The BludgerTrack poll aggregate continues to trend the Coalition’s way, to the extent that it reaches two milestones this week: parity with Labor on two-party preferred, and an absolute majority on the seat projection, albeit by the barest of margins. Three new polls were added to the national figures, those being Galaxy, the regular weekly Essential Research, and the fortnightly Morgan (fortnightly in the sense of publication, although the poll is conducted on a weekly basis). Also out this week was the Newspoll quarterly aggregates, which have been factored into the state breakdowns, along with the regular state breakdowns from Morgan (published) and Essential (unpublished). The combined effect is to add seat each to the Coalition tally in New South Wales, Western Australia and South Australia, while removing one in Victoria and Tasmania.
The quarterly Newspoll is a big deal for BludgerTrack, which is never better serviced for state data than it is immediately after being fed with three months’ worth of state-level Newspoll results. To this end, later today I will get around to publishing my own detailed quarterly state breakdowns for BludgerTrack, the previous instalment of which can be seen here.
BludgerTrack is still in the position of being slightly more favourable to the Coalition than any single published poll result, due to a variety of factors. Perhaps this could be best explained if I run through each of the pollsters:
Nielsen of course closed up shop a few months ago, which was significant in that BludgerTrack deemed it to be the most Coalition-friendly pollster, and the only one which adjusted for any substantial bias to that effect. Now that it’s gone, the model has a clear tendency to skew to the right of what a straight polling average would tell you.
Newspoll is rated as neutral by the model, but it hasn’t reported for a fortnight. When it did report, it gave Labor a 51-49 lead when the primary vote numbers looked a lot more like 50-50. It’s the primary votes that BludgerTrack goes off, so this was a 50-50 poll as far as the model was concerned. Clearly Labor got rounded up in the Newspoll result – it follows that they also got rounded down in BludgerTrack.
Galaxy is taken very seriously by BludgerTrack, and receives next to no bias adjustment at all. This week it gave Labor a lead of 51-49, although putting its rounded primary votes into the model produces a result of 50.6-49.4 going off 2013 preferences (as BludgerTrack does). If not for this poll, the Coalition would have moved into the lead.
ReachTEL’s last poll a fortnight ago had Labor leading 51-49, and BludgerTrack adjusts this pollster slightly in favour of the Coalition.
Morgan is reckoned to have the biggest bias in the game, that being in favour of Labor. Its result on respondent-allocated preferences this week was 51.5-48.5 in favour of Labor, but the more telling point so far as BludgerTrack is concerned is that it was the Coalition’s best result since February.
Essential is noted for being slow to respond to changes, and for this reason, BludgerTrack treats its bias in a unique way, by dynamically adjusting it according to how its deviates from the model over time. Since it’s stayed stuck with Labor on the cusp of leading 52-48 or 53-47, while the other pollsters have moved to the Coalition, a Labor bias adjustment is increasingly being factored into its results.
The other development in BludgerTrack this week is that Morgan published a set of phone poll numbers on leadership ratings, and they were relatively very rosy for Tony Abbott, who wasn’t too far off parity on net approval and had a pretty solid lead on preferred prime minister. This has a pretty sharp effect on the BludgerTrack leadership ratings, which aren’t exactly spoiled for data and are always pretty sensitive to the most recent result, even if the poll in question was from a rather small sample, as was the case here.
UPDATE: As promised, here are the detailed state-level breakdowns featuring primary vote numbers and charts tracking the progress of the primary and two-party votes in each state. Crikey subscribers may enjoy my analysis of these results in today’s email, assuming it gets published.
I also promised two weeks ago that I was going to start tracking betting odds in these mid-week BludgerTrack posts, then forgot about it last week. Now that I’ve remembered again, I can inform you that there has been movement to the Coalition over the part fortnight in Centrebet’s federal election odds, with the Coalition in from $1.50 to $1.45 and Labor out from $2.55 to $2.70. Centrebet’s price on Campbell Newman being re-elected in Queensland has also shortened from $1.36 to $1.28, with Labor out from $3.15 to $3.65. There has been a very slight move to Labor for the Victorian election, with Labor in from $1.23 to $1.22 and the Coalition out from $4.00 and $4.10 – which sounds a bit generous to Labor for mine. The Betfair market evidently thinks so, as it has the Coalition in from $4.10 to $3.40 and Labor out from $1.48 to $1.59.
DN,
I prefer to thwim.
shellbell
[Who would have thought that Mr Kate Ellis would be such a nasty bloke?]
Nasty he is! Wonder what attracted her to him?
