Today’s Sunday Tasmanian has results from ReachTEL polling of each of the five lower house seats in Tasmania, from a combined sample of 3019. The report says the poll credits the Liberals with 51-49 leads in Bass and Lyons, independent Andrew Wilkie with an increased majority in Denison, Labor member Julie Collins with a lead of 54-46 in Franklin, and Liberal member Brett Whiteley with a primary vote lead of 42.7% to 32.6% in Braddon, suggesting little change on his 2.6% winning two-party margin in 2013. The Jacqui Lambie Network would find “solid support” in the northern electorates, particularly her home base of Braddon, but has just 2.7% support in Denison and 2.5% in Franklin (this being before exclusion of around 7.5% undecided). I will be able to go into greater depth on these results tomorrow, but will be beaten to it by Kevin Bonham, who promises to publish a comprehensive overview at 8.30am.
In other partly reported poll news, Brisbane’s Sunday Mail has a tranche of state results from that Galaxy poll that provided federal results yesterday, but none of the voting intention numbers are provided in the online report. The report does relate that Tim Nicholls’ coup against Lawrence Springborg the Friday before last had 42% approval and 27% disapproval, and that Annastacia Palaszczuk leads Nicholls as preferred premier by 44% to 29%. Much is made of the fact that this isn’t as good for Palaszczuk as the 54-26 she happened to record against Lawrence Springborg in November. There will be voting intention eventually, I promise.
UPDATE: Kevin Bonham details the full results from the ReachTEL poll. The published respondent-allocated results have the Liberals leading 51-49 in Bass (54.0-46.0 at the 2013 election), 53-47 in Braddon (52.6-47.4) and 51-49 in Lyons (51.2-48.8), with Labor ahead 54-46 in Franklin (55.1-44.9). Each of these results is better for Labor than a 2013 election allocation would have been, particularly in Franklin (where Labor’s lead would have been 52.4-47.6) and Lyons (where the Liberals would have led 54.1-45.9). In Denison, Andrew Wilkie records 33.2% of the primary vote, down from 38.1% at the election, with Labor up from 24.8% to 27.3%. However, ReachTEL has published a Wilkie-versus-Liberal two-party result rather than Wilkie-versus-Labor, of 66-34, even though it was Labor who finished second last time, and would do so again on these numbers. The Jacqui Lambie Network’s average across the five seats is 5.3%.
This really does sound like blarney to me:
Why Malcolm Turnbull will win the election
The marathon election campaign is now well underway and things are neck-and-neck. At least, that’s the story if you take conventional opinion polls that measure voting intentions as your guide – the Fairfax-Ipsos survey released last Monday showed the Coalition and Labor locked at 50-50 after taking account of which party those polled would preference.
But it’s a different story when you ask who people expect to win, rather than who they intend to vote for. When the Fairfax-Ipsos survey put that question to voters, 53 per cent said the Coalition, 28 per cent said Labor and 22 per cent did not give an opinion. An Essential poll asking a similar question late last month found 42 per cent thought a Coalition victory was mostly likely, while 28 per cent opted for a Labor win and 29 per cent did not give an opinion.
Those results are good news for Malcolm Turnbull because researchers have discovered voter predictions about elections tend to be a more accurate guide to the result than asking who they will vote for.
…
So why is asking people the question “who will win?” a more powerful predictors of election outcomes that asking “who will you vote for?”
The researchers argue it is because asking voters for a prediction has the effect of greatly broadening the sample.
It allows survey respondents to consider not only their own views but also the attitudes of those around them. It is akin to taking “a personal poll of approximately 20 friends, family, and co-workers”
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/the-question-that-shows-that-malcolm-turnbull-will-probably-win-the-election-20160513-gouq6c.html#ixzz48dju2uZs
They expected Campbell Newman to win too. And Hewson in 1993. And Howard in 2001.
If the sampling is random, and the friends and neighbours are similarly random, greatly broadening the sample to 20 friends and neighbours won’t change the result much. The best is that it might focus it a little more accurately.
And anyway, around here everyone votes Liberal. If I asked *my* friends and neighbours from around here, Turnbull would win 150 seats.
Of course I meant Howard in *200-seven*
I tend to suspect that it is not a bad thing if the expectation remains of a Turnbull win despite the parties being now more or less at parity. It is however a disgrace for the nation that only voters who could pay money to Murdoch could see the leadership debate.
disappointing!
If I’ve got the Blogger link system correct then the following link will work from 8:30 am Tasmanian time onwards:
http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2016/05/reachtel-points-to-tasmanian-status-quo.html
If that doesn’t work then just go to the link to my site in the header post.
There are many design issues that make this polling interesting on some levels but also messy on others.
