Category: Federal Election 2022

The weekly Roy Morgan poll finds Labor’s two-party lead falling back slightly to 54.5-45.5, in from 55-45 last week. However, the pollster has switched from respondent-allocated preference to using the flows from 2019, the former of were producing results more favourable to Labor. The movements on the primary vote are actually in favour of Labor, who are up half a point to 35.5% with the Coalition down one to 34%. The Greens are steady on 13%, One Nation are up one to 4% and the United Australia Party is steady on 1%.

The state breakdowns, which cannot be directly compared to last week’s due to the change in the preference calculation, have Labor leading 51.5-48.5 in New South Wales (a swing to Labor of about 3.5%), 61-39 in Victoria (about 8%), 57.5-42.5 in Western Australia (about 13%) and 62.5-37.5 in South Australia (about 12%). The Coalition leads 53.5-46.5 in Queensland (a swing to Labor of about 5%) and 60-40 from the tiny sample in Tasmania. The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1401.

Further chatter from around the traps:

• Karen Middleton of The Saturday Paper reports that Liberal polling shows Tim Wilson “headed for defeat” at the hands of independent Zoe Daniel in Goldstein with 37% of the primary vote, while Josh Frydenberg’s vote in Kooyong is “currently tracking at 42%”, putting him “about 2% lower than it needs to be” to hold out against independent Monique Ryan. In North Sydney, Trent Zimmerman could potentially lose to either independent Kylea Tink or Labor’s Catherine Renshaw; both parties’ polling suggests the Liberals are in “a losing position” in the Sydney seat of Reid and the Perth seats of Pearce and Swan; Boothby in Adelaide is “leaning strongly Labor’s way”; Hasluck in Perth and Bass in Tasmania are “tightening”, presumably to Labor’s advantage; and the Brisbane seats of Ryan and Brisbane are “at risk”, as is Casey on the fringes of Melbourne, which I haven’t heard mentioned before. Parramatta and Macquarie in Sydney “are currently looking like staying with Labor”. The government’s anti-China rhetoric is also said to have resulted in a “plunge” in Liberal support among the Chinese community, harming it in Chisholm and putting Bennelong in play for Labor. For all that, the Liberals “remain confident of winning Gilmore” and are “lineball” in Corangamite. They are also “hopeful of seizing McEwen”, although “Labor sources query this”.

• In contrast to the previous assessment, Greg Brown of The Australian reports Liberal sources are “increasingly confident” that Gladys Liu will retain Chisholm and “believe Labor is shifting resources towards Higgins, where incumbent MP Katie Allen’s primary vote has dropped to 42%”. However, Paul Sakkal of The Age reports Labor believes it will win Chisholm while also having a “serious chance” in Higgins, and will “probably” retain McEwen, Corangamite and Dunkley. Sakkal further reports that Anthony Albanese will appear with Daniel Andrews today, defying suggestions he is keeping his distance from the Premier, to announce a promised $2.2 billion in federal funding for the Suburban Rail Loop, a state government project opposed by the Morrison government. The initial stage of the project will cut a north-south path through the eastern suburbs that will run neatly through Chisholm.

• Contrary to Clive Palmer’s earlier position that the United Australia Party would direct preferences against all sitting members, The Guardian reports how-to-vote cards being distributed at pre-poll voting centres have Liberal incumbents ahead of Labor in Chisholm, Reid and Bass, and ahead of teal independents in Mackellar and Wentworth.

• Nine’s endeavour to rate audience response to Sunday night’s debate eventually settled on a tied result between Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese, although this was based on an uncontrolled exercise open to anyone who get the website form to work. The overwhelming view was the combative nature of the debate did neither protagonist any favours. A third debate will be held tomorrow night on the Seven Network.

The Australian reports the weekly campaign Newspoll has Labor’s two-party lead increasing from 53-47 to 54-46, their primary vote up a point to 39% with the Coalition down one to 35% and the three minor parties steady, the Greens at 11%, One Nation at 5% and the United Australia Party at 4%. Scott Morrison’s personal ratings are deteriorated, his approval down three to 41% and disapproval up four to 55%, while Anthony Albanese is up a point to 41% and down two to 47%. Morrison’s lead as preferred prime minister has narrowed from 45-39 to 44-42.

