William Bowe – The Poll Bludger

US presidential election minus seven weeks

Still anyone’s guess as to who will occupy the White House come February, but it does seem that last week’s debate has moved the dial towards Kamala Harris.

Evidence is starting to emerge of a strengthening in Kamala Harris’s position in the wake of last week’s debate, and while this hardly amounts to a paradigm shift in terms of the popular vote – after rounding to whole numbers, The Economist’s poll aggregate records no change from Harris’s 50-46 lead when the debate was held on September 10 – it’s been enough to move forecast models substantially in her favour. Nate Silver’s model is the most striking case in point, with Trump’s win probability falling from 59.7% to 52.0% just over the past few days, having peaked at 64.4% the day before the debate. After bouncing around 52-48 for a couple of weeks, The Economist’s probability reading now has Harris leading 57-43. FiveThirtyEight’s model remains the most bullish for the Democrats, putting Harris’s win probability at 63%. More from Adrian Beaumont at The Conversation.

Federal polls: Freshwater Strategy and Roy Morgan (open thread)

Two new poll results, one very grim for federal Labor, the other merely mediocre.

Two new federal poll results, one of which I reckon to be Labor’s equal worst result of the term, together with a Roy Morgan poll from early June:

• The latest monthly result from Freshwater Strategy for the Financial Review has the Coalition leading 52-48 on two-party preferred, out from 51-49 a month ago, from primary votes of Labor 30% (down two), Coalition 42% (up one), Greens 12% (steady). Anthony Albanese is down a point on approval to 34% and up four on disapproval to 49%, while Peter Dutton is down three to 34% and down two to 38%, with Albanese’s lead as preferred prime minister unchanged at 45-41. The poll was conducted Friday to Sunday from a sample of 1057.

• The weekly Roy Morgan poll has Labor with a two-party lead of 50.5-49-5 on respondent-allocated preferences, from primary votes of Labor 30.5% (up half), Coalition 37.5% (up one), Greens 12.5% (down two) and One Nation 5.5% (down half). The two-party measure based on 2022 election preference flows has Labor’s lead unchanged at 52-48, which is a little better for Labor than I would expect based on the reported primary votes. The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1634.

Friday miscellany: redistributions and preselections (open thread)

New South Wales federal boundaries confirmed, post-redistribution musical chairs for the Victorian Liberals, and contenders like up for the Labor preselections to replace Bill Shorten and Brendan O’Connor.

It’s been a busy week on Poll Bludger, which a new thread on the US election joining posts on state polls in Victoria, Western Australia and Queensland. Meanwhile at federal level:

• The federal redistribution for New South Wales has been finalised, with only very minor adjustments made to the boundaries proposed in June, none of which affect my calculations of the new margins by more than 0.1%. Certainly there has been no revision to the abolition of North Sydney, held by teal independent Kylea Tink. The only redistribution process still in train is that for the Northern Territory, charged with drawing a new boundary between its two seats of Solomon and Lingiari, for which a proposal should be published shortly.

• The Liberal candidate for the crucial Melbourne seat of Chisholm will be Katie Allen, who was the member for Higgins from 2019 until her defeat by Labor’s Michelle Ananda-Rajah in 2022. Allen was endorsed on the weekend by the state party’s administrative committee, which was charged with ratifying local party preselection processes that were conducted before new boundaries revealed that Higgins, for which Allen had again won endorsement, was to be abolished. The decision came at the expense of Monash councillor Theo Zographos, who was last year preselected unopposed for Chisholm.

• Ronald Mizen of the Financial Review reports the looming preselections for the Melbourne seats of Maribyrnong and Gorton, respectively to be vacated with the retirements of Bill Shorten and Brendan O’Connor, will be shaped by a long-standing agreement that the Left will take Gorton from the Right when O’Connor retires, while the Left will take “the next safe Right seat that becomes available”. The matter will be determined by the party’s national executive, which has again taken over the federal preselection process from the Victorian branch. Maribyrnong is considered likely to go to Jo Briskey, national co-ordinator of the Left faction United Workers Union, although The Age reports she “could face a challenge from Moonee Valley mayor Pierce Tyson”.