I’m doubt we’ll see anyone from News saying this: http://www.watoday.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/media-failed-duncan-storrar-and-the-issues-he-raised-20160514-gov5ig.html
Bushfire Bill (#1-2): in 2007, Newspoll actually had voters thinking Labor would win in August (57-28), October (52-30) and just before the election (64-24).
Interesting that Labor may be closer in Lyons and (particularly) Bass than has been suggested by the bludgertrack state average for Tassie. Odds for Lyons might lengthen a little bit but odds for Bass should tighten if there is any confidence in the polling. I look forward to Kevin Bonham’s take on the polling data MOE and treatment of preferences.
Has anyone done any serious analysis of best practice in interpreting electorate-level polling in Australian election campaigns?
It would be great to have a list available somewhere that gets updated with each individual seat poll, showing date, pollster, sample size, first prefs, TPP, etc. Maybe even with links to relevant media reports for each poll release for those interested in how they are spun.
“I doubt”. That’s what I get for changing my sentence half way through and not going back to proof read it.
briefly @ #4 Sunday, May 15, 2016 at 1:17 am
On the contrary, the poll suggests that a roughly one per cent swing from here could rid us of Nikolic when the general vibe here has been that he was a lock. Personally I am a little cheered by that. Anyway, individual seat MOE and all that. Seven weeks and Bass could well be in play. I’ll take that.
If in another lifetime Newscorp was in a castle atop a hill, I could see myself amongst an angry group marching towards it with whatever agricultural equipment I could get my hands on. Sadly the fight against this virus on our society is far more difficult in our era. Sometimes I wonder that they have probably long since won and that any effort to oppose may be futile.
EGT….Technical development…or innovation…or adaptation…whatever it’s called….occurs at the junction of knowledge and production. This is an essentially human-centred process. If we want to modulate the rate of innovative development, we can change the state of our knowledge or the conditions of production or both. This means we may choose to change:
the rate of growth of knowledge, its extension and diffusion
the technical conditions of production
the opportunities for knowledge and production to interact
our ability to recognise and harness creativity
At a deeply instrumental level, we should, of course, see the creation of knowledge as production too. Does this mean that learning about learning is the highest form of production we have available to us?
FredNK (previous thread)
If the company (owned by Australians) is subject to dividend imputation then reducing the corps tax from 30% to 25% will reduce the franking credits associated with dividends correspondingly. Therefore the owners will have higher personal income tax (if natural persons) than previously. Where the owners are also the top management the reduction should make no difference as the same amount of tax will be paid irrespective of the corps rate (just less corps tax and more personal tax to the same total).
The main reason to choose to retain earnings is to build the value of the company in hope of increasing the capital gain when it (or shares in it) are sold. Such gains are then subject to CGT. Owners might well prefer to gain value in this way since CGT is discounted in comparison to the personal income tax and in many case they will end up paying less tax as a result of favouring reinvestment, but note that the variables here are the personal income tax rate and the CGT discount rules; coprps tax rate doesn’t affect it.
It gets more complicated where the owners and top management are not substantially the same people, in which case the top management (as the owners’ agents) need to be able to justify their choices between distribution and retention, and hence use systems (such as hurdle rates) rather than making ad hoc decisions. As Crank pointed out it is common to use the corps rate (without adjustment for imputation) when assessing project viability against the hurdle and so a lower corps rate will mean more projects clear the hurdle.
Company income in Australia is highly concentrated in the largest firms, and of course in these firms the top managers are almost always owners rather than agents. Given that these (few) firms generate the largest part of company income and distribution of earnings as dividends is abnormally high in Australia (the article you cited which indicated an abnormally high % of assets are held as cash, but assets result from retained earnings after distribution, so the two are not inconsistent) it follows that the % of these companies’ earnings distributed as dividend is unusually high. The main explanation offered for this is that dividend imputation biases the distribution versus retention decision in favour of the former, and reducing the corps rate (if the reduction applied to these large companies) would reduce this imputation related bias and led to these large companies retaining a larger % of earnings (and quite possibly keeping quite a lot of the retained amounts in cash per the article you cited).
norwester @ #10 Sunday, May 15, 2016 at 1:51 am
Cheers, Norwester! I agree…I am inherently impatient, I know….:)
norwester @ #8 Sunday, May 15, 2016 at 1:42 am
Best practice involves severe scepticism at all times. At the 2013 election seat polls were comprehensively flogged by the national polls.
Re Lyons I trust people are noticing already that the link has the Liberals ahead 42.7-27.2 on primaries and have worked out for themselves that not in a million years does Labor really get 49% 2PP out of those primaries, especially not in that electorate.
Incidentally Richard Eccleston was saying *before* this poll that he thought Bass was more at risk than Lyons. Can’t say I got much vibe of that in my two weeks there just ended though.
Briefly
Well of course one can then go down the full Jeff Skilling / Enron slippery-slope and say that “thinking about learning about learning” (and so on) is even better and hence monetisable.