The poll also found Labor leading 44% to 41% as best party to handle cost-of-living pressures. On this question at least, breakdowns are apparently offered by gender (44% each among men, but 45% to 38% in favour of Labor among women) and age (dramatically more favourable to the Coalition among the old than the young, as usual). The poll was conducted Wednesday to Saturday from a sample of 1523.

Also out today in the Financial Review was an Ipsos poll suggesting Labor is headed for a landslide win, with primary votes of Labor 35% (up one since a fortnight ago), Coalition 29% (down three), Greens 12% (steady), One Nation 4% (steady), United Australia Party 3% (steady) others 9% (up two) and 7% undecided (down one).

The poll offers two interpretations of two-party preferred, one of which asks respondents who support minor parties or independents to either state a preference between the Coalition and Labor or remain uncommitted, which has Labor on 50% and the Coalition on 35%, with the remaining 15% being those uncommitted on either the primary vote or the preferences question. The other allocates distributes minor party and independent preferences as per the 2019 election result, which has Labor on 52% and the Coalition on 40% with 8% identified as undecided. The accompanying report notes this translates into a 57-43 lead for Labor if the undecided are excluded.

The poll also finds 33% rate the global economy the factor most responsible for last week’s increase in interest rates, with the government on 16%, the pandemic on 17%, the Reserve Bank on 16% and the war in Ukraine on 7%. Personal ratings find Scott Morrison down two on approval to 32% and up three on disapproval to 51%, with Anthony Albanese down one to 30% and up one to 36%. Albanese’s lead as preferred prime minister widens from 40-38 to 41-36. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Saturday from a sample of 2311.

I hesitate to read federal implications into yesterday’s Tasmanian Legislative Council elections, but it may at very least be a sign of the times that Labor and Liberal candidates couldn’t muster half of the vote between them in the by-election for Huon, which encompasses about a third of the federal seat of Franklin. For those of you who are interested (not many, it seems), I will continue to follow the count in the dedicated post in the days to come, in which either Labor or the independent will win the seat depending on how preferences flows. Two other seats, Elwick and McIntyre, were comfortably retained by their respective Labor and independent incumbents.

More directly of relevance:

• The Guardian reports a uComms poll for Climate 200 shows independent Sophie Scamps with a 60-40 lead over Liberal member Jason Falinksi in Mackellar. The primary votes are Falinski 32.0%, Scamps 31.2%, Labor 15.5% and Greens 8.6% with 7% undecided, and a respondent-allocated preference flow of 81-19 in favour of Scamps. The automated phone poll was conducted last week from a sample of 834.

• Countering much of the recent horse race narrative, The Australian reports strategists on both sides say support for the Coalition has fallen away in Queensland. While Brisbane is “the most vulnerable”, Leichhardt, Longman and perhaps also Flynn are “in play”. Ryan is “in danger” from the Greens, and while the same might also be held of Labor-held Griffith, “a Labor strategist said he believed Griffith would hold”. However, a Liberal National Party source’s claim that Labor “has been claiming for the last three elections that they were going to pick up another eight to ten seats and it doesn’t eventuate” is only slightly exaggerated.

• John Ferguson of The Australian adds to a recent chorus of reportage to the effect that Victoria’s lockdowns “will hit hard in pockets across Melbourne’s outer suburbs”, endangering Labor’s hold on McEwen and Corangamite. This time may well be different, but I can’t help noting that the news media doesn’t have a good record of reading Melbourne’s pulse in recent years. After similar suggestions of a threat to Labor in McEwen in 2016 due to a controversy over the Andrews government’s handling of the Country Fire Authority, the seat swung to Labor by 7.7%. Efforts by the Liberal Party and the Herald Sun to promote African gang crime as the defining issue of the 2018 state election fell on the deafest of ears, and after much talk that the “Skyrail” issue would weaken the Andrews goverment’s hold on the crucial sandbelt seats of Melbourne’s south-east, every single one of them recorded a double-digit swing to Labor.

