First things first:
• I had a piece in Crikey yesterday looking at how-to-vote cards, preference deals and the media coverage attendant to them. It considers a claim by Greg Sheridan of The Australian that any teal independent victories will be owed to ovine fealty to how-to-vote cards on the part of Labor and Greens voters; Labor’s decision to put the United Australia Party ahead of the Greens in central Queensland seats, in sharp contrast to its treatment of the party everywhere else; and One Nation’s tokenistic direction of preferences against the Liberals in five seats, without endangering Pauline Hanson’s second placement on the Liberal National Party Senate ticket in Queensland. Had I held back a day, I might have been able to note the latest full-page United Australia Party advertisements proclaiming &8220;Labor are preferencing the Liberal Party”.
• Andrew Tillett of the Financial Review reports the Liberals are boosting resources in the Labor-held seat of McEwen in outer Melbourne. However, Labor sources say they expect to retain the Victorian seats that have become the source of media chatter over the past week, the others being Corangamite and Dunkley, as “national concerns over cost of living and antipathy towards Mr Morrison” are registering as strongly here as anywhere else.
• The Australian reports the Liberals are newly concerned that the normally safe Brisbane seat of Ryan will be lost to Labor. There has also been increasing talk that the Greens could prove competitive in both Ryan and neighbouring Brisbane, together with Labor-held Griffith immediately to the south.
• Alice Workman of The Australian reports “independent polling conducted over the phone, towards the end of April” shows Liberal candidate Jenny Ware on a low enough primary vote to put her in danger of losing Hughes to independent Georgia Steele. Liberal sources are quoted saying Ware is “on the nose with locals after being picked by Scott Morrison to run, against the wishes of rank-and-file branch members”. Assuredly not in contention is the seat’s incumbent, Craig Kelly, notwithstanding United Australia Party advertising proclaiming him the “next Prime Minister of Australia”.
• The Age/Herald today reports that this week’s Resolve Strategic poll showed 32% rated the Coalition as best to manage the Solomon Islands issue compared with 29% for Labor.
Now, by popular demand, a post probing into this site’s popular BludgerTrack poll aggregate, for which a permanent link can be found on the sidebar. This presently suggests Labor holds a lead of 54.0-46.0 on two-party preferred, which I don’t think anyone seriously expects to be actual result at the election. It does, however, show a narrowing trend commencing slightly before the onset of the campaign period, though not sufficient to suggest any chance of the Coalition closing the gap. Given the record low support for the major parties, the Coalition can at least hope that parity on two-party preferred need not be required to at least hold on to minority government – and also for another pollster failure like that in 2019 (the likelihood of which is considered in a post by Mark the Ballot).
BludgerTrack is one of a number of endeavours around the place that seek to plot a signal through the noise of federal opinion polling, together with one on the Wikipedia federal election page maintained by a user called Canley; Twitter user @Gergyl’s regular posts aggregating trends both short-range and long-range; and semi-regular blog posts from the aforementioned Mark the Ballot. That’s aside from the sites Armarium Interreta and Buckleys and None which, together with Professor Simon Jackman’s betting odds model, are tracking the horse race in other ways.
BludgerTrack and its close relatives, each of which produce very similar results, use LOESS (locally estimated scatterplot smoothing) functions to trace a path through the data points that keeps the distance between the path and the points at an appropriate level. The degree of tolerance for this difference is set by a smoothing parameter, which produces something resembling a straight line if set too high, and zooms all over the place in response to each individual poll result if set too low. The industry standard for determining the Goldilocks point is called the Akaike information criterion, which I use (thanks to a library available for the R statistics package) without really understanding its mathematical intricacies.
The data points themselves consist of every opinion poll of voting intention published since July 2019 by YouGov/Newspoll, Essential Research, Roy Morgan, Resolve Strategic and, just recently, Ipsos, which are weighted according to their perceived accuracy and adjusted to smooth out the peculiarities of each series. My methods here are quite a bit less presumptuous than they were before the pollster failure of 2019, when I imagined there was value in calibrating pollsters’ historic performances. I now assume that YouGov/Newspoll, the only pollster with any track record to speak of since 2019, is essentially free of bias, and calculate other pollsters’ biases based on the extent to which they deviate from a trend measure of it. These are halved so the peculiarities of each pollster have at least some weight in the overall result, rather than it being totally centred around Newspoll. The biggest change made is to Resolve Strategic’s Labor vote, which is increased by over two points. All other adjustments amount to less than one point.
Each pollster gets a weighting based partly on how much bias adjustment they’re being loaded up with, but mostly on my subjective impression of how accurate they’re likely to be, together with consideration of how frequently they report. The latter ensures the aggregate doesn’t get overwhelmed by the more prolific polling series. The most heavily weighted pollster at the moment is actually Ipsos, which is a (presumably) high-quality pollster that has so far produced only two polls released several weeks about. However, the mainstay of the series, Newspoll, is not far behind – a Resolve Strategic poll is worth about half a Newspoll, and an Essential Research (the most prolific series over the current term) and a Roy Morgan (which has a dubious track record) are worth about a quarter each.
Where BludgerTrack goes deeper than its rivals is in providing state breakdowns (together with leadership ratings). This is done using trend measures of each state’s deviation from the national results, which are then combined with the national trends (excepting Tasmania, for which next to no state-level data is published). Unfortunately, only Ipsos offers complete state data for each poll, as the others don’t care to have their small sub-samples held up to scrutiny their margins of error can’t bear. Essential Research comes close, but it smooths results for the smaller states by publishing three-poll rolling averages. Newspoll has always dealt with the issue by publishing state-level aggregates on a quarterly basis, which are a big deal for BludgerTrack when they come along (it would be nice to see one soon). Resolve Strategic only goes as deep as Queensland, and Roy Morgan’s are not used as they only provide two-party preferred at state level, whereas BludgerTrack works off primary votes.
