Today’s Sunday Herald-Sun carries two electorate-level polls by Galaxy, which I presume to be automated phone polls, one of which is by some distance the Liberals’ best poll of the campaign:
A poll of 706 respondents in Bentleigh, one of the crucial sandbelt marginals and the decisive seat in the Coalition’s 2010 election victory, has the Liberals leading 52-48, compared with their existing margin of 0.9%. The primary votes are 48% for Liberal incumbent Elizabeth Miller (compared with 47.2% in 2010), 35% for Labor candidate Nick Staikos (38.5%) and 11% for the Greens (unchanged), with Denis Napthine holding a 49-28 lead over Daniel Andrews as preferred premier.
It’s a different story in Buninyong, hitherto known as Ballarat East, where a poll of 527 respondents has Labor’s 1.6% margin opening out to a two-party lead of 54-46. The primary votes are 40% for Labor incumbent Geoff Howard (40.9% in 2010), 37% for Liberal candidate Ben Taylor (42.5% in 2010), 6% for the Nationals (who didn’t run last time) and 13% for the Greens (11.3% in 2010). Here Napthine and Andrews were tied at 38-38 all on preferred premier.
Added an update to my piece from early today (http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2014/11/victorian-poll-roundup-and-seat-betting.html) with a note about how I will be using seat polls in my model. (I experimented with this in the federal election campaign with a similar model, but the Coalition lean of the seat polls was a bit of a hazard there so I’m refusing to allow seat polls to stuff about with the implied overall 2PP this time around.)
I guess that swing is ok for the ALP in Bunninyong, considering its an area the LNP have targeted, their Campaign Launch was in the area, and they have had a few announcements.
An increase in the Liberal Vote in Bentleigh and decrease in Buninyong seem counter to what has been coming across to me. There has been a lot about the Liberals targeting regional seat to stay in power and the Liberal in Bentleigh recently left the only candidate forum she agreed to attend early, like she had given up.
Also using sandbelt to describe Bentleigh is not all that accurate as it is not a beachside seat. I think William`s quotation marks are very appropriate.
As I understand it the term “sandbelt” doesn’t denote only beachside, but also sandy soil, and the region is considered to extend slightly inland.
I’m wondering what the MOE are on these seat polls.
5
The only Moe is in Narracan.
http://www.vec.vic.gov.au/ElectoralBoundaries/NarracanDistrictProfile.html
Or if you were writing of Margin of Error, it depends on sample size.
Unless this is different from past Galaxy electorate polls, the sample will have been about 550, and the MoE a bit over 4%.
The sand belt I grew up in referred to the soils rather than the beaches. It was an expression used to describe the numerous golf courses in the eastern burbs. I suppose some of the Liberal silver tails will soon have plenty of time for a few extra rounds.
Group voting lodgement ends today at 12pm.
What’s the political history behind the term “sand belt”? Is there any relation to “wheat belt”?
The Bentleigh poll would worry the ALP. But with the MOE it’s not conclusive of the Libs pulling back ground in the Frankston line marginals.
Without wanting to sound like Bruce McAvaney – the next few statewide poll are going to be very telling.
Lib primary 48 in Bentleigh! Not sure how they’ve done the 2PPs but I really struggle to get only 52 rather than 53.
With that MOE, I’d conclude that it’s too close to call.
In the 2013 fed elections, while the overall polling was close to the actual results, the seat by seat ones were quite unreliable.
WtR @ 12 – at your mention, Bruce’s voice leapt into my head: ‘telling stat that’ ‘that’s a teeeellling mark, isn’t it?’ etc etc
Do we know which statewide pollsters have been in the field for publication monday or tues?
Raaraa@14
Yes. The seat polls, while getting the right winner about three quarters of the time, were generally heavily skewed to the Coalition compared to the results. Galaxy’s were the least skewed by far with an average skew by my calculations of 0.44 points. But if changes in the national 2PP between when the seat polls were taken and the election are factored in, even Galaxy’s skew rose to 1.64.
Libs out to $6.50 with Sportingbet. Labor into $1.10. Apparently someone put $5000 on Labor yesterday.
Darn@18
No sign of a “narrowing” in the betting markets.
Did anyone track how the odds at the last state election played out over the campaign? From memory the ALP were warm favorites despite trailing a little in the polls.
looking at the candidate ballot paper listing on Antony’s site – which i assume is in ballot paper order – it looks as if the Lower House draw is favourable for the ALP: they are above the Libs in most of the marginals, especially in the Liberal marginals and so should benefit from the donkey vote.
