The Poll Bludger

More poll misery for the Coalition today courtesy of the latest Galaxy Research poll for the Courier-Mail. The survey covered 800 voters in four marginal Labor electorates – Clayfield, Hervey Bay, Broadwater and Aspley – and finds a collective two-party vote of 56-44 in Labor’s favour, compared with 53.4-46.6 at the 2004 election. This is not the only indication that I may have been unduly hasty in disputing the accuracy of Tuesday’s Newspoll results. In yesterday’s Courier Mail, Dennis Atkins reported that both Labor and Liberal sources agreed the Newspoll results were "very close" to their "tracking polling of key marginals":

It is now hard to see any Labor losses in Brisbane – although the always difficult seat of Clayfield could be a wildcard if there’s some late movement. And the Liberal by-election gains in Chatsworth and Redcliffe are in serious danger of going to the ALP: partly because the Beattie liberals who switched to Labor in 2001 and stayed in 2004 have resisted the urge to turn on Beattie and are now either angry with the Liberals for denying them an alternative or just appalled at how appalling the Opposition has been … Labor’s primary vote was in the high 40s late last week and it has now climbed above 50 per cent. Liberal tracking puts primary support at "around or just above 50".

Some good news at last for the Nationals: Elisa Roberts’ off-again, on-again, off-again, on-again campaign for re-election as independent member for Gympie is now off again. Roberts’ withdrawal comes too late for her name to be removed from the ballot paper, so she will face no obstacle if she feels like changing her mind again. Otherwise, the seat should return to its natural home as a Nationals seat: their candidate is David Gibson, general manager of the Gympie Times and a former army officer.

It’s a shame yesterday’s Newspoll results are so difficult to take seriously, because the agency has gone a few extra yards with its survey results. Included is a question regarding respondents’ strength of commitment to their chosen party, which is run alongside comparable results from the previous two elections. If hopeful Coalition supporters go looking to these results for indications that Labor has won soft support from a volatile electorate, they are in for a disappointment. Overall commitment is at least as strong as at similar stages in the earlier campaigns, and Labor voters rate themselves less likely to change their minds than Coalition voters.

It appears that this was not all Newspoll had to offer, as Sean Parnell of The Australian today provides detailed results of voter attitudes towards the party leaders. These measures are normally of only incidental interest, but Parnell makes some interesting observations by comparing the results with those from previous election campaigns. However, Bruce Flegg may have cause to feel aggreived that Parnell didn’t extend a similar courtesy to him yesterday, when the Coalition’s disastrous poll ratings were explained in these terms: "Liberal leader Bruce Flegg’s early errors have cost the conservatives dearly". As has been argued earlier, the trend is little different from the last two elections, when the onset of the election campaign led to a rapid decline in Liberal poll ratings both in absolute terms, and relative to their coalition partners.

The following tables indicate the Liberal Party primary vote and share of the total Coalition vote in the second last Newspoll of the 2001, 2004 and 2006 campaigns and the two previous polls, extending on to the election result for 2001 and 2004.

Not that too much should be made of this: there is little doubt that the leadership change has been a disaster, and that Bob Quinn would have had the Liberals in a less bad position. Elsewhere, Mark Bahnisch at Larvatus Prodeo asks "why state oppositions are hopeless". Instructive newspaper report: "A Victorian Liberal candidate has been caught distancing himself from his party in an apparent bid to boost his chances in the November state election".

Whatever else might be said about Australia’s opinion polling agencies, they cannot be faulted for having sent mixed messages during the current Queensland election campaign. If today’s Newspoll figures are to be believed, the trend towards Labor has turned exponential: their primary vote has gone from 45 per cent to 52 per cent in one week, and the two-party gap has widened from 54-46 to 58-42. The accompanying report in The Australian buttresses itself against the poll’s obvious inaccuracy, saying "long-term tracking by Newspoll shows Labor often squanders a strong lead developed mid-way through a campaign" – which is the first I have heard of such a phenomenon. The Coalition’s primary vote is at 36 per cent, leaving a surprisingly meagre 12 per cent to spare for minor parties and independents.

If you haven’t take an a look at the Poll Bludger election guide lately, the following entries have been expanded in the past week: Cook, Mulgrave, Thuringowa, Redlands, Mansfield, Noosa, Cleveland, Glass House, Ipswich West, Springwood, Burdekin, Hinchinbrook and Currumbin.

