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.
It’s OK – if you’re Morrison pressers aren’t really a problem. You don’t answer the questions at all.
Gaffagate Mark 5(?) is getting prominence in the Daily Telecrap, billed an an “exclusive” (≈ today’s beat-up).
Lars Von Trier @ 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.”
You’re watching the wrong channel then. On ABC, Albo is talking and connecting to real people. Keep trolling 😉
I swear to God @Lars do you misspell that word repeatedly on purpose? lol
I’ve been informed Barry Cassidy should be hosting this with big picture stuff , not minutia from David Spears.
What has the lnp done in 9 years – NOTHING!
Tory Taylor:
“ We can’t have a PM who gets rattled and storms out of press conferences. We just can’t.”
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We already have one of those.
Speers not liking that Albo is answering every single question, with empathy and conciseness – on top of his brief tonight
Albo is very strong on Aged Care. He seems far more authentic on this than other topics.
LNP to gain Gilmore ? Haha you have rocks in your head. I’m familiar with senior people on Philips campaign and they are adamant through what they’ve been privy to is that they will not only hold but increase 2pp. Fiona is one of the most hard working mps in the country and is sore knocking and out and about in the community every non- sitting day.
The way things are moving the LNP will be lucky to hold Lindsay
Aged Care has been horrendous under Morrison and the indolent Colbeck.
Shame.
Greensborough Growler @ #71 Thursday, May 5th, 2022 – 8:27 pm
No. I refuse to believe it.
Andrew loves me with every fibre of his being.
He does I tells ya.
Speers nickel and diming –
Albo is doing fine.
He’s got access to an audience that Morrison has ignored. The regional reach of the ABC through TV, radio and all the social media platforms is what he and Labor get out of tonight.
Lars can parse. But he’s talking out of his arse.
Henrysays:
Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 8:51 pm
His speech is laboured and he is referencing his mum and his housing commission background far too much. We know this already.
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FFS he is not crapping on about that again is he ?
Morrison always storms out of press conferences in the shits he has to answer to anyone.
Albanese is doing okay but he’s not a Whitlam, a Hawke, a Keating. I have severe doubts whether they’ll be a majority Labor government.
[Taylormadesays: Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 9:06 pm
FFS he is not crapping on about that again is he ?]
Meanwhile has scomo posted another photo of curry or his family?
Speers’ Liberal talking points are in disarray…. Albo is making mince meat of him…
Scomo and his gang can only dream about the clarity of ideas, program and action that Albo and the ALP are displaying.
Speersy thinks he’s grilling his guests on Insiders.
Constant interruptions by Speers is giving me the heebie heebie-jeebies!
Even by your low standards Lars, the trolling from you tonight has been sub-par. 1/10.
Geez the Tories riled up tonight. Can’t get it here of course but Albo must be wining the Q&A crowd like he did in the first debate.
Have to laugh at the BS line about changing PM after the election. Party rules were changed when Rudd was PM to make this all but impossible with Party members getting 50% of the vote.
More hollow Tory rhetoric from empty vessels.
I think Albo is doing great!
It was a slow first 10 mins, but he’s in his element now
If albo gets up he will be pm for minimum 2 terms.
sprocket_ says:
Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 8:59 pm
And what an excellent team Albo has to call on!
ScoMo has Tudge, Reynolds, Colbeck in witless protection.
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hahahahhahahahahaha! Witness protection?
Oh.
You’re not joking.
Seriously where his Tudge? Isn’t he kind sorta in cabinet? Mr Speaker? Mr Speaker?
She is over it; I have just had a lecture on the greatness of Geraldine Doogue, draws them out to get info, not into this gotcha stuff.
Trust is what the young voter is after
The Liar ain’t gunna give that to you…
Far out – another nasal ring undecided on Q&A.
“Mavissays:
Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 9:07 pm
Albanese is doing okay but he’s not a Whitlam, a Hawke, a Keating. I have severe doubts whether they’ll be a majority Labor government.”…
Pathetic nonentities like Abbott and Scomo won majority government…. Albo and the ALP are going to smash the Coalition… and if you add the Teals Independents, the Coalition is likely to be pulverised…
Hung Parliament my a..e!… 🙂
P.S. Didn’t the punters predict a “hung parliament” at the last elections in WA and SA too?…. How did those “hung parliaments” go?
The audience is clapping for him.
Speers wants to hurry up – would be better to shut up with the interruptions
My cats definitely know their names. And they haven’t been with us long, so they learnt them quickly.
oooo, albo calling out the media about whats on the front page, and spears hackles immidiatley go up.
Very telling, i feel a lot of journaists are ashamed of themselves. And those that arn’t are pittied by the rest.
None of them deserve sympathy.
Mavis says:
Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 9:07 pm
Albanese is doing okay but he’s not a Whitlam, a Hawke, a Keating. I have severe doubts whether they’ll be a majority Labor government.
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Heresy Mavis!
If Spear want to hurry up perhaps Spear should stop interrupting.
Shut up,Speers
@Mavis – I think you’re a little stuck in this broken idea of Labor + x + y = victory.
Obviously I repsect your view – just strongly disagree. Frankly, I’ll take a win however it comes, but I believe it will be in a majority.
Because Albo isn’t a charismatic speaker doesn’t mean Labor isn’t going win a majority. Frankly, I think Labor winning without it being based on a cult of personality can only help it in the long-term. It also means a government ends up more stable and not tied directly to the leader.
Let him answer the question, David Speers!!!
Long time lurker. I see we have the usual Tories out about tonight to offer their spin and predictable armchair commentary.
I think Albos doing just fine on QandA. Yes, he’s not the best speaker – He’s no Jason Clare, but he comes across as authentic. Speers constant interruptions are adding very little. At least Albo has the guts to face up to the ABC.
The usual suspects in the media like Ulhmann worked themselves into an anti Albo frenzy when he made the gaffe in week 1. Then they went a bit quiet as the polls didn’t move like they had been certain they would. Damn they thought as they regrouped, we must try harder to get Albo off guard!! We’ve seen this theatre before. All the while Scott Morrison is more or less ignored.
Spears is disappointed the Albo got applause.
Mavis
“I have severe doubts whether they’ll be a majority Labor government.”
Oh but you’re just another “concern troll” who should be berated for daring to express doubt
Well, interesting change of mood in the audience… They took some time, but they are now starting to applaud Albo’s replies…
The media brainwashing shows an effect on the audience, but it’s clear that the ALP can overcome that with good policies and good arguments.
hazza4257 says:
Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 9:14 pm
Mavis
“I have severe doubts whether they’ll be a majority Labor government.”
Oh but you’re just another “concern troll” who should be berated for daring to express doubt
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Burn the witch!
Howard won a number of elections and he has the Charisma of my toe nail clipping
Ooooh, he’s got some ego hasn’t he? On the other hand Albo’s pretty humble.
ScoMo hates the ABC
Speers trying to shut down the lnp corruption talk – the outgoing pm doesn’t want to appear.
The audience is clapping – albo is winning the audience over.
Spears disappointed that Albo gets applause again.