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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40525939450545956752016-06-26T04:35:33.947+10:00Dr Kevin BonhamPSEPHOLOGY, POLL WATCHING AND STRAY POLITICAL COMMENTARY/PHILOSOPHY FROM THE HOME OF HARE-CLARK. THIS SAME-SEX MARRIAGE THING IS VERY SIMPLE: IF YOU'RE A POLITICIAN AND YOU HAVE ISSUES WITH IT, JUST FOLLOW JOE BULLOCK'S LEAD - RESIGN. COMMON SENSE DOES NOT LIVE HERE.Kevin Bonhamhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-80950987591776532672016-06-26T03:19:00.002+10:002016-06-26T03:30:51.410+10:00Does The Coalition Need Far-Right Preferences To Win?I had this bit in my Poll Roundup, but decided it was too long, so I moved it to a separate article and expanded it a bit. It gets a bit ranty in places; beware.

Bill Shorten yesterday claimed the following:

"It is clear that if Mr Turnbull is any hope to retain a range of seats in the government column, he is going to rely upon the votes of more extreme views, which are not healthy for this Australian democracy.

The only formula whereby he can win this election is if parties like One Nation give him the preferences that allow him to govern, and the problem with Mr Turnbull getting another chance at government is we've already seen him surrender his values and his views on climate change, on marriage equality. We see that elements of the conservatives within his party giving him orders and instructions. What we see is a weak Prime Minister hostage to the right wing of his party, hostage to the political fortunes of even more right-wing parties outside his government."

This was part of a general theme of trying to liken Malcolm Turnbull to David Cameron that Shorten had going, and I have to say that Shorten has been much more inventive, combative and spirited in trying to turn Brexit to his advantage than I expected. Whether this culture-warring works anywhere outside Labor-vs-Green seats, we will soon see.

Let's leave aside Labor's frequent past preference liaisons with the anti-gay Family First party (it's alright though, they've only caused two of them and nearly a third to win Senate seats so far) and the way Julia Gillard's Labor was so hostage to the Shoppie wing of her government over same-sex marriage that she herself voted against it. Let's also leave aside (until the end bit) Labor's puerile, paranoid and ultimately unintelligible opposition to Senate reform, which puts it in no place to say what is "healthy for this Australian democracy" for a number of hundreds of years.

Taking a sober psephological look at the facts of the matter, in 2013 the Coalition's edge over Labor on the lower house preferences of right wing micros was worth 0.36% 2PP. Here I define right wing micros on the 2013 Reps ballots as: Family First, Christian Democrats, Australian Christians, One Nation, Rise Up Australia, Australia First. I could include the DLP, but their preferences actually helped Labor! Defining a seat as won on right-wing preferences if the Coalition would have lost the seat had the right-micro preferences split evenly, I find the Coalition won just one seat on the preferences of parties "to the right of it" in 2013, and that was Barton. (Capricornia was close).

Looking at that 0.36% margin over time, I find that usually the Coalition wins either no seats or one seat by less than that, though in 2007 it was five seats. With the implosion of Palmer United, the launch of the Australian Liberty Alliance and some inconclusive signs of a large increase in One Nation support, it's plausible the Coalition's leg-up from the right could rise to, say, 0.6%. That would be worth an average of three seats based on past elections, and might be worth four or five all else being equal at this one. But the difference would probably fall largely in the Queensland portion of the few (11) seats One Nation is contesting, only four seats of which are really marginal. That means it might actually be only worth a seat or two, even if One Nation polls say 10% where it contests.

Still, whether it's one seat or five, it's hardly to be sneezed at, and could make all the difference. But to say that getting preferences from right micros is Turnbull's only plausible path to victory is a very silly statement which assumes that if he wins at all it will only be by a handful of seats. It's almost as arrogant as Turnbull saying he would win. Quite aside from this, One Nation (voters for which historically prefer the Coalition only weakly - about 55:45) don't appear to be preferencing either major party (let me know if you see a Reps HTV for them otherwise, they're not preferencing either party in the Senate or on their how-to-vote section on their website.)

Also, the idea that the Coalition's chances would bob up and down based on the size of right-wing party votes is silly. If a given right-wing party's vote goes down, and a voter for that party would otherwise have preferenced the Coalition, chances are they'll be preferencing the Coalition anyway, and perhaps even voting for it.

Extreme Views On The Left

Labor too get preferences from voters for some parties that get called extreme, and some of them actually are.

I'll ignore the Greens, because if they're extreme then so is half the Coalition. I'll ignore the Socialist Alliance, because they have seldom influenced anything. But we should consider the potential influence on Labor of the Animal Justice Party, whose preferences decided the Victorian seat of Prahran for the Greens (and would have almost done so for Labor instead, had they not put the Greens over Labor). The AJP, doubtless encouraged by its win in New South Wales, is increasing its efforts this election from two seats in 2013 to 41 seats (including 19 ALP-Coalition marginals and various ALP-Green contests). AJP preferences flow strongly to Labor and even based on 2013 results Labor might expect a 0.2% legup from them in each seat if they can poll just 1% per seat.

That's not to say AJP always preference Labor, and they are getting all kinds of flak for preferencing the Liberals in LaTrobe. But on the whole their supporters probably won't follow the card much anyway, and will mostly be left-wing, even if one of their candidates seems to be an Orlando truther and another has some strange views about nature.

The Animal Justice Party are extreme. I don't say that in the sense that they are irate, hateful, violent or disruptive, nor that being "extreme" is always a bad thing. I'm quite extreme on a few things myself. It's simply that they're not just live-animal-export and battery-hen protest people. Their philosophical views are much more off the scale than almost anyone has noticed. This is a party that clearly doesn't believe in killing introduced animals for environmental control reasons (apparently not even if the exotic species' advantage in an environment that has evolved without it goes on to inflict cruel harm or even extinction to native species), and that promotes unscientific hysteria like the view that kangaroos are at risk of extinction because of culling.

As a scientist who is concerned about exotic species influxes and the risk they pose to native species, I find views like the AJP's frustrating. To give one example, indian mynas pose a dire risk to Tasmanian birdlife, should they ever get established here. Some influxes of the odd nest or two have been taken out with telescopic rifles, a method that I totally support. If only very cruel and painful methods of control were available for keeping out this pest then I would alas have to support them. The AJP would not support such methods, and have a fundamentalist-like faith that there's always some kind of effective cruelty-free alternative to lethal pest control. From their opposition to lethal feral animal control it's clear they'd let the mynas live to round them up humanely later and then set about "restoring eco-systems via methods harmonious to nature such a rewilding." Whatever the hell that means in whatever language it is written in.

The AJP also supports (among many other things) a long term transition to a world with no animal farming, ending fishing and fish farming, phasing out the sale of pets except from rescuers or shelters, radically transforming zoos so that they're hardly zoos anymore, and moving to a 100% animal-product-free human diet. It's a vision the traditional ALP base would find extremely strange.

Now of course I would never suggest that Labor would swap preferences for policy outcomes with an extreme party given Mr Shorten's own concerns about this being bad for Australian democracy. That would be to imply hypocrisy by Labor over preferencing and I try hard not to do that more than seven times per article, plus I'm not sure if it's true. But in the very week when Labor received HTV preferences from the AJP for the Senate (alongside the Greens, various left micros and the deplorable "Health Australia Party") the AJP announces an alleged agreement with Labor to increase plant-based food production. This came soon after AJP members attended a meeting with Mark Butler to pressure him on their pet (pun intended) issues.

The details are extremely vague, but increasing plant-based food production is code for AJP's long-term goal to phase out animal farming altogether. I can find no confirmation of the arrangement from Labor and it may well just be the AJP chest-beating or getting ahead of themselves, but nor can I find any Labor denial of a release that purports to quote Mark Butler. Even if it is all fictitious, the AJP is still one of a few extreme left parties that would like to influence Labor policy, and from which Labor (often) receives preferences. The AJP is a minor presence now, but it is growing, as part of a trend for left-wing voters to look outside the Greens.

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Ultimately though, the implied idea that the Coalition moves to the right to harvest scraps of preferences from right-wing micros is weak. The religious Right of the Coalition needs no such encouragement, it is already there. Bill Shorten is right about that bit, and he is right that Turnbull, while still having the great asset of simply not being Tony Abbott, so far lacks either the inclination or the ability to fix it. The Coalition is much too full of powerful religious deniers of basic liberty and equality, who belong in Fred Nile's party or something resembling it. It has been that way for a very long time, and it would cause me to endorse Labor as the better major party choice with relish - if only Labor were not themselves so often so painfully stupid.

After the Coalition's increasingly confused stonewalling on same-sex marriage, and Labor's atrocious performance on Senate reform, both major parties are in my view about equally unworthy of election as neither can be trusted to navigate the basics of intelligent or evidence-based liberal-democratic policy. One doesn't care about the liberal side, the other fails the democratic test. That is not to say we should flood the place with any old alternative, since a lot of the alternatives are even worse.Kevin Bonhamhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-88790563895024274942016-06-25T08:30:00.000+10:002016-06-25T21:47:44.834+10:00ReachTEL Says Lyons Going, North In DoubtNote: National poll updates are continuing in the rolling poll roundup below.

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ReachTEL: Bass and Braddon 50-50, Lyons 55-45 to Labor, Franklin 59-41 to Labor, Denison 65-35 Wilkie vs Labor
Interpretation: Bass 51-49 Liberal, Braddon 51-49 Labor, Lyons 54-46 Labor, Franklin 58-42, Denison see below
(Poll taken before Brexit and Launceston university funding announcement)

The Mercury has released ReachTEL polling of the five Tasmanian federal electorates. For my general background to them see The Five Tasmanian House Of Representatives Seats and for a previous ReachTEL from mid-May see ReachTEL Points To Tasmanian Status Quo. It isn't pointing that way any longer. There is also some Senate-related polling coming that I will cover in an update to this piece.

The previous Mercury poll had all three Liberal incumbents (Andrew Nikolic in Bass, Brett Whiteley in Braddon and Eric Hutchinson in Lyons) in fairly comfortable positions. Although their two-party preferred votes were only 51% in two cases and 53% in the third, these were based on a strong flow of respondent-allocated preferences and in reality the leads were greater.

Since then parts of Bass, Braddon and Lyons have been flooded (although this had no obvious political implications beyond a distraction from the campaign and an attempt by Nikolic allies to bestow credit on their man for Launceston escaping the worst of it). The issues mix also turned to health via Medicare in the last week, which suited Labor fine with health services the biggest issue of the 2016 campaign for voters in the northern seats. Hospital funding is a major issue in urban parts of Bass and Braddon and remote health services a perennial issue in Lyons.

The poll overall suggests a 3.7% swing to Labor in the four Liberal-vs-ALP electorates. This is higher than the current national swing. Until now the trend in Tasmanian-sample polling has mostly been one of no swing or a muted swing. However this trend has often been based on small and unreliable samples. This new sample is very large so we shouldn't place too much weight now on what we had before.

Poll design

The poll is another ReachTEL robopoll with about 550 voters per seat. Voters were asked questions on primary voting intention, their ratings of the local member and important issues in their seat.

The previous poll muddied the waters by including the Lambie Network, who are not fielding lower house candidates. This poll includes only those candidates who are standing, all of whom are named and presented in ballot order.

Preferences are as stated by the respondents. The use of respondent versus last-election preferences has been a hot potato as usual in polling for this election campaign, and for the May poll I preferred to calculate the latter. However there is now a very good reason not to use last-election preferences for Tasmania, and that is that we know the micro-party candidate mix, and know that it is more left-wing than last time. The Recreational Fishers (a left-wing outfit led by union figure Kevin Harkins who was twice spectacularly stymied in his bids to run for Labor), the Arts Party and the Renewable Energy Party will all send preferences to Labor. Together they account for half of Tasmania's micro-party Reps candidates, and the Recreational Fishers (who have TV ads) are polling well. I have also checked the preference flows in this poll and none of them seem problematic.

Given that ReachTEL supply data on primary votes to one decimal place, I find it useful to calculate a non-rounded 2PP to one decimal place from the data. After all, if the poll is 50-50 it is nice to know if that is really 50.4 one way or the other. However, when I do this I often end up with a slightly different 2PP result even after rounding, and I am not sure why this is. I include my own 2PP estimates from the poll below.

Primary votes

As usual I have converted the poll into figures that resemble those published by other pollsters, with undecided voters reallocated. A little later on I will paste the full primary figures in for data hounds who may want them.

Some comments here:

Firstly I am sceptical of the size of the votes for some of the micro-parties, once undecided voters are included or even before. The Recreational Fishers have been advertising heavily and might be confused for more right-wing user-group parties (like the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers) by unwary voters, but some of the other parties have very little profile in Tasmania and are running obscure candidates. So whether voters will actually vote for them in the numbers shown remains to be seen. This is especially so as the poll suggests the Green vote is rebuilding well (something we should also be a bit cautious about since the Greens are frequently too high in polling).

The size of the Recreational Fishers vote is interesting as while they probably would not do as well in the Senate (where there is competition from Lambie as well as many other micro-parties) it does suggest that if there is a seat left over for a micro-party they might poll the 3% or so needed to be in the mix for it. That said I am not convinced there will be.

The undecided rate is high in Lyons (13.9%) and Franklin (12.2%) but in Lyons there were only about two undecided voters in the whole sample who said they were leaning to Eric Hutchinson. That at least suggests room to pick up votes from undecided voters who preferred other parties.

The poll has published 2PPs of 50-50 for Bass and Braddon here, but I get Bass at 50.8 to Andrew Nikolic (LIB), and Braddon at 51.2 to Justine Keay (ALP). So on my reading if this poll is correct, only Nikolic will hold. However the margins in Bass and Braddon are so close that the Liberals could plausibly hold or lose both. The university announcement may help them, or not.

The implied result in Franklin is not surprising as Liberal candidate Amanda-Sue Markham has had an even worse campaign than Julie Collins' previous opponent.

The Mercury have not had much luck with Denison. In May they asked for a Wilkie vs Liberal 2PP but produced figures on which the 2PP would probably have been Wilkie vs Labor, and this time it's the other way around. That said I doubt the Liberals are this far ahead of Labor on primaries (if at all) and we do at least have useful data to suggest the flow of preferences to Wilkie has been unchanged from the last election. Both the Greens (who preferenced Labor last election) and Labor (who initially put Wilkie last, then raised him to above Rise Up Australia only) have seen the error of their ways, with the Greens issuing an open ticket and Labor preferencing Wilkie over the Liberals.

Candidate ratings are also supplied. Here's a summary:

The negative ratings for Andrew Nikolic and Brett Whiteley are similar, but respondents are much less likely to rate Whiteley "very good" and more likely to rate him "average". Julie Collins remains popular and Andrew Wilkie's figures would be matched by few sitting MPs in the nation. All the Liberal incumbents have fallen since the May poll (Nikolic by 13.6 points, Hutchinson by 4.6, Whiteley by 2.9) and while this is probably partly caused by worsening voting intention results, there is a suggestion here that the personal campaigns against Nikolic have rubbed off to some degree.

There is much more I could include but time is short and I am not sure what the Mercury is covering today so I will leave it there for now. Assessments for the Tasmanian seats will be updated with this polling later today. ReachTEL polls correctly picked the winners of all Tasmanian seats in 2013, but the margins were a fair way out (in favour of the Coalition that time), so it shouldn't be assumed these samples are the final word. Nonetheless the margin for Lyons isn't trivial and unless something else comes along I now expect the seat to fall, and my national seat model agrees, dropping the Coalition's probability of holding it to 25% (conditional on the national 2PP not changing), having not been significantly below 50% before now.

More to add in coming days and more detail in the print edition of the Mercury today.Kevin Bonhamhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-3801956662518907352016-06-24T22:50:00.000+10:002016-06-26T00:43:19.100+10:00Rolling Poll Roundup: The Final WeekNOTE: A new article about Tasmanian seat polling will be posted here at 8:30 am Saturday.

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2PP: 50.8 to Coalition at end of week (Friday 24 July)
Seat estimate if this is the final 2PP: 78 Coalition 66 Labor 6 Other
Voting intention may be volatile in final week because of Brexit

2PP aggregate smoothed tracking graph including value for expected 25 June reset

Here's another rolling roundup of incoming polls, which will probably run at least until the middle of election week. For last week's see here, and for my thoughts on the state of the betting markets through last week (and reasons for caution about the current projections of a narrow Coalition win) see here. New polls and thoughts will be added, and the aggregate graph and header updated, through the week as polls arrive.

I've been eagerly awaiting the fresh data in this evening's national ReachTEL, given that as usual in this rather sparsely-polled election, there were no national data that were less than five days old. Especially it was important to see whether national polls had picked up the shift to Labor implied in that batch of commissioned ReachTELs in NSW earlier this week. If that shift was real, then Labor's Medicare scare campaign may have bitten hard, and it would not have been surprising to see the Coalition drop a few points off its primary vote tonight. Tasmanian polling which I will report on tomorrow is also none too flashy for the government.

As it happens though, tonight's ReachTEL (taken last night) shows only modest and not even really "statistically significant" changes*. There is an important methods change in this poll in that ReachTEL only now polls the Nick Xenophon Team vote in South Australia, causing it to drop from 4.2% to 1.4% through no fault of its own (the NXT SA vote was likely in the ballpark of 19% plus or minus lots, on the low side compared to others).

The NXT handling change (an excellent idea, though likely to be widely misreported) releases 2.8 points of primary vote to other parties. Others are up 2.4, Greens are up 1.4, Labor are up 0.1 and the Coalition is down 1.2. So possibly Coalition votes are going to Others while ex-NXT votes go to Others and Greens, but more complex churn could also be at play. There's no movement on the respondent preferences 2PP (still 51-49) but my estimate of the last-election 2PP from these primaries is down from 52.3 to 51.1%. And by the way, the lack of difference between the last-election and respondent 2PPs in this ReachTEL is another point against the view that this election will see a large preference shift.

Once again because of the sparseness of recent data the ReachTEL is heavily weighted, taking my aggregate from 50.3 to 50.5 as of Friday night, which will go to 50.8 on weekly reset if no other polls arrive by midnight. Again the lower frequency of polls makes the aggregate more volatile than it would normally be at this stage of the campaign and the pattern so far has been that boosts for the Coalition are pulled down by other polls. And the caveats mentioned in the article below - about whether our polling is even reliable at all - still apply.

The ReachTEL has a curious leadership result, with Malcolm Turnbull's net rating jumping 9.1 points to +0.2, a three-month high, for no evident reason whatsoever (again, this is pre-Brexit). Bill Shorten is also up to -7.1, which is again his second-best rating so far. Turnbull gains slightly as "better PM", out to 58.4 to 41.6. Bearing in mind that ReachTEL does not have a neutral option (which seems to be the major cause of skew to incumbents on this question), this seems a serious lead, and might say something unflattering about perceptions of Bill Shorten's readiness to lead.

The only slight change in the issues mix is a slight uptick for health issues at the expense of "creating jobs". It is interesting that the Coalition have stressed "Jobs And Growth" as their mantra and yet generally polling hasn't shown that employment is the issue it was in 2013.

(* There is a fallacy that changes that are not statistically significant mean that nothing has changed, and should be ignored. Small changes do generate far too much nonsense commentary when they are often caused by random movements. However, any non-tiny change in data alters the underlying probability distribution of voting intention in an aggregate.)

"Events, dear boy, events"

As fresh as this ReachTEL sample is, there's a case it may as well be from a million years ago. The elephant I mentioned last time has gone from being in the room to in the house. The Brexit referendum has been carried (a disaster for most of the already-stricken UK polling industry, but that's another story.) It is rare for such a potentially significant world event to happen during an Australian campaign, and especially while the polls are open, and especially following a campaign in which so little has happened to date. The biggest such event to happen during a campaign was the declaration of war in 1914 (which probably swung the election result). Other major external events during campaigns have included the 1954 Petrov Affair and the 1983 bushfires. Some other campaigns have occurred in the immediate aftermath of major events that have seen major swings in voting intention during the campaign - the 1975 Dismissal, the 2001 S11 attacks and the 2013 reinstatement of Kevin Rudd, for example.

The usual battle-lines are already being drawn. The Coalition says this is no time for reckless spending and running up the national deficit. Labor responds that this is no time for cutting revenue through tax cuts either. Labor also says that it steered the nation through the GFC. The Coalition responds that Labor did this by trashing the hay their man stashed in the barn, and then says that Labor spent too much. The last part may not actually be true, but Labor struggles to contest it. Even if Labor debates the issue effectively, the perception is that time spent on the economy rather than on medicare or education is only a good thing for the Coalition.

