Yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald carried results of a Resolve Strategic poll of state voting intention in New South Wales that has both major parties down on the primary vote from the mid-September poll – Labor by two to 36%, and the Coalition by four to 32%. The beneficiaries are minor parties, with the Greens up four to 13% and others up three to 7%, with a generic independents option down one to 12%. Based on preference flows from the March state election*, I make this 56.6-43.4 to Labor on two-party preferred, compared with an election result of 54.3-45.7. Chris Minns holds a 35-13 lead over Mark Speakman as preferred premier, in from 41-14.
As is usually the case with Resolve Strategic’s New South Wales and Victorian state polls, this one combines two sets of surveys conducted a month apart, in the first weeks of the previous and present month. The former presumably formed part of the pre-referendum national poll, but the provenance of the latter is a mystery for now, as the state polling results are usually released after federal ones and we have as yet had no federal Resolve Strategic poll for November. There is presuambly a strong chance this will change shortly. The overall sample for the poll is 1044.
* Since I went to the trouble of crunching the ballot paper data to work this out, I will record here that Greens preferences went 59.5% to Labor, 7.3% to the Coalition and 33.2% exhausted, while all others went 22.7% to Labor, 20.3% to the Coalition and 57.0% exhausted.
Can we please keep this thread for discussion of NSW state politics. The open thread for general discussion is here.
Thanks, William, for this NSW polling update.
Based upon your distributed 2PP figures there is a chance that 11 seats could be lost to the CLP, if an election was held currently.
I would nominally give 8 to the ALP and 3 to Independents / Teal candidates.
As demonstrated by your exhaustive preference flows, from the March 2023 Result, Optionable Preference Voting makes an inexact science even more inexact to predict.
“* Since I went to the trouble of crunching the ballot paper data to work this out, I will record here that Greens preferences went 59.5% to Labor, 7.3% to the Coalition and 33.2% exhausted, while all others went 22.7% to Labor, 20.3% to the Coalition and 57.0% exhausted.”
=================
Thank you very much for posting this. For my part, it’s given me a snappy little heuristic to gauge who’s ahead in NSW: ‘Labor plus 0.6 x Greens’ or ‘Coalition plus 0.1 x Greens’.
Silly me, the heuristic I gave above can be even simpler. The side in front is whichever of these is greater: Labor PV plus half of Greens PV; or Coalition PV. By this rule of thumb, the Coalition is about 5% down on where they need their PV to be, assuming they get it straight from Labor’s PV.
Optional preferential voting is a terrible idea. It is first past the post by proxy.
First past the post is completely undemocratic. It skews the results.
Disagree completely, compulsory preferential basically means if you don’t vote for one of the major parties (in the majority of seats) you get a second go.
That’s what I call ‘undemocratic’.
The star performers in this government are the Premier himself, Daniel Mookey and John Graham. The negatives are Jo Haylen and Yasmin Catley – both seem to be way out of depth in their respective portfolios.
Ryan Park is a very solid performer in Health so far.
As for the Liberals, Mark Speakman is invisible, Natalie Ward seems to grab all of the publicity, as ever the Daily Telegraph and 2GB do the work for the opposition.
‘CPV’ with savings provisions so it’s effectively OPV is the best of both worlds and I wish we could have it.
OPV is more democratic than FPP. Proportional representation would be best, however.
Agreed about Jo Haylen. She would be no doubt under threat from the Greens in Summer Hill if she lasts till the next election.
It may be a semantic point but, when discussing voting systems, people should bear in mind the difference between ‘democratic’ and ‘representative’.
First past the post, optional preferential, compulsory preferential and proportional representation are all ‘democratic’. The differences relate to how well they represent the views/desires of the voting population.
I suspect Ward runs in Epping when Perrottet inevitably leaves and ends up running against Minns in 2027.
The Coalition don’t have anyone else who has a hope of beating him.
Having said that, this Government is the epitome of a house of cards, outside of Minns they have a longer tail than any cricket team I’ve ever seen.
How Jo Haylen is still in Cabinet is an absolute disgrace.
When Minns does the inevitable reshuffle early next year, Greg Warren is one who should be promoted, and how about Paul Scully in the Police portfolio? Mark Buttigieg is another to watch.
Labor should repeal the vote exhaustion mechanics?
it’s entrenched in the State constitution Bob – impossible to remove.
Is Speakman the worst LOTO since Bruce McDonald?
Discuss
State referenda are much easier to win than fed ones. Qld won a switch to four year terms not that long ago. But it would be a cynical and bad idea to get rid of OPV entirely. Votes that express a clear preference should be counted whether or not they manage to number every box.
Jodi McKay and Michael Daley make Mark Speakman look positively Premier material in comparison.
Speakman’s suffering the same fate as Robbo – pushing the proverbial uphill in the desert that is State Politics as a first term LOTO after the defeat of a long term government.
If the climate gets warmer then there’ll be more evaporation and therefore, on average, more rain. The effect on atmospheric circulation is less clear. Some places will get wetter, others drier.
In the Australian region, the belt of Westerlies seems to be retreating polewards, which is bad news for the wheat belt. On the other hand there might be more rainfall in what are now drier parts of Australia’s North and also East of the Dividing Range. Sydney Summers might be replaced by a wet season while Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth dry out. No one knows.
The fact is, our agriculture and settlement patterns, like that of the rest of the world, are geared up to 19th-20th century climate patterns. A Riverina wheat farmer can’t readily decamp North and to grow rice. A Bangladeshi farmer can’t decamp to anywhere.
Optional preferential voting is in that part of the NSW Constitution that can only be changed by a referendum, so it is difficult but not impossible to change.
“it’s entrenched in the State constitution Bob – impossible to remove.”
Looks to be the case. I’d probably at a minimum direct the electoral commission to produce signage on the ballots, upon entering the voting locations and for the electoral works that simply says “number every box”, and to ban how to vote cards from suggesting otherwise.
》Disagree completely, compulsory preferential basically means if you don’t vote for one of the major parties (in the majority of seats) you get a second go.
》That’s what I call ‘undemocratic’.
Compulsory preferential means if nobody gets 50%+1 everyone gets to pick their favourite from those who remain not just those who picked the least popular.
“First past the post is completely undemocratic. It skews the results.”
Disagree a lot with this. The Australian system is very negative, effectively electing the “least hated” of main candidates, and not really giving a platform to ‘others’ in the process either. The advance of Teals at the last election is an anomaly if you look at the history (albeit an anomaly that may be sustained at least until Australia is ready for another change of government, if not longer).
Whereas FPTP elects the most popular in each seat – it’s a positive vote, not a negative one. The fact that sometimes they get elected with well below 50% as well as often with greater than 50%, doesn’t change this overall point IMO.
In summary, no democratic system – where your vote is free and fair – is perfect and none are completely terrible, but FPTP is the best. 100% proportional representation tends to far too much instability and horse-trading, whilst ranked choice systems can be very dubious and very negative as outlined above.
“Compulsory preferential means if nobody gets 50%+1 everyone gets to pick their favourite from those who remain not just those who picked the least popular.”
No they don’t. Those of the party in the lead until the final ’round’ don’t get their 2nd choices etc counted. Why shouldn’t they, and contribute to who they end up against in the final round? Anyway, saying “everyone gets to pick. . . from those who remain. . .” is clearly inaccurate.