But it’s clear that technical progress relates to both research and education on the supply side and education also improves the demand side (most expansions of access to higher education lead to increased demand as consumers become more sophisticated).
The difficult thing is (on the supply side again) to turn research/IP into business innovation. Australia is quite poor at doing this, and seems to be particularly poor at creating innovative businesses based on its own research/IP and hence capturing the largest slice of the pie. It’s not at all clear that lack of capital for investment is the problem. Instead it seems to be a combination of attitude/culture and the remoteness of the major global markets (which makes it more difficult to test innovations in the market and hence inflates the risk).
Kevin Bonham @15
I’ll be very interested to read your analysis of this TAS seat polling.
Particularly how they get the 49% in Lyons based on those primaries. How are the other 30.1% primaries split?
My only rule with seat polls is to treat them with a bit more respect once there are three or so saying more or less the same thing.
EGT
We are familiar with concepts such as the capital and labour intensity of production. We need to think about the innovation intensity of production. Innovation is essentially a type of capital good, much like a machine tool is also capital. Australia has not been a significant locus for the production of capital goods in the past. But we have always had high rates of adoption and application of capital goods and had high capital intensity of production. This has propelled the growth in real wages and increased the knowledge intensity of production. The corollaries of high rates of innovation are high rates of obsolescence of existing capital and the need for high rates of acquisition of new knowledge. We should consider how to accelerate the substitution of new capital goods for old and we should also consider providing a kind of “depreciation” allowance for skills and learning. This could take the form of accelerated write-offs of training and education costs, whether borne by workers or by firms or both.
The costs of technical and other higher education could be deducted from taxable income on an accelerated basis in the same way that the costs of purchasing machines or tools attract accelerated deductions. This would encourage workers or their employers to reinvest in knowledge and certainly bring forward the necessary increase in the knowledge intensity of production.
Samantha Maiden:
Good morning Dawn Patrollers. It’s Sunday so there is no bumper edition.
A terrible public health situation is arising in western Sydney.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/health/diabetes-threatens-to-overwhelm-western-sydney-hospitals-as-obesity-epidemic-rages-20160512-gotfas.html
Mat Wade reckons the undecideds will win it for Turnbull.
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/the-question-that-shows-that-malcolm-turnbull-will-probably-win-the-election-20160513-gouq6c.html
Stephen Koukoulas describes how the Coalition has failed on three key economic promises.
http://thekouk.com/blog/how-the-coalition-has-failed-on-three-key-economic-promises.html
The AMA’s Brian Owler is going to make things quite uncomfortable for the government this election.
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/australian-medical-association-joins-campaign-against-medicare-rebate-freeze-20160513-gourgd.html
Peter FitzSimons’ weekend contribution.
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/what-tony-abbott-said-over-coffee-this-week-20160513-gouhho.html
The new identity rules for overseas housing purchasers in NSW come in to play in a few months.
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/foreign-buyer-crackdown-as-new-identity-rules-applied-to-sydney-property-market-20160514-gov65h.html
Craig Laundy’s seat is under the pump as a result of Baird’s enforced council mergers.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/election-2016-dont-punish-me-for-council-mergers-says-liberal-mp-craig-laundy-20160514-gov7wy.html
Will this AS “division” in the Liberal Party get similar treatment to Labor’s?
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/election-2016-liberal-candidate-argued-for-humane-approach-to-asylum-seekers-20160514-gov5eo.html
Who are the election “string pullers” in this election?
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/election-2016-the-people-pulling-the-strings-behind-the-scenes-in-the-federal-election-20160508-gop66i.html
John Menadue with the second part of his article on why conservatives are not better economic managers. There is a link to part 1 at the head of it.
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/no-conservatives-are-not-better-economic-managers-part-2,8987
Section 2 . . .
How a simple error helped to bring down a notorious “hurtcore” paedophile.
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/lux-captured-the-simple-error-that-brought-down-the-worlds-worst-hurtcore-paedophile-20160513-goum54.html
An informative article from Annabel Crabbe on the innovative saving of threatened animal species.
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/how-the-humble-elastic-band-is-saving-lives-20160513-goubvx.html
The ACCC is probing “Big Milk”.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/accc-examining-fonterra-murray-goulburn-milk-price-cuts-20160514-gov8qf.html
Here’s what is happening to the dairy farmers.
http://www.theage.com.au/business/murray-goulburn-milk-farce-why-werent-the-farmers-told-20160513-gouoqq.html
Peter Wicks on the internal struggles within The Greens.
http://wixxyleaks.com/the-struggle-within-leaks-highlight-major-issues-within-the-greens/
The “NannyCare” project is off to an inauspicious start.
http://www.smh.com.au/act-news/absolutely-shocking-35-an-hour-nannies-forces-government-scheme-overhaul-20160513-gouvtc.html
How to get some great free stuff online.
http://thenewdaily.com.au/life/2016/05/14/free-online-movies-music/
Donald Trump and Boris Johnson , the post-truth politicians.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/13/boris-johnson-donald-trump-post-truth-politician
Our world renowned sea level expert has been thrown onto the scrapheap.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/global-sealevel-expert-john-church-made-to-walk-the-plank-by-csiro-20160513-gov0k9.html
Section 3 . . . Cartoon Corner (what there is of it!)
