Miscellany: redistributions, referendums and by-elections (open thread)

A review to what the electoral calendar holds between now and the next general elections in the second half of next year, including prospects for the Indigenous Voice referendum.

James Massola of the Age/Herald reports that “expectations (are) growing that former Prime Minister Scott Morrison will quit politics”, probably between the May budget and the end of the year, entailing a by-election for his seat of Cook. Please let it be so, because a valley of death stretches before those of us in the election industry out to the second half of next year, to be followed by a flood encompassing the Northern Territory on August 24, the Australian Capital Territory on October 19, Queensland on October 26 and Western Australia on March 8 the following year (UPDATE: It’s noted that the Queensland local government elections next March, inclusive as they are of the unusually significant Brisbane City Council and lord mayoralty, should rate a mention). A normal federal election for the House of Representatives and half the Senate could happen in the second half of 2024 or the first of 2025, the alternative of a double dissolution being presumably unlikely.

Redistributions will offer some diversion in the interim, particularly after the Electoral Commissioner calculates how many House of Representatives seats each state is entitled to in the next parliament on June 27. This is likely to result in Western Australia gaining a seat and New South Wales and Victoria each losing one (respectively putting them at 16, 46 and 38), initiating redistribution processes that are likely to take around a year. There is also an outside chance that Queensland will gain a thirty-first seat. The Northern Territory will also have a redistribution on grounds of it having been seven years since one was last conducted, although this will involve either a minimal tweak to the boundary between Solomon and Lingiari or no change at all. At state level, a redistribution process was recently initiated in Western Australia and should conclude near the end of the year. The other state that conducts a redistribution every term, South Australia, gives its boundaries commission wide latitude on when it gets the ball rolling, but past experience suggests it’s likely to be near the end of the year.

However, the main electoral event of the foreseeable future is undoubtedly the Indigenous Voice referendum, which is likely to be held between October and December. Kevin Bonham has a post on polling for referendum in which he standardises the various results, which differ markedly in terms of their questions and response structures, and divines a fall in support from around 65% in the middle of last year to around 58% at present. For those of you with access to academic journals, there is also a paper by Murray Goot of Macquarie University in the Journal of Australian Studies entitled “Support in the Polls for an Indigenous Constitutional Voice: How Broad, How Strong, How Vulnerable?” In narrowing it down to credible polls with non-binary response options (i.e. those allowing for uncommitted responses of some kind, as distinct from forced response polls), Goot finds support has fallen from around 58% to 51% from the period of May to September to the period of October to January, while opposition had risen from 18% to 27%. The change was concentrated among Coalition supporters: whereas Labor and especially Greens supporters were consistently and strongly in favour, support among Coalition fell from around 45% to 36%.

Forced response questions consistently found between 60% and 65% in favour regardless of question wording, while non-binary polls (i.e. allowing for various kind of uncommitted response) have almost invariably had at over 50%. Goot notes that forced response polls have found respondents breaking between for and against in similar proportion to the rest, which “confounds the idea that, when push comes to shove, ‘undecided’ voters will necessarily vote no”. However, he also notes that questions in non-binary polls that have produced active majorities in favour have either mentioned an Indigenous Voice or the Uluru Statement from the Heart, or “rehearsed the Prime Minister’s proposal to amend the Constitution”. One that conspicuously did not do any of these things was a Dynata poll for the Institute of Public Affairs, which got a positive result of just 28% by priming respondents with a leading question and then emphasised that the proposal would involve “laws for every Australian”. JWS Research got only 43% in favour and 23% against, but its response structure was faulted by Goot for including a “need more information” option, which ruled the 20% who chose it out of contention one way or the other.

Late counting: Aston and New South Wales

A post covering the concluding stages of counting for the Aston by-election and the state election in New South Wales.

Click here for full display of New South Wales state election results.
Click here for full display of Aston by-election results.

I’m continuing to update the results pages a couple of times a day, and thought a post might be in order for those wanting a focused discussion on the results. Obviously the result in Aston is not in doubt: postal votes continue to trickle in, and while they have swung less forcefully than election day and pre-poll votes, they have done nothing to dispel an impression of Labor accounting for a 2.8% Liberal margin with a swing of between 6% and 7%.

In New South Wales, the only seat that remains in doubt is Ryde, which would leave Labor a seat short of a majority with 46 seats out of 93 if they won, and put the Coalition on 36 in the seemingly more likely event that the Liberals retain their present lead. The Liberals hold a 232 vote lead on the raw two-candidate preferred count, but since the Electoral Commission is only counting primary votes on absents and enrolment/provisionals, it is not possible to say exactly where things stand. Absents have been weak for the Liberals and strong for the Greens, so I would estimate it at between 80 and 90 votes. Since the only outstanding votes are postals and these have been favouring the Liberals by 55-45, this seems more likely to widen than to narrow. Labor’s best chance is for anomalies to be discovered when the distribution of preferences is conducted next week. UPDATE: As Antony Green notes in comments, since all ballot papers are data entered in the check count, this seems especially unlikely, although “there can be questions over whether there has been an error in the batch entry of ballot papers”.