• In Gorton, the Labor preselection appears to be developing into a contest between Alice Jordan-Baird, a climate change and water policy expert, and Ranka Rasic, the mayor of Brimbank. The two candidates are back by rival sub-factions of the Right, the former with that of Richard Marles and the Transport Workers Union, the latter with Bill Shorten and the Australian Workers Union. James Massola of The Age reports the matter could be decided by a third Right union, the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association, supporting Rasic and the AWU in the interests of checking the rising power of the TWU.

US presidential election minus eight weeks

After a fortnight in which the balance of the polls tipped back towards Donald Trump, indications of a clear win to Kamala Harris in yesterday’s debate.

The most robust item on reaction to yesterday’s presidential candidates’ debate, at least so far as I’m aware, is a CNN poll “conducted by text message with 605 registered US voters who said they watched the debate”, which recorded a 63-37 win for Kamala Harris from a sample that going in had a 50-50 split on who they expected to win. This doesn’t quite match the 67-33 result in favour of Trump after the June 27 debate that marked the beginning of the end for Joe Biden, but it isn’t far off, and both seem about as close to decisive as can be expected by the polarised standards of American politics.

It was a win that Harris badly needed, if recent polls and forecast results are any guide. The latter have recorded what looks to my untrained eye like a dividend for Donald Trump from Robert F. Kennedy’s withdrawal, sufficient to reduce the modest lead Harris opened up in The Economist’s model to effectively nothing. Still more striking has been the recent form of Nate Silver’s model, which won the approval of Trump himself by swinging to a 64.4% probability in his favour as of Monday, though it’s since eased to 61.3%. The divergence between the two models, which were hitherto finely matched, appears to be largely down to Silver’s model correcting for an anticipated Harris convention bounce, of which the polls have offered no sign.

Adrian Beaumont has an update on the polling situation in The Conversation, dating from Monday.

Resolve Strategic: Labor 27, Coalition 37, Greens 14 in Victoria

Another poll suggesting Labor’s state primary vote in Victoria has a two in front of it, as The Greens fill the upper house vacancy arising from Samantha Ratnam’s federal election bid.

A huge week for state opinion polling continues with Resolve Strategic’s bi-monthly read on state voting intention in Victoria, combining survey results from its last two monthly national polls. As reported in The Age, this records no change for either major party since the June-July result, with Labor on 27%, the Coalition on 37% and the Greens down a point to 14%, suggesting a roughly even split on two-party preferred. There is also next to no change on preferred premier, with Jacinta Allan’s lead over John Pesutto in from 31-28 to 30-29.

The poll also finds 43% support for the Suburban Rail Loop project with 27% opposed. However, 53% favoured the airport-to-city rail link project when it was put to them that “some people have been argued” the money should be used for that instead, with only 16% preferring the Suburban Rail Loop and 19% saying it should be spent on neither. The sample for the poll was 1054.

Also of note from Victoria is the Greens’ choice of a new member of the Legislative Council for Northern Metropolitan region, following party leader Samantha Ratnam’s departure to contest the federal seat of Wills. A party ballot was won last week by Anasina Gray-Barberio, Samoan-born founder of Engage Pasefika, an organisation “committed to advancing Pacific Island Health equity”. Gray-Barberio was chosen from a field of eight that also included Yarra mayor Edward Crossland and former Merri-bek mayor Angelica Panopoulos.

Federal polls: Essential Research and Roy Morgan (open thread)

Labor loses its very slight advantage in Essential Research but keeps it in Roy Morgan.

The latest fortnightly Essential Research poll has both parties up on the primary vote, the Coalition by two to 35% and Labor by one to 30%, with the Greens steady on 13%, One Nation up one to 8% and undecided down one to 5%. The pollster’s 2PP+ measure has Labor and the Coalition tied on 48%, with the balance undecided. Further results show a 69-31 split in favour of the government’s cap on international students, together with various other findings on the theme of education. Fifty-three per cent expressed support for the Future Made in Australia policy, following a question that said it would “provide funding for large-scale renewable energy projects that support the creation of local jobs”, with 18% opposed. The poll was conducted Tuesday to Saturday from a sample of 1132.

