means a $6 billion windfall?
Except where is the forgone CT and MRRT revenue in these figures?
———————————————–
The figures are even more questionable as they are counting PPL will be +$1 billion’
And it matters not one sparrow fart anymore.
Anyone that is on the roll as an eligible voter should be able to run for parliament imo
I think it’s time to destroy the 2 party system, we need something new
I highly recommend the Palmer video – Wendy Deng a Chinese spy 🙂
Political disengagement in T minus 60hours and counting….
Er, that OTH 0.600 under Usual Assumptions should instead be a 06.00. Typos!
Antony’s proposal assumes that the main reason micro-parties are on the ballot is as preference-feeders, and that’s certainly true of some. But some are there as a deliberate tactic of ballot-flooding, to drive up the informal vote and thereby harm Labor. Others are just vanity candidates, people who like seeing their name on a ballot paper. The purpose of elections is to elect members of parliament, not to indulge bogus and frivolous candidates.
Thanks Arrnea – I am leaning toward it being 51-49
A stuff up with the numbers today might swing a few more late as well
More importantly – Queensland is in play BIG time