Mark Knight lines up Bernard Tomic.
http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/3aef1190e0a720555383d5016648dd45?width=1024&api_key=zw4msefggf9wdvqswdfuqnr5
More from Mark David on “Jobs and Growth”.
A brilliant monologue from Bill Maher.
https://youtu.be/WqVCvbtfkho
BB, that’s right. For the average Joe to have an opinion on who will win is about like asking who will win the grand final this year. It’s speculation.
Whereas I can know who I will vote for today, it’s absurd to say with any authority who everyone else will vote for.
Having said all that, if the election were held yesterday, I would be fairly confident it would turn out to be as William’s bludger track predicts.
So the Liberals supremacy over the Nationals in Queensland is now complete.
In his maiden speech Sen James Paterson (liberal, ex-IPA) is reported as saying:
“We must make it as easy and cheap as possible to employ people.”
Is there any chance he might lose his seat at the election? I fear not.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-14/world's-smallest-porpoise-near-extinction-in-mexico/7414730
Politicians justify their ‘perks’ (some of which I’d defend) with the argument that they spend so much time away from home and their families.
Which is how workers ‘justify’ penalty rates.
When Sen Paterson leads by example, I may listen to him.
I wonder if Kelly O’Bigmouth is feeling the slightest frisson of shame over the results of her response to Duncan.
And as a corollary. Will anyone with some small ‘problem’ in their past now be reluctant to ask a question on Q&A?
Zoomster
Unfortunately, Paterson is now cushioned for life and will never understand the cruelty of his attitude.
Morning all
William
Quote by Sam Maiden is on the money!!
And the Liberals pretend they spend our taxes wisely!
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/absolutely-shocking-35-an-hour-nannies-forces-government-scheme-overhaul-20160513-gouvtc
Crabb seems to have totally drunk the cool aid –
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-15/malcolm-turnbull-book-stop-at-nothing-first-look-annabel-crabb/7408626
Turnbull’s father was a successful pub broker. He left Malcolm $1.7m in the early 80’s.
I think it was Evan who said follow the betting markets … sorry but that is the last indicator. Especially at this point. People bet for many reasons and doing the form in a two horse race is fraught especially when that form comprises, in effect, 150 sub races.
Irrelevant fashion comment. Niki is looking attractive in adult clothes today, rather than baby lace.
The young Australian girl did extremely well at Eurovision to come second!!
And of course, his Labor opponent is the Mayor of Canada Bay (part of the seat) which is on the “pending” (i.e. held over, for a while) list for a merger with Strathfield and Burwood councils.
A reprieve for Craig, and lucky for him. His opponent knows a thing or two about councils.
I notice there was a discussion last night about the Trickle Down theory.
Pour moi, I prefer my BUTT theory (“Bubble Up Towards the Top”). This is where the spivs on top cream off what the poor buggers down below produce.
Feel free to accept my theory (pick my BUTT) of reject it (scratch my BUTT).
Acerbic Conehead
Makes sense!
Sky News Australia
1h1 hour ago
Sky News Australia @SkyNewsAust
.@billshortenmp is promising swimming lessons for every child if Labor wins government. #ausvotes http://snpy.tv/1V2eRaR
Might be an idea to warn new migrants not to fish off the rocks, too.
And to stay away from blowholes!
That was not what Kate Ellis said.
victoria @ #37 Sunday, May 15, 2016 at 9:14 am
I have to thank BB for posting a link to her first audition last night. It turned me into a fan as she was such a natural young lady, with no tickets on herself, and a great voice. Delightful!
There’s always next time.
lizzie @ #42 Sunday, May 15, 2016 at 9:23 am
Rock fishing is inherently dangerous but far less so if you take steps to mitigate the risks. I did plenty of it as a kid with my father and we never put ourselves into dangerous situations. Safety first.
Dami is 27.
WILLIAM – Coorey wrote a big piece in the AFR several days ago about how the Nats hate the lib’s innovation and agility slogans because they go down like a lead balloon in the regional areas, for the reasons Samantha Maiden has identified. So they basically don’t use them.
Boerwar
You dont think 27 is young?
There is nothing inherently wrong in being killed while doing what you love to do, IMO. There should probably be more of it, not less of it.
But the frame should be shifted so that people who get washed in cannot expect any help.