Polls: Essential Research and Roy Morgan (open thread)

Little change on voting intention in the latest Essential Research poll, but a dip from Labor’s recent highs in Roy Morgan.

Essential Research’s fortnightly voting intention numbers, which include a 5% undecided component, have both Labor and the Coalition down a point on the primary vote, to 33% and 30% respectively, with the Greens steady on 14%, One Nation up one to 6% and the United Australia Party steady on 2%. The pollster’s 2PP+ measure has Labor up one to 53%, the Coalition down one to 42% and undecided steady on 5%. The poll includes has Anthony Albanese’s monthly personal ratings, on which he is down a point on approval to 52% and up one on disapproval to 35%.

Other findings from this fortnight’s survey include strong majority support for six proposed federal government measures to deal with the cost of living, ranging from 77% for electricity and gas price caps to 57% for changing industrial relations laws to make it easier for workers to negotiate pay rises. Fifty-four per cent now rate themselves as financially struggling or worse, up five since March, with 46% rating themselves comfortable or secure, down five. Asked how much impact federal government policies had on the cost of living, 31% chose a lot, 40% a little, 18% not that much and 5% hardly anything.

On climate change, 39% now rate that the government is not doing enough, down four from October and the lowest result this question has yielded going back to 2016, with doing enough up a point to 33% and doing too much up three to 16%. Fifty-one per cent support a national authority to manage the transition to renewable energy with 20% opposed, and 50% support government assessment of greenhouse gas emissions when considering new projects with 20% opposed, but only 34% support ending future coal and gas extraction projects with 35% opposed. Asked whether parliamentary approval should be required for a decision to go to war, the sample split 90-10 in favour of yes. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1133.

Also out yesterday was the latest Roy Morgan result, which had Labor’s two-party lead in from 57-43 to 54.5-45.5 from primary votes of Labor 34.5%, Coalition 34.5% and Greens 13%.

UPDATE: Also out this morning from The Australian is results from Newspoll on the Indigenous voice, which finds 54% in favour and 38% opposed, breaking down to 55-36 in New South Wales, 56-35 in Victoria, 49-43 in Queensland, 51-41 in Western Australia, 60-33 in South Australia and 55-39 in Tasmania. The results are aggregated from three polls conducted since the start of February, but sub-sample sizes are as low as 334 in the case of Tasmania, increasing to 1414 in the case of New South Wales.

Newspoll: 55-45 to Labor (open thread)

Hot on the heels of its drubbing in Aston, the Coalition cops a worsening picture from the first Newspoll in four weeks.

The Australian reports that a grim weekend for the Coalition has been capped by a bad Newspoll result, with Labor’s two-party lead widening from 54-46 to 55-45 from primary votes of Labor 38% (up one), Coalition 33% (down two), Greens 10% (steady) and One Nation 8% (up one). Anthony Albanese’s lead as preferred prime minister has also widened from 54-28 to 58-26. The report says Anthony Albanese is up one on approval to 56% while Peter Dutton is down two to 35%, with no word yet on disapproval. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1500. Update from Adrian Beaumont: Albanese’s disapproval is down three to 35% and Dutton’s disapproval is steady at 48%.

Aston by-election live

Live coverage of the count for the Aston federal by-election.

Click here for full Aston by-election results updated live.

Sunday

7pm. More postal votes have been added, the later ones being weaker for the Liberals than the first, being only 1876-1839 to their advantage and leaving the Labor lead all but unchanged at 6342. The electronic assisted votes have also been added, of which there were a grand total of 22. That should leave us with about 4000 postals and a handful of provisionals, and there’s no reason to think either will change the size of Labor’s lead. I have now cleaned up the remaining bugs in my results, including the one that was preventing a swing on the preference flows from showing. Labor’s share has gone from 60% to 63.6%, reflecting the fact that the United Australia Party and One Nation were in the field last time. It may be noted that Pauline Hanson’s assertion that One Nation was sitting out the contest as a strategic move to harm Labor yielded no appreciable dividend.

11am. The first and biggest batch of postals have broken 3642-3065 to Liberal, and while this is a relatively modest swing of 1.0% to Labor, it only cuts the margin from 6466 to 6124.