At a completely unscientific visceral level I would not be surprised if Bentleigh will not be as easy for the ALP as it looks on paper, and despite the fact that the seat has been held by Labor for longish periods in the past. Bentleigh itself has become more prosperous and has gone from being a very nondescript middle middle suburb to a steadily more expensive one – at least as far as property values go. But i will bow to the wisdom of psephology over my gut feel any day
My model has the following projected Coalition wins (average of 36)
1 Buninyong 1%
2 Cranbourne 1%
3 Albert Park 0%
4 Eltham 5%
5 Wendouree 0%
6 Yan Yean 0%
7 Carrum 9%
8 Frankston 10%
9 Bentleigh 40%
10 Monbulk 6%
11 Mordialloc 23%
12 Ripon 3%
13 Bellarine 8%
14 Forest Hill 66%
15 Prahran 57%
16 South Barwon 45%
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/10/27/1339458/-Victorian-State-Election-Modeling-With-Venom
Do we know what time the VEC will release the group voting tickets?
Bentleigh nowcast 46% in mine after the seat poll so looks like our treatment of the seat poll is pretty similar (or else different in ways that cancel out!)
(That is, 46% Coalition win probability.)
Actually I had Bentleigh around that percentage even before the Galaxy seat poll so that poll mainly confirmed things! We look to be pretty much in agreement on most seats (once the fact that I have a higher state-wide swing to Labor currently allocated than you do) except for Forest Hill (You are more Coalition leaning) and Ripon (I’m more Labor leaning).
18 – even 10% return tax free over two weeks looks like pretty easy money if one is sure Labor will win.
max@20
I’d agree that Bentleigh will probably swing less than the overall state and may be one that gets away from the ALP. The reasons being for the subtle demographic shifts you mention.
The Bentleigh electorate contains McKinnon Secondary College. It’s one of the best performing government schools and it drives up property prices within it’s catchment.
I suspect the demographic that is attracted to buy into that area would be more favorable to the Libs.
As an aside, the school is probably past it’s peak and is now suffering from over-crowding and large class sizes. But it takes time for a school’s reputation to change.
If I remember rightly the Coalition were about $3 to win the night before the 2010 election. Which was another “fail” for the “betting market is always right” mob after a similar result in WA in 2008 when Labor was a warm favorite.
[As an aside, the school is probably past it’s peak and is now suffering from over-crowding and large class sizes. But it takes time for a school’s reputation to change.]
What is the basis for that statement?
Antony’s tweeting details of the GTVs, but they don’t seem to have been published yet – unless they’re on some corner of the VEC site that I haven’t been able to locate?
VEC site says GTVs will be on tomorrow
But Labor is preferencing DLP and Country Alliance above Greens in upper house apparently.
They were able to manage it last time, so that’s rather disappointing. Evidently Antony will be publishing condensed versions over the next few hours.
The VEC have published an XML file with all of the LC tickets on their media page: http://www.vec.vic.gov.au/Media/Default.html
Anyone out there smart enough to use CSS or something to make it comprehensible?
Hi William…..the xml files can be opened with MS excel…it will generate tables
There’re some sneakily hidden PDFs already on the VEC’s website, accessible from the Upper House candidate list pages:
http://www.vec.vic.gov.au/Elections/files/EasternMetropolitanRegion.PDF
http://www.vec.vic.gov.au/Elections/files/EasternVictoriaRegion.PDF
http://www.vec.vic.gov.au/Elections/files/NorthernMetropolitanRegion.PDF
http://www.vec.vic.gov.au/Elections/files/NorthernVictoriaRegion.PDF
http://www.vec.vic.gov.au/Elections/files/South-EasternMetropolitanRegion.PDF
http://www.vec.vic.gov.au/Elections/files/SouthernMetropolitanRegion.PDF
http://www.vec.vic.gov.au/Elections/files/WesternMetropolitanRegion.PDF
http://www.vec.vic.gov.au/Elections/files/WesternVictoriaRegion.PDF
Greens preferencing Palmer above Labor
http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2014/11/victorian-legislative-council-preference-tickets-western-victoria.html
Brilliant – thanks CM.
blackburnpseph@29
Anecdotal from students and parents of students over the past few years. The number of students has been rising and the school zone has been shrinking to try to manage this. Which, I imagine, would frustrate anyone who purchased a house just inside the boundary before it moved.
Still seems like a very good school. It’s just getting finite resource stretched as a result of its own success. Hence the my own opinion that “it’s past its peak”.
Antony’s about to put up PDFs of the GVTs.
Well spotted, Daniel. Antony now has them up in an easier to use format though: go to the pages for each region for the links.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/vic-election-2014/guide/legislative-council/
___cog___@38
Only in some regions as it turns out but it rather undermines Sandel’s complaints about the ALP preferencing the DLP and various other right-wing nonsense ahead of the Greens. One would expect very few serious Greens supporters would actually prefer the socially-confused, chaotic political vanity project that can’t screen candidates properly (hence Jacqui Lambie among many others) over the ALP.
I have a post up on the preference tickets:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2014/11/16/victorian-upper-house-preference-tickets/
Some people think there might be another Victorian Newspoll tomorrow but I’ve not seen any signs of it just yet.
(Not aware of any concrete basis for such speculation other than past history of there often being one two weeks out.)