• A report in today’s Age/Herald papers says Liberal MPs are being told not to encourage people to vote early, as they expect, or at least hope, for a late break in their favour. The report also says Labor now is “more hopeful” that Bennelong and Leichhardt are trending its way, but that both sides now expect Dunkley, Lilley, Hunter and Paterson to remain with Labor, and Hasluck, Flynn and Longman to remain with the Coalition.

Another day, another assortment of news relevant to the federal election horse race. Note also the post below by Adrian Beaumont on today’s local elections in the UK. Here goes:

• The Australian reports Vivian Lobo, Liberal National Party candidate for the Brisbane seat of Lilley, lives in the up-market suburb of Windsor in the neighbouring electorate of Brisbane, but is enrolled within the electorate in a “run-down” and “obviously deserted” property in Lilley’s Everton Park. Lobo told the paper he had “signed a lease in Everton Park with the intention to move in straight away”, but had been “delayed” due to campaign commitments. The Labor-held seat is the most marginal in Queensland, being held by Anika Wells on a margin of 0.6%. Making a false claim for enrolment carries a maximum penalty of 12 months’ imprisonment.

• The Jacqui Lambie Network is directing preferences to Bridget Archer, who holds Bass for the Liberals on a 0.4% margin, but to Labor in the neighbouring seats of Braddon and Lyons, respectively held for the Liberals by Gavin Pearce on 3.1% and Labor by Brian Mitchell on 5.2%. Katherine Murphy of The Guardian reports “strategists are privately confident that Labor will hold Lyons”; Max Maddison of The Australian reports Liberal sources were “confident of holding Braddon”. Labor has the JLN second on its Senate how-to-vote card, and the JLN has Labor third behind Shooters Fishers and Farmers.

• Matt Wade of the Age/Herald reports on a University of New South Wales analysis identifying seats where substantial numbers of mortgage payers are in financial stress. Top of the list is La Trobe in outer Melbourne on 72.3%, followed by Werriwa in Sydney (Labor 5.5%) on 70.7%, the Hunter region seat of Paterson (Labor 5.0%) on 65.0%, Pearce in northern Perth (Liberal 5.2%) on 63.2%, Bass in northern Tasmania (Liberal 0.4%) on 62.9% and Greenway in Sydney (Labor 2.8%) on 62.6%.

• Paul Garvey of The Australian notes Labor is “using specifically tailored advertising for the WA market” (I can report that not one Labor advertisement I have seen on Perth television could have been screened nationally), and that the party it outspending the Liberals on Facebook advertising in the state by three to one, “as the central ALP cedes control to the state party office and makes a major commitment to digital advertising”.

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.

A particularly random assortment of federal election developments:

• A third and final leaders’ debate will be held next Wednesday by the Seven Network, starting at 9:10pm (when Big Brother ends, in case you were wondering), to be moderated by Mark Riley. The second will be on the Nine Network at 8:30pm on Sunday.

• The Australia Institute has published a uComms poll crediting independent Zoe Daniel with a 62-38 lead over Liberal member Tim Wilson in Goldstein, with Wilson even trailing Labor candidate Martyn Abbott 53-47 on two-party preferred. Including results of a forced-response follow-up for the 6.3% undecided, the primary votes are Tim Wilson 34.5%, Zoe Daniel 34.3% and Martyn Abbott 14.3%, with the Greens on 8.9%, the United Australia Party on 3.2%, the Liberal Democrats on 1.9% and One Nation on 1.8%. Further questions find support finely balanced on who Daniel should support in a hung parliament should it come to that, and Scott Morrison viewed less favourably than Josh Frydenberg but more favourably than Peter Dutton. The poll was conducted last Wednesday from a sample of 855. An unidentified Liberal spokesperson cited by Phillip Coorey in the Financial Review described the result as “absurdly low” for Wilson.