The weekly Roy Morgan poll has Labor leading 51-49 on two-party preferred, out from 50.5-49.5 last time, from primary votes of Labor 30% (down half), Coalition 36.5% (up half), Greens 14.5% (up one-and-a-half) and One Nation 6% (steady). Going off preference flows from the previous election rather than as allocated by poll respondents, Labor’s two-party lead is unchanged at 52-48. The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1703.

Also, further results from the Resolve Strategic poll indicate remarkable pessimism on interest rates, which 40% expect to go up over the next year compared with only 15% for down and 34% for stay the same. Fifty-one per cent rated that the federal government and the Treasurer had “the greater responsibility for keeping inflation down” compared with 27% for the Reserve Bank and 22% for both equally. A question on gambling advertising found 51% support for banning gambling advertisements on television entirely, with 32% supporting the government’s policy of a cap on two ads per hour during live sports and none during children’s programming.

Freshwater Strategy: 55-45 to Labor in Western Australia

Multiple polls point to a win for Labor in Western Australia rather more on the scale of 2017 than 2021.

Hot on the heels of the Wolf & Smith national results on state voting intention, The West Australian had its own Freshwater Strategy poll on Monday which matched its headline figure on 55-45 in favour of the state Labor government, as compared with its unrepeatable 70-30 win at the 2021 election. The primary votes are Labor 39%, Liberal 32%, Nationals 6% and Greens 11%, with Roger Cook leading Libby Mettam 46-34 as preferred premier.

The accompanying reportage says Roger Cook has a plus seven net approval rating and that 37% “have either never heard of him or are unsure”, which presumably means he has 35% approval and 28% disapproval. This compares with plus four for Libby Mettam, minus two for the presumably little-known Nationals leader Shane Love, minus four for ambitious Liberal election candidate Basil Zempilas – and plus 41 for the departed Mark McGowan. The sample for the poll was 1045, with the field work period not identified.

UPDATE: The Freshwater Strategy website has the results, which show Libby Mettam at 21% approval and 17% disapproval (29% had never heard of her, compared with 10% for Roger Cook). The poll was conducted Friday to Sunday.

The voting intention results are little different from those of another Freshwater Strategy poll reported by The West Australian three weeks ago, commissioned in this case by the Liberal Party. Conducted in July from a sample of 1000, it had Labor leading 56-44 from primary votes of Labor 39%, Liberal 33%, Nationals 5% and Greens 12%. The primary votes from the Wolf & Smith poll were Labor 37%, Liberal 29%, Nationals 3%, Greens 12% and One Nation 4%.

Recent-ish news relevant to the March 8 election:

• Labor determined the order of its Legislative Council ticket in mid-July, with Dylan Caporn of The West Australian helpfully listing all 22 candidates and their union and factional affiliations. With Labor on track for perhaps fourteen seats, nine of the 22 incumbents are in positions of greater or lesser comfort; another, Stephen Pratt, will run for the lower house seat of Jandakot; two (Sandra Carr and Dan Caddy) are on the cusp; and four in positions where they are unlikely to be returned. Four non-incumbents hold competitive or better positions, one being Nedlands MP Katrina Stratton at number ten. Andrew O’Donnell, a staffer for Balcatta MP David Michael, aligned with the Right faction Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA), is at nine; Lauren Cayoun, the party’s assistant state secretary, aligned with the Right faction Australian Workers Union, is at eleven; and Parwinder Kaur, biotechnician and associate professor at the University of Western Australia, aligned with the SDA, is at thirteen.

• One Nation’s sole incumbent, South West region MLC Ben Dawkins, has not won a position on his party’s Legislative Council ticket. Dawkins ran for Labor at the 2021 election, entered parliament as an independent when he filled Alannah MacTiernan’s vacancy on a countback in March 2023, and joined One Nation in February. The ticket will instead be headed by Rod Caddies, the head of the party’s state organisation, who told The West Australian he “would be the one responsible for who is on the ticket”. Caddies expressed the view that Dawkins had not “lived up to the professionalism of what I would expect”. Dawkins will nonetheless remain a member of the party, whose formal registration for the election was confirmed by the Western Australian Electoral Commission a fortnight ago.