With polling day less than a fortnight away, a journalists’ thoughts turn to preference recommendations. Today we have Greg Roberts and Michael McKinnon reporting in The Australian that the Greens will not recommend a preference to Labor in "key marginal Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast and southern Brisbane seats". This is apparently significant because "a similar strategy by the Greens in the 1995 poll helped force the Goss Labor government from office". However, this is only true because the Goss government’s fortunes were decided by one seat, and the Greens’ preference decision cost Labor Mulgrave by a margin of 0.5 per cent. An article in Saturday’s Australian Financial Review by Peter Brent of Mumble covered the familiar topic of Greens voters’ reluctance to follow how-to-vote cards, but noted that the same did not appear to be true of Family First voters – according to a South Australian Parliamentary Library analysis, their votes split 65-35 in electorates where preferences were directed to Liberal, and 39-61 where directed to Labor. By Peter’s reckoning, that could have made the difference in four seats at the federal election. Consequently, Family First’s direction of preferences to Labor in Burdekin, Glass House, Mudgeeraba, Logan and Ipswich West is likely to be more consequential than the Greens’ decision, despite their smaller field of candidates. Family First preferences will be directed to the Coalition in Gympie, Ferny Grove, Sandgate, Toowoomba North, Toowoomba South, Cunningham and Lockyer, and to independent member Dorothy Pratt in Nanango. UPDATE: Antony Green notes there are special circumstances in South Australia which partly explain Family First’s capacity to influence preferences at the state election.

A few more Campaign Updates to be added to the election guide when I get my act together:

Currumbin (Liberal 3.2%) and Mudgeeraba (Labor 1.9%): Suzanne Lappeman of the Gold Coast Bulletin writes that while Labor has "all but written off" Dianne Reilly in Mudgeeraba, the party is increasingly hopeful its 2004 defeat in Currumbin will prove to have been an aberration born of the Tugun Bypass and the troubles of defeated member Merri Rose. Dennis Atkins of the Courier-Mail also refers to "wild talk" about Labor winning Currumbin, and concurs that Labor sources describe Mudgeeraba as "next to hopeless".

Noosa (Independent 8.7%) and Kawana (Labor 1.5%): Dennis Atkins also reports from a "Labor insider" that the Sunshine Coast looms as a "wipe-out" for Labor, with Noosa returning "quite strongly" to its traditional Liberal-voting ways. The only other Labor-held seat on the Sunshine Coast is Kawana, where the government has been having ongoing troubles over the location of a new hospital. Atkins notes that "deep antagonism to the Mary River dam" is also damaging Labor in the region.

Clayfield (Labor 1.2%) and Indooroopilly (Labor 2.1%): Dennis Atkins one more time: contrary to other reports elsewhere, "Labor strategists" quoted by Atkins are pessimistic about Clayfield – "the party hasn’t bothered to poll the electorate" – and "not confident" about Indooroopilly. Labor’s other Brisbane seats are believed to be safe.

A poll of 749 voters in yesterday’s Gold Coast Bulletin shows the Liberals struggling to hold two of their three Gold Coast seats: Currumbin, where Labor is reportedly becoming increasingly hopeful, and Robina, which is being vacated by ousted Liberal leader Bob Quinn. However, the online article says only that the Liberals hold primary vote leads of 3 per cent and 2 per cent respectively – presumably the print edition has more.

Polling agencies move in mysterious ways, as demonstrated by their insistence on letting respondents choose out of the Nationals and Liberals in Queensland state election surveys. Given that there will be no three-cornered contests at the election, voters will in fact have to make do with one or the other depending on where the live. Nevertheless, tomorrow’s Galaxy Research figures in the Courier-Mail turn up an interesting result: support for the Liberals has fallen over two weeks from 28 per cent to 24 per cent and now 22 per cent, while the Nationals have travelled from 15 per cent to 16 per cent to 18 per cent.

Why ever could that be? One answer suggests itself if we discount the notion that "all publicity is good publicity" and do some quick word searches on the Factiva news archive, which make clear that the current Liberal leader has assumed a higher profile than his predecessor had in 2004. The following table indicates the number of references to party leaders in the first 11 days of the two campaigns, both of which started four Tuesdays before polling day.

In fairness to Flegg, it should be noted that the Nationals also gained ground on the Liberals after the 2004 election was announced, presumably because respondents became aware of which candidates were running in their own seats. As for Labor, Galaxy has their support over the past two weeks progressing from 42 per cent to 45 per cent to 47 per cent, and the two-party split reversing from 49-51 to a point where it is "edging closer" to the 55.5-44.5 result from 2004.