Thought you’d be glued to Sky, Lars
Is he wearing thermals sprocket? Pants are too short but grey thermals showing?
Unruly and antagonistic yoof asks first question. Refuses to be satisfied with any answer.
Do you think Albo’s tie is too long?
Wonder who the guy with the nostril piercing is voting for ? UAP?
First Liberal,stooge
Raymond is peak boomer – he would never vote labor.
This is a good format for Albo – much better than the gaggle of geese pressers
Yes sprocket , tie looks like it is too long. Someone stuffed up in ALP wardrobe? What is to be done?
sprocket_says:
Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 8:41 pm
I would have thought his body was too short.
Albo pushing back on this bullshit…
Morrison’s butler would allow that
I actually think the Albo would win votes by saying to the first voter, you have the benefit of having those beliefs because you don’t have any equity.
Then he should throw silver dollars at him and chase him out of Qanda.
He’d win teal votes!
Labor plant question
alias –
Also, with respect specifically to the ABC, they have to be ‘balanced’ which means being able to add up positive/negative stories about the 2 majors and minutes of coverage etc etc. So they’re kind of obligated to use whatever negative footage/story they can about the ALP to tally up for “balance”.
Detailed answer by Albo on NDIS, just to rub the gotcha crew noses in it
Lars Von Trier says:
Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 8:08 pm
Seat polls next week?
Upnorth have you been briefed on any more internal polls?
中华人民共和国
No cobber. I am upcountry at the moment. But Party polls are very different to Newspoll et al. Why poll safe Tory electorates? Tracking and Focus groups plus the pollsters experience.
It’s a myth that parties don’t use polling and polling methods but they are far different in their composition to the ones we read about in the news.
The first question I would imagine each side will be asking their “groups” is “Is Australia heading in the right direction”. Answer that and 9/10 you have the election result.
A good “pollster” such as John Utting is worth their weight in gold. Again I understand the ALP didn’t use Utting last time and that was part of the problem.
Yes… Albo… go there …
NDIS very safe ground for Albo
Albo not across the detail. Talking in platitudes.
NDIS is too important for games
[Lars Von Triersays: Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 8:50 pm
Albo not across the detail. Talking in platitudes.]
He must have learnt from scomo – has he got any policies?
Thus far I am not a fan of Albo’s performance on qanda.
His speech is laboured and he is referencing his mum and his housing commission background far too much. We know this already.
He needs to loosen up and speak more candidly.
Even Speers having a go at Albo. Maybe they should have had a shadow minister baby sit him?
@Lars – he didn’t play Speers’ game.
Good for him.
Shouldn’t you be over on Sky, Lars? I hear ScoMo is knocking it out of the park
[Lars Von Triersays: Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 8:51 pm
Even Speers having a go at Albo. Maybe they should have had a shadow minister baby sit him?]
Where’s scomo – won’t even appear on qanda – what a coward.
Speers getting frustrated that Albo won’t allow him to set the agenda.
Lol, ScoMo presumably decided he didn’t want to get independently and impartially rodgered by the ABC.
Albo is probably tense after today’s so called gaffe.
Speers, spending, spending, spending…..
I can’t listen to Q&A my wife is threatening to throw a brick and at Spears.
Only interested in minutia and gotchas she has told me at the top of her voice.
sprocket_ says:
Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 8:54 pm
Speers, spending, spending, spending…..
________
After a decade on Sky, Speers is now worried about spending.
Now Speers interrupting- shut up and let the people ask the questions
Too many talking points, not enough straight anwers.
Albo on the ropes. Speers relentless.
[Lars Von Triersays: Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 8:55 pm
Albo on the ropes. Speers relentless.]
He beat the outgoing pm who didn’t show up.
Better when he goes off piste.
All this country cares about is money money money. What about social policy?
Speers is aping Stan Grant
Can Speers let the audience ask some questions already?
He started strong, but shouldn’t allow himself to get bogged down.
I don’t think his presentation is “laboured” it’s how he usually presents.
But Speers’ roughed him up on that one.
Albo switching to rope-a-dope with Speers
The constant interrupting is annoying.
Lars Von Triersays:
Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 7:08 pm
From the Daily Telegraph:
Anthony Albanese’s colleagues question his ability to lead Labor as he makes another mistake
Anthony Albanese’s own Labor colleagues are questioning his ability to lead after he made his fifth campaign mistake just two weeks from the polls. See the video.
_____________________
Uhlmann saying similar on Ch9 earlier.
They will make a move on him pretty quickly after the election I imagine.
We can’t have a PM who gets rattled and storms out of press conferences. We just can’t.
I thought this was Q and A, not the spears wank show.
Your seeing a good demonstration tonight why Labor surrounded Albo with shadows after the first week gaffe.
[Taylormadesays: Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 8:58 pm
We can’t have a PM who gets rattled and storms out of press conferences. We just can’t.]
We already do – has scomo ever answered a question/not ran from a press conference?
[Lars Von Triersays: Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 8:58 pm
Your seeing a good demonstration tonight why Labor surrounded Albo with shadows after the first week gaffe.]
Where’s scomo?
C@t @ 8:56pm
“Better when he goes off piste.”
Right you are. It’s usually when journos get under his skin so much that he gets passionate and actually starts to sound natural.”
And what an excellent team Albo has to call on!
ScoMo has Tudge, Reynolds, Colbeck in witless protection