[davidwh
Posted Thursday, October 9, 2014 at 3:50 pm | Permalink
Astrobleme the rubbish comment was regarding the assertion we have become a cowardly group. I don’t believe that at all. I think different groups are using the current situation to achieve different aims totally unrelated to cowardism. There are political agendas at play and some are just using this as an excuse to act out personal prejudices.]
‘coward
ˈkaʊəd/
noun
noun: coward; plural noun: cowards
1.
a person who is contemptibly lacking in the courage to do or endure dangerous or unpleasant things.
“they had run away—the cowards!”
synonyms: weakling, milksop, namby-pamby, mouse; More
informalchicken, scaredy-cat, fraidy-cat, yellow-belly, sissy, big baby;
informalbig girl’s blouse;
informalcandy-ass, pussy;
informaldingo, sook;
informalfunk;
archaicpoltroon, craven, recreant, caitiff
“the cowards turned back as soon as it looked dangerous”
antonyms: hero
adjective
adjective: coward
1.
literary
excessively afraid of danger or pain.
2.
Heraldry
(of an animal) depicted with the tail between the hind legs.’
It is hard to argue that the sum total of all our domestic behaviours is not cowardly.
Where is the courage of our convictions vis-a-vis democracy and civil liberties?
Why fearful and disproportionate responses to largely imagined outcomes?
Why allow fear of the unknown to run foreign policy, war policy and domestic security?
Why the wall-to-wall fear mongering by the Murdochcrats?
Why the war revelling but the Home Front cringing?
Abbott has turned Australia into a nation of candy-assed scaredy cats.
Davidwh
Thanks.
Do you think that appealing to fear, is one way of making us, as a Nation, cowardly? Cowardice doesn’t necessarily make you quiver in fear, it also makes you want to strike out. In this case I see the Coalition wanting to encourage us to be fearful so they can strike out at ISIS.
There are so many ‘worthy’ causes, so many uses for our military to help and save people, why have they chosen this particular cause? My impression is that because it was a very easy way to cultivate fear, to turn us into cowards wanting to strike out at this ‘death cult’.
I see their wish to strike out as a continuance of their obsession with machismo, they’d rather fight and kill than do a real humanitarian support mission. It’s far easier to garner support (and hence improve their voting potential) through fear than by actually trying to do something good (which will probably been seen as a waste of money). Remember, they are cutting foreign aid, yet at the same time spending many millions to kill people (to save some others). It’s utter hypocrisy.
Yet they could save SO MANY more lives by conducting much more mundane foreign assistance. Not a vote winner, not a ‘leadership’ spinner, no glory or machismo. So they cut that budget so they can kill.
John Anderson@248
Two main reasons, I think:
1. The tracker tries to predict current results from past polls based on trends.
2. The tracker “adjusts” polls according to their perceived bias.
So the current result is a bit dodgy, since it assumes the government will continue its recent run of slight improvements. This is unlikely, and presumably will be corrected in future updates.
It is truly amazing the number of people who don’t seem to realise that there’s a whole article written by William located between the headline and the comment box.
(Funnily enough, said article tends to expand and expound upon the headline, including in this case why Bludgertrack ends up at 50/50 with no published poll going that far).
We have outsourced our courage to the SAS and the FA-18 pilots.
That leaves around 23,000,000 Australians who have insourced craven fear.
We can give it but we can’t take it.
Ebola scare in Cairns. Will Abbott do a photo op?
From the Absurdistan Files: the Prime Minister comments on one plane dropping two bombs.
That should fix ISIL, no?
No on ground operational details of course.
caf@256
Williams explanation at the top is not the full story. You also have to read the methodology article – http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/bludgertrack-2013-methodology/
Ebola in Queensland!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@abcnews: #Cairns #Ebola scare: Woman under observation in hospital, Red Cross worker had been in Sierra Leone http://t.co/EL3SeYixBG
guytaur@258
In a biohazard suit from Canberra, no doubt.
BW,
Maybe the damage is not as extensive as our experts might want. Perhaps there was only a flag with “BANG” at the point of detonation.
Player One@263
Also, judging from his previous “fire starter” photo efforts, the biohazard suit will come complete with blood stains.
caf,
[It is truly amazing the number of people who don’t seem to realise that there’s a whole article written by William located between the headline and the comment box.
(Funnily enough, said article tends to expand and expound upon the headline, including in this case why Bludgertrack ends up at 50/50 with no published poll going that far).]
There are also blue data points (i.e.LNP data points) on the bludger track graph for which the 2PP value is greater than 50%. Presumably these data points have been adjusted for the biases that WB outlines at the top.
