Random observations

Scattered thoughts on the Senate, the western Sydney electorate of Fowler, Bob Katter, the informal vote rate, and the fine art of poll aggregation.

Time for a new thread, so here’s some very scattered thoughts that it occurs to me to share at this late hour:

• I had a piece on the Senate result in Crikey yesterday, and have been keeping a low profile on Poll Bludger in part because I’ve been busy fielding inquiries from media outlets eager to hear an election wonk’s take on the whole affair. If you’d like to comment on the progress of late counting in the Senate I’d encourage you to do so on the dedicated thread, or at least re-paste your comments there after leaving them on this one.

• I’d also like to encourage those with particular insights to offer on late counting in close lower house seats to share the love in the relevant comments threads, which can serve as useful clearing houses for information for those of us trying to keep up. Note that these posts can be accessed through links near the top of the sidebar.

• So what the hell happened in Fowler? There was, as we know, a much milder swing against Labor in western Sydney than media hype and certain local opinion polls had primed us for. However, that scarcely explains the thumping 8.8% swing enjoyed by Labor journeyman Chris Hayes. What presumably does explain it is Liberal candidate Andrew Nguyen, chosen by the party with a view to snaring the Vietnamese vote in Cabramatta, who suffered swings approaching 20% in that very area. As to what Vietnamese voters might have known about Nguyen that the Liberal Party did not, I cannot even speculate. However, it won’t be the only question the party has to ask itself about its candidate selection processes in New South Wales, for the second election in a row.

• It wasn’t a very good election for Bob Katter, who failed in his bid to bring new allies to Canberra and had his seemingly impregnable hold on Kennedy cut to the bone. One reason of course was that he was squeezed out by Clive Palmer (with due apologies for the unattractiveness of that image). However, another was very likely a preference deal he cut with Labor which in the event did neither party any good. I would also observe that this is not Katter’s first failed attempt at empire-building. At the 2004 Queensland state election, Katter organised an alliance of independents with a view to activating discontent over sugar industry policy, and the only one to poll a substantial share of the vote had done nearly as well without Katter’s help at the previous election. Even the much-touted successes of Katter’s Australian Party at last year’s Queensland election involved it a) absorbing probably transient protest votes which formed part of the huge swing against Labor, and b) electing two members who could just easily have won their seats as independents. Katter’s constituency would evidently prefer that he stick to being an independent local member, and limit his broader ambitious to bequeathing the family firm to his son.

• As well as witnessing an explosion in the micro-party vote, the election has at the very least seen the rate of informal voting maintain the peak scaled at the 2010 election. Limiting it to ordinary election day votes to ensure we’re comparing apples with apples (pre-poll and postal voters being generally more motivated and hence less prone to informal voting), the informal vote rate has progressed from 4.18% to 5.82% to 5.92%. Presumably the Australian Electoral Commission will be conducting a ballot paper study to let us know how much this is down to proliferating candidate numbers leading to inadvertent mistakes, and how much to disaffection leading to deliberate spoilage of ballot papers.

• If I do say so myself, my BludgerTrack poll aggregate performed rather well. The Coalition’s two-party preferred vote is at 53.15% on current counting, which is likely to edge up towards the projected 53.5% as the remaining votes come in. Better yet, there’s a good chance the state seat projections will prove to have been exactly correct, allowing for the fact that the model did not accommodate non-major party outcomes such as the possible wins for Clive Palmer in Fairfax and Cathy McGowan in Indi. No doubt this is partly down to luck. There was some imprecision on the primary vote, with the Coalition about a point too low and the Greens about a point too high (though the model in fact scaled down the latter from the pollsters’ published results), with the circle being squared by a preference allocation method that proved over-favourable to the Coalition, based as it was on the 2010 election result (although I’m pretty sure it still performed better than a method based on respondent allocation would have done).