• The Age/Herald had a follow-up result from the recent Resolve Strategic poll showing Labor’s carbon emissions policy, once explained, was supported by 45% and opposed by 30%.

• David Penberthy of The Australian reports that Rachel Swift and James Stevens, respectively the party’s candidate for Boothby and member Sturt, could emerge as the Liberal candidate for the looming state by-election for the safe Adelaide seat of Bragg if defeated on May 21.

• I noted the other day that Labor had made an exception to its general rule of putting the United Australia Party second last after One Nation on its how-to-vote cards in the seat of Dawson. This turns out to apply across central Queensland, where the party would evidently like it to be known that it is not directing preferences to the Greens. Other curiosities among Labor how-to-vote cards include the Liberal Democrats being put ahead of the Greens in Paterson, perhaps reflecting similar sensitivities in the Hunter region, and the Nationals going ahead of the Greens in the regional Western Australian seat of Durack. I’ll have more on preferences in Crikey later today.

• The ABC’s Media Watch had an item on Monday on the hot topic of the accuracy of opinion polling. It quoted my own assessment of the polling situation from the start of the campaign in Crikey, since which time the consensus has moved from Labor winning three seats in Western Australia to possibly two.

• Matthew Denholm of The Australian reports the Australian Electoral Commission will provide telephone voting, using a system in place for blind and low vision voters, for those who test positive to COVID-19 – currently amounting to about 40,000 a day – between the close of postal vote applications on May 18 and polling day on May 21.

• Ben Raue at The Tally Room offers instructive charts recording the rise of pre-poll voting over the past two decades and changes in vote types since the onset of COVID.

Another two new polls have come down the chute overnight, one being the latest fortnightly Essential Research poll as reported by The Guardian. Labor is at 49% on the pollster’s “2PP+” measure, up two on a fortnight ago, and the Coalition at 45%, down one, with the remainder undecided. The primary votes have the Coalition down one to 36%, Labor steady on 35%, the Greens up one to 10%, the United Australia Party steady on 4%, One Nation steady on 3% and undecided down a point to 6%.

The Guardian’s report also reports that the four most salient elections were deemed to be cost of living, improving public services, job security and climate change, respectively rated as important by 79%, 69%, 60% and 54%, with Labor favoured over the Coalition on each of them, respectively by 40% to 30%, 44% to 26%, 38% to 29% and 40% to 21%. The poll also finds 41% believe Australia is heading in the right direction compared with 43% for the wrong direction, whereas the respective results were 46% and 37% a fortnight ago.

The Guardian reports the sample was 1500, whereas the pollster’s sample sizes have hitherto been between 1000 and 1100. It was presumably conducted from Wednesday to Saturday. Further clarification will be provided when the pollster publishes full results and a methodology statement on its website later today.

The other poll is the weekly Roy Morgan, which finds Labor’s two-party lead increasing from 54.5-45.5 to 55.5-44.5, arresting a generally downward trend for Labor from a peak of 58-42 in mid-March. Both major parties are at 35% on the primary vote, with the Coalition down half a point and Labor steady. The Greens are up a point to 13%, One Nation is down one-and-a-half to 3% and the United Australia Party is down half a point to 1%. This would translate to about 54-46 based on 2019 election preference flows.

The regular state two-party breakdowns have Labor leading 56-44 in New South Wales (out from 55-45, a swing of about 8%), 63.5-36.5 in Victoria (out from 60-40, a swing of around 10.5%), 62.5-38.5 in South Australia (out from 61.5-38.5, a swing of around 12%) and 57.5-42.5 in Tasmania. The Coalition leads 56.5-43.5 in Queensland (out from 54.5-45.5, a swing to Labor of around 2%) and 51-49 in Western Australia (in from 54.5-45.5, a swing to Labor of around 4.5%). Sub-sample sizes are such that all of these should be treated with caution, but the pollster’s readings for the two largest states are consistently at odds with the much tighter race expected by both sides. The poll was conducted last Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1487.