• Aswath Chavittupara, whose daughter Aishwarya’s death while awaiting treatment at the Perth Children’s Hospital emergency department in April 2021 was a serious embarrassment for the government, will be the Liberal candidate for Morley, after earlier saying he would run as an independent. Jack Dietsch of The West Australian reports Chavittupara won preselection ahead of Nirmal Singh, owner of a beauty services company.

• The Liberal candidate for Bicton will be Christopher Dowson, a former policy officer at the Department of Premier and Cabinet and current postdoctoral fellow at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Munich. Jack Dietsch of The West Australian reports Dowson won preselection ahead of Bill Koul, owner of an engineering consultancy and an unsuccessful candidate for the federal Tangney preselection.

Queensland: Resolve Strategic and RedBridge Group polls

Two polls offering a somewhat mixed picture of the scale of the defeat awaiting Labor in Queensland, plus other election-related developments.

Three items of Queensland state polling have emerged over the past few days, one being the previously reported national poll by Wolf & Smith that featured results for each state:

• The Brisbane Times has published a state voting intention results from the Queensland components of Resolve Strategic’s monthly national polls from June through to September. This suggests seemingly no end to Labor’s slide, their primary vote down three points from February-to-May to 23%, with the LNP up one to 44%, the Greens down one to 12% and One Nation steady at 8%. While the size of the minor party and independent vote allows for a wide range of uncertainty, I would conservatively put the LNP’s two-party lead at 58-42 based on these primary votes. The sample for the poll was 939.

• Nine’s television news reports a RedBridge Group poll showing the Liberal National Party with a two-party lead of 54.5-45.5, the least bad result for Labor government in some time. However, all that’s reported beyond that is that the Labor is at 29% on the primary vote and the LNP 42%. RedBridge Group director Kos Samaras relates that Labor is in “a very strong position along the Brisbane river”, but “travel out further from that and it gets very very ugly”.

• The aforementioned Wolf & Smith results were not far off Resolve Strategic’s: Labor 24%, LNP 42%, Greens 12% and One Nation 8%, with the LNP leading 57-43 on two-party preferred. The poll was conducted August 6 to 29 from a sample of 1724.

Other happenings relevant to the October 26 state election:

• Stephen Andrew, who has held the central Queensland seat of Mirani for One Nation since 2017, finalised his defection over the weekend from One Nation to Katter’s Australian Party after the former advised him he would not be its endorsed candidate at the election. A letter from Pauline Hanson cited his failure to bring any private members’ bills before parliament, and accused him of planning to join another party or become an independent. One Nation’s new candidate for the seat is Brettlyn Neal, a travelling tent boxer known to the sporting public as “Beaver Brophy”, who ran in the far north Queensland seat of Cook at the 2020 election.

• The LNP candidate for the southern Brisbane seat of Capalaba will be Russell Field, whose son, daughter-in-law and unborn granddaughter were killed when hit by a stolen car in 2021. Field says he is motivated by Labor incumbent Don Brown’s description of youth crime as a “media beat-up” in a social media post he removed when it attracted media attention last year.

• Curtis Pitt has announced he will not seek re-election in the Cairns seat of Mulgrave, which he has held for Labor since 2009. Samuel Davis of the Cairns Post reports Pitt’s favoured successor is Aaron Fa’Aoso, a Logie-winning Indigenous actor, whom Steven Miles has “fallen short of endorsing”. The LNP candidate is former Cairns Regional councillor Terry James. UPDATE: The Australian’s Feeding the Chooks column reports Labor’s administrative committee has chosen former Cairns councillor Richie Bates over “another, unnamed contender”, who was not Fa’Aoso. Bates is aligned to the Right, whereas Pitt “defected to the Old Guard some time back”.

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