Nonetheless, the model was certainly successful enough to confirm the wisdom of its basic premise that the best way to read the campaign horse race is to a) only pay attention to large-scale polling, i.e. national and state-level results, b) adjust pollsters for bias according to their past performance where sufficient observations are available from recent history, c) instead use the pollster’s deviation from the aggregated poll trend where sufficient observations are not available, and d) weight the results of each pollster according to how historically accurate/consistent with the trend they have been. As to the performance of the polls themselves, I’ll have a lot more to say about that when all the votes are in. In the meantime, here’s a broad brush overview from Matthew Knott at Crikey.

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.

2,937 comments on “Random observations”

Comments Page 54 of 59
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  1. BW – watching the Dockers last week was so much like watching the Saints when we had Ross as coach. They may make the GF but I don’t think they will win – everything, just everything has to go right to win (and then only narrowly) with this style. Syd 05, Syd 06, StK 09, StK 10. (1 out of 4)

  3. v
    It might be something that happens before then that might put her in a tricky situation.

    I imagine that the reason the Liberals are worried about this is that they corrupted the system when they overthrew the Whitlam Government in a GG Coup.

  5. [lefty e
    …..Yeah I thought your figure looked a bit high. Thanks for bothering ML – I muts admit I was a bit curious myself, but I couldnt be arsed working it out]

    Also, assuming there are 1 million votes left, they would have to go 60% to 40% to the LNP for the LNP to get to about 54%.

  7. [Quentin Bryce will not be GG by the time of the next election. What is Rafael Epstein on about?]

    Their ABC strikes again it would seem…

  15. K

    ‘Is there a choice?’

    Apparently once or twice every couple of centuries we all have to have a civil war and choose a new monarchical family through trial by blood, fire and rapine.

  16. In memory of the deluded:

    mexicanbeemer
    Posted Sunday, September 1, 2013 at 10:57 pm | PERMALINK
    Okay

    Just completed the week before seat predictions and i suspect that i am on the high side again.

    2 Independent
    55 ALP
    95 LNP

    No change in either SA or WA
    Tassie 2 Lib gains
    Bass, Braddon
    Victoria 4 Lib gains
    Corrangamitte, La Trobe, Deakin, Bendigo
    NSW 12 Lib gains
    New England, Lyne, Greenway, Robertson, Lindsay, Banks, Reid, Parramatta, Dobell, Barton, McMahon, Fowler
    Queensland 5 Lib gains
    Fisher, Moreton, Petrie, Lilley, Capricornia, Rankin

    Of the ALP loses depending on how the last week goes i could see the ALP pulling back about half a dozen seats.

  22. Boerwar re Hawks and Cats
    \____________________

    Might I remind yhou that the Hawks haven’t won any game against Geelong since Sept abd the Cats really believe that they have the power to defeat Hawthorm
    Have you heard of The Kennett Curse ?

  28. It is interesting that only Republicans want to call the Queen “head of state”, while only monarchists are willing to concede she’s not…

    How ironcialement

  29. It is interesting that only Republicans want to call the Queen “head of state”, while only monarchists are willing to concede she’s not…

    How ironcialement

  30. Psephos

    [Is Farrell’s SA seat definitely lost?]

    He has basically conceded, quite graciously as it turns out. He said he’d need “a minor miracle” to win.

  31. H

    ‘Indi has been updated. McGowan now leads by 1445’

    Well, it looks like honesty, integrity and respect for others has received a profound setback with the electoral defeat of Mirabella.

    Those Indins.

  32. Indi
    ________
    I understand that the confusion arose over the labelling of a bag of votes which had several thousands already counted for the indie and the bag had a incorrect total written on the outside(about 1000 different to the contents)

    NO VOTES WERE LOST OR UNATTENDED TO..merely a wrong figure on the bag
    The error was seen when the HoR figures were different to the Senate figures in the booth by over a 1000 votes

    An AEC officer made that statement today on Melb ABC radio

  33. [He has basically conceded, quite graciously as it turns out.]

    He’s a gracious guy. As it happens, I didn’t think very highly of him as a parliamentarian, but I always found him extremely courteous and he doesn’t deserve the demonisation he gets from the left. And I say that as a gay man who disagrees with him pretty widely on many issues.

