UPDATE (18/7 9pm): Now YouGov, which began the campaign with a poll painting a much rosier picture for Labor than its peers, ends it in the same fashion, while still finding them having faded over the course of the campaign. The Liberal vote is unchanged at 31%, with Labor down four to 30%, the Greens up three to 16% and independents up two to 20%. It also provides a two-party preferred result (redundant of course under Hare-Clark, except for purposes of comparison) showing Labor leading 55-45, and has Dean Winter leading Jeremy Rockliff by the same amount. The poll was conducted July 7 to 18 from a sample of 931.
Tasmania’s unwanted and unloved state election campaign is drawing to a conclusion, and the Poll Bludger will as always be the place to watch the action as it unfolds tomorrow evening, courtesy of a live results facility that will look broadly similar to last year’s, perhaps with a few bonus features if I can work them out in time.
The one bit of substantial late polling comes courtesy of the Liberal Party, which has been providing regular numbers from its internal research by EMRS to The Mercury, and I for one am trusting enough to think they’re not just making them up. The latest result apparently encompasses 1000 responses from two waves of polling this week and last week, the latter of which was reported earlier in The Mercury, and records no change in having the Liberals leading 37% to 26%, with the Greens down one to 14% and the collective independent vote up one to 19%.
Two other minor items of polling: the same Mercury report that has the EMRS numbers relates that Pyxis (the company responsible for Newspoll) finds 34% think the government deserves to be re-elected compared with 53% for “time to give someone else a go”; and Pulse Tasmania reports a Community Engagement finding that 28.3% out of 872 respondents surveyed in the division of Franklin favour David O’Byrne for Labor leader ahead of 15.7% for Dean Winter.
For any who missed it, here’s another embed of my appearance with Ben Raue of The Tally Room, which was recorded on Monday.
The main issue I have with all these kinds of systems for predicting election results, whether it be the Keys or Alexander Downer’s “two out of three factors that decide a government’s fate” or whatever, is that elections are ultimately decided by people. Lots and lots of different people, from political junkies and policy wonks to dedicated single-issue voters to those who pay barely any attention to what is happening in the political scene, all of whom cast their vote based on a variety of different and sometimes not especially rational factors. Even the things that can be quantified, like the performance of the economy, still affect different people in profoundly different ways depending on their own personal circumstances.
Stuff like the Keys do have some use as tools to guide an educated guess on an election outcome, but they shouldn’t be relied on in isolation and and should definitely be taken with a large grain of salt. Ultimately, we never know how an election is going to go until the results are in. Polls can be wrong, the media can misread the public mood, one’s own perception of the mood on the ground is typically distorted by the social circles they tend to run in, and you can usually rely on there being a decent chunk of undecided voters who don’t make up their mind until right until they need to actually cast their ballot.
This sort of thing is an art, not a science.
New thread.
Asha: “This sort of thing is an art, not a science.”
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I think it’s neither. I reckon it’s something more akin to the prophecies of Nostradamus, which people go through with a fine tooth comb to try to prove that he predicted things that are already known to have happened.
So, a measure that’s close to irrelevent in an election that will be decided via a complicated proportional system where the polls are suggesting that over a third of Tasmanians will be casting votes for independents and minor parties?
With all due respect, arange, that is not a prediction.
Arange never pretended the keys were ever more than a popular vote winner prediction, and acknowledged countless times that this didn’t indicate who would form government on many occasions in different polities with a variety of voting systems.
It’s really not as hard as people are trying to make it. It’s very simple. And no-one has to agree with it or like it. But it’s still simple in its concept and some people like using it for a bit of fun at least, and it won’t hurt anyone.
The times, they are achangin so could the Greens and Independents form a new Party?