GG
Yeah. Australia – the nation that went ‘ping’.
[The tracker tries to predict current results from past polls based on trends.]
This is true, but the trend is sensitive enough to the most recent results that the impact is very slight (which is why BludgerTrack bounces around more than Kevin Bonham’s model). If there was no trend factor at work, and I was simply going off each pollster’s most published results, Labor would lead 50.06-49.94. So it’s more to do with bias adjustment, rounding, and the model’s (and my) conviction that a couple of the pollsters are presently biased to Labor, and none are to the Coalition. Whether or not it moves back to Labor next time depends very much on what the next polls say, particularly Newspoll.
Thank you, Kevin at #223.
I accept what you say, except for your assertion that Morgan ‘got lucky’ in getting it’s prediction right.
Why Morgan should be luckier than any other poller isn’t clear.
I’m interested in why, if there’s a ‘proven’ ALP bias in Morgan, why don’t they adjust their figures for it? is that unethical, or just good corporate practice?
Aaarghh, replace it’s with its.
With Bill Shorten and the ALP unable to establish a narrative that will get the attention away from Abbotts war, I can see the Govt increasing their majority at the next election.
It’s a hopeless situation.
Rex Douglas@271
I don’t seer that. The budget is still a basket case, the economy is tanking, and the LNP have had to virtually dismantle their only real positive (with the punters, I mean) which was “Boats!”.
Abbott can’t keep the attention off these fiascoes forever.
I went to today’s ALP Politics in the Pub lunch where Tanya Plibe4rsek was the guest speaker. She discussed Foreign Affiars and Abbott’s reliance on bi-laterel relationships with other countries while the ALP believed in multi-lateral relationships, amongst other topics.
In discussing education, I can report when Pyne’s name was mentioned gales of laughter swept the room.
Comment navigation
Turkish ambassador being interviewed on PM Agenda.
Their main game is still getting rid of Assad and keeping the Kurds under control. They are not going to get distracted by ISIL in the short term.
Asked if Turkey supported Australia’s efforts:
It is ‘…up to the Australian government what to do…’
I am not sure of the quality, but the Turkish armed forces look a bit like the Australian armed forces.
Multiplied by ten.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Armed_Forces
[ I don’t seer that. ]
I don’t see that, of course – but perhaps a Freudian typo?
Player One
For some inane reason the Govt seem to be preferred to ‘manage the budget’ according to Essential polls of the past, so I can’t see the conomy causing them too many headaches.
Morgan didn’t get too lucky in 2001, when they said Labor would win 54.5-45.5, or in 2004, when they said they would win 51.5-48.5, or in 2007 when they said it would be 56.5-43.5 (rather than 52.7-47.3, the actual result). Then they added SMS and online polling to their usual face-to-face before the last election, and started getting better results. For some reason they’ve since dropped the online, which is unfortunate, because the more dominated their polling is by face-to-face, the more biased to Labor it is.
Many years ago I posted that we would know that the ME end-game was nigh when the West betrayed the Kurds.
A year or so ago I stated that this prediction had not come to pass.
But now…
Swing Required:
[I’m interested in why, if there’s a ‘proven’ ALP bias in Morgan, why don’t they adjust their figures for it? is that unethical, or just good corporate practice?]
If they were to admit that there’s an unexplained effect causing their 2PP value to have a systematic bias, their commercial customers might reasonably ask if the same thing is true of, say, their “favourite soap powder” figures as well.
Rex Douglas@276
I think the utter ineptitude of the current government is going to change that a bit.
Looking at the individual polling results on BludgerTrack, it’s striking how little variation in the polling there has been recently – compare the tightly clustered results of recent times to the wild variations in February-April.
Make no mistake, Abbotts residency in the Lodge will last as long as he can string out his war on Islam/terror.
Should Australia officially ban this organisation?
http://www.hizb-australia.org/
Come on RD – Why so pessimistic?
In this 24-hour-it-all-goes-around-and-comes-around world, do you really think any government is safe/popular for more that the proverbial 5 minutes?
With two budgets to come and a poor track record for the first twelve months, the current government, despite their rhetoric about “ready for government” was just rubbish.
The old adage is yet to be proven wrong as far as I am concerned – certainly at the Federal level, is that governments lose office rather in oppositions win them.
The last two-three years of Labor in office, most of the travails of Labor were self-imposed. The electorate will just not stomach seemingly meaningless changes of leadership.
Even with the MRRT, Rudd would probably have got a second term.