Saturday

End of night. Election day and pre-poll booths ended up producing remarkably similar swings, at 6.3% and 6.5% on two-party preferred and barely less similar on the primary vote. We can seemingly still expect something approaching 20,000 postal votes, which will assuredly bite into the current margin of 6466, but not by nearly enough to overturn Labor’s remarkable win. The only other categories of outstanding vote are provisionals and electronic assisted votes, of which there will be barely more than a few hundred. It was a bit of a horror night for my election results page, partly because my system needs more work before it can handle two elections at the same time — work I haven’t had time to do over the past week. I’ve now patched it up to the extent that it’s more or less doing its job, providing booth results and swings neatly laid out in the table and on a map display you can view by clicking the link at the bottom of the page.

9.10pm. Three of the four pre-poll booths have reported their results in quick succession, and they have entirely dispelled the notion that the Liberals could hope for a late miracle.

8.40pm. All the ordinary booths have reported on both two-party and primary, which is pretty fast work. Presumably we’ll be getting big pre-poll results later in the evening. I notice that there aren’t raw two-candidate numbers on the AEC site, so perhaps it’s not just me. The “projections” shown on my results page are actually the raw results, and the zero swings shown for two-candidate preferred and preferences are fudges I’ve put in.

8.19pm. There are still a few issues with my display, notably the swings on the two-party preferred table, but after the insertion of a few fudges it’s mostly doing it’s job. So to finally comment on the actual numbers, what we have here is a grim night for the Liberal Party, who will need something extraordinary on pre-poll votes and postals to pull it out of the fire. It should be noted though that they just about did so in Wentworth after it was called for them quite early on the night, and that last week’s New South Wales election wasn’t as bad for them as it first appeared owing to a better dynamic for them on pre-polls.

8.11pm. I’ve finally ironed out the problem that was producing screwy primary vote swings and projections. Seemingly though there’s some other problem with the swings in the two-candidate preferred table.

7.32pm. It’s not a good night for my live results — bits of it are working but bits aren’t. Just use it for looking at booths results until I advise further.

7.15pm. My Boronia East two-party results aren’t adding up, but this was a booth where there appeared to be little swing on the primary vote.

7.11pm. The Wantirna South booth is now in, and it’s an intriguingly strong result for Labor, but there’s a 10% swing to Labor there, and the ABC TV coverage relates that Kos Samaras is hearing of consistent swings to Labor.

6.55pm. The first result is in from Rowville East, where both parties are up about 5% on the primary vote.

6pm. Polls have closed for the Aston by-election. Through the above link you will find live updated results, including full booth details in both tabular and map display and swing-based projections and probability estimates. This post will offer live commentary as the results come through, the first of which I imagine will be in about 45 minutes or so.

Aston by-election minus one day

A belated look at the first federal by-election since the Albanese government came to power.

Tomorrow is the day of the federal by-election for Aston, for which I have produced an overview page here. As is now customary, this site will features its acclaimed live results updates, along the format you can see on the seat pages for the New South Wales election, and may very well be the only place on the internet where you will find results reported at booth level. I discussed the by-election with Ben Raue at The Tally Room for a podcast on his website that was conducted on Monday, though there was nothing I said in it that wouldn’t hold at this later remove.

The only polling I’m aware of is a report yesterday for Sky News that Labor internal polling pointing to a status quo result with the Liberals retaining a margin of 52-48. However, the poll also found local voters far more favourable to Anthony Albanese (56% approval and 26% disapproval) than Peter Dutton (21% approval and 50% disapproval).

Polls: Indigenous voice in WA and Morgan voting intention (open thread)

A poll that uses the exact wording to be featured on the ballot paper finds support for an Indigenous voice holding up in Western Australia.

The West Australian had a poll on Tuesday from Painted Dog Research that put the exact question to be featured on the ballot paper at the Indigenous voice referendum found a 60-40 of its WA-only respondent base coming down in favour, with sharp distinctions by age (71-29 in favour among 18-to-34, 63-37 in favour among 35-to-54 and 53-47 against among 55-plus) and gender (69-31 for yes among women compared with 51-49 among men). The poll was conducted over the weekend from a sample of 1052,

The only other poll news unrelated to Aston that I have to hang a new open thread off is the regular Roy Morgan result, which has Labor’s two-party lead at 57-43 from primary votes of Labor 35.5%, Coalition 32% and Greens 13%. The poll was conducted last Monday to Sunday, so may have picked up static from the New South Wales election, with an unreported sample size.

Not the New South Wales election thread (open thread)

A discussion thread for anything other than the New South Wales election count.

A new post for the site’s comments thread barflies to argue the toss about whatever, the previous open thread having almost dropped off the front page. Presumably we won’t be getting much in the way of new polling this week, owing to the black hole of the New South Wales state election. There will of course be the Aston by-election on Saturday, which has gone scandalously under-discussed on this blog for the same reason – a situation that will hopefully be addressed in due course.

Adrian Beaumont update: There was actually a Resolve Voice poll published on Saturday in The Age that had Voice support at 57-43, down from 58-42 in February.  This poll was taken before Anthony Albanese announced the question wording for the referendum.

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