Category: General

Time for the bi-monthly appeal to the readership of the Poll Bludger to help keep the proverbial wolf from its proprietor’s proverbial door, which can be done by making use of the “become a supporter” buttons at the top of the site and the bottom of each post. I had hoped this would coincide with the publication of my guide to the July 19 Tasmanian state election, but after a long night of labours must reluctantly concede that it will have to wait until tomorrow. It will happen tomorrow though, and feature the usual panoply of tables, charts, interactive maps, historical detail on each electorate and summaries of all major candidates. With that out of the way, coverage of the campaign will pick up as it enters the business end of proceedings, to culminate as usual with this site’s famed live results features on election night and beyond.

In a spirit of striking while the iron is hot, a special federal election edition of the Poll Bludger’s normally bi-monthly donation drive, to which you can contribute through the “become a supporter” buttons that appear at the top of the site and the bottom of each post. These posts double as an occasion to promote my site’s wares, such as the fact that I’ve made good on my objective of publishing a federal politics post for each day of the campaign, only a few of which were limited to rote dissemination of polling numbers. Obviously there’s no danger of me dropping the ball on that score on the few days that remain.

The biggest looming attraction though is the live results feature on election night, now based on a three-candidate model that hopefully had the bugs ironed out of it when it had a run at the Western Australian election in March. This will prove especially useful in Macnamara, the Greens seats in Brisbane and possibly one or two other places I can’t presently foresee. To this will be added the brand new bell and/or whistle of a a map results display, of which you can get a very clear sense based on this test run from the 2022 election, recording how it saw the situation at around 8:30pm on the night (note that the page architecture is set up for the current election, so the map has Bullwinkel but not North Sydney and the table reflects this election rather than the last).

The map will colour in as results are reported to reflect who the system deems to be ahead or to have won, respectively indicated with a lighter or darker shade. Scroll over an electorate on the map and you’ll a window with a two-party pie chart and other essentials of the result. Click and the results page for the seat will be revealed, featuring progress totals, projections, probability estimates, a table recording votes and swings for each booth and, if you click on the button at the bottom, a booth results display map.

This site likes to be sparing with its pleas for contributions, with posts like this one normally appearing at the end of every second month. A federal election, however, is a moment of sunshine in which hay must be made, so this mid-campaign entry is here to supplement the one that would fall due on election eve in any case. To make the case that I’ve been earning my keep, I need only point to the fact that I have thus far met my performance indicator of one fresh federal election post each day since the campaign began a fortnight ago, as well as promptly updating the BludgerTrack poll aggregate as new results come to hand.

Naturally there will be no let-up over the next three weeks, culminating in the live results feature that will run on election night and beyond — some sense of which can be gleaned from the corresponding effort for the Western Australian election. This encompasses a three-candidate prediction model that will come into its own in seats where support for Labor, Liberal and Greens and/or independent candidates is finely balanced, of which there are now more than ever. Another new feature added late in the game during the WA count is a live results map that will start out white and then colour in as seats report, in lighter or darker shades to indicate who’s ahead and which seats have been called. I hope to develop further features for this in time for May 3.

If any of that sounds worthy of a contribution, these can be made through the “become a supporter” buttons that appear at the top of the site and at the bottom of each post.

Time again for the Poll Bludger’s bi-monthly donation drive, which is especially deserving of your generosity if the degree of effort I’ve been putting in is thought to have any bearing on the matter. Since the last instalment at the end of the last year, this site has published two giant election guides, one for next Saturday’s state election in Western Australia and the other for a federal election on a date to be determined, though it remains the press gallery consensus that it will be called shortly after the WA poll for April 12.

There were also the two Victorian state by-elections earlier this month, which provided an opportunity to iron some bugs out of the site’s famous live results feature. This has gained an extra layer of complexity through an innovative three-candidate preferred model, providing win probability calculations accommodating the increasingly common circumstance where more than two candidates are in the race. Prodigious labours are under way to prepare this for WA election night next Saturday, at which I’m very confident it will run more-or-less smoothly. If that weren’t enough, the size and frequency of blog posts has increased as the imminence of a federal election brings ever more news to relate, and BludgerTrack continues to be maintained as the internet’s favourite one-stop shop for those sensible enough to want a general idea of how the polls are heading without getting bogged down in the weeds.

If any or all of that strikes you as deserving of a contribution, these can be made through the “become a supporter” buttons at the top of the page and the bottom of each post.

Time for the Poll Bludger’s bi-monthly appeal for donations, for those of you with any spirit of giving left to spare after the demands of the festive season. Donations are gratefully received through the “become a supporter” buttons at the top of the site and the bottom of each blog posts.

Some particular reasons you might think reward is due for my recent efforts:

• A comprehensive Western Australian state election, with the usual charts, maps and written summaries for all 59 seats plus the upper house and a general overview, will be along very shortly – possibly even later today. UPDATE: Here it is.

• It will be followed at some point over the next month by the similar but far grander exercise for the federal election, with its 150 seat profiles and guides for all eight state and territory Senate contests.

• Somewhere in the midst of all this, I hope to relaunch the BludgerTrack poll aggregate to include separate readings for the five mainland states. UPDATE: Here it is.

• There will also be two Victorian state by-elections to deal with in the midst of all this, which will get the usual election guides along with the much-admired Poll Bludger live results features.

Time for the Poll Bludger’s bi-monthly appeal for donations. This one follows a month of prodigious efforts on the Queensland election, which so far at least have not attracted anything out of the ordinary on the revenue front. The election results system that eventually started working about 45 minutes into the count continues to tick over, and I’m hard at work on a more elaborate three-candidate preferred model that will make sense of the increasingly common circumstance in which the two leading candidates cannot be confidently predicted in advance. A case in point is the current situation in South Brisbane, where the Greens’ slim hopes of holding on depend on who finishes second out of Labor and the LNP. Hopefully the new system will be ready to go for a looming by-election in South Australia, and then for the big events that loom in the new year – Western Australia’s state election in March, followed by a federal election that I hope and expect will be held in May.

Time to dig deep-ish for the Poll Bludger’s bi-monthly appeal for contributions, which can be done through the “become a supporter” buttons at the top of the site and the bottom of each post. This follows a month in which I’ve devoted many long hours to the site, thanks to the Northern Territory election and its accompanying election guide and live results feature, without to this point having a whole lot to show for it on the donations front. Many more long hours will be put in over the coming weeks and months to bring you such delights as a comprehensive seat-by-seat guide to the October 26 Queensland state election, plus a reupholstered and better-than-ever live results facility featuring an innovative new approach to projecting three-party contests; ditto for the Australian Capital Territory election a week earlier; and an expanded BludgerTrack that will feature the return of state-level polling trends.

Time for the EOFY edition of the Poll Bludger’s bi-monthly request to the site’s valued readers for contributions, which can be made through the “become a supporter” buttons that you can find at the top of the site and the bottom of each post. This also doubles as an opportunity to relate what the site has been update lately, and will be up to in the months to come.

So far as donations are concerned, this has been a particularly lean period since a helpful little flurry at the time of the Dunkley by-election at the end of April, last month especially having been something approaching an all-time low. While events such as last week’s Northern Tablelands by-election in New South Wales inevitably failed to generate much excitement, getting the live results feature up and running was no less laborious for the fact that very few were interested.

I also had to grapple simultaneously with the thankless task of stitching the site back together after a back-end meltdown caused by an errant WordPress plug-in (the one that results in numbered navigation links appearing at the top and bottom of comments threads). Further labours will be forthcoming in the months ahead to deal with the Northern Territory election on August 24, the Australian Capital Territory election on October 19, and the Queensland election on October 26.