It is astounding Labor was not down to about 20 seats in the Reps which shows just how reluctant the electorate was with Abbott.
So much more can go wrong for the Coalition – it has only just begun for them.
As the Coalition struggles, especially if this is after its third budget when blaming Labor will be non-starter and a whole lot of nasties set in, it will be amazing how much it will be recognised that Bill Shorten looks a sure and steady hand as PM.
Let’s face it, the conservative press made this absurd comment about Abbott but he still got the gig even though he must rate as one of the worst leaders we have had in the office for some time.
Rex Douglas@282
People will get bored of Abbott’s ridiculous war posturing before the next election. His best hope is a terror attack on Australian soil.
Astrobleme #254 no I don’t think it makes us cowardly. For some it creates concern but that is not being cowardly. For others, hopefully a minority who are likely prejudiced to begin with, it generates anger but that is not being cowardly. There is likely to be some people who become genuinly fearful but even that is not always being cowardly.
I think that if Australians generally were cowardly they wouldn’t be supporting any action in Iraq. The truely cowardly response would be to oppose any action in Iraq even if there are genuinly humane reasons to help the minority groups in Iraq from being slaughtered by IS.
Personally I think you are more likely to see a cowardly response from the ebola problem if it starts to have any impact here. There is probably a much greater threat from that than any terrorist act in Australia.
Puff
It’s nice that everyone is laughing at Pyne, but he still has the power of a Minister, and IMV he’s dangerous.
Abbott doesn’t live in the Lodge atm.
Boerwar:
[Turkish ambassador being interviewed on PM Agenda.
Their main game is still getting rid of Assad and keeping the Kurds under control. They are not going to get distracted by ISIL in the short term.]
Turkey’s long game is containing the influence of rival power Iran, for which getting rid of Assad is a subsidiary concern.
Tricot
This Govt would have a contest on its hands if it had a tactically competent and ruthless Opposition.
Greensborough Growler@288
Is he still living with his AFP “buddies”?
285
Player One
Posted Thursday, October 9, 2014 at 4:53 pm | PERMALINK
Rex Douglas@282
Make no mistake, Abbotts residency in the Lodge will last as long as he can string out his war on Islam/terror.
[People will get bored of Abbott’s ridiculous war posturing before the next election. His best hope is a terror attack on Australian soil.]
A terror act on australian soil would be a big fail for the govt of the day in my view
[Morgan didn’t get too lucky in 2001, when they said Labor would win 54.5-45.5, or in 2004, when they said they would win 51.5-48.5, or in 2007 when they said it would be 56.5-43.5 (rather than 52.7-47.3, the actual result).]
Or their 57.5-42.5 to the ALP prediction less than a fortnight before the 2010 election
All Rex does is pessimism.
It’s one of life’s certainties – it doesn’t matter how well or badly the ALP is doing in the polls, it’s doing everything wrong and is ultimately Doomed.
I would prefer the Australian Govt to focus on maintaining harmonious and peaceful communities in this country rather than sending our resources over to the ME into what seems a never ending violent confrontation between peoples….
“I’m just a plumber, ma’am”
[Anti-terrorism bill: police to get power to secretly search suspect’s house
AFP to be allowed to enter through neighbour’s property
Suspects do not have to be told for six months
Media companies protest prison term for reporting on searches
Lawyers tell Senate the six-month clause should be shortened.
Federal police will gain the power to secretly search a terrorism suspect’s home, enter through an innocent neighbour’s property and impersonate people, without having to notify the subjects of the warrant for six months or more.]
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/oct/09/anti-terrorism-bill-police-to-get-power-to-secretly-search-suspects-house?CMP=twt_gu
victoria
[ A terror act on australian soil would be a big fail for the govt of the day in my view ]
Ultimately, yes of course. But if it should (purely by chance, of course) happen just before the next election, it would most likely frighten enough people to make the difference and convince them to vote conservatively.
Actually, you don’t even need an attack. Just some unsubstantiated threat, followed by a raid by … oh, say 800 parliamentary police or so … might be enough. You know the kind of thing – police officers arresting people that later turn out to be innocent, or waving captured swords around that later turn out to be plastic ceremonial replicas.
Not that such things could ever happen here, of course!
I do wish people would stop saying “a premise” meaning “a house”.
lizzie
as I’ve been saying, there’s far more reason to be concerned about the second and third tranche of bills than the first.
If the first didn’t upset journalists, I doubt we’d have heard much about them.
Abbott says ‘Shorten is an Australian patriot’.
Abbott Lite.