Today’s Mercury brings us what looks like the third in a series of bi-monthly ReachTEL automated phone polls of state voting intention for the Tasmanian election to be held in March, from big samples of roughly 550 for each of the state’s five electorates. Excluding the 6.6% undecided from an overall sample of 2723, the results pan out at 25% for Labor, 53% for the Liberals and 16% for the Greens. The poll finds Liberal leader Will Hodgman with a similarly enormous lead over Lara Giddings as preferred premier of 59.2% to 25.5%, with 15.3% favouring Greens leader Nick McKim.
The new results have inspired me to make my second attempt at a bias-adjusted poll trend for the current term using the 13 available results from ERMS and the four from ReachTEL. The bias calculations are based on comparison of ReachTEL’s federal polling for Tasmania in the months prior to the state election with the BludgerTrack poll aggregates adjusted to account for the discrepancy for the final BludgerTrack reading and the actual election result. Measures for EMRS are in turn derived by comparing their poll results with proximate bias-adjusted results for ReachTEL. This procedure suggests that the Liberals and the Greens are heavily inflated by both pollsters, mostly at the expense of “others”. However, I can’t state with too much confidence that this isn’t down to the one-off circumstance of the polls underestimating the others vote at the federal election, to which a late surge to the Palmer United Palmer may have contributed. So with due caution advised, the trend looks as follows, with the “current” result being 48.0% Liberal, 28.3% Labor and 9.6% Greens.
Long range prediction: 14-7-4
William – are you able to extroplate that out to a seat count?
I make no claims to understanding the Tassie system and have no intention of spending the time to do so.
As of April next year looks like the Mayor of Canberra is going to be the highest ranking ALP Office Holder in Australia. Interesting how the fortunes swing given Brisbane held that honour for the Coalition only a few years ago.
My back-of-envelope best guess, based on my own statewide determination of the statewide vote and three ReachTEL polls on which to base relative party support levels across the five electorates, would be 2-2-1 in Denison and Franklin and 3 Liberal, 2 Labor in Bass, Braddon and Lyons, adding up to 13-10-2 with a Liberal absolute majority. Although it wouldn’t surprise me if we had an independent or other minor player somewhere in the mix – though not at the expense of the Liberals, who on my calculation get all their seats off full quotas.
Thank you.
Once the Libs win their mandate to govern, they should immediately set about dealing with the Extreme Greens once and for all by scrapping the economy destroying, instability causing mayhem that is the Hare-Clarke election system.
Kill it once and for all and make sure it’s dead, buried and cremated never to return. If it needs a referendum for this to occur, so be it, this boil on Tasmania must finally be lanced.
*facepalm* Jesus Christ, Sean. Where’s your rationale that the state of the Tasmanian economy is related to the electoral system it’s had for a century. Seriously, nobody can be that thick!
And I’ll leave it to Tasmanians to decide what kind of electoral system they have, rather than some far-right Queenslander who clearly has no idea what he’s bloody talking about.
My coverage on this poll is here:
http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/reachtel-giddings-northern-problem.html
I’m also running an aggregate and I get a somewhat friendlier result for the Greens – I have them just below 14% and scraping four seats, though two of those are rather and very close vs Labor. I think the main cause of the difference between mine and William’s is probably the Wilkie issue in Denison and how this affects modelling of the Others vote. All the same my model of the Others vote will be too low if PUP really gets going. (If that is the case hopefully we’ll see them named in the state polls!)
Sean Tisme@5
It doesn’t need a referendum and indeed the Tasmanian Constitution has no mechanism for binding referenda, only non-binding plebiscites. Electoral system change can be passed through both houses of parliament by a simple majority. Whether the Upper House would jump when the Liberals told them to is another question (some of them doubtless would.)
The problem in Tasmania is not the Hare Clark system. It is the same problem as occurred in NSW Labor under a different system. Cronyism and deals for incumbents have wrecked the economy, and stalled investment in things that might create new jobs.
Tasmania is an economic basket case, despite generous Federal largesse under Howard, Rudd and Gillard. New management is required. Transparency, due process and avoiding conflicts of interest are required even more.
I had some fun here on the question of when the next state election is actually due. My conclusion is that it’s “due” sometime in March only because Lara Giddings said so, and that Will Hodgman’s attempts to declare it due on specific dates in March are wrong:
http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/when-is-next-state-election-due.html