  36. Boerwar
    Posted Wednesday, September 11, 2013 at 8:31 pm | PERMALINK
    Every single News Ltd and Fox reporter has a conflict of interest. They should all do the decent thing and resign.
    —–the fairfax house has begun to tilt lately

  39. [He has basically conceded, quite graciously as it turns out.]

    From the few media appearances I’ve seen him in he always struck me as a very considerate person, and with humility.

  41. what diplomatic seat should the Sofa be given if she does lose Indi. North Korea? we’d soon find out whether they’ve worked out their issues with long distance missiles.

  42. Victoria

    With the spectre of a possible double dissolution far from purely theoretical, Quentin Bryce might conceivably find herself grappling with questions that directly affect her son in law during the period of her tenure.

    Still, I doubt very much whether the L-NP would make an issue of it. Or if they did, I suppose she could recuse herself and allow the Lieutenant Governor to act in her place in relation to the events in question. (Is that how it works?)

  44. Hello all. Sophie Mirrabella must be close to be the coalition’s worst performing member on election night, with a 9% margin shrinking to a 1500 vote deficit. The coalition may make up all the excuses it wants, but it speaks pretty poorly of her personal standing in the electorate.

  45. New2This
    Posted Wednesday, September 11, 2013 at 8:09 pm | PERMALINK
    Oh and BTW Tony Abbott is Prime Minister… How many on Poll Bludger said it would never happen…

    ———it hasn’t nightmares pass .. i live and see only the dream

    btw i think labor vote would have dipped below 40 well below without rudd …… everyone thinks that, except some in party. makes u wonder when the party will learn? shorten suggests not soon

  48. [With the spectre of a possible double dissolution far from purely theoretical, Quentin Bryce might conceivably find herself grappling with questions that directly affect her son in law during the period of her tenure.]

    Her term expires in March, and the coalition won’t extend it.

    I can’t see a DD election happening before then, esp with the parliament resuming in early November.

  50. News for the gloaters. There were many here who saw the reality of an Abbott led victory ages ago. He managed to stabilize his base and recruit and win the whingers and whiners. Good luck to him.

    That it has happened is disappointing for the progressive side of politics as we all thought that while he might take us back to the 50s we thought this meant the 1950s rather than 1850s.

    However, putting this to one side for a moment, I am happy to concede that for democracy to work, when one side wins about 53% of the TPP and the other 47%, the side with the 53% and the seats to match have the right to govern.

    My worry is that it is the other side of politics which finds it hard to stomach being out the the “born to rule” mode. For at least the first six to twelve months of the Gillard years did we ever stop hearing the constant whinge from the right about how “unfair” it was? And, “We need another election now!” ad nauseum.

    At the end of the day the conservatives have less than three years now to demonstrate that (a) there is that much wrong with the way Oz has been going (b)have the honesty to tell us how they are going to fix it and (c)finally, tell us which poor turkeys are going to pay for “fixing” things. Sure as hell the belated “costings on the table” hours before the media black out says it all for me and conservative honesty.

    There is none None.

    And for those conservatives who fondly believe that governments automatically get two terms in the era of the ever-shortening political cycle, you will need to think again. At the end of the day 15 seats changed hands with quite small margins. After three years with Abbott, they will be ready to go the other way.

    It will be fun using all the three-word slogans to remind the Abbott and his pathetic lot just how difficult government is. After all, the LNP, up until last week, had not won an election at the Federal level for 9 years.

    Just for starters – Paid Parental Leave – “Another great big new tax”. Gee, that was easy and enjoyable.

    “Stop the Boats” – What, one has come already? Quickly, “Turn it back when it is safe to do so!”.

    Oh, but I forgot, Day 1 is not Day 1 yet.

    Where is a damn “three-star” general when you need one?

    By the way, “We want a new election now!” I did not like the result and my side did not win. Not fair!

    This is going to be an enjoyable three years in some respects.

    I wonder which wall Abbott is going to punch, which sitting he will run out of the House or when he will go catatonic again?

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