Maybe it just won't matter. Perhaps no-one will care. Maybe voters are so sick of elites telling them what they care about that they will just ignore it all, or vote Labor in droves for no reason just to prove all those insiders wrong. A colleague points out that if the Coalition think that they can win now by just saying "Brexit" all week, they could be in for a rude surprise:

Indie Raids Done Dirt Cheap

Cowper.  Is this really happening? Do I really have to write about this seat? Rob Oakeshott, a waffly crossbencher who delivered government to Julia Gillard and then ran away from the impending judgement of voters in 2013, pops up in the adjacent seat at the very last minute and runs a shoestring campaign with no money, no signs, and worse still the support of GetUp! ... and within weeks he is polling 50-50. This to go with the similar if larger-scale resurgence by Tony Windsor against Barnaby Joyce in New England. If these seat polls are accurate (and it's not just one company either) then the National Party has serious problems. It simply shouldn't be this easy. It doesn't even seem to be about the candidates - Luke Hartsuyker and Rob Oakeshott rate about the same (both fairly well). Perhaps these results will not stand up when votes are counted, but in the past indies have tended if anything to build up steam as polling day approaches. If you know of an indie candidate who's running hard against a National and has more profile in their electorate than David Cameron's cat, drop me a line about them; who knows, they might win.

Galaxy Mass Seatpolling

I've seen reports of a large pack of Galaxy seat polls with mostly grim readings for Labor. Details when I have them. Hindmarsh is 50-50 with NXT on 16%. Boothby is 53-47 to Coalition with NXT on 19% and potentially still competitive (though apparently needing to overhaul Labor to win). Kennedy 58-42 to Katter (oh well), and the following are Coalition vs Labor: Longman, Dunkley and Corangamite all 53, Reid, Banks and Brisbane 52, Lindsay, Gilmore and Dobell 51, Macarthur 50. Sounds grim for Labor but on tight margins from small samples they would win some of these by chance. Labor are in front in Petrie 52-48, Capricornia 51-49 and their own seats of McEwen 52 (CFA making it uncomfortably close-ish despite the wretchedness of their opponent), Bruce 52 and Griffith 53. There's nothing surprising in these seat polls - the average swing to Labor is 1.8%, which is about what we'd expect given the state of polling in each state and given that several of these seats have sophomore effects in the Coalition's favour.

The Galaxy results are strongly contradicting some of the commissioned ReachTELs from this week, though neutral polls have yet to bother with Page and Eden-Monaro.

Updates will be added as new polls arrive.

Fishy Fire Stuff From Vic Liberals

It's refreshing to see some dodgy polling from the right for a change rather from the usual quarters. Liberal internal polling of their own seats of Corangamite, Dunkley and La Trobe and Labor's seats of Ballarat, Bendigo and McEwen is reported as saying that Labor will be hard pressed to gain any seats there (which I suspect is true) and may be fighting to avoid losses. (It would be useful to see public polling of some of those - unlike McEwen - where the Liberal candidate isn't actively hopeless.) The CFA saga is a dead weight on Labor's chances in Victoria but the reporting of the poll goes beyond what is believable in terms of impacts.

It's believable that 65% of respondents in such seats would say they opposed the push to "unionise the CFA" (I'd still like to see the question wording) but it's very hard to credit that 27% of Labor voters would have said they would change their vote over the issue. It turns out that they didn't! 27% was the net result of a poll in which voters were asked if they were more or less likely to vote Labor - not if they would actually change their vote.

Polls of this kind are almost always rubbish. Many voters will say "less likely" just to give a party they dislike anyway a kicking, though they would never have voted for it anyway. Some voters say they are more likely when they are only very slightly more likely. Effect sizes of 30% can be produced in this kind of polling even using issues that are obviously trivial or irrelevant. It's a stupid polling genre and the best thing any journalist offered such a poll can do with it is burn it.Kevin Bonhamhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-992973584005465602016-06-18T22:23:00.007+10:002016-06-26T03:20:36.109+10:00Horse-Race Overview And Betting Roundup: Are Labor Too Long?(Note: This post was actually released 23 June, not 18 June as for some strange reason stated!)

It's just about time to rule a line under the rolling poll roundup that I ran through the last several days and write something new about the overall horse-race picture. A new rolling roundup will be started when there is a new national poll (most likely ReachTEL on Friday night).

The national polling data that we have on this election at the moment all dates from Sunday or earlier. Only Newspoll is even dominated by data from last weekend. The two-party picture is persistently close, and the Coalition's advantage in seat projections is not massive, but betting markets offer headline odds that imply it's almost a done deal. Many people have suggested to me over the last few weeks that Labor are way too long, and that odds of $3 or $4 might be understandable, but surely not $6 and upwards as has been seen at times.

My own polling aggregate (which, I should restate, describes the state of play at a given time - it is not by itself a prediction) has found the Coalition to be in a winning position at all times since Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister. The Coalition has sometimes slipped below 50% two-party-preferred, but has never yet fallen below 76 seats on my projection of what would happen in an election "held now" at the time. However, it hasn't had a big lead for a long time.

Here are some possible reasons for doubt about the strength of the Coalition's favouritism based on current polling:

* The 2PP vote is relatively close. Stranger things have happened than governments losing just just over one 2PP point in the last two weeks of an election campaign.

* The polling is less rich than at the 2010 and 2013 elections, with only four pollsters fully active in this campaign, one of which (Essential) is posting fortnightly-rolled data that is therefore not very fresh.

* Of the pollsters posting fresher data, only ReachTEL exists in the same format as at the last election, and even it has changed its preferencing method. Ipsos is a new pollster for Australia at a federal election and Newspoll is neither the Newspoll nor the Galaxy of old. The lack of continuity and the increasing global problem with polling representative samples create an increased chance that the polls may be wrong - in either direction.

* A surge by the Nick Xenophon Team (NXT) could potentially win several Coalition seats in South Australia even based on present polling, and has potential to increase further by election day. As Mr Xenophon has specified a policy basis for negotiations in a hung parliament, it could be that he would back Labor in a hung parliament, if one eventuated.

* There is a particular issue with voters telling pollsters they will vote for NXT in seats which NXT is not contesting. These voters might disproportionately vote for or preference Labor.

* There are mixed results on the question of respondent preferencing, with one pollster (ReachTEL) apparently finding evidence for a preference shift that may go beyond the issues created by NXT's entry (although other pollsters don't seem to be finding this.)

None of this is to argue that any of the above things are each likely to bite. I can also argue that it is possible that the Coalition (following the 2004 model) will now pull away and win with as much as 52.5% (or maybe even more) of the two-party preferred vote. Stranger things have happened than governments gaining bigtime at the post, as well.

The polls may have an overall skew to Labor as has often been the case at past elections, or there may be a repeat of the UK election polling failure based on oversampling of politically-engaged voters. The NXT and respondent preferencing issues may fizz, or Greens preferences could even move to the Coalition. The strategic argument for voting Coalition to avoid a hung parliament may catch on in the final week, or Labor's campaign about Medicare may simply run out of puff. But none of that affects the question of whether Labor's chances of winning are actually much better than the betting markets say. For instance, Sportsbet currently has Labor at only an implied 18% chance of forming government, though even that is up from 16% yesterday morning.

Looking at the historic polling-based projections I have, they continue to tell a similar story to what they have told all along. Polling as of two weeks out explains about 60% of variation in the final 2PP, but even two weeks out there are some massive outliers. The 1977 election is the biggest: even in the final weeks it seemed close, but Malcolm Fraser won very easily. The two projections I have been following for 2016 both see the Coalition on average winning (with 50% and 50.6% 2PP) but still give an average error of about two points on that estimate. If that error was normally distributed then they would give Labor chances of only 20% and 16% of winning from here, but it probably isn't, and on that basis it can be argued Labor's chances are better.

A different way of doing it is to predict the share of seats the government will hold. In this case the errors on the projection do appear to be more or less normally distributed, which is nice, but the model is also far more sensitive to whether you take the track record of the parties into account. In this case the simple historic relationship between government 2PP two weeks out and percentage of seats won implies the government will hold about 78 seats, with a 70% chance of holding at least 74. However the version that takes into account the Coalition's history of outperforming its polling at elections predicts that the Government will win 82.5 seats, with a 91% chance of holding at least 74. So that model is saying that the markets have Labor too short.

We also know that the governments that did lose in the past were all clearly losing at this stage. All were on 48% 2PP or worse. The five governments with 2PPs between 48 and 50 all won, as did the four that were between 50 and 52. So for a government polling above 50-50 to actually throw it away in the last two weeks would be unprecedented at federal level (there are cases at state level though).

There are two points against the idea that Labor is too long. It's true that many of the uncertainties applying at this election were not present at past elections, but all elections have some kind of uncertainty about the quality of national 2PP polling. Often these uncertainties turn out to have no effect. However, so few Australian governments have lost that we do not know enough about all the possible circumstances under which they could lose.

We did see the ALP win two state elections at longer odds than this - Queensland and South Australia. In the case of Queensland there was a preference shift of unprecedented size and of which there was no neutral polling evidence (because nobody asked), and in the case of South Australia the natural skew of the state's seats meant that a slight lift in the government's polling got it across the line with a miserable 2PP vote. In both cases psephologists generally thought the Coalition would probably win, but did not think this nearly as strongly as the markets. So there's plenty of precedent for markets to be overconfident. I suspect that favourites in election betting markets may even be prone to have money thrown at them close to the day just because they are favourites, and because so many people believe the myth that markets are very reliable.

So I've outlined above some reasons why Labor might be considered much too long, but also some objective arguments for why they have very little chance at all, based on the state of polling as of last weekend. I don't think there is an objective way to say which of these arguments are stronger. Intuitively, I'd have more confidence in the stronger projections if the Coalition's campaign hadn't appeared so lacklustre. Strong, stable, majority government that only the Coalition can provide? You didn't deliver that with 90 seats, why on earth should we think you would do so with 80?

This week

We have seen some pretty strange stuff so far this week, without even mentioning "Fake Tradie" (who was of course a real tradie, though the ad still seemed terribly scripted.) Labor launched an audacious scare campaign - based on just the smallest grain of truth - over the alleged privatisation of Medicare. Instead of treating it from the outset as paranoid, ludicrous and desperate rubbish, the government became sufficiently rattled to go on the defensive and play straight into Labor's hands with a "never ever" type pledge that just recalled similar broken promises in the past.

There may be further jitters - if anyone believes the results - following the publication of commissioned NSW Teachers Federation ReachTELs of six NSW Coalition seats showing an average swing to Labor of 7%, far above what other seat polls (commissioned or not) have generally found in that state or in such of those seats as have been neutrally polled. These polls - taken as a whole - are so far off the scale that if they are accurate the only explanation could be a sudden large snap in voting intention (at least in NSW) following the Labor launch and what I am calling the Mediscare. So far, this hasn't been backed in even by reports of insider mutterings from the parties, but if there had been a major shift would either side admit to it?

A tweet from Ben Eltham (New Matilda) today said that Labor sources had said their internal polling was stronger than they are publicly saying. Are they fibbing to the media in general, or only to the left to boost morale? We will need to see more national polls to see if the Coalition has actually slipped up this week.

Seat Betting

As usual, just noting that I track seat betting not to claim it is predictive nor to encourage it, but to test the theory that it is predictive.

Quite a lot has happened since last week's review of the seat betting markets. This is how things line up at present. A seat is considered close if both parties are at $3 or less on any market:

Loss (Coalition to Labor): Barton*, Paterson*, Petrie, Page
Close Loss (Coalition to Labor): Solomon, Dobell*, Eden-Monaro, Macarthur,  Capricornia, Burt, Cowan
Loss (PUP to Coalition): Fairfax
Tied (Coalition vs NXT): Mayo (split markets)

ALP Close Holds: Batman (vs Grn)
Coalition Close Holds: Banks, Gilmore, Robertson, Macquarie, Brisbane, Dickson, Forde, Leichhardt, Boothby (vs NXT), Grey (vs NXT), Barker (vs NXT), Lyons, Braddon, Deakin, Dunkley, La Trobe, Hasluck, Swan

In terms of overall favourites, the Coalition has gained Hasluck in the last week while Mayo has become a split market (various sites have NXT or the Liberals favourite or a tie), which is very little change. I think Mayo may have been a cross-market favourite for NXT prior to claims of links between Rebekha Sharkie and an anti-immigration Facebook site, claims which may have resulted from a set-up rather than being actually valid.

But the close-seat picture has seen a return of the imbalance of close seats that has been a feature for most of the campaign, Here's the colour-coded tracker.

Key to colours:

Dark blue - Coalition favoured in all markets
Light blue - Coalition favoured in some markets, tied in others
Grey - seat tied, or different favourites in different markets
Orange - Labor favoured in some markets, tied in others
Red - Labor favoured in all markets
Dark green - Green favoured in all markets

While no Labor-vs-Coalition seats are "close", a number are almost in the close seat pile. These include:

Greenway, where Labor would have lost in 2013 but for a hopeless Coalition candidate (so the seat might be considered notionally Liberal).
Adelaide and Griffith, where the inner-city appeal of Malcolm Turnbull may have Labor in some trouble.
Chisholm, where Labor is affected by the retirement of the sitting member and also the Country Firefighting Authority stoush that is damaging its chances in Victoria
Richmond, for no reason obvious to me.

This graph which I prepared before the last election shows the history of Opposition seat losses to governments by size of swing:

(The red dot just right of the -4 and on the zero line is actually two red dots now). The graph shows that for a swing of up to 3% to the Opposition, Oppositions have still lost at least one seat somewhere in seven out of ten cases. For swings of around 3.5 to 5.5% they have done so about half the time. So the chance that Labor loses at least one seat somewhere is substantial, but there has been scarcely any polling in the at-risk Labor seats.

The Windsor and Oakeshott challenges in New England and Cowper are also lurking just outside the close-seat radar. Also, Kennedy has closed a bit since I gave Katter's then-$1.01 odds a blast a few days ago. The counter-arguments are the general anti-major-party mood, that Labor are preferencing Katter, and the LNP challenger Jonathan Pavetto is young, low-profile and not just openly gay but also vocal on gay rights issues given Katter's past form on them. However if the electorate does finally decide it is time for Katter to put the gun away then even these things might not matter.

The Sportsbet exact seat total market now has a median of 81 or 82 Coalition seats, but a weighted average of 78-79. The former figure is now more closely in line with Sportsbet's expected 51.5% 2PP to the Coalition. The William Hill banded seat total market has 81-85 seats the favourite range, but with a weighted average of 78. The William Hill exact seat total market has 81, 82 and 83 Coalition seats joint favourites but with a weighted average of 77.6. The weighted averages are a bit misleading because they don't factor in longshot bias, so it might be said that what is expected is really closer to the median.

There is an apparent discrepancy in the Sportsbet market for NXT vs Greens to win the most Lower House seats. The Greens are still $1.75 vs $2 favourites here, but in the individual NXT and Greens seat totals markets NXT are expected to on average win more seats. Meanwhile the market for the number of crossbenchers still expects five, possibly because rising perceptions of NXT's chances are slightly counterbalanced by doubts about Katter and McGowan, or perhaps just because some of these markets haven't been updated yet.

I'll start a new rolling poll roundup tomorrow night when ReachTEL comes out.Kevin Bonhamhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-16649321628195900682016-06-18T22:23:00.004+10:002016-06-24T00:25:34.798+10:00Rolling Poll Roundup: ReachTEL vs The Rest?
2PP Aggregate: 50.3 to Coalition (ended last week at 50.6, week before 50.3)

Seat projection for this 2PP: probable Coalition majority (estimated 77-67-6)
(at time of starting this rolling roundup, aggregate was 50.7)

2PP aggregate tracking graph. Last updated 21 June

As foreshadowed at the end of the previous session I've decided to put out a rolling poll roundup thread to cover the time from the new polls out on Friday night until at least the expected release of Essential on Tuesday. Updates will be added at the bottom as new polls arrive.

As I write a difference between one poll, ReachTEL, and the other most recently released polls (Ipsos, Morgan and Essential) has developed. ReachTEL had the Coalition at 50-50 2PP last week and 51-49 this week, using respondent allocated preferences, but if last election preferences are used both polls come out to about 52-48 to Coalition. Meanwhile Ipsos, Morgan and Essential have all issued headline rates of 51:49 to Labor. ReachTEL had the Coalition primary on 42.7 last week and 43.5 this week while Ipsos had it on 39 and Essential on 41. We're still looking for Morgan's primary results and expect to find them somewhere between the black box of MH-370 and the sign that reads "Beware of the Leopard", but the Coalition was probably on 40 or less with them too.

For those who believe the majority verdict here, it might be worth noting this: ReachTEL polled at the 2013 federal, the 2014 Victorian and the 2015 Queensland and NSW elections. Essential and Morgan polled all of these and Ipsos polled Victoria and NSW. In terms of accurate predictions of the primary votes, ReachTEL leads Morgan 4-0, Essential 4-0 and Ipsos 2-0, and a lot of those matchups were not even close.

I aggregated the Ipsos at 48.9 for Coalition and the ReachTEL at 52.3, and as a result my aggregate ended the week at 50.6 (its highest end-of-week reading for the Coalition for nine weeks) and has since gone to 50.7. The aggregate is, however, based on last-election preferences and there is a case that it is slightly generous to the government based mainly on uncertainties surrounding the Xenophon Team. This is discussed further below.

There's an elephant in the room, by the way, and I've not seen much discussion of it. This week the UK votes on leaving the European Union. If (as mostly expected) it votes to remain, there will be no impact on the election. But if it votes to leave, the world will suddenly be a different and more economically unpredictable place, and the Coalition's hand on economic responsibility will be greatly strengthened.

Leaderships and debate

A little bit more leadership data this week. Ipsos has Malcolm Turnbull up two points to a net +5 rating (47-42) and Bill Shorten at -4 (43-47, Shorten's best since April 2015). The Preferred PM gap closes another 4 points to a nondescript 48-34 lead to Turnbull.

ReachTEL, however, finds Turnbull stretching his lead a couple of net points with no change to speak of in their personal ratings. One thing to note is a spike in the percentage considering Bill Shorten's performance "Very Good" (to 12%), probably caused by increased familiarity and impressed responses to his campaign-trail performance.

ReachTEL found only a slim lead (52:48) for Labor on trust to manage rollout of the NBN network, and the response was very party-polarised. I suspect that this is a different question to whether voters prefer an all-fibre network or the Coalition's version, since it becomes one about service delivery as well as technology, and some voters asked if they trust Labor to deliver anything will just think "pink batts" or "budget surplus". Voters also overwhelmingly think that Medicare is more likely to be privatised under a Coalition Government than a Labor one. I would have not even bothered comparing the parties, and asked if voters believed the Coalition was likely to privatise Medicare, since that is the subject of a major ALP scare campaign.

Debate

A Facebook-hosted debate was held at the ridiculous time of 6 pm Friday. I thought Shorten won the debate (after roughly sharing honours in the first two), and many commentators did so too for various reasons. Among other things I think Turnbull comes across badly when he uses his "can I just say this to you" repartee on ordinary people as opposed to journalists, and for this reason he is less well suited to people's-forum type debates than press-club types. Town-hall debates also have an irritating tendency towards a left-wing issues mix. But the whole novel debate setup was undermined by the gimmicky decision to award the result based on the vote of a panel of just thirty "undecided voters", who voted for Shorten 17-7 with six not even pressing a button. In polling terms, Shorten's 71% result had an 18 point margin of error. Such a small sample size is as bad as watching a live focus group. If that's the best you can do, bring back the worm.

Seat Polls (Coalition vs Labor) vs National Polls

Overnight Newspoll released a set of seat polls, which showed the Coalition leading 54-46 in Herbert, 53-47 in Lindsay, 52-48 in Bass and Dunkley, 51-49 in Corangamite, Robertson and Brisbane, with Macarthur and Capricornia both 50-50 and Labor leading 52-48 in Burt.

In common with other seat polls that have been released by Galaxy and ReachTEL, these polls are broadly consistent with what would be expected based on the state swing and personal vote effects. This can be seen in the overall figures compiled by William Bowe, which show an average swing in seat polls of 2.1 points, slightly less than the overall aggregate national swing. In many Coalition-held marginals the party is assisted by sophomore effect caused by its winning the seat from a Labor incumbent last time, but this is partly cancelled out by seats like Dunkley, where the Coalition is affected by retirement. So this is overall what we should expect to see. (See also Tally Room for a similar conclusion).

Not only is the general seat poll picture therefore consistent with national polling, but even if it wasn't, we should ignore it, because seat polls were so badly skewed in 2013. Seat polls shouldn't be considered capable of shifting our views about the result all that much, unless they show something that is consistently odd but that is not a national skew to one side. Probably the most important thing seat polls are doing is casting doubt on the swing shown in national sampling for WA. If the national WA samples are correct then Cowan, Hasluck, Burt and Swan would be expected to be toast, but seat polling has shown Cowan and Hasluck at least to be closer than expected.

Currently my federal seat model has the Coalition losing only these seats: Barton, Paterson, Dobell (all notionally Labor), Petrie, Capricornia, Solomon, Cowan, Burt and Mayo to NXT. However it's expecting another two or three Coalition seat losses overall, and perhaps even a Coalition gain somewhere (though as the sum of very small chances in a number of Labor seats.)

Respondent vs Last-Election Preferences

In a rearguard against the Newspoll, someone in Labor has finally provided some systematic data about ALP seat polling, telling Barrie Cassidy that Labor's internals have the party ahead or square in 18 presumably Coalition-held marginals (a breakdown into ahead and square would have been nice here) and trailing by 2 points or less in six others. Specific claimed results have included 57-43 to Labor in Paterson, 53-47 in Robertson, 50-50 Hasluck and Coalition leading just 51-49 in Pearce.

Cassidy explains the issue by reference to respondent preferences, arguing that Labor's vote was down in 2013. If Labor is up by a few 2PP points this time then, he says, you would expect Labor's preference flow to be up "by that amount". There are many major problems with this argument.

Firstly, if this all held water then you would expect that Labor's preference share in 2013 would have fallen (given that its vote share was down). This didn't happen; Labor's share of Green preferences in 2013 rose from 78% to 83% and their share of Others preferences rose from 42% to 47%. The same theory also failed in 1993, 1998 and 2007 (Labor's vote share rose in all these cases but preference share, when adjusted for changes in the support level for established minor parties, was unchanged), 2004 (swing away from Labor, preferences unchanged), 1990 (Labor was saved from a vote share crash by greatly improved preferences) and 2001 (swing against Labor, Labor preference shares improved). In fact the only times this theory has actually worked recently were 1996 and 2010, and both of those were cases where both Labor's primary vote and its preferences crashed. The last time Labor significantly gained on both 2PP and preference flows by party at the same election was 1980.

Secondly, respondent versus last-election differences do not cause four-point gaps in a seat like Robertson. In Robertson at the last election, Greens preferences flowed 86% to Labor and Others preferences flowed 54% to Coalition, a more or less typical national breakdown. To get from the Newspoll primaries (45-41 to Coalition, 8 Green 6 Other) to the Labor-poll 2PP (53-47) it would have to be assumed that the Coalition's share of all preferences was falling from an expected 31% to about 14%, even though its share of Green preferences can hardly fall much further. Assuming a 90% Greens flow, Labor would need 80% of Others preferences. So there must be substantial differences in the primaries for Robertson between Newspoll and the ALP. (A more fruitful line of enquiry might be how Newspoll gets 51-49 to Coalition off their Robertson primaries, which would normally imply a 2PP of about 50.5% to Labor, but there may be rounding or a drilldown into the nature of these "others" at work here.)

Thirdly, let's have a general look at how respondent preferences are faring in national polls. In Ipsos, the last four polls have on average shown Labor half a point better by respondent preferences than last-election preference flow, with the last two showing no difference. However these four polls have attributed 57% of the non-major vote to the Greens, compared to 40% at the last election, and Greens voters preference Labor more heavily. Ipsos uses a batched preference flow method that ignores such changes. So even if there had been no change in preferencing breakdowns for either Greens or others individually, we should expect Ipsos to show Labor doing about 1.4 points better on respondent preferences, 0.9 points higher than is actually happening, meaning that Ipsos implies Labor's preference flow is worse. Ipsos has thus provided no evidence whatsoever of an improved Labor preference share - if anything the contrary. (It is possible that Green voters who preference the Coalition in Ipsos are actually often Liberal voters, which would also explain Ipsos' huge Green vote, but that is not good news for Labor either.)

If we move to ReachTEL, the picture is slightly different. In the last six ReachTELs (since the start of May) the average difference between respondent and last-election preferences has been one point in Labor's favour. And in the last three fully published Morgans the difference was negligible (an average of 0.2 points in Labor's favour). So the evidence on respondent-vs-last-election preferences from public pollsters is actually all over the shop. Overall I suspect there will be a slight move in Labor's favour because of the uncertainties created by the Nick Xenophon Team, but the case that there will be more than half a point in it is weak. It should be weak too. Why should Greens voters be more likely to preference a Shorten-led ALP against a Turnbull-led Coalition than they were to preference Labor against Tony Abbott last time? Why should Christian voters disappointed with the Coalition's half-hearted moves towards same-sex marriage preference a Labor Party that is phasing out even letting its MPs vote against it? Xenophon aside, if many Others voters are really swinging to Labor then who are these people?

Yet another point here is that it is not just the last-election Newspoll seat polls that have Labor struggling in the marginals about as much as they should be expected to struggle. ReachTEL - which is using respondent-allocated preferences - is getting the same thing.

Of course, anyone who wants to play mix and match with the polls can do so and get the result that they like. Combine, say, Essential's primaries and ReachTEL's finding on respondent preferences and you get 23 Labor seat wins and majority government (just!) with a 52-48 2PP. Combine ReachTEL's primaries with Ipsos' finding on respondent preferences, however, and you get Labor hardly winning a seat. Throw in the chance of an industry wide Poll Fail (which is higher than it has been for some time) and possible shifts in the last two weeks and almost anything can happen. However, the balance of probabilities is that the key questions about polling land somewhere in the middle, and if so that favours the government winning the 2PP in the majority of seats.

Non-Classic Seat Polls

Newspoll has three new seat polls of seats that will or might not come out as classic Coalition-Labor contests. In Batman, where the Greens' seemingly crushing position against David Feeney has been mangled by Malcolm Turnbull's call on preferences, Newspoll still has a seven-point swing against Feeney for a 53-47 Labor-vs-Green result. That seems about right to me - he's had a truly terrible campaign but maybe not enough to blow all ten points. Things might still get rocky here should the Coalition be clearly headed for the win nationwide come election day, so I don't think the Greens' chances in Batman can yet be entirely ignored.

Newspoll produced yet another Mayo poll that shows Jamie Briggs losing (indeed on the primaries of 42-38 he might not even make their 48-52; that said the primary for Rebekha Sharkie of NXT is much higher than other pollsters have had so far). Newspoll also produced a very rosy outlook for Christopher Pyne in Sturt, with 50% of the primary vote. No poll has yet convincingly showed Pyne losing and I'd rather see more data on Barker, Boothby and Kingston, for example. Odds in Mayo have crashed to $1.85 apiece on Sportsbet and $1.80 for Briggs vs $1.90 on Luxbet.

There is still the possibility that the NXT vote will surge in SA in the final week and lead to multiple seat wins and perhaps cause a hung parliament. The latest data point was a 26% vote share for Others in SA/NT in Ipsos, bearing in mind that NXT scores nothing in NT, so that probably puts him on high teens at least in South Australia without even being in the readout. Ipsos samples are small though.

NXT are not the only minor party that may be surging. Which brings me reluctantly to ...

I Was Part Wrong About Hanson

Recently I published an article making the case that the new Senate voting system does not advantage Pauline Hanson's One Nation. That article's fine and I stand by every word of it. If Hanson is elected to the Senate, it will very likely be because she has polled well enough on primaries that she would probably also have won under the old system, especially on ticket preferences from right-wing (and even left-wing) micro-parties.

What is not bearing up so well is my initial estimate that Hanson would struggle to poll a competitive primary, following her party's very weak performance at the 2013 election. I now think that the speculation about Hanson having a good chance at that early stage was right, but was right for the wrong reasons. Firstly, there is some polling evidence that Hanson may be doing very well indeed on primary votes. For instance (and it's not the sole example) the current Newspoll has One Nation on 11% in Herbert, which in 1998 polled the average One Nation vote for Queensland as a whole. Hanson could very well become Senator Hanson, not just because of the collapse of Palmer United, not just because of it being a double dissolution, and not at all because of the change of electoral system. There are other things going on here.

The 2016 election campaign has pitted a moderate, tolerant Liberal Prime Minister against a socially progressive urban ALP leader whose campaign pitch is rather left-wing. It's been a very upper/middle-class, technocratic, rationalised civilised election campaign with barely a dog-whistle heard. It's been a PM who is excited by innovation and prosperity vs an ALP leader with "100 positive policies". Old-style, irrational, populist protectionist right-wingers could relate to Tony Abbott, since he was one of them. But he got rolled, and there's really no major-party voice for those feeling "left behind" by it all, or who just feel that both leaders are too left, too politically-correct and not paranoid enough about Islam. It's the ideal vacuum for the Hansons and the Lambies to be filling - and as with Donald Trump, Hanson gets free votes because the media give her publicity. Every article about her chances in the Courier-Mail gives her still more appeal as a way to give major parties the finger. More One Nation seat polling data will be watched for with interest.

I will update this piece following Newspoll tomorrow night, if not before, and around mid-week I will update the seat betting picture.

19 June: AEU Seat Polls

There are reports of some Australian Education Union commissioned ReachTELs said to show Labor ahead 55-45 in Eden-Monaro, 52-48 in Page and trailing 49-51 in Lindsay. Neither Eden-Monaro nor Page have yet attracted a neutral seat-poll despite the interest in the former famous "litmus seat" (which is widely thought to be at risk of losing its status this election); the result in Lindsay is better than in the public seat polls. Presumably these results are based on respondent preferences and the primaries are yet to be seen. (Update: Yes - William Bowe relates that the Eden-Monaro result is blown out by an unlikely flow of respondent preferences.)

19 June: Recency Update

It being Sunday, the Ipsos poll taken from Tuesday to Thursday no longer qualifies for the special weighting for polls taken in the last four days, while the ReachTEL still does. This drives my aggregate to a very bullish 51.0 for Coalition. but the two most recent ReachTELs are between them carrying 43% of the aggregate's weight - because of the age, unreliability and in Morgan's case data inadequacies of the others. So we have to see if this figure survives Newspoll this evening. The heavy weightings for the final three weeks are designed to stop the aggregate from being dominated by old rope, but polling data at this stage is much sparser than in 2013, so maybe those weightings are too strong in this case. We'll see!

Through the election campaign my aggregate's seat projection and BludgerTrack have seldom differed by more than a seat but there is presently a six seat difference off a 2PP difference of only 0.6 points. This becomes seven seats considering that I am giving Mayo to NXT. This gave me a lot of pause for thought so I tried rerunning my model using the exact same seat weightings as BludgerTrack, the same 2PP and stripping out the seat polls. Even then there was still a three-seat difference. I looked at this by state and found the difference to be over a seat in NSW but no more than about half a seat in any other state. Only 75 Coalition seats off a 2PP of 50.4 is lower than I would expect. A possible cause is rounding by state (my aggregate just calculates a national total). It should be kept in mind that Bludger Track was stunningly accurate in its 2013 final seat projections.

19 June: Newspoll

It really is ReachTEL vs the rest now with Newspoll coming out at 50-50 off primaries of Coalition 41 Labor 36 Green 10 Other 13. I've aggregated that at 49.7 for the Coalition, bearing in mind that Newspoll has consistently seemed to lean Labor by several tenths of a point since Galaxy took over. That puts my aggregate back to 50.7 2PP.

Malcolm Turnbull records a new personal worst netsat of -15 (36-51), albeit only by a point. Paul Keating won with -25, but you really don't want to be carrying a PM with this sort of rating in a campaign, especially not when you have his face with your candidate on every second billboard. Bill Shorten records an almost identical -16 (35-51) and the better PM reading is a nondescript 46-31 to Turnbull (again, the standard lead given the 2PP).

The Xenophon Team chalks up 29% in South Australia and I will have to look carefully at their data across various pollsters over coming days to see whether it is now worth projecting them a second seat or even more. If they actually polled 29% all hell would break loose as they would probably win most of the state. However this is just one data point that would be from a small sample.

In seat poll news, Barnaby Joyce has a precarious 51-49 lead over Tony Windsor in a New England seat poll. This is off primaries of 48-36, but with most of the rest Labor and Greens preferences, Joyce doesn't want to fall short of a 50 primary by too much here; the implied 81% flow to Windsor is quite believable. I've been sceptical along that Windsor would actually win, but even that he is this competitive at this stage would be a worry, unless the Nationals have their own polling showing different.

Meanwhile, the Liberals are attracting lots of flak from people who wouldn't vote for them anyway for this apparently terrible ad. I'm not likely to be a guest on Gruen Transfer anytime soon, but does stuff like this really work? And, as a novel break from the endless candidate malfunctions at this election, Labor has suffered an ex-candidate malfunction just where it didn't need it, Cowan.

20 June: Kennedy

It would be interesting to see some seat polling of Kennedy, held by Bob Katter. Katter is at $1.01 at Sportsbet but he is 71, crazier than ever and almost lost last time. Today excerpts have been circulated of an eccentric 12-page document Katter sent to his constituents, and he also appears to have lost some influential supporters following the screening of an ad in which he shoots rival candidates.

20 June: Morgan Greens samples and Batman

There is more data on those Morgan Green samples up now. The sample size is apparently about 310 per electorate. On the published figures, the Greens would win Batman by a whisker (I get 50.5% two-candidate preferred) based on last-election preferences, but I'd take at least a few points off that for Morgan's usual skew, and then not pay too much notice anyway based on the sample size. They would also only just hold Melbourne (I get 51-49).

Thanks to Matt Lennon for noticing that the link also includes seat results for 20 seats, though some of the results are obviously silly. The problem with Morgan (aside from sample size and house effects) is that its SMS polling is a panel-poll and it is therefore extremely prone to local pool selection effects.

Meanwhile there is an internal poll fight between Labor and the Greens with the Greens claiming to be leading on primaries 41-28 in Batman (55-45 respondent allocated, which is an especially dubious method in such a seat) while Labor claim to be leading the primary count. Labor are also alleging push-polling (by which they probably mean skew-polling, but who knows since full details of neither the poll nor the accusations are available). It is alleged that the poll included negative claims about Feeney. Whether these claims were made before or after the voting intention and approval questions is the crucial test of whether or not skew-polling (at least) occurred, but this information isn't available.

21 June: Recency update

The ReachTEL and the Newspoll no longer qualify for special weighting, which means the Newspoll as the more recent is now weighted higher, so that brings us down to 50.4 to Coalition, and costs the Coalition two seats on the projection. It's still close, and it's still very loseable, and the Coalition have seemed rather jittery in the last 24 hours.

21 June: Adelaide

The seat of Adelaide has from time to time got some mentions as a Coalition target. There's a report of an ALP internal ReachTEL - but with a very small sample size of below 350 - said to show Kate Ellis trailing 49:51. The argument is that inner city voters are still responding positively to the replacement of Tony Abbott with Malcolm Turnbull. Anyway such a close margin in such a small sample can only show the seat is competitive.

21 June: Barker

Barker was on my radar early as a seat at possible risk to NXT. A CFMEU-sponsored ReachTEL has NXT ahead 52-48 on a large sample ReachTEL. Again, commissioned poll, but I would not be surprised if this seat is in play.

21 June: Menzies

Stephen Mayne is running a rather colourful campaign against Kevin Andrews, premised on Andrews being an Abbott man who is disloyal to Malcolm Turnbull and describing Andrews as a "1950s dinosaur and social extremist". It should be kept in mind that while all of this is absolutely true, the Abbott government's scrapped six-month dole-wait policy was an Abbott office brainchild (if anything involving brain is the right word) that was resisted by Andrews and Eric Abetz because it was too extreme and nasty even for them. Anyway a ReachTEL commissioned by the Mayne camp has Andrews on 51% and Mayne on 7.3%, which seems a rather large gap to bridge to get Mayne into a competitive position. Andrews' 2PP (presumably vs Labor) is not much affected.

22 June: Essential

Essential's result today was another 51-49 to Labor, but the Coalition's primary has slipped a point and the 2PP was probably close to rounding to 52-48. That makes this the first poll from anyone other than Morgan for six weeks to have Labor in a probably winning (rather than tossup) territory, and knocks another tenth of a point off my polling aggregate. The Coalition also sheds another seat there, but not to Labor, rather to NXT. Poll Bludger has reported an NXT aggregate reading of 24% and has access to more reliable state drilldown data than me. I think that some, at least, of the polls are overestimating NXT based on a general tendency to overestimate Others votes, but even putting it at, say, 21% it is hard to deny NXT a couple of seats. This is also consistent with what little neutral seat polling exists.

Essential however finds that perceptions of which groups would be better off under a Coalition government have generally moved in the Government's favour. They also find that voters only slightly more trust the Government to secure jobs than Labor, although jobs are a major part of the Coalition's re-election campaign. A 5% result for "Pauline Hanson" on this question suggests a lot of right-wingers in the Others category for this sample.

22 June: Melbourne Ports

Crikey today reported a Greens ReachTEL of Melbourne Ports with the Liberals on 44.7 (+3.7 compared to 2013), Labor incumbent Michael Danby on 23.7 (-8) and the Greens on 20.2 (level). It is not stated how undecided voters were treated. I greatly doubt that these results are accurate, but if they were, then the Liberals would probably win. A handy comparison is the state seat of Prahran in which the Liberals with 44.8% were beaten by a whisker by the Greens (24.8%) with a similar result had Labor (25.9%) managed to remain second.

22 June: More Morgan Wibble ... Stop It Now This Stuff Is Painful

Morgan has released some issues findings from Indi, Higgins, Mayo and Menzies. These are based on SMS samples of 308 voters across the 4 seats, so the individual samples are on average 77 voters per seat. If Morgan actually used random sampling it would be have a maximum margin of error of a mere 11% on these samples, but it's a panel pollster with dangerous undertones of opt-in, so it is probably not that good. The seat-by-seat results are useless but I will mention the Menzies one because they claim the candidates are roughly evenly split. Even Stephen Mayne's own polling - from a much bigger sample - had him trailing 51% to 7% as discussed above!

22 June: More Commissioned ReachTELs

Commissioned ReachTELs for the NSW Teachers Federation have Labor up 55-45 in Eden-Monaro, 54-46 in Macquarie, Page and Lindsay and 53-47 in Dobell and Gilmore. These are all based on respondent preferences, but only in Eden-Monaro and Page does the flow look unusually strong; in most cases the issue is that Labor are ahead on primaries. The Eden-Monaro poll has the same 2PP as the other commissioned poll of the seat and Macquarie and Page have not had neutral polls yet, but the figures are much better than the neutral polling of Lindsay, Dobell and Gilmore, and overall show a swing of 7% since the last election. The suggestion is a shift in voting intention in these seats following the ALP launch and Medicare attack, although the sponsor of course blames their pet issue, Gonski funding. Neutral evidence is required to back these results.

While I have praised ReachTEL's state and national performance above, I should point out that seat polls by anyone were pretty ropey in 2013. I am extra-wary of these results but we will find out soon enough if there is something startling going on!
Kevin Bonhamhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-66326463000009117832016-06-17T03:28:00.001+10:002016-06-23T15:12:42.122+10:00List of Senate How-To-Vote Card PreferencesIntroduction

This is a resource piece that will be updated as information comes to hand. It is simply a list of the Senate preference recommendations on party how-to-vote cards by state, with some comments as I feel inclined to add them. I will not be writing a similar piece for the House of Representatives. Note that the ABC Senate Guides also show HTV card scans for many parties (indeed a lot more than listed here) though at the time of writing they are missing some that I have.

Senate how-to-votes are of interest because in the new Senate system, voters decide their own preferences, but many will follow how-to-vote cards in so doing. Typically something like half of major party voters are likely to follow cards (more accurate assessments are probably available elsewhere in the psephosphere) but the card-follow rate among Greens voters is very low. Under the new Senate system it is possible voters will be more reliant on these cards than normal. Knowing who these cards preference may be important in projecting the outcome early in the post-count, as will high-quality scrutineering (but I doubt that there will be too much of that.)

Following a how-to-vote card and then stopping after six boxes weakens the power of your vote and I strongly recommend voting beyond six boxes if voting above the line. See How To Best Use Your Vote In The New Senate System.

The cards could prove quite significant in some states. Preference snowballing by micro-parties is unlikely to work well because it will be impossible to co-ordinate, but some of the larger micro-parties might be able to outpoll the leftover quota fraction for a major party and thereby gain a boost on their preferences. So for instance a micro-party polls 3% and a major party has 2% left over after several of its candidates have been elected. The major party preferences the micro-party, which gains another 1% because half its voters followed the card - this could be a massive help in a tight race.

However in most cases where a major party preferences a micro-party, the micro-party will be out the door in the cut-up before the major party's preferences are thrown, if indeed they are thrown at all. Or in other cases a major party may cross during the preference cut-up (with their preferences then worth very little) or may be elected to their last seat without making quota. So we shouldn't assume that these preferences will always flow. Yes Hinch has a nice setup in Victoria with preferences from both majors ahead of anyone else of much consequence, but whether those preferences actually get passed on remains to be seen.

Here I will be including only those parties whose cards I think may be significant in determining outcomes, except for Tasmania for which I will include any party. Obscure micro-parties have little success in directing preferences, partly because their ability to staff polling booths is poor and partly because their voters are independently and sometimes even tactically minded. Therefore I will tend not to include them, but you are very welcome to add them in comments. (Note as always that comments here are moderated to prevent vandalism by chess trolls and other lunatics, and hence may take some time to clear.)

As of the early hours of 17 June the Liberals, Nationals, Greens and NXT all had Senate preference cards online (generally searchable by postcode), as did many micro-parties, while Labor only had them on some state websites. Labor's tardiness in getting this information online when people are already voting is surprising.

As a general comment there was a fair amount of concern that parties might try to issue just-vote-1 how to vote cards, even though by doing so they surrendered bargaining power. It hasn't, so far, happened. On the other hand parties are often not encouraging their supporters to fill more than six ATL boxes, or even letting them know that they can do so. (A few cards, such as Family First and Australian Christians in Queensland, are radically recommending a seventh preference!) Also, the design of how-to-vote cards varies and it may be that some lend themselves more to the voter deciding to just vote 1 than others.

What follows is a work in progress and will be expanded as I have the time. Please help if you can fill in any blank marked (To be added). Parties may later decide to hand out how-to-votes different from those they are advertising. If you see one that doesn't match please photograph it and upload it and send me the link, or email it to me (firstname.lastname@example.com).

=======================================================================

Australian Capital Territory

Coalition (Liberal): 2 Christian Democrats, 3 Liberal Democrats, 4 Animal Justice, 5 Sustainable Australia, 6 Labor
Labor: (To be added)
Green: 2 Secular Party, 3 Sex Party, 4 Animal Justice, 5 Labor, 6 Sustainable Australia

New South Wales

Coalition: 2 Christian Democrats, 3 Shooters Fishers and Farmers, 4 Family First, 5 Liberal Democrats, 6 Motoring Enthusiasts
Labor: 2 Greens, 3 Renewable Energy, 4 Animal Justice, 5 Sex Party, 6 Liberal Democrats (!!)
Green: 2 Pirate Party, 3 Science Party, 4 Socialist Alliance, 5 Animal Justice, 6 Labor
Liberal Democrats: 2 Shooters, Fishers and Farmers, 3 HEMP, 4 Family First, 5 Australian Liberty Alliance, 6 Katters Australian Party
NXT: Open ticket, asks voters to number at least 6 squares

Northern Territory

Note: the small list of parties in the NT Senate race makes for some seemingly odd preference decisions.

Coalition (CLP): 2 Christian Democrats, 3 Labor, 4 HEMP/Sex, 5 Greens, 6 Rise Up Australia
Labor: (To be added)
Green: 2 Labor, 3 HEMP, 4 CLP, 5 Citizens Electoral Council, 6 Christian Democrats

Queensland

Coalition (LNP): 2 Family First, 3 Christian Democrats, 4 Shooters Fishers and Farmers, 5 Katter's Australian Party, 6 Australian Christians
Labor: 2 Greens 3 Sex/HEMP 4 JLN 5 Glenn Lazarus Team, 6 Katters Australian Party (This has been re-ordered and a card with Renewable Energy at 3 has also been reported in comments)
Green: 2 Renewable Energy, 3 Marriage Equality, 4 Arts Party, 5 Labor, 6 Australian Cyclists (GLT were fourth but have been dropped)
One Nation: 2 Australian Liberty Alliance, 3 Rise Up Australia, 4 Shooters, Fishers and Farmers, 5 Family First, 6 Katters Australian Party
Glenn Lazarus Team: 2 Katters Australian Party 3 Family First 4 Greens 5 Labor 6 Liberal
Katters Australian Party: 2 Lazarus 3 Shooters, Fishers and Farmers, 4 Australian Liberty Alliance, 5 Family First, 6 One Nation (Aus Christians initially at 3 but dropped)
NXT: Open ticket, asks voters to number at least 6 squares

Note that many parties in Queensland (including the LDP who are not listed above) have changed their preference order during the campaign - see comment by Brisbanelattesipper below this article.

South Australia

Curiously, after Bob Day railed against the potential of the new Senate system to cause votes to exhaust, he has issued a how-to-vote card that preferences only parties that will be excluded before him, so in the event that he loses, his HTV card preferences will exhaust.

Coalition: 2 Family First, 3 Liberal Democrats, 4 Christian Democrats, 5 Motoring Enthusiasts, 6 Shooters, Fishers and Farmers
NXT: Open ticket, asks voters to number at least 6 squares
Labor: 2 Greens, 3 Animal Justice, 4 Marriage Equality, 5 NXT, 6 Motoring Enthusiasts
Green: 2 Animal Justice, 3 Australian Cyclists, 4 Marriage Equality, 5 Arts Party, 6 Labor
Family First: 2 Christian Democrats, 3 Australian Liberty Alliance, 4 Shooters, Fishers and Farmers, 5 One Nation, 6 Liberal Democrats

Tasmania

NOTE: I suggest that Tasmanian Liberal voters decide their own preferences rather than following the card, since the Family First candidates are very strange anti-gay extremists. For more see my Tasmanian Senate piece.

Coalition (Liberal): 2 Christian Democrats, 3 Shooters, Fishers and Farmers, 4 Liberal Democrats, 5 Family First, 6 Labor (!)
Labor: 2 Greens 3 Jacqui Lambie Network 4 Recreational Fishers 5 Sex/HEMP 6 Renewable Energy
Green: 2 Renewable Energy, 3 Recreational Fishers, 4 Labor, 5 Science Party, 6 Arts Party
Lambie Network: No HTV card seen but website recommends "2-6 as you please and due to the Liberals' betrayal put them last". (There is no mention that you need to number more than 6 squares to do this.)
NXT: 2 Lambie Network, rest open, asks voters to number at least 6 squares
Rec Fishers: 2 Renewable Energy 3 Green 4 Shooters, Fishers and Farmers 5 Sex Party 6 Lambie Network

Victoria

Coalition: 2 Family First, 3 Australian Christians, 4 Democratic Labour, 5 Australian Country Party, 6 Derryn Hinch Justice Party
NXT: Open ticket, asks voters to number at least 6 squares
Labor: 2 Sex Party, 3 Derryn Hinch, 4 Renewable Energy, 5 Greens, 6 Cyclists/Science
Green: 2 Marriage Equality, 3 Science/Cyclists, 4 Animal Justice, 5 Arts Party, 6 Labor
Derryn Hinch Justice Party: Open ticket, says "vote 2-6 for your own preferences"

Western Australia

Liberal: 2 Nationals, 3 Aus Christians, 4 Shooters, Fishers and Farmers, 5 Liberal Democrats, 6 Family First
Nationals: 2 Liberal, 3 Shooters, Fishers and Farmers, 4 NXT, 5 Labor, 6 Australian Christians
Labor: 2 Greens, 3 HEMP/Sex, 4 Derryn Hinch Justice Party, 5 Shooters, Fishers and Farmers 6 Nationals
Green: 2 Renewable Energy, 3 Aus Cyclists, 4 Animal Justice, 5 HEMP, 6 Labor
NXT: Open ticket, asks voters to number at least 6 squares
Palmer United: (To be added)Kevin Bonhamhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-2962849161977038012016-06-16T12:14:00.003+10:002016-06-19T01:34:17.374+10:00Poll Roundup and Seat Betting Watch: National Poll Drought Edition2PP: 50.3 to Coalition (same as end of last week, +0.5 in two weeks)
Coalition would probably win election if everyone voted now, probably with small majority (seat projection 78-67-5)

The 2016 federal election is underway! Prepoll voting has already started and we're just sixteen days away from the main game. And yet, courtesy of a long weekend and perhaps media disinterest in splashing out on polls this time around, the evidence of what is going on in nationwide voting intentions is very limited indeed. (We do have evidence of who is paying attention though. Check out Morgan's very believable list of the most and least engaged electorates.)

For all that trendy stuff about how we're being swamped with polls, as I write we have just one national sample that is entirely less than one week old, and that will stop being true some time tonight. Unless the overdue Morgan finally appears (which apparently it will sometime), we may be left with the infamously trend-averse Essential as the only poll with any data less than one week old until ReachTEL and Ipsos come along on Friday night. The non-appearance of Newspoll this week makes this the first time since 1990 that the Newspoll brand has gone this late into a campaign before switching to weekly polling.

So if federal voting intention has changed significantly in the last week, we may well not even know. It doesn't seem like it has based on seat poll results and murmers from party insiders, but it's hard to tell which of these sources of knowledge is least reliable.

Polls ... you don't know what you've got til its gone! (I dislike that song, by the way.)

National polls ... blink and you'll miss 'em.

In the last week we had a ReachTEL which came out at 50:50 by respondent preferences, but which was in fact a strong result for the Coalition based on the primaries (I get 51.8 by last election preferences, though you can knock a few tenths off for Xenophon if you want). We also had an Essential two-week sample which was 51:49 to Labor. I aggregated the ReachTEL at 51.8 for Coalition and the Essential at 49.1. The heavy weighting on the ReachTEL caused by my special rules for the last three weeks at one stage pushed my aggregate out to 50.7 but this has since come back to 50.3. Here's the smoothed tracking graph, not that there has been anything much to smooth lately:

The half a point movement means less than it otherwise would given how few polls are in the mix at the moment. This weekend's polls will give a much better idea. For all that we saw with the bursting of the Turnbull bubble, it remains the case that at no point under his Prime Ministership so far has the Coalition quite lost its projected majority, in comparison with the Abbott prime ministership under which Labor would have won an election at any time from April 2014 on.

Labor's best hopes are either that something big damages the government in the final weeks (some are hoping the Parakeelia business might be it, though it really seems a bit obscure and too easy to muddy the waters by claiming Labor are equally guilty) or that the polls (not just the national polls, but also the seat polls, and the internal polls) are wrong. They would look more competitive if someone tracked polls using only respondent preferences, but even that would probably not quite have them in a winning position.

I strongly agree with Peter Brent that Labor's campaign is actually pitched a lot further left than it needs to be, and that really the only reason they are not further behind is that the government's campaign has had a lot of potholes too. It's as if Labor actually believe all those terrible Australia Institute polls purporting to show "the hitherto repressed progressive voter inside every Australian".

It's notable that the BludgerTrack aggregate gives the Coalition only 76 seats off a 2PP of 50.5%, which is based on adverse state samples in Queensland and WA. My seat model has a lighter weighting for state polling and hence a higher Coalition seat tally off a slightly lower 2PP.

(Edit: The missing Morgan is 51:49 to Labor, presumably by respondent preferences, but primaries have not yet been published. I've aggregated it at half-value, which knocked another 0.1 off the Coalition, pending the full results)

Leaderships

Essential had new leader ratings with Malcolm Turnbull flipping back to a net -2 (38-40), and Bill Shorten up to -6 (34-40), which I think is his best from them since March 2015. The Turnbull-Shorten better PM gap closed again to 11 points (40-29) but this was in the context of a possibly ALP-friendly sample. For summaries of the rest of Essential's polling see Adrian Beaumont or Poll Bludger (or just go to their website).

ReachTEL have published their ratings for the last two weeks now and there is not much to see there except that last week had a substantial dip for Malcolm Turnbull, which this week's sample more or less reversed.

Preferencing

As usual we see the sad spectacle of some parties preferencing someone who is either repulsive to their supporters, or just repulsive full-stop, on House of Reps How-to-vote cards. However whether the Greens foolishly and insultingly preference a gay Liberal behind the Christian Democrats has no actual impact on the election since the CDP will not win any Reps seats.

The big preferencing stories are that:

* The Liberals are preferencing Labor ahead of the Greens everywhere
* The Greens are preferencing Labor ahead of the Liberals in 139 of 150 seats (Hotham is apparently one of the exceptions, I don't have a full list yet)
* In South Australia, Labor, Liberal and Nick Xenophon Team are issuing open or alternate tickets with regard to each other. So voters will make their own decisions - I suspect it's still highly likely voters for both majors will lean heavily towards NXT over the other major. Not getting Labor card preferences will blunt the Sharkie attack in Mayo somewhat, but possibly not very much.

In SA the Greens are preferencing Labor ahead of NXT, but relatively few Greens voters follow cards anyway. Perhaps even fewer would do so if they knew that such a vote could in some seats help the Liberals to beat NXT and thereby elect a Liberal Government. The reason for this is that to win Liberal seats NXT has to make the last two, and they won't do this if Greens preferences push Labor ahead of them.

As concerns the Liberals' decision to preference Labor, by leaving the decision as late in the campaign as possible the Liberals have caused Labor to devote effort to shoring up Labor-vs-Green seats. However for the cost of letting Labor off that hook for the last three weeks, the Liberals get a decision that dovetails neatly with their (objectively unconvincing) claim that the election is a choice between a Liberal majority and a mess.

The matter of Senate preferencing is very interesting and I hope I can find time for a separate article about that, or else link to someone else's.

Finally, for free entertainment, check out this stuff from Warringah (a seat where Labor has never exceeded 41% two-party preferred).

Seat Polls

This week's ReachTEL seat poll featured the seat of Grey (Lib 13.5%) and had a stunning 32.7% NXT vote after allocating the undecided, based on which NXT would win 54:46. This even though the poll's ratings for the local member Rowan Ramsey were strong (a +21.5 net rating). This was a highly amusing result for me because my modelling attempt for NXT had Grey as, all else being equal, the last seat in SA where NXT might stake its claim. The size of the electorate would probably make it hard for a new party to cover, and might also make it a very hard seat to poll, so it's possible the result is just plain wrong. But if it is anywhere near correct then there is no seat in SA is completely safe from the third-party uprising.

A reason to wonder about the Grey poll sample is the implied 2PP Labor-vs-Liberal result. It can be calculated from the 2PP figures supplied (and it is fantastic that these figures were included even though Labor aren't in play in Grey) that Labor would obtain a 10.3% 2PP swing. This seems hard to believe, unless NXT is acting as some kind of "gateway drug" for ex-Liberal voters to preference Labor (a thing I doubt would ever happen on that scale).

The Grey poll had "creating jobs" at the top of the usual ReachTEL issue list, the first poll I have seen anywhere with that result.

The Fairfax presses had a bunch of ReachTELs with the Coalition leading in Deakin 52:48, Lindsay 54:46, Corangamite 51:49, Bonner 56:44, tied in Cowan and trailing in Dobell 49:51. The low average swing (about 1%) was taken as evidence of a gross disparity between the national polls and the situation in individual seats, but with the national swing at barely over 3%, most of the difference could actually be explained by four of these six seats being "double sophomore" seats. That Labor is struggling to convert 50-50ish 2PPs into an even share of seats is not news; it is rather business as normal given the result of the last election. (Alas, primary results for these polls seem not to have surfaced yet.)

That said these results still look a touch on the disappointing side for Labor, but not so you'd read much into it when seat polls were so systematically skewed in 2013. This election there is much less evidence of discrepancies between seat polls and the local polls.

Sketchy details of a Mayo poll in the same batch had Jamie Briggs on only 37.6 to Rebekha Sharkie (NXT) 24.4% with Labor on 19.5 and the Greens 10.4. On such figures Sharkie would need less than 70% of preferences and would most likely win, the second recent Mayo ReachTEL with this result.

Commissioned Polls

The following should be treated with scepticism since the forces commissioning them stand to benefit from the result that is released. Had the polls been bad, they would just have been mothballed.

Rob Oakeshott made a very last-minute and much ridiculed announcement that he was going to have a go at roughing up the Nats in Cowper (13.2%). Cowper has been National-held for almost a century except for a single Labor term in 1961-3 after the incumbent, ex-stopgap-PM Sir Earle Page, declined to retire despite being 81 years old and terminally ill. There was much scepticism (mainly founded in views of Oakeshott's waffly speeches) towards a GetUp! ReachTEL that had (after undecided) the Nats Luke Hartsuyker on 42.6%, Oakeshott 25.6, Labor 14, Green 8.4, Christian Democrats 3.7. Hartsuyker would only need 23% of preferences on those figures, but there would be real doubt that he would get them.

GetUp! also had a ReachTEL of Dawson (LNP, 7.6%, held by wannabe turtle-saviour George Christensen who is for some strange reason much disliked by the left) with a respondent-allocated 50-50 2PP. Poll Bludger calculates the 2PP as a much less remarkable 53:47 to Christensen by last-election preferences (which are quite rubbery given the 10% Palmer United vote in 2013, but still probably better than the

The Greens released a Lonergan poll - effectively one of their internals, since the Greens often use Lonergan for polling - which purported to show them trailing but competitive in their major target Liberal seat of Higgins (Lib, 9.9% vs ALP). The timing of this release looked like an attempt to shore up morale in the wake of the adverse Liberal preferencing announcement. (Green strategy frequently considers supporter morale more important than actually getting a good result). The 47-53 result would if real suggest a 7% "swing" from the Liberal-Labor 2PP, which seems on the high side, but it's plausible these kinds of inner-city targeted Greens campaigns might be more effective at peeling off Liberal primaries than ALP campaigning in a relatively safe 2PP seat. Part of Higgins overlaps the Victorian state seat of Prahran, which the Greens knocked off with a "swing" of 5.4%.

Lonergan's limited public polling was terrible in 2013 (though not that bad in the NSW state election) and the Greens have a history of releasing polls that usually have their vote higher than they actually get. I think it's possible the Greens will get about this close in this seat but actually knocking it off is much much harder than the Prahran win. Meanwhile the loopiness of the dumb Australian twitter left was such that many of them declared Kelly O'Dwyer to be toast on the basis of a cherrypicked-for-release seat poll that still showed her winning.

One would expect the Greens are sitting on any number of seat polls that are much less flattering that they haven't released. When it comes to seat polls released by parties, the gleaming object that you see in public view is just the tip of a large and very dirty iceberg.

Seat Betting

Once again, the point of this section is to test the theory that markets provide accurate information, and not to make claims that they do.

The most important thing in this week's betting is the headline rate - despite the scarcity of new national polling evidence, Labor has drifted to implied chances of about 18%. This is actually in line with my historical poll-based model, which based on the slight aggregate shift in the last week is now giving Labor chances of only either 21% (simple version) or 16% (party-based version). However my model will increase Labor's chances sharply should the new polls this weekend put it back above 50-50.

At present these are the seats considered on the various markets (now using Sportsbet, Crownbet and Luxbet) to be changing hands or else reasonably close. If a seat is tied on one market I use the others. In cases of conflict I call it a tie. If a seat is close on any market (usually both parties $3 or closer) I class it as a close seat.

Loss (Coalition to Labor): Barton*, Paterson*, Petrie
Close Loss (Coalition to Labor): Solomon, Dobell*, Page, Eden-Monaro Macarthur,  Capricornia, Burt, Hasluck, Cowan
Loss (PUP to Coalition): Fairfax

ALP Close Holds: (none)
Coalition Close Holds: Banks, Gilmore, Robertson, Macquarie, Brisbane, Forde, Hindmarsh, Mayo (vs NXT), Lyons, Braddon, Deakin, Dunkley, La Trobe, Swan

In the past week only Hindmarsh has flipped (and the ALP-Greens contest in Batman because the Liberals are preferencing Labor). However the important change is that a large number of seats formerly on death-watch are drifting and there is no longer the massive imbalance in the number of narrowly expected wins. As a result on my close-seat-adjusted measure the Coalition is in its best position on the markets since the polls closed up:

There is still a strange discordance between the Sportsbet 2PP market (which has the Coalition headed for 51.6%) and the remaining markets. That 2PP would be likely to produce about 84 Coalition winners (disregarding any losses to the crossbench), but no other type of market backs this. A similar Luxbet market also has a strong 2PP, projecting about 51.2%. The William Hill banded market points to 78 Coalition seats, as does their exact seat market. The Sportsbet exact winning margin market points to 79-80 Coalition seats.

Sportsbet now expects all of Jacqui Lambie ($1.25), Pauline Hanson ($1.45) and Derryn Hinch ($1.85) to be elected to the Senate. Luxbet has Lambie at $1.12, with Lazarus at $2.50 and Bob Day at $2.70. Ladbrokes however thinks Lazarus is more likely to win than Hanson. In Hinch's case this has all been bolstered by a dream ballot draw and a flow of how-to-vote card preferences from the major parties. There's a need to look closely at where the major parties are likely to land in Victoria to see how likely (or not) this is to actually help him, but I haven't had time to try to model that yet, and probably won't have time for detailed modelling for Senate races other than Tasmania.

For the coming weekend's national polls I'm considering doing a rolling poll roundup from tomorrow night, and then a separate article with seat betting and my current seat model outputs later next week. Everything is subject to time and the demands of the four contracts I am working on around all this!

Morgan SA and Greens Update (16 June): Morgan has released aggregated figures for some seats where NXT is doing well, and aggregated NXT figures for all SA seats, based on polling from April until now. The sample sizes for individual seats are probably tiny. NXT averages 21.5%, 3.4% below its 2013 Senate result, and a level at which my NXT model was expecting them to get about three seats. Based on the Morgan breakdowns, NXT would win Mayo easily, might win Barker depending on exclusion order, would probably miss Sturt as they would need both exclusion order and preference flow to go their way, and would lose Grey (contra to the headline) and Kingston because they wouldn't get out of third. That said the Labor primary in Grey looks too high, so we may say Grey is in play. Maybe! The pollster attributes the Grey result to the plight of the Whyalla Arrium steelworks, which is the kind of thing my last-election NXT model is blind to.

Generally Morgan has had higher third-party votes than all other pollsters and this may well mean the 21.5% is an overestimate. Then again, since NXT apparently picked up steam in polling through May and the survey window goes back to April, maybe not by much. Even if I take, say, a couple of points off the NXT vote in these samples to account for this, they still win Mayo, but are removed from contention in the others.

Morgan has also released details of another SA seat, Makin, in its State of the Nation document. (LARGE PDF DOWNLOAD) On the results as given (ALP 30 Lib 25 NXT 22 Grn 12.5 Other 10.5) NXT would need to overtake the Liberals to win on Others preferences and also those of such Greens as did not follow the party card. That's not implausible, but the same comments about Morgan possibly having NXT a touch high apply here too. And, again, the individual seat sample sizes are probably more or less useless.

The same document contains a breakdown of NXT support by state, with the SA figure this time given as 20.5% and all others between 2% and 3.5% (in some of these states, like Tasmania, NXT aren't even running.) This is followed by some 2PP breakdowns which I'd assume are the overall 2PPs for those states, though they might be the preferences of the NXT supporters.

There is also some detail on Morgan's polling of the Green vote. Top Greens seats are given as Batman 42% Melbourne 41.5% Wills 33 Grayndler 30 Richmond 29 Gellibrand 27.5 Sydney 27. On such numbers the Greens might well win Batman even without Liberal preferences, but Morgan rampantly overestimates the Green vote so that should be ignored until it is reproduced by an accurate pollster. Indeed the implication of this sample on that basis is actually that the Greens would not win a single seat, but for Melbourne that conclusion seems unlikely to be true.Kevin Bonhamhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-34370671763352327082016-06-14T09:18:00.001+10:002016-06-25T13:39:08.979+10:00Tasmania Senate 2016: Prospects and GuideTasmania's list of Senate candidates has been released. The state has 58 candidates, including 21 party groups and five ungrouped candidates (two of whom are running for parties). This compares with 54 candidates in 23 party groups (plus one ungrouped) in 2013. The new Senate system should have the impact over time of discouraging so many micro-parties from wasting their deposits and cluttering up the ballot paper, but because it's the first time and it's a double dissolution, a lot of them have decided to try their luck anyway. (There's a scurrilous theory that some of them are part of an organised flood of the ballot.)

This piece gives some basic information and views about the parties and lead candidates, and some general background to the contest. The party candidate section, in places, represents my own opinions of the candidates and parties. There are a few obnoxious candidates on the Tasmanian ballot and I have no hesitation in warning voters about these people. There are also some parties that may not be what they seem.

For advice about how to best use the Senate system to vote see How To Best Use Your Vote In The New Senate System.

Background

Tasmania currently has five Labor, four Liberal and two Green Senators, plus Jacqui Lambie. Lambie was elected as a candidate for the Palmer United Party but left it and has formed her own party.

A graphical history of changes in the state's Senate makeup can be seen at The Tally Room. When the Senate was expanded in 1984 the breakdown was 5 Liberal 5 Labor 1 Democrat 1 IND (Harradine). In 1996 the Greens won the Democrats' seat. In 2001 Shayne Murphy defected from Labor to sit as an Independent. In 2004 Harradine retired and Murphy lost, and the Greens and Liberals each gained a seat, making the balance 6-4-2 to Liberal. In both 2007 and 2010 Labor won a seat from the Coalition, and finally in 2013 Jacqui Lambie won a seat and Labor lost one.

Had the most recent elections been run as double-dissolutions under the new system, results could have been:

2001 and 2007: 5 Liberal, 5 Labor, 2 Green
2004: 6 Liberal, 4 Labor, 2 Green
2010: 4 Liberal, 5 Labor, 3 Green
2013: 5 Liberal, 4 Labor, 2 Green and Lambie

The 2016 preselections for both major parties have been extremely controversial. The Labor preselection, conducted by a mix of rank-and-file and union balloting using a less than ideal election-order system, dumped high-profile sitting Senator Lisa Singh to the bottom of the ticket, while retaining the controversial Helen Polley in second place. See Singh Dumped To Fourth On Senate Ticket (for a DD it became sixth.)

The Liberals attracted criticism for attracting no female candidates and for selecting a very conservative pro-Abbott ticket. Past ticket-topper and current minister Richard Colbeck, perceived to have supported Malcolm Turnbull in the leadership ballot, was demoted to the unsafe but winnable fifth position. This was widely seen as payback for his issue positions (like supporting a conscience vote on same-sex marriage) and perceived support for Turnbull. See Colbeck Demoted to Fifth.

I also covered the Greens' secretive but less controversial preselection process.

Prospects

A disclaimer first that Senate projection is a mug's game, though under the new system it should have become somewhat easier. Expect the unexpected! The 2013 votes as converted to double-dissolution quotas make a good starting place for trying to work out what should happen here:

Liberal 37.5% (4.88 DD quotas)
ALP 32.8 (4.27)
Green 11.7 (1.52)
PUP 6.58 (0.86)
Liberal Democrats 2.32 (0.30)
Sex Party 1.45 (0.19)
Family First 1.31 (0.17)
Shooters + Fishers 1.11 (0.14)
All other parties combined 5.2% (0.68)

One quota is 7.69%, two is 15.38, three is 23.08, four is 30.77, five is 38.46. The final one or two candidates will probably be elected with somewhat less than a quota because of exhaust.

Lower house polling until the final week of the campaign mostly suggested there is not much swing in Tasmania. At times suggested a swing against the Coalition similar to the national swing, and at times it has suggested that there is very little swing at all, or perhaps even a swing to the incumbents. However, polling in the final week (see here) suggested a primary swing of about four points against the Coalition in most seats, except for Denison for which the results may not be reliable. Still, the House of Representatives primary vote swing against the Liberals is likely to be modest.

On that basis four Liberal, four Labor and one Green seat appear extremely likely. The Greens' vote should increase at least slightly, but even if it stays the same they should still win two seats, especially with a flow of preferences from left-wing micro-party candidates. On the other hand it is not easy to see them picking up the seven or so points they would need to be seriously in the mix for a third seat.

The PUP vote will collapse, probably to 1% or less. The Jacqui Lambie vote is hard to predict. ReachTEL polling showed it at about 5% statewide, but that poll was not clear about whether the respondent was voting for the Reps or the Senate, and it could well have understated her vote. Far higher levels are sometimes rumoured from internal polling, but with no clear evidence available. The Lambie campaign appears modest in on-ground presence and has struggled to attract donations. However her profile is extremely high and her mix of political positions distinctive. Tasmania has a history of returning state-based independents, though Lambie is quite a different type of independent to Brian Harradine, and far more controversy-prone. I don't think we can be too certain Lambie will be returned given the lack of firm polling evidence, but for the same reason we shouldn't rule out a second seat for her ticket. The most expected outcome has been just Lambie herself winning.

Assuming that the major parties win four each, the Greens two and Lambie only one, the final seat looks likely to be between the Coalition, Labor and perhaps the second Lambie candidate, Steve Martin, but a micro-party win is also possible. A difficulty for Labor is that the Greens would seem to be a useful preference source, but should be either short of a second quota or not far over it. On the other hand the Coalition will receive preferences from numerous right-wing micro-parties. For this reason Labor will probably need a substantial primary vote lead on the Coalition, which seems unlikely. But maybe not! (See Lisa Singh section)

Of the micros, the Liberal Democrats only did so well on primaries last time because of a good ballot draw and name confusion. The Liberals have drawn better this time so that is very unlikely to happen again. The Sex and HEMP parties polled over 2% combined last time, so maybe their joint ticket could build enough vote share to be an outside chance. However they will struggle on BTL preferences because their lead candidate is from interstate. Family First have the cherished first column, and we don't know yet what this is worth in the first run of a new system, but they'd need to lift a long way on last time to be a threat. The Recreational Fishers Party and Christian Democrats both polled strongly in the current House of Reps ReachTEL (averaging 5% and 3.3% respectively) but these figures may well be inflated and their vote shares would probably be reduced by greater competition in the Senate anyway.

The Shooters, Fishers and Farmers have polled 2% in the past but there are a lot more parties nowadays. I wouldn't entirely write off NXT's chances based on the possibility that Wilkie supporters could vote for them in some numbers. Really it's difficult to see anyone other than Liberals, Labor, Greens and Lambie Network getting up in Tasmania, but we do have a new electoral system and a number of untested parties, and so minor party surprises cannot be ruled out. Of the new micro parties I have seen the most campaign action so far from the Recreational Fishers, NXT, the Science Party and (in their own wacky tacky way) Family First.

A possible scenario is that the quotas for the obvious parties fall such that no-one has much left over - they all get their seats with not much excess, with close to two quotas (15%) scattered between the various micros, one of which then wins. A plausible scenario is around 4.3 quotas for the Liberals, no higher for Labor, 1.2 quotas for Lambie Network and 1.6 quotas for the Greens. The Liberals and Labor win four each, the second Green wins while being short of quota, and one of the micro-parties might outlast everyone else from a vote of 3% or so. This would require a lot of luck (since preference flows will probably go to better-known candidates) and there is also a chance that below the line voting for Singh and Colbeck would derail it by keeping individual major party candidates above the micro-parties.

The Singh Factor

The dumping of Lisa Singh to a normally "unwinnable" position creates an interesting test for whether voters want to make use of the ease of voting below the line in order to save her. Singh has form in this regard. In the 2010 Senate election Singh was in the dicey third position and 2.76% of Tasmanian voters voted below the line for her (at that election only 24 boxes were required.)

At this election, the choice is between numbering six boxes above the line or twelve below. Singh is campaigning very actively, with many signs and brochures. If she can get a few percent of the vote below the line in her own right then this opens up chances for her.

One scenario is that the Labor vote stays about the same as last time. If Singh could poll about 4% in her own right she then might be able to pass Catryna Bilyk on preferences and win the fourth ALP seat.

Another is that the Labor vote increases to, say, 4.6 quotas. Then Singh might beat John Short for the fifth Labor seat, conceivably from a primary vote as low as 2%. If Labor poll towards 5 quotas then it gets more difficult, but still not impossible.

If the Liberals perform poorly and Singh polls spectacularly well, there is also a scenario in which Labor wins 5 to the Liberals' 4 (despite starting behind) because the fifth Liberal (Colbeck) is caught behind the individual preference tallies of both Singh and Bilyk. This sort of thing is seen in Hare-Clark sometimes. This might conceivably also be a risk to Nick McKim, but only if the Green vote doesn't really increase at all.

So who knows? It's challenging, but it's plausible that Singh could be returned if the will to do so is there. If it would happen anywhere, Tasmania would be the place. (Serious intra-party contests sometimes happened in Tasmania in the pre-1984 system, which was purely "below the line" with full preferencing).

The challenge for Singh is getting her message out without drawing the ire of the party. A double-sided A4 leaflet for Singh asks voters to re-elect her, but the only hint on how to do so appears in a quiz about the new system! However, a "Re-elect Lisa" group headed by Hobart barrister Tony Jacobs has been actively trying to rescue Singh for several months, and is now actively letterboxing.

There is also some impetus for a below-the-line campaign for Richard Colbeck on the Liberal side (including a Facebook page), but it is less prominent so far than the Singh campaign. If the Liberals look like they will only win four then it will be worth looking at Colbeck's below the line vote to see if he has any chance of remaining. If they win five he will be re-elected anyway.

Interlopers from interstate

A number of candidates run in Tasmania who are actually not from the state (although sometimes such candidates may move here briefly in the leadup to the election). Examples are listed in the parties and candidates section where they are the lead candidate.

The Constitution allows candidates to run in any electorate or state, but the cluttering of ballot papers with non-locals is irritating to Tasmanian voters and a potential waste of electoral resources. I support introducing a requirement for candidates to be nominated by a minimum number of local nominators to ensure their candidacies are supported by residents of the state they're running in. (This would also knock out quite a lot of pointless micro-party runs.)

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Parties and candidates: a subjective guide

Here is my guide to the parties running for this Senate election. Mostly I include background on the lead candidate or competitive candidates only. Parties are listed in ballot order. Where opinions are offered, they are obviously purely mine, and if you don't like them feel free to go and write your own somewhere else, or contest them in comments. It's a bit rough around the edges in order to get it out in time for the start of voting, I may add more links later, but I will not add or change any material on request except to correct clear factual errors.

Family First:  Don't be fooled by their image as the slightly cuddlier side of evangelical politics, nor by Bob Day's image as a shrewd operator. Family First's two Tasmanian Senate candidates are both strange anti-gay extremists and I encourage all Tasmanian voters to put this party last or at least behind anyone with a ghost of a chance.* Lead candidate Peter Madden was almost elected by preference snowball in 2013, when I wrote this piece on him. He's been at it again with his tacky anti-gay trailer and predictably insensitive tweeting following the appalling Orlando massacre (he has since apologised, sort-of, and said he would attend a vigil for the victims, though I'm unsure he will be entirely welcome there). Since the last election, he started a blog and got as far as this one bizarre post. As the article explains, Madden is a person who would deserve much sympathy if only he did not take his past sad life experiences out on a group of people who had nothing to do with them, and nothing, especially not religious belief, excuses this.

Second FF candidate Andrew Roberts also has a rich vein of form, having 38,000 fliers intercepted at a previous election and being behind some highly odd websites which have thankfully disappeared (here's an archive of one of his efforts).

(*Those who insist on putting Eric Abetz last instead may do so safely - it will make no difference since Abetz will be elected on primaries.)

Australian Labor Party: Tasmanian ALP Senators, with the exception of Singh, are mostly low-profile, or if seen in the news are often seen for the wrong reasons (such as Senator Helen Polley, who has received adverse publicity for investigations of her workplace's culture, flying between Hobart and Launceston, and opposing same-sex marriage among other Shoppie-style social-issue positions). The only new name on the ticket is John Short in the winnable but difficult fifth position, and if the others haven't done enough to make themselves known to you over many years then I am not about to help them out.

The Greens: The Green ticket contains sitting Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, recently-appointed Senator and former party leader Nick McKim, and one of Hobart's four (!) Green councillors, Anna Reynolds, who was revealed as in line for the distantly winnable third position a ridiculously long time after the preselection was actually finished.

Christian Democrats: I have managed to write the party name without including "so-called" my usual twice, but this is the more orthodox style of fundamentalist bible-thumping politics. Lead candidate is a ring-in, Fred Nile's wife Silvana Nero-Nile, whose enthusiasm for doing the Lord's work in the state may have something to do with missing preselection in NSW. Second candidate Mishka Gora is a past Democratic Labour Party candidate. (The DLP are running one Reps candidate in Tasmania but none for Senate.)

Nick Xenophon Team: Lead candidate for this centrist/populist/SA-centred rising new party is Michelle Hoult, who has a Navy, education and small business background and has campaigned quite actively (some on Twitter have said too actively!) online. Signs of an old-fashioned NXT groundgame are elusive at this stage but will be interesting to see how they go.

Liberals:  Enough said about the grip that the hard Abetzian right continues to hold on the preselection process despite the head-of-ticket continuing to beat a drum for Tony Abbott long after Abbott was rolled. (He seems to have gone quiet on that for the campaign though) The Liberal ticket is renewed in age with the preselection of young staffer Jonathan Duniam to the ultra-safe third position, but this might not mean much in terms of its politics. Re Richard Colbeck, see background section. (The height of radicalism on social policy in the Tasmanian Liberal Senate team is to support a conscience vote on same-sex marriage while still being opposed to it.)

Note: If voting 1 Liberal above the line, please choose your own parties to preference and do not follow the How-To-Vote card. The card unfortunately preferences Family First (see above).

Palmer United Party: I'm unsure why the remnants of Australia's fastest-destructing vanity party bother, but lead candidate Kevin Morgan was the party's candidate for Braddon in the Reps in 2013 and again in the state election, getting about halfway there in the latter before being cut out. Morgan didn't have much that was original to say for himself when he ran for LegCo in 2013.

Sex Party/HEMP Party: Another ring-in; the lead candidate for the "joint ticket" (pun intended) is Dr Francesca Collins, a Victorian-based behavioural scientist and university teacher who has run for the Sex Party in Victoria in the past. This is the second election in a row the Sex Party has been unable or declined to find a Tasmanian lead candidate. The Sex Party is broadly left-libertarian and secularist. The HEMP Party primarily supports removing legal barriers to medicinal, recreational and industrial use of marijuana.

Pauline Hanson's One Nation: The lead candidate for the original of a slew of xenophobic nationalist parties, Kate McCulloch, scored 3% for the party in Macarthur (NSW) in 2010 after being hailed (or derided?) as "the next Pauline Hanson". (The first one is somehow not finished with us yet). McCulloch is based in New Norfolk and has a background in farming (which she calls Primary Production) and hospitality businesses.

Derryn Hinch's Justice Party: As far as I can tell the Justice Party combines a right-populist "tough on crime" approach (except perhaps if that crime is naming sex offenders) with attitudes on animal rights and euthanasia more associated with the left. Its lead candidate is Suzanne Cass, a well-known animal rights activist who was at one stage an RSPCA director prior to one of many rounds of internal RSPCA politics in the state. Cass has also worked in the corrections sector, for the Greens and in literacy support.

Citizens Electoral Council: A perennial low scorer and veteran fruitloop party that believes in many ridiculous conspiracy theories.

Renewable Energy Party: The name sounds cool and the policy platform is what you'd expect, but I'd treat this micro-party with caution based on its endless unsound contributions to the Senate reform debate (see here and here) and close links with Glenn Druery style preference harvesting schemes. Formerly known as the Human Rights Party (go figure.) (As an aside it's interesting that Druery claimed the REP and the Recreational Fishers Party would be fighting for the last Senate seat though scarcely anyone in Tasmania had heard of either, and then both pop up with House of Reps candidate slates to support their Senate tilt.)

Jacqui Lambie Network: Lambie, a former soldier who had failed to obtain Liberal preselection, managed to climb aboard the PUP ship at the right time and the rest is history. Lambie combines generally Labor-ish attitudes on economic and education policy with right-wing populism on Islam and national service. She is also very interested in defence veterans issues. Lambie is brash, outspoken, direct, impatient and sometimes out of her depth, but is becoming less gaffe-prone and more politically skilled than when first elected. She recently appeared on Kitchen Cabinet and offered a coarse character reference for Cory Bernardi. Lambie's #2 is also from the north-west coast and is a heavy hitter in local politics: Steve Martin, the very electorally successful mayor of Devonport (last year Martin was returned with 60% of primaries in a field of four.) Martin got his start in politics in health issues, in particular surrounding the Mersey Hospital. Martin does not have Lambie's controversial reputation and is an obvious asset for her ticket and chances, although his own campaigning is apparently low-key because of his mayoral duties.

Australian Liberty Alliance: Anti-Islam, anti-immigration, ultra-anti-Islamic-immigration - I'm not quite sure what this all has to do with liberty when you don't openly apply it to all illiberal religions, but anyway ... Lead candidate Tony Robinson is a ring-in from WA, a Perth-based orthopedic surgeon who is also a director of a company behind the party.

VOTEFLUX: I'm not entirely sure if this flashy new entity is really a political party or a product advertisement, but anyway it is a new "delegative democracy" movement, the idea of which is that MPs represent their voters who vote electronically on particular bills (but can delegate their votes to other bills). In other words, direct democracy with proxies. (Your host prefers indirect democracy; it is safer.) Lead candidate Adam Poulton is President of the Bitcoin Association of Australia.

Shooters, Fishers and Farmers: Formerly Shooters and Fishers and seeking to broaden its support. The party is pro-gun, pro-hunting, pro-4WD, pro-fishing, pro-resource-industries and not surprisingly anti-Green. The party holds upper house seats in three states. Lead candidate Matthew Allen stood last time and is, unsurprisingly, a deer hunter (and also a builder and carpenter.)

Animal Justice Party: A philosophically radical animal rights party that holds one seat in the NSW upper house. The Animal Justice Party opposes practically all killing of animals, humane or not (including when for environmental control reasons) and even opposes the sale of pets "other than from shelters or rescuers". Lead candidate Karen Bevis is President of Vegetarian Tasmania and also has a background in the local health sector.

Science Party: Formerly the Future Party, the Science Party is a secularist, socially progressive rationalist-style party that supports the acceleration of technological development (some wild-eyed optimist tendencies may be detected in an otherwise agreeable platform). Lead candidate Hans Willink is a former Liberal who in past campaigns invoked the ire of both the Liberal Party for using the colour blue, which it apparently owns, and also Andrew Wilkie. He was also nearly elected to Clarence Council in 2014. Willink has been endorsed by Mercury columnist and fellow ex-Liberal Greg Barns. Support candidate Jin-oh Choi ran for the Secular Party last election. The Science Party is active with signage and radio spots.

Unfortunately the Science Party website published unscientific nonsense about Senate reform during that debate and has been pinged for such in comments.

Australian Recreational Fishers Party: This new micro-party is also running in the Tasmanian Reps seats and has TV advertisements (!) Lead candidate Kevin Harkins has a controversial unionist past and was twice in line for federal ALP preselection only to have his efforts blown up by controversy about his past in one case and Kevin Rudd in another (the latter being apparently a case of mistaken identity). The party is opposed to "super-trawlers" but in most areas has similar policies to Labor.

Liberal Democrats: The party of accidental NSW Senator David Leyonhjelm, the LDP is a US-style ideological right-libertarian party that aims to support individual freedom in both social and economic areas but also in the ownership of dangerous guns. Lead candidate Campbell Mead is our fourth interstate ring-in; he's the mayor of Campbelltown, NSW, and also ran in 2013 for Tasmania.

Arts Party: Self-explanatory given current debates about arts funding (for example). Lead candidate Scott O'Hara is a professional Arts Manager and also writer, musician and more intriguingly exhibitor of an "augmented reality artwork at Sculpture By The Sea".

(Irrelevant NB: the "Plato" quote that pops up annoyingly on the Arts Party website is, even more annoyingly, apocryphal.)

Ungrouped column: The ungrouped column (which can only be voted for or preferenced BTL) includes the Anti-Paedophile Party (a somewhat ranty outfit that supports harsher penalties for child sex offenders and aims to make judges who it deems to have inadequately protected children "accountable"), the Mature Australia Party (which aims to promote the interests of senior citizens and has some rather silly populist political reform policies) and three independents.

Of the indies, Kaye Marskell is left-wing, Grant Russell thinks political correctness is the biggest problem society faces and George Lane is standing on a plank of "affordable housing, a revitalised forest industry and a new and independent foreign policy" and creaky youtube videos. (Actually about six minutes in there is a fun bit where he refers to all the right-wing micro-parties "descending on this island like a pack of rabid demented hyenas".)
Kevin Bonhamhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-74544543629978952332016-06-10T00:54:00.000+10:002016-06-23T14:10:02.272+10:00How To Best Use Your Vote In The New Senate SystemThis piece is written to provide advice on the best way voters can use their vote effectively in the new Senate system. Many regular readers of the site will already be aware of many of the points below. I hope the main part of the post will also be useful, however, for those who want to know what advice to give less politically engaged (or more easily confused) voters. I will vote below the line and number every square under the new system, and I'm sure many other readers will too (at least in the smaller states!), but not everyone is up for that.

Under the old Senate system, you had a very simple choice. You could vote for a party above the line and your vote would be distributed according to your party's registered ticket, or you could vote for candidates below the line, in which case you knew you had to number nearly all the squares or your vote would not be counted.

That old system has been scrapped. Voting all the way below the line for sometimes 100+ candidates was too difficult, confusing or time consuming for most voters, and above-the-line voting was being gamed by micro-party preference deals that meant most voters would have no idea what their vote would actually do. Not only that, but problems with this system meant that the loss of a small number of votes in WA caused the whole WA Senate election to have to be re-run at massive cost.

The new system brings much more freedom - your preference will never go to a given party or candidate under this system unless you actively choose to send it there, so you have complete control over where your vote goes. This is a fantastic thing, but it's still going to take some getting used to. If you vote carelessly, you might end up helping a party you can't stand beat one you are merely disappointed by. This guide tells you how to avoid that.

On the Senate voting paper you will be asked to either number at least six parties above the line or at least twelve candidates below. Here I give some answers to the sorts of questions people are asking or likely to ask about the system. At the bottom there is a section on tactical voting for advanced players only. The vast majority of readers should stop when they get to that point.

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Should I vote above the line or below the line?

You should vote below the line if any of the following apply:

1. You wish to vote for a range of candidates across party lines, rather than just putting all the parties in order of preference.  You might be the sort of person who will really like some candidates from a given party and really dislike others, or you might want to preference candidates with a certain background or who you know, whatever party they're running for.

2. You are happy to keep your vote within party lines, but you want to put the candidates for some parties you vote for in a different order to the order their party lists them in.  For instance you like a party but think it should have put someone else on the top of its ticket. Or you detest a particular candidate and strongly want to put them absolutely last, even if it means numbering three times as many boxes.

3. You wish to vote for an ungrouped candidate (an independent who does not have a party box above their name) or preference one or more ungrouped candidates higher than some other candidates or parties

If none of these apply, and you just want to put some or all of the parties in order of your choice without caring about specific candidates within those parties, then you should probably vote above the line. It's easier. And if you are mostly happy to just put parties in order but want to put a specific candidate last, you might want to consider whether it is really worth the effort if that candidate will be elected anyway.

If voting below the line, be extra careful with votes 1-6

If you vote below the line, make really sure you have put one and only one candidate number 1, one and only one candidate number 2 (etc) up to 6. If you omit any of the numbers 1-6 when voting below the line your vote won't count. If you double any of the numbers 1-6 when voting below the line, your vote won't count. If you make a mistake after number 6, however, your vote will still count up to the point where you made that mistake. Remember, if you make a mistake while voting at a booth, you can ask for another ballot paper. (Also, don't use zeros or negative numbers for candidates you dislike - this will cause your vote to not be counted.)

Be extra careful if you like to number a few boxes then number backwards from the bottom up. It's very easy to skip a number then end up with two 5s. If you like to do this sort of thing, best to practice at home first.

You might think this sounds simple. It's amazing how many people still manage to stuff it up.

So I should just number 6 boxes above the line or 12 below?

You can, but I strongly encourage you to number more! Whether you are voting above the line or below the line, the more squares you number, the more powerful your vote becomes.

I've numbered, say, 23 boxes and I don't like any of the other parties/candidates. Should I stop now?

You certainly can, but it's more effective to keep going. One of the most important messages in the new system is that while you can stop when you run out of parties that you like, this may result in a candidate you strongly dislike beating a candidate who you think is the lesser evil. Just voting for the parties you like and then stopping is not making the best use of your vote.

A lot of voters - especially a lot of idealistic left-wing voters - are a bit silly about this and worry that if they preference a party they dislike they may help it win. Well yes, but your preference can only ever reach that party if the only other parties left in the contest are the ones you have preferenced behind it or not at all! If that's the case then someone from that list is going to win a seat, whether you decide to help the lesser evils beat the greater evils or not.

To make best use of your vote, you should only stop when one of the following happens:

1. You could not care less which of the remaining candidates wins (assuming that at least one is elected).
2. You so strongly dislike all the remaining candidates that you feel morally opposed to even helping them beat each other.
3. Although you actually dislike one of the remaining parties less than one or more of the others, you want to exhaust your vote in protest to encourage that party to listen to your concerns. (To make your point effectively, I suggest you send that party a letter after the election telling them you did this, since they won't be able to work it out from your vote.)

Of course, some voters just "don't have the time" to number more than a few squares. It's up to you whether voting effectively is a priority for you or not. I'm just suggesting what you should do if it is.

I want to vote below the line for a candidate, and I want to put a certain party last, but I don't want to number 150 boxes. Is
there a shortcut?

Yes! Bear in mind that with the exception of Labor, the Coalition, the Greens, and NXT in SA, the great majority of tickets have no chance at all of getting more than one seat in any given state. So there is no need for you to send your preferences to all the candidates for every micro-party, just the lead candidate will do. Make sure you still preference all candidates from the bigger parties if doing this though (except the party you are putting last.)

Can I vote above and below the line?

There is not much point in voting both above and below the line. Under the old system voters sometimes voted both above and below the line so that if they made a mistake below the line their vote above the line would still be counted. This still applies, but it's so much easier to just make sure you don't make a mistake in the first six numbers if you vote below the line.

Also (and this is one to watch for when telling confused elderly relatives how to vote!) do not cast a vote that crosses the line (eg a 1 above the line, then a 2 below, then a 3 below, a 4 above etc). At best this will cause your vote to exhaust very quickly and at worst it will not count at all.

This is all confusing! I just want to do what my party wants!

That's up to you. If your party is popular and you are voting at a booth, your party will probably hand out how-to-vote cards that tell you how they suggest you vote in the Senate. If you are voting for a little-known party, you may need to check their website to see what they recommend (if anything).

Be aware that it is possible your party will deal with parties you do not agree with and hence recommend you vote for someone who you would not actually like. However, this is much less likely in the new system.

I've heard that I can just vote 1 above the line and stop and my vote will still be counted!

That's true, but only to a limited degree. If you do this then your vote will only count for the party you've voted for. Once all that party's candidates are elected or excluded, your vote will exhaust and will play no further role in the election. It might make sense to vote this way (despite what the instructions say) if you only liked one party and couldn't care less about any of the others, but really if this is true you should learn more about the different parties. You will almost certainly find some of them appeal to you more than others.

(Likewise, if the voter stops after filling six squares below the line, their vote will still count, but it will have reduced power.)

This party I've never heard of has a cool-sounding name. Should I preference it?

That's up to you, but again I suggest being cautious about parties you don't know much about. Their name may misrepresent what they are really on about, or some of their candidates may go off on a completely different track if they're elected.

If you don't have time to research parties before voting, then the best place to put parties you've never heard of is probably somewhere between the ones you moderately dislike and the ones you really cannot stand. If you don't dislike any parties, best to put the ones you've never heard of at the end.

Do you have a video on this?

I don't, but the Vic-Tas branch of the Proportional Representation Society of Australia do. I'm not associated with them, and I don't agree with all of it (they're very anti-above-the-line, but under the new system above-the-line voters have a greatly increased amount of control over their preferences, even if slightly less than below-the-line voters). But on the whole it's OK and does at least explain why people should keep filling in boxes, and not just stop when they reach the minimum.

Are there tools to help planning my vote?

Depending on where you live, there will probably be a lot of parties on the Senate ballot, as a large number of micro-parties with no chance of winning have decided to run this time anyway. (This may be a deliberate ploy by some of them to discourage you from voting below the line.) If you want to vote below the line and go more or less all the way, you may want to prepare your ballot beforehand so you have something to take to the booth and copy.

It's taken a while at this election, but two such sites have emerged:

Senate voting card creator
ClueyVoter

These are sites where you can prepare your ballot firstly by rating parties and then ordering candidates within those parties. The main advantage of ClueyVoter is that you can give the parties ratings to assist in sorting them, but ClueyVoter is also prone to assign numbers to parties you haven't preferenced, is not very user-friendly on candidate reordering, and above all else don't press the minimise preferences button! Overall I think the voting card creator site is better.

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That concludes the simple questions (but feel free to ask me more in comments). On to the tricky, slightly naughty bit! The bit below the line is rated Wonk Factor 3/5 and is mainly for serious election and voting system junkies.

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Tactical Voting

Disclaimer: If you have read this section and are not sure that you completely understand it, please ignore it and pretend you never read it.

Most voting systems are prone to tactical voting of some kind; indeed, in some it's necessary. Under the first-past-the-post system in the UK it is often necessary for voters to vote tactically for their second or third preference party to ensure their vote isn't "wasted". Our preferential system is much fairer than first-past-the-post, of course, but there are still ways of voting that can waste part of your vote's value, and ways to get around that if you want.

In this case I am not arguing that voters should vote tactically - I'm just explaining how they can do it if they want to. The ethical decision involved (since voting tactically effectively reduces the value of other voters' votes) is up to them.

Here is a good example. A voter really likes two candidates. One is on top of a major party ticket, the other is in a lowly position and considered in danger of not winning. They slightly prefer the first candidate, but might it actually be worth voting 1 for the second and 2 for the first instead?

Generally, the answer is yes, but only if not everyone does it, since if everyone did it then the first candidate wouldn't be so safe anymore. However, it's a fact that not everyone will do it, and you can rely on the party vote being high enough at this election that top-of-the-ticket major party candidates in states will definitely win.

The one principle of tactical voting I recommend to those who really want to do it is do not vote 1 for any candidate who you know will get elected more or less straightaway. Generally a strategic voter would therefore avoid a 1 vote for the first four major party candidates in a state, and in most states they'd avoid voting 1 for the top Greens candidate. Voting below the line and starting at the bottom of your preferred party ticket - if you're a major party voter - is a common trick. But another one is to vote 1 for the second candidate (just to be really safe) of an agreeable micro-party which has no chance of winning at all, and then number the rest of the squares as you would normally. (The possible downside of this method is that your originally preferred party misses out on a few dollars of public funding. For people who think no parties should be funded, that's a benefit.)

You can also do this above-the-line if you want to, under the new system. Instead of voting 1 for any party that will poll more than 7.7% of the primary vote, you can deliberately give your 1 vote to a micro-party with absolutely no hope of winning and your second preference to your preferred party (then continue numbering parties in order). Your vote will flow at full value to the candidate from your party who is most likely to be fighting for the final seat. However, this does get a bit risky, because if too many people do it and select the same obviously hopeless micro-party, that micro-party might someday actually win!

Here's the mechanics behind all this. If you vote 1 for someone who is going to be elected right off the bat, you are giving them a vote they do not need. A portion of your vote is in effect left behind with them when their surplus is passed on, and your ballot paper in effect carries on to other candidates at a reduced value. (In some cases its value may be reduced to zero, through "loss due to fractions".) However, your vote also slightly increases the total passed-on value of all your chosen candidate's other votes. Effectively, 1 vote is still passed on, but instead of it being your vote at full value, it's a mishmash of your vote and bits of the vote of everyone else who voted for the same person.

This can make a big difference if you're voting across party lines. In some cases, voting 1 for a very popular candidate and then 2 for someone from a different party could actually harm the candidate you put second! (Note: don't do this deliberately to try to harm an opposing candidate, since you can harm them more then by just voting as you normally would.)

Advanced players may like to engage in a form of preference-running in which they try to strategise their vote so that it never gets caught with anyone who is elected until right at the end, and stays in the hunt at full value. It is actually really hard to pull this off, because multi-seat elections are so unpredictable. It often involves making difficult decisions about whether you would rather be sure of your vote reaching a favoured candidate, or take some risk of it not doing so to greatly increase the chance of another candidate you like. This sort of thing is so easy to misunderstand that I am not going to publicly give any advice on how to do it.

Those interested in some real examples of the principle I recommend should see this old Tasmanian Times article (wonk factor 4/5). That article covers the Hare-Clark system as used in Tasmanian state elections. There is a slight difference with the Senate system in that in the Senate, if your vote reaches someone who is elected with a quota at a later count, part of the value of your vote will be passed on (though often not very much). Kevin Bonhamhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-72566333950407324692016-06-07T23:09:00.001+10:002016-06-17T00:01:43.694+10:00Poll Roundup And Seat Betting Watch: Fear Of A Hung Parliament Edition2PP Aggregate: 50.2 to Labor (unchanged)
Seat projection for this 2PP: probable narrow Coalition win, not necessarily with majority (estimate 76-69-5)

As usual, this roundup is quite long so feel free to just read whichever bits interest you.

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It may as well be a recorded message: for the eighth (!) week in a row national 2PP voting intention has been around 50:50 and there has been no significant movement in the 2PP at all. Excitable noises are made about moves of 1-2 points this way or the other in this poll or the other (typically by the media those polls are associated with) but it is all meaningless babble as nothing has actually happened.

This week Newspoll came out at 50:50 following four weeks of 51:49 to Labor. Ipsos, which has tended to lean slightly to the Coalition but is bouncy because of its smaller sample size than other pollsters (and lack of artificial bounce-retardants, I suspect) raised the odd eyebrow with a 51:49 to Labor (by both kinds of preferences). Essential went to 50:50 after being 51:49 to Coalition last week and ReachTEL went to 50:50 as well. The two-point move in ReachTEL was mostly caused by volatility in their respondent-preference sampling; by last-election preferences the Coalition improved by only 0.7 points.

I have removed the house effect assumption for Essential again as its mostly pro-ALP skew since Turnbull became PM appears to have at least dropped below a point in recent readings, if not gone away. However I've also increased the "global house effect", which adjusts for there being more apparently ALP-friendly polls in the mix than Coalition-friendly ones. The combined impact of these two decisions was zero. After considering the primaries I entered the Newspoll and Essential both as 50.2 to Labor, the Ipsos as 51.0 to Labor and the ReachTEL at 50.1 to Coalition. The current aggregate (noting that this doesn't just include this week's polls) is 50.2 to Labor, which was also the end-of-week result for both the previous two weeks:

BludgerTrack is on 50.1 for Labor, Phantom Trend 50.2 (pre-Essential), Luke Mansillo 50.37 Mark the Ballot 49.3 (using house effects anchored to last election), and I'll add any others I come across.

From next week I switch on the special weightings for the newest polls released in the final weeks of the campaign. If there is change then all this 50-50 stuff should be downweighted pretty quickly.

How Little We Know

In terms of where it might go from here, I track two historic projections, one of which ignores which party is in government and the other of which includes a party in government term. The simple version expects the 2PP to on average go nowhere and gives the Coalition a 63% chance of winning. The advanced version expects the Coalition to gain (on average) half a point and gives it a 71% chance of winning. But what is most notable is that these projections still - only four weeks out - explain only 40% and 44% of variation in past 2PP results respectively, and the average error on these projections is large (1.9 and 1.7 points respectively).

What's more, the errors on these projections are not even normally distributed - about 40% of elections see blowouts of at least 2 points and in cases up to 4 points from the projection, and it is also not the case (as might be thought) that the poll-based projections work better when the polls are close. I even tried taking the old pre-1987 Morgan results out of the regressions to see if using more recent elections with richer data made for better predictiveness. Predictiveness got worse.

At this stage in 1993 the Keating government was being smashed at below 47% 2PP (it won). The Fraser government in 1977 was narrowly winning (it won massively). The Hawke government in 1987 and 1990 was winning comfortably (both those elections were close in 2PP terms). The Howard government in 2004 was struggling (it increased its majority) and so on.

Four weeks out, all the national polls are saying in the light of history is the following:

1. The election will very probably not be a massive 2PP win (54+ for Coalition or 53+ for Labor)
2. The Coalition has the better chances because Labor is not far enough ahead.

And that is all. And because each election has unique properties this could always be the one - though there's no reason yet to believe it is - that does something right off the scale.

There's a view in some quarters that if there is to be a blowout it will be to the incumbents. There are a few ways this could happen. Firstly, through the campaign Labor has been making far greater spending promises, as Oppositions often do, but has not explained how it will pay for them. Suppose that when that explanation shows up, it is not convincing (either voters don't believe it, or they don't like how it will be achieved). [UPDATE: It seems they're going to pay for them by blowing out the deficit. That seems like easy meat for scare campaigns.]

Secondly, suppose that polling continues to point towards a major risk of a hung parliament, but with the Coalition best placed to capture a majority. Then the argument becomes that only the Coalition can deliver a stable government (give or take the odd PM or two) and anything else will be 2010-3 all over again. This argument works especially by analogy with the UK election, in which the choice was between a Conservative government (at worst a continuation of the coalition with the Liberal Democrats) or a Labour government that might see the whole UK in thrall to the Scottish Nationalists. For Australia, replace "Scottish Nationalists" with "Nick Xenophon Team", ie South Australia, or just the Greens as always.

I don't think this argument is actually all that strong. Unlike in the UK, Labor can be argued based on current polling to have a real chance of majority government, since the number of crossbenchers tends to be small here. But the issue is not whether the argument is actually strong; it is whether it will resonate and see voters flocking back to the government in the final weeks in fear of what a mess might do to the economy.

Anyway, the total minor party vote continues to creep up in this week's polling, with Newspoll recording it at 25% (the 15% Others including 3 points for NXT, an optimistic 3 for Family First, and 1 each for One Nation and - ho ho - Palmer United), Essential having it at 24% (NXT 4%), ReachTEL at 23.7% (NXT 5%) and Ipsos at 23% (with 19% for Others in SA/NT combined). On this basis, as foreshadowed last week, my aggregate is giving one Coalition seat to NXT as a "nowcast" reading of current polling. Whether they'll still be positioned to take that seat (with Mayo the leading candidate) by polling day remains to be seen.

The big question is whether these high third-party readings are real. They may be just a bubble (with voters saying they will vote for third parties as a coded way of saying that the campaign is boring their socks off), or it could be that the great malady of modern polling, the over-capturing of politically engaged voters, has infected others besides Morgan.

There was a possible hint on the latter in this week's Essential questions, in which 22% of respondents said they had "watched one of the party leader debates on TV". (Especially note the "on TV" bit - this should, in theory, exclude watching bits of it later on social media.) I assume nearly all respondents who said yes to this question watched the ABC debate, but TV ratings published by Crikey gave it an audience share of only 880,000 (less than 7% of voters who will actually vote). I don't know how the audience ratings deal with time-shifting or multiple viewers in one household. But in any case it seems that either the poll respondents are more likely to be highly engaged compared to the population at large, or else some are lying ... to a computer!

Leaderships

This week's Newspoll saw Malcolm Turnbull at a new lowest netsat, by a point, of -14 (37-51) while Bill Shorten somewhat surprisingly shed all the seven points he gained last fortnight to be back at -19 (33-52). Nothing to see in the better-PM department with Turnbull holding a normal lead for an incumbent (45-30). Ipsos had Turnbull in the red for the first time (44-46) with Shorten also down a touch at -8 (42-50) and a rather large preferred-PM lead for Turnbull (49-31). ReachTEL has only released its better-PM figures, which show an insignificant move to Turnbull (who has 55.6% by forced-choice).

ReachTEL also found that Shorten was perceived, by a narrow margin (51.9:48.1) to have campaigned better than Turnbull so far. This margin was mainly driven by Green voters, since Labor voters were, oddly, three times more likely than Coalition voters to think their leader had been outcampaigned.

Essential found that the Coalition's trust to handle issues is down an average of about four points in its areas of dominance, but if anything improving slightly in Labor's. There is also the usual finding that voters think the Coalition is better at handling the economy for businesses large and small, that Labor is better at handling it for "working families", but that the Coalition is best at handling it overall.

Seat polls

ReachTEL released a seat poll of Longman (Wyatt Roy, LNP, 6.9%) which had the seat at 50:50 by respondent preferences, though it appears this was about 50.4 to LNP prior to rounding. By 2013 preferences it would probably come out as about 51.2 to Roy, but it's hard to place much value on this when PUP polled 12.8% in 2013.

That was the only "public seat poll", but there were several commissioned polls. For my view on the GetUp! Bass ReachTEL see my Tasmanian seats guide.

The GetUp! ReachTEL figures for Mayo and Sturt were reported without including voters who are initially "undecided" but leaning to a party. (This is a big problem in making sense of a lot of the commissioned ReachTELs and is leading to a lot of confused reporting). Once the undecideds are included (figures here) the primaries for Mayo are Liberal 40.5 ALP 19.5 Green 10.8 NXT 25.4 Other 4.2. For Sturt it's Liberal 43.5 ALP 21.5 Green 9.2 NXT 22.4 Other 3.4. On these exact numbers NXT would win Mayo (with only a 73% preference flow needed from ALP and Greens voters) but Sturt would be harder, with an 81% flow required assuming the NXT candidate could stay in second place (which in turn is highly doubtful). Seat-polling of these sorts of seats would be unreliable at the best of times, let alone when commissioned by an activist group, but these results are not greatly surprising given the general evidence concerning the NXT vote. I'm surprised though that GetUp! seem to have missed the opportunity to name the Mayo candidates, as it's quite possible Jamie Briggs' name would now be a negative for his party.

Cowan is an interesting seat because it is well below the waterline in terms of the size of swing on in WA, and yet it took a long time to move on the betting markets. It may well be that punters were feeling that the ALP candidate (high-profile counter-terrorism expert Dr Anne Aly) might be a risk in the electorate because she is an academic and a Muslim, although she is so obviously well credentialled to make evidence-based contributions on a key political issue.

There was also a "leak" of alleged internal ALP polling said to show Labor behind 55:45 in Lindsay (LNP 3%) and only up 53:47 in Werriwa (ALP 6.5% but with the sitting member retiring.) Grim stuff if true, but gloomy internal polling often surfaces before elections.

Finally the most derided commissioned seat-poll of the week was one sponsored by Malcolm Turnbull's Labor opponent in Wentworth, said to show a 10-point swing against the PM on both primary and 2PP votes, and much general disappointment with Turnbull's performance (I haven't seen the text of this poll's questions yet). But he might be onto something here, because it's not so rare for party leaders to poll badly mid-campaign (some but not all non-commissioned polls had Kevin Rudd losing Griffith last time). A leader's electorate can often feel neglected if their MP is spending all his time gallivanting round the country and is not focused on his own seat. As for the disappointment, Turnbull had been selling his supposed progressive soul little piece by little piece for months before his elevation in order to secure the leadership (it made me think of The Picture Of Dorian Gray). Anyone who didn't notice this and was expecting him to emerge as a proxy for GetUp! just wasn't paying attention. It does still seem that there were many such people.

This could well be a very good election to assess the accuracy of commissioned polling compared to neutral polls, since commissioned seat polls are so common at it (mainly because robopolling is cheaper than commissioned polling used to be).

Amusing Poll Of The Week

I haven't seen the full wordings and results of this one yet, but this article re an Australia Institute poll on Senate crossbenchers is hilarious. Apparently 33% of respondents said they wanted more Senate crossbenchers (whether this includes Greens is not clear), 28% said they wanted fewer and the rest didn't know. That's not the funny bit. A remarkably small 52% of respondents said it was normal for governments to require crossbench support to pass legislation, while 24% thought it wasn't. A small hint here: of course it's normal; only 2 of the last 20 parliaments have had majority Senates.

The point being missed here is that it's normal for governments to have to deal with a small number of balance-of-power forces elected by the will of the people (historically the Greens, Democrats or DLP or the odd state-based independent), not a random gaggle of unstable and unaccountable one-person-band beneficiaries of preference-trading and ballot-flooding. If voters want lots of crossbenchers and now go forth and elect them fairly then that will be fair enough. But the irrelevance of the question and the cluelessness of the answers still isn't the funny bit.

No, the funny bit is Ben Oquist's comments:

"Given that the constitution created the Senate to be a check on prime ministerial power, the frustration of prime ministers shouldn't really come as a surprise."
"The Senate is there to protect the public from policy ideas that come as a surprise,"
"The constitution makes it difficult to pass laws. This is not chaos, it is stability."

Spoken like a true 19th century conservative! One can hardly imagine TAI wheeling out this classic Victorian (the time, not the state) defence of obstructive upper houses when the left next finds itself in power and having, say, effective action on climate change blocked by minor-league righties. (Which is less likely to happen under the new system anyway, but I digress). But what's really funny is to have TAI arguing that the public should be protected from surprising policies, when most of the time its business model consists of putting surprising policies to the people in silly pony-polls and breathlessly reporting 73% "support" for ideas scarcely anyone has heard of, let alone thought through.

Seat Betting

Myriam Robin's article in Crikey (paywalled but you can get free trial subscriptions) had some very useful comments about how seat betting markets are framed. According to the article the seat odds are all along (not just at first) set subjectively by an employee who is guided by how the punters are betting, but not bound by it. What we're seeing is not just the undistilled wisdom of betting crowds.

(In the eternal and invariably confused battle of betting odds vs polls, I'll point out that the reason why the markets more strongly expect a Coalition win than poll respondents - when the latter are asked a "who will win" type question - is not the closeness of the polls but partisanship. Voters with strong leanings to a party are more likely to believe their party will win.)

At present these are the seats considered on the Sportsbet and Crownbet markets to be changing hands or else reasonably close. If a seat is tied on one market I use the other. In cases of conflict I call it a tie, but there are currently none of those. If a seat is close on either market (usually both parties inside $3) I class it as a close seat.

Loss (Coalition to Labor): Barton*, Paterson*, Petrie
Close Loss (Coalition to Labor): Solomon, Dobell*, Page, Eden-Monaro, Macarthur,  Capricornia, Hindmarsh, Burt, Hasluck, Cowan
Loss (PUP to Coalition): Fairfax
Close Loss (ALP to Green): Batman

ALP Close Holds: (none)
Coalition Close Holds: Banks, Reid, Gilmore, Lindsay, Robertson, Macquarie, New England (vs IND), Bonner, Brisbane, Forde, Dickson, Leichhardt, Lyons, Braddon, Deakin, Corangamite, Dunkley, La Trobe, Stirling, Swan

Here's the colour-coded tracker. A pale shade indicates the seat is tied in one market, and grey indicates an overall tie (there are none at present).

This week saw the seat betting markets flip two seats for the first time - Cowan (for reasons that are entirely obvious) and Page (perhaps someone knows something I don't). Overall these markets are about as pessimistic for the Coalition as they were four weeks ago. If you want a detailed drilldown for all seats since May,

The case of Petrie is interesting. The markets give Labor a 25% chance here, but my seat model (which is blind to local factors unless they are captured in a seat poll) has it at 40% and the current edition of BludgerTrack has the LNP losing only one Queensland seat.

There hasn't been any notable change in the expectations of overall totals markets (as noted last time) so it's worth rounding this week's efforts out with a look at a few other market offerings. Markets on the number of Lower House seats that NXT will win have "none" favourite in the $1.80s range, which comes out to a bit below 50% implied probability, or it may as well be 50-50 if adjusting for longshot bias. Sportsbet has Pauline Hanson at an implied 58% chance of election to the Senate, while Derryn Hinch has drifted from $2 to $3. A market on the number of Senate crossbenchers including Greens has 16 as the median number (compared to the current 18), while the most expected number for the Lower House is 5.

By next week we'll have seen a major milestone with the close and release of nominations. Nominations close at midday on Thursday so we'll soon know who is running for what and indeed whether PUP are fielding any Lower House candidates at all! I will be busy through the long weekend so further coverage may have to wait til this time next week. As well as the usual roundup, at some stage next week I expect to post a guide for the Tasmanian Senate.Kevin Bonhamhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-49725832946336184412016-06-05T19:52:00.000+10:002016-06-25T09:56:03.610+10:00The Five Tasmanian House of Representatives SeatsThis article gives a detailed discussion of the five Tasmanian House of Representatives seats, which will be updated as needed up til election day. Two seats (Denison and Franklin) are generally not considered to be in play at this election. Three (Bass, Braddon and Lyons) are Coalition marginals that could change hands with swings of 1.2 to 4%. Current national polling points to a close federal election, although this may still change during the final week. If it does not change, then these three seats could be very important to the outcome of the election, or to whether the winner has a majority or not. As of 25 June, with the national swing estimated at 2.7% , my projections favoured one or two Liberal losses, with a possibility of all three seats falling. However, there is really not a lot of quality public polling data for the state. A late swing to the Coalition could make all these seats safe, while a late swing to Labor might see all of them lost.

To explain why these seats are tricky, it is worth looking at the strange results in the state from the 2013 election. Labor won 51.2% of the state's two-party-preferred vote, but only won one of five seats. The swing against Labor was the largest of any state by far (9.4%) but the uneven nature of it meant that Lyons, held with a 12.2% buffer, fell with a 13.5% swing. However Franklin, on a 10.8% margin, was easily retained. Causes of the massive swing included a downturn in the forestry industry, anger at the state's then ALP-Green coalition government over its "forests peace deal", and a correction from 2010 in which year the Liberals had campaigned very badly in the state. Both at the 2013 federal and 2014 state elections, Tasmania may as well have been two different states, with the anti-Labor mood extremely strong in the north.

Aggregated samples for Tasmania (see BludgerTrack) have generally shown the swing against the Coalition in the state to be somewhere between zero and the national swing, and at times even shown a swing to the Coalition, but the final ReachTEL poll is likely to change that. All else being equal, the swing back in Bass, Braddon and Lyons should be cushioned by the new personal votes gained by the incumbents Andrew Nikolic, Brett Whiteley and Eric Hutchinson. On that basis if the state swing is modest but otherwise uniform then all of them should hold. However, at the last election we saw a spread of swings around the state, with swings below 7% in the southern seats and above 10% everywhere else. If that sort of uneven swing occurs again but in reverse, then personal votes may not save them.

For this reason seat polls would seem important, but federal seat polls at the 2013 election were a basket case. In Tasmania ReachTEL polling had the right winner for all five seats, but overstated Liberal support by an average of 4-5 points compared to final outcomes. When seat polling for this election shows Tasmanian seats on close margins, it is hard to be confident that the leader would actually win. Even 5% margins are not conclusive. See also my detailed articles on the May 12 Tasmanian ReachTEL and the June 23 Tasmanian ReachTEL.

Also, while it is tempting to assume that seats would fall in order of margin if any fell at all, the reasons for risk vary between the three.

In early June Tasmania was affected by massive flooding, which affected substantial parts of Bass, Braddon and Lyons. Many voters will have had much more than the election on their minds in last few weeks. However Labor's Mediscare campaign may have bitten hard in the northern electorates, which are all very sensitive to health services issues at this election.

Only polling taken since Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister is included in this article. For a review of seat polls during the Abbott prime ministership see Would Wood Waste Waste The Seat Of Franklin? Also, The Tally Room has detailed accounts of the history and 2013 voting patterns.

Note to candidates: I will be adding new candidates once I am aware they are running. Apart from that I will not be making changes on request to the listings, links or profiles (please don't ask) except if there are clear factual errors.

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Bass (Liberal, 4.0%)

Geography: North-eastern Tasmania, consisting mostly of urban Launceston and also the rural north-east with major centres including Scottsdale and Bridport.

History: Bass is a revolving-door seat, having changed parties at six of the last eight elections. This all started when Liberal Warwick Smith lost the seat by 40 votes, ending a 17-year Liberal tenure, in 1993. He then won it back in 1996 and lost it by 78 votes in 1998. Forestry issues played some role in the Liberal wins in 2004 and 2013 but primarily Bass is won and lost in the suburbs of Launceston, with the southern and eastern suburbs especially volatile in recent elections. The failed Bell Bay pulp mill proposal caused a surge in the Green vote in 2007 but this has since gone away.

Incumbent: First-term incumbent Andrew Nikolic is a former Army Brigadier and Department of Defence public servant, who was the first Liberal candidate preselected for the 2013 federal election. There is evidence that he acquired one of the highest personal votes for a new candidate in the nation. Following the sacking of Phillip Ruddock, Nikolic briefly became a (not the) Government Whip and was a staunch supporter of Tony Abbott to the end. Earlier this year Nikolic was made chairman of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Intelligence and Security.

Nikolic has a combative political personality and is frequently involved in a range of scrapes (mostly on social media) with the Tasmanian left, one of which was ruled on by the Press Council. Despite (and/or because of) this he has persistently polled very good personal ratings.

Interestingly Nikolic has received an endorsement from the Chairman of the Launceston Flood Authority, despite it being established by an act of state parliament. This connection to a recent event in which Launceston escaped the worst of recent flooding is likely to stand Nikolic in very good stead, whatever might be said about whether authority chairs should be endorsing candidates.

On the other hand, Nikolic's history of social-media scrapes has now reached a much broader audience (including a claim that he blocked his ALP opponent).

Main challenger: The Labor candidate is Ross Hart, a lawyer (bio here) and occasional comment poster on this site! He has been quite prominent on state media during the election leadup. The slogan "put the Hart back into Bass" has been used as a play on the candidate's name and also perceptions that the incumbent is a bit of a meanie.

Other candidates: Terrill Riley-Gibson (Greens)
Roy Ramage (Renewable Energy Party)
Malcolm Beattie (Christian Democratic Party (Fred Nile Group))
Mark Tapsell (Australian Recreational Fishers Party)

Polling:
1. Mercury ReachTEL May 12 primaries Lib 46.2 ALP 36 Grn 9.7 Lambie Network 4.9 Other 3.3. Note: Lambie Network is not contesting Lower House seats. Published 2PP 51-49 to Liberal by respondent preferences (51.9% to Liberal by last-election preferences). The poll showed health services, a Labor strength area, to be considered a very important issue in Bass.

2. GetUp! commissioned ReachTEL May 31 primaries Lib 45.2 ALP 34.3 Green 11.7 Ind/Other 8.8. Published 2PP 51-49 to Labor by respondent preferences, but this is based on an unrealistic 82.7% flow of preferences to ALP. By last-election preferences Nikolic would win with 51.5% on these primaries, but this is probably a shade generous following the demise of PUP as a force.

3. Newspoll June 13-15 primaries Lib 47 ALP 38 Grn 9 Other 6. 2PP 52-48 to Liberal by last-election preferences. Bass voters preferred Malcolm Turnbull to Bill Shorten by an unconvincing 47-35.

4. ReachTEL June 23 primaries Lib 42.6 ALP 36 Green 9.7 Others 13.6 Published 2PP 50-50 to Liberal by respondent preferences. My estimate off primaries 50.8% to Nikolic.

Assessment: Probable Liberal retain, but loseable. The margin from 2013 will be amplified by the Liberal Party picking up a personal vote for their new member (sophomore effect) meaning that the effective swing required is more like 6% than 4%. The volatility of Bass is such that this swing could still conceivably happen, and some observers think that the seat is in more danger than even Lyons. The argument made by Richard Eccleston that the Liberals' federal campaign is not a good match for low-income areas and service-dependent seats is valid. The balance of public polling evidence suggests the seat is (just) holding but Nikolic's personal rating has fallen through the campaign, and while it remains fairly good it is possible that Bass will see another cliffhanger.

Braddon (Liberal, 2.7%)

Geography: North-west and western Tasmania, including the small regional cities of Devonport and Burnie and the large town of Ulverstone, the rural north-west (Smithton, Wynyard) and the west coast mining and tourism towns (Queenstown, Zeehan, Strahan)

History: Braddon has been mostly Liberal-held since 1975, with the exception of two six-year terms for former Labor member Sid Sidebottom (1998-2004 and 2007-2013). Decades ago the north-west was infamously socially conservative, but Braddon has changed greatly in the last 20 years and has become another swinging marginal seat, changing hands at four of the last six elections.

Incumbent: First-term incumbent Brett Whiteley was a state Liberal MHA for eight years until his defeat in one of the intra-party contests possible under the Hare-Clark system at the 2010 state election. His loss was largely caused by being outspent by popular local businessman Adam Brooks. Whiteley's reputation as a state MP was as a conservative headkicker. This side has been less seen in federal parliament though he did recently call for drug-testing of the long-term unemployed. The recent ReachTEL shows indifferent personal ratings for Whiteley (much less positive than for the other two Liberal incumbents.)

Whiteley has been the target of a bizarre sign vandalism episode with an unknown "artist" superimposing bondage masks on his pictures and changing his name to "GIMP".

Main challenger: Whiteley's main opponent is Justine Keay. Keay (bio) has been a Devonport councillor since 2009 and contested the state seat of Braddon (which has the same boundaries) in the 2014 state election, polling 1382 votes.

Extremely vague responses from Keay to questions about boat turnbacks during a radio interview became fodder for a Liberal attack ad.

Other candidates: Scott Jordan (Greens) - a high profile activist with the group Save The Tarkine. Polled 12% as Greens candidate for this seat in 2010 and has also run as a minor state candidate.

Josh Boag (Liberal Democrats)
Clinton Rice (Renewable Energy Party)
Glen Saltmarsh (Australian Recreational Fishers Party)
Graham Hodge (Christian Democratic Party (Fred Nile Group)) - apparently responsible for a certain infamous sign

Polling:
1. Mercury ReachTEL May 12 primaries Liberal 46.4 Labor 34.4 Green 6.6 Lambie Network 8.9 Others 3.5. Note: Lambie Network is not contesting Lower House seats. Published 2PP 53-47 to Liberal by respondent preferences (53.3% to Liberal by last-election preferences, but inclusion of Lambie in poll makes any conclusion about preferences difficult)

2. Mercury ReachTEL June 23 primaries Liberal 42.7 Labor 37.9 Greens 8.8 Others 10.3. Published 2PP 50-50 by respondent preferences but I get 51.2 to Justine Keay from same figures.

Assessment: At serious risk. There has not been much discussion of this seat compared to Bass and Lyons. Although Whiteley had a more comfortable lead in the first ReachTEL sample than the other two Liberals, his indifferent personal ratings suggested some level of risk not hinted at in the poll headline. Whiteley has not had a glorious campaign and the second ReachTEL suggests he is very vulnerable. National issues in the final week may reduce the danger but my seat model classes the seat as a tossup based on current polling.

Denison (IND 15.5% vs ALP)

Geography: Western shore Hobart. Includes two very different halves - the working-class Glenorchy half which is strongly pro-Labor), and the Hobart City half which is one of the greenest areas in Australia (with small pockets of strong Liberal support).

History: After winning the seat from the Liberals, Labor's Duncan Kerr held the seat for 23 years. On his retirement Labor flubbed the preselection and the campaign resulting in independent Andrew Wilkie very narrowly winning the seat on preferences from third place. Trashy negative campaigning by Labor against Wilkie in 2013 backfired and Wilkie was re-elected easily.

Incumbent: Andrew Wilkie is a former army officer and intelligence analyst who famously blew the whistle over the Howard government's support for invading Iraq. (This matter still comes up in political debate from time to time with a document relating to the leaking of related matters to be released on June 17 (apparently at 5 pm not 9 am as per the story)). He then joined the Greens and ran against John Howard in Bennelong, polling 16.4%. He moved to Tasmania and ran as the Greens' second Senate candidate in 2007 but he quit the party shortly after, and ran as an Independent for Denison at the 2010 state election. The profile built in this very narrowly unsuccessful tilt assisted him to win the federal seat. Wilkie's support assisted the Gillard government to remain in power following the 2010 election. After the government did not follow through on its agreements with Wilkie concerning poker-machine precommitment, Wilkie announced he was no longer supporting the government but would not support no-confidence motions except in extreme cases. He has since maintained he will no longer deal with either major party.

Wilkie is a clearly left-wing independent whose major issues have included poker machines, asylum seekers and health services in Denison. The May ReachTEL showed very strong personal ratings for him.

Labor challenger: Jane Austin (background) is a senior policy analyst working in mental health and suicide policy prevention. Austin was also the candidate in 2013. She could have won a seat at the 2014 state election but had announced that she was going to have another run at the federal seat.

Liberal challenger: Marcus Allan (linkedin) is an IT consultant and former contracted Hydro business analyst. He seems to be putting more energy into this run than other recent Denison Liberal candidates. He has been most notable for a call to reinstate Eric Abetz to the frontbench, which wouldn't win him a single vote in Denison but might play better for the party's Senate vote in other seats.

Other candidates: Jen Brown (Greens) has drawn the short straw of running for the Greens against Wilkie this time.

Amanda Excell (Christian Democratic Party (Fred Nile Group))
Wayne Williams (Democratic Labour Party)

Polling:

1. Mercury ReachTEL May 12 Primaries Wilkie 33.2 Liberal 27.3 Labor 22.1 Green 13.3 Lambie Network 2.8 Other 1.5 Note: Lambie Network is not contesting Lower House seats. Published 2PP 61-39 Wilkie over Liberal by respondent preferences, but Labor could be second after preferences (even on this sample). Estimated 2PP 61-39 Wilkie over Labor assuming 2013 preference flow.

2. Mercury ReachTEL June 23 Primaries Wilkie 34.5 Liberal 29.5 Labor 24.5 Green 8.7 Others 2.7. Published 2PP 65-35 Wilkie over Labor by respondent preferences. On this sample Liberals would be second after preferences, though I still think Labor actually will be.

Assessment: Independent retain.  The recent ReachTELs provide some evidence (albeit conclusive) that Wilkie's primary vote could be slipping, which if true might be attributed to his relative lack of power in the current majority parliament. Anecdotally, I have also detected slightly more noisy Wilkie-fatigue this time around than last time, but his personal ratings are outstanding.

While both Greens and Labor would benefit in the long-term from evicting Wilkie (even at the cost of throwing the seat to the Liberals for a term), Denison is so left-wing that Green attempts to preference Labor and Labor attempts to preference the Liberals both failed in 2013. Supporters simply didn't follow the how-to-vote cards. If Labor is again second (which I expect) Liberal supporters will be more obedient, but the Liberal Party and its voters have no strategic reason to help anyone but Wilkie win the seat. Therefore while Wilkie's margin may be reduced, I cannot see a path to victory or even a close result for any other party.

A recent win by Labor in the Legislative Council seat of Elwick, which contains 35% of Denison voters, shows that the party has the capacity to rebuild its vote in the northern suburbs.

Franklin (Labor, 5.1%)

Geography: An oddly shaped electorate containing the eastern shore Hobart suburbs within the Clarence council area, and also the Kingston area, D'Entrecasteaux Channel and Huon Valley areas on the other side of the river.

History: Franklin has been won by Labor at every election since the 1993 retirement of Bruce Goodluck, who had held the seat for the Liberals since 1975 (often by force of personality or electorate work rather than by party identification).

Incumbent: Julie Collins is a three-term incumbent who served as a Minister in various portfolios (including Social Services) under both Gillard and Rudd in the previous parliament. She is currently Shadow Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Emergency Services. The ReachTEL polling showed quite strong personal ratings for Collins but also a fairly high non-recognition rate, suggesting that her profile has been low in Opposition.

Main challenger: Franklin is the seat where both the Liberals and Greens have preselected their most interesting challengers. The Liberal challenger for Franklin is Amanda-Sue Markham, a former intensive care nurse who is also a former (WA 2001) Christian Democrat. Markham's prominent advocacy on same-sex marriage and abortion in recent years suggest her views probably haven't changed that much since she was in the Fred Nile fold. However she has also espoused some pro-asylum-seeker views on a now-scrubbed Twitter account. I found these via the old Twitter-searching website Topsy, but it has sadly since gone belly-up. I saved one, which Labor was then wrongly given credit for unearthing.

I've also now found Facebook posts in which Markham said she was "Really looking fwd to" an Amnesty rally called "Not in our name: human rights are not optional" that was staged to protest (from the pro-refugee left) against Kevin Rudd's asylum seeker policy in the leadup to the 2013 campaign. Markham also posted "An appropriate Christian response to asylum seekers: 'Do not oppress or mistreat the foreigner among you for you were foreigners in Egypt' Exodus 22:21 We must care for those seeking refuge." She also appears to have written a sympathetic post about Julian Assange (scroll down to comments section). These matters are interesting in light of the pursuit of Labor candidates who are deemed to be soft on boats.

Markham is the only female candidate running for the Liberals in Tasmania (out of 11). You can see her reacting to what might be called a citizen gotcha journalism attempt on penalty rates here. On 17 June the Fairfax press reported that Markham's registration as a nurse had lapsed although she was continuing to use it as a selling point. This matter continues to be debated.

Other candidates: Martine Delaney (Greens) is a long-time LGBTI rights campaigner. Her successful actions against the Exclusive Brethren, Timber Communities Australia and the Liberal Party over hateful campaign tactics in the 2006 state and 2007 federal elections are the stuff of Tasmanian political legend. These actions had the effect of exposing Liberal Party complicity in the placement of Exclusive Brethren ads, although this had been denied by one Damian Mantach (yes that one) at the time. Delaney's prominent recent action against the Catholic Church over their "Don't Mess With Marriage" booklet was less successful and eventually withdrawn, after at one stage arousing the ire of commentators in The Australian on a seemingly almost daily basis.

Tim Sanderson (Arts Party)
George Muskett (Christian Democratic Party (Fred Nile Group))

Polling:
1. Mercury ReachTEL May 12
primaries Lib 40.7 ALP 34.3 Grn 15.9 Lambie Network 3.2 Other 5.8. Note: Lambie Network is not contesting Lower House seats. Published 2PP 54-46 to Labor by respondent preferences (53.1% to Labor by last-election preferences).

2. Morgan aggregate 2016
primaries Lib 38.5 ALP 34 Green 14.5 Other 10. Sample size about 310, no published 2PP but Labor would win about 51.5-48.5. Aside from their small sample size and the age of the data, these Morgan samples are prone to local pool selection effects and Morgan's tendency to overestimate third-party votes, so they are not very useful.

3. Mercury ReachTEL June 23
Primaries ALP 37.6 Lib 37.1 Green 18.6 Others 6.9. Published 2PP 59-41 to Labor by respondent preferences (I get 58-42 from same figures)

Assessment: Labor retain. During the Turnbull honeymoon there were some thoughts that the Liberals might recapture this seat but that has all gone out the window as federal Liberal stocks have crashed. Collins is popular and Markham has been a contentious candidate.

Lyons (Liberal, 1.2%)

Geography: A mainly rural seat including the large regional town of New Norfolk, the fringes of Hobart and Launceston, and numerous small towns dotted across the centre and east of the state. Lyons has a sharply north-south voting divide (see maps at The Tally Room).

History: Partly because of the difficulty of building name recognition in a seat with so many scattered communities, Lyons has had only three incumbents (two Labor, one Liberal) in the past 70 years. Former Labor member Dick Adams survived a scare in 2004 by attacking his own party's forests policy, but was unable or unwilling to repeat the dose in 2013 and was dislodged after 20 years with the biggest 2PP swing in the nation.

Incumbent: Eric Hutchinson is a former wool-marketer who won the seat at the second attempt in 2013. His profile has been lower than that of the other two Liberal incumbents and the May ReachTEL poll showed him to have good approval ratings but a high (15%) proportion of respondents did not know who he was.

Main challenger: A former journalist/editor and now media consultant, Brian Mitchell does not fit the mould of a typical Lyons candidate at all, but he does at least have an appropriate hat. Mitchell previously attracted my attention with the booklet A Compelling Case For The Reform Of Tasmania's Legislative Council Brought To You By Kittens. (Little has been seen of the Transform Tasmania Alliance since.) Mitchell was preselected for Lyons in 2014, in recognition of the long run-up needed to have any chance of winning this electorate as a new candidate.

Other candidates: Hannah Rubenach-Quinn (Greens), a Break O'Day councillor who was Deputy Mayor from 2011 before unsuccessfully running for Mayor at the 2014 elections (she was second of four candidates but defeated 59.5:40.5 by Mick Tucker). Somewhat unusually for a Green, Rubenach-Quinn is a Christian school chaplain.

Duncan Livingston (Renewable Energy Party)
Shelley Shay (Australian Recreational Fishers Party)
Gene Mawar (Christian Democratic Party (Fred Nile Group))

Polling:
Mercury ReachTEL 12 May primaries Liberal 45.9 Labor 29.2 Green 13.3 Lambie Network 6.5 Others 5.2 Note: Lambie Network is not contesting Lower House seats. Published 2PP 51-49 to Liberal by respondent preferences (54.1% to Liberal by last-election preferences).

Mercury ReachTEL 23 June primaries Liberal 40.4 Labor 35.2 Green 11.8 Others 12.7. Published 2PP 55-45 to Labor by respondent preferences (I get 53.9 to Labor from same figures).

Assessment: Probable Labor gain. Through the last few months my projections have sometimes pointed to another Liberal win in Lyons, and I have made some rather bullish media comments on their chances here. (One comment became much too bullish when quoted out of context!) However even before the current poll the seat was now and then dipping into tossup territory. The margin in the current ReachTEL poll swamps all previous and statewide evidence and my national seat model now considers the seat a probable loss. Labor sources were making confident noises before this poll, with Liberal sources reported as considering the seat "difficult" and one Green source suggesting that the seat was practically gone. While Lyons has a history of giving incumbents long terms, a first-term incumbent there might be vulnerable because of the time taken to build name recognition, especially if some of the vote against Labor last time was just a short-term backlash against the then state government. Hutchinson has possibly not been high-profile enough and there are concerns about whether he has done enough to protect what support the Liberals had in the south of the electorate against a swing back.

The low Labor primary in the first ReachTEL was probably a sample error. Lyons is not an easy seat to poll and a single 55-45 poll result does not prove it is going back, but this now seems rather likely.Kevin Bonhamhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-90582451769299032712016-06-01T02:11:00.000+10:002016-06-05T23:47:11.706+10:00Poll Roundup And Seat Betting Watch: Preferred Pet-Sitter Edition2PP Aggregate: 50.1 to Labor (-0.1 since end of last week)
Coalition would probably win with a slight majority if election were "held now" (projection 78-68-4)
No significant move in voting intention detected in past seven weeks

In this edition:
Seventh straight week of no 2PP action
Old Newspoll's Queensland problem
Is Nick Xenophon Channeling Terry Pratchett?
Bill Shorten, Preferred Pet-Sitter
Corangamite seat poll
Punters Vs Polls - A False Dichotomy (For Now)

(Note: these roundups get pretty long, so feel free to just read the bits that interest you! I hope to have a detailed preview for the five Tasmanian seats up sometime this coming weekend)

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Welcome back for another rundown of another week of polling in which, in terms of the national 2PP headline, nothing happened! There wasn't really too much to cause it to happen yet either. There was a debate on free-to-air TV, but it was still watched by hardly anyone, and almost everyone who did watch it complained about it afterwards.

Candidate malfunctions continued at the higher than normal rate that has distinguished this campaign, with Chris Jermyn (Liberal, McEwen) wowing the crowd by trying to ambush Bill Shorten only to be ambushed himself. The Coalition made a gloriously overcooked attack on Labor's spending commitments, parts of which were immediately dismantled, and then with no sense of shame replied that by refuting half of their original claims Labor was admitting to being half guilty.

Two polls this week received attention because they appeared to show some movement, but as it happened these were in opposite directions and were both less of a big deal than they seemed. ReachTEL late last week jumped from 50-50 to 52-48 to Labor, but this mostly reflected in its use of respondent-allocated preferences (which can make the 2PP result more volatile). On primaries the Coalition had lost just 0.9 of a point, with Nick Xenophon Team and not Labor the beneficiaries. Essential this week switched from 51-49 to Labor to 51-49 to Coalition, quite a surprise given its ALP-leaning form under Malcolm Turnbull's reign so far, but the shift was probably not much more than a point before rounding. The third poll out in the last week was Morgan, which returned a 51.5 to Labor result by last-election preferences but only 51-49 respondent-allocated, bucking a recent trend for respondent preferences to favour Labor. Morgan again had an extremely high non-major-party vote of 30%, of which more later.

Here's the smoothed tracking graph:

(Other aggregates as they update: BludgerTrack 50.2 to Labor, Phantom Trend 50.1 but yet to include Essential, Luke Mansillo 50.55 pre-Essential, Mark the Ballot 50.7 but see this post).

For the first time since 1996 there was no regular Newspoll on the fifth weekend prior to voting, but there was the pollster's aggregated state breakdown from the last two months. After this Peter Brent noticed something very interesting - the old Newspoll had an extremely strong habit of polling higher 2PP readings for Labor in Queensland specifically than Labor polled on the day. This had happened in every one of 20 recordings that Peter tabulated, with an average discrepancy of four points! Labor would be dearly hoping that the Galaxy-run Newspoll has ended this curse, because if Newspoll's 51:49 to Coalition in Queensland is really 55:45, then Labor will be scratching for crumbs in the sunshine state and might even not get both of Petrie and Capricornia. (NB: After I wrote this, @Flibbety on Twitter found one Newspoll sample missing from the Brent tables - in 2010 the final Newspoll underestimated Labor in Queensland by 2.9%, so that's 20 vs 1 now.)

The other big takeaway from the Newspoll breakdowns is that things are looking bad for the government out west, with the 9% swing in WA not much smaller than the damage in other sampling. The BludgerTrack breakdowns tell the story - the Barnett government is dragging on the federal polling, and in WA alone the Coalition is back where it was in the last days of Tony Abbott. This puts about six seats in play and on current polling Labor could well take about four.

The Xenophon Team: Magic Or Illusion?

There's also the small matter of Others polling 34% in South Australia in this Newspoll, of which Nick Xenophon Team is polling 22%. Xenophon himself is quoted as saying there is a "million-to-one chance" of a Lower House win for his team. While this might imply that his noted aversion to industrial gambling comes from being incredibly bad at it, more likely he's a closet Terry Pratchett fan: as any political magician knows, one in a million chances happen nine times out of ten.

This wasn't even the rosiest projection of the NXT's fortunes doing the rounds: Morgan had them on 26.5% in South Australia (compared to 20.5 and 19.5 in previous weeks). Both Essential and ReachTEL have them up nationally, although still at lower levels than Morgan. I believe Morgan are overestimating the NXT vote as part of a systematic tendency to overstate the votes for third parties, as Morgan has had third parties combined on an average of about 29 in recent polls, while other pollsters have third party votes around 22-24 at the moment. This overestimate of the third party vote in my view is a signal that a pollster is oversampling either politically engaged voters or fashionable views. Morgan's SMS method is prone to the first and its face-to-face method prone to the second, just as it had a far bigger signal for the Turnbull bounce at first than anyone else.

But even toning down Morgan's figures accordingly, the Newspoll sample is still hard to ignore and what limited polling is available to me across all pollsters is consistent with an NXT vote of around 19% in SA. That's more or less what I take to be the seat-winning level and while caution is always warranted with minor-party polling surges, if similar polling continues I will soon give them a seat in my projection. (Re the Greens in Batman, I'm still waiting on the preferencing decisions there.)

Leaderships

A few new leadership stats this week, with ReachTEL just about sharing Newspoll's view now that Turnbull and Shorten are equally popular (net -7.4 vs net -7.8; the latter is Shorten's best since December 2013 and his second best ever). Turnbull's lead on the forced-choice better PM figures narrowed to 54.9:45.1. Essential had Turnbull back in positive territory with a net rating of +2 (41-39) to Shorten's -10 (34-44) and had a two-point narrowing of the "beauty contest" gap to 40-27 in Turnbull's favour.

But the most unusual part of Essential's leadership polling was a series of quirky questions about which leader they would trust the most in everyday-ish situations (see p 8 of the PDF). Voters would rather have the merchant banker than the unionist negotiate their pay rise (36-27), would most trust Malcolm Turnbull to advise their children about the future (34-17) but think Bill Shorten would be most likely to lend a hand if a car was stranded (21-37) and would slightly prefer him to care for their pet (20-23). Some of these seemingly flippant questions do shine some light on perceptions of the leaders' personalities that don't come through in the headline questions - mostly in Turnbull's favour.

This was all an amusing sequel to a rant by Mark Textor about a supposed excess of polling in Australia. The core claim is that electoral coverage is being swamped by discussion of polls at the expense of discussion of issues, and voters can't escape from this even if they want to, because the stuff is everywhere. (The swamping aspect is greatly exaggerated by the inclusion of polls ignored by the media and seat polls only reported in batches in the figures, but I digress). Textor wants more polling that explores the reasons behind voter choice rather than just the raw numbers and the nonsense that is made of tiny random movements in them. Somehow I am not sure this Essential effort was exactly what he had in mind.

Seat Poll

ReachTEL released a seat poll of Corangamite. As with their seat poll of Lyons (see Tasmanian ReachTEL coverage) it had the ALP primary suspiciously low, but also with a respondent-allocated flow of preferences to Labor (78%) that seems on the high side, though Labor did get 71% of preferences in that seat last time. This all came out to a 2PP of 54:46 to Coalition (no swing). This continues a trend of mildly disappointing results for Labor in most of the seat polls from ReachTEL so far. However, taking into account sophomore effect and the fact that the swing in WA is blowing out the national swing, the headline figure here doesn't seem greatly surprising. The poll finds a good positive rating (net +19.6) for local member Sarah Henderson. Her Labor opponent Libby Coker has the usual work to do on the name recognition front for a new challenger, but 16% non-recognition is not too bad, and a net rating of +1.3 with a "neutral" rating of 37% is OK at this stage. The issues results are just about a microcosm of the nation.

Seat Betting

The usual disclaimer applies - the object of this section is to have some harmless fun with gambling odds before Nick Xenophon hacks both houses of parliament and all the bookies shut down their websites in alarm.

Firstly if you got on Labor in McEwen when they were out at $2.20 for no especially convincing reason, well done and I reckon you can spend that all at once. At the time of writing a very small arbitrage exists on this seat if you assume that one major party or other will win it with 99+% certainty.

At present these are the seats considered on the Sportsbet and Crownbet markets to be changing hands or else reasonably close. If a seat is tied on one market I use the other. In cases of conflict I call it a tie, but there are currently none of those. If a seat is close on either market (usually both parties inside $3) I class it as a close seat.

Loss (Coalition to Labor): Barton*, Paterson*, Petrie
Close Loss (Coalition to Labor): Solomon, Dobell*,  Eden-Monaro, Macarthur,  Capricornia, Hindmarsh, Burt, Hasluck
Loss (PUP to Coalition): Fairfax
Close Loss (ALP to Green): Batman

ALP Close Holds: Richmond (three-cornered), Lingiari
Coalition Close Holds: Banks, Reid, Page, Gilmore, Lindsay, Robertson, Macquarie, New England (vs IND), Bonner, Brisbane, Forde, Dickson, Leichhardt, Lyons, Braddon, Deakin, Corangamite, Dunkley, La Trobe, Cowan, Stirling, Swan.

Here's the colour-coded tracker. A pale shade indicates the seat is tied in one market, and grey indicates an overall tie (there are none at present). I've added a line which gives the expected Coalition seat total as adjusted for differences in close seats. For these purposes a close seat is counted as 0.7 to the leading party and 0.3 to the trailing party (0.2 for the Coalition in Richmond). Note also that Mark the Ballot is doing daily tracking of numbers of seat favourites.

(NB as noted in comments I initially missed Swan from the Coalition close hold list, so the Close Seat Adjusted figure for this week should be 76.9. I'll fix that in next week's table.)

Factoring in close seats allows for what I think is a more accurate view of what the seat betting markets "think" than just going by numbers of favourites. On my aggregate, the current 50-50ish national polling started in the week of the April 20 scrape above, and over the next two weeks seat betting markets adjusted to evidence of the national polls. Since then they've pointed to much the same bare Coalition majority as projections like mine and BludgerTrack.

Sportsbet now has an exact totals market that sums to a slightly silly 254% but with 79 and 80 Coalition seats as the individual most likely totals and a weighted average (for what it's worth) of 78.1. The line market has the Coalition winning by 12.5 seats (c. 79). The William Hill banded seat market is still pointing to just under 77, and their exact totals market also points to 77. Although the Sportsbet 2PP market continues to expect a Coalition 2PP of 51.6, all the evidence from markets specifically about seats suggests punters and/or bookies (depending on who is more to blame for these odds) expect on average that the Coalition will win with a very small majority, which would probably mean a 2PP of about what we have now (50-50).

A lot is said about the accuracy of punters vs polls at predicting election outcomes. It's a silly comparison at the best of times because betting is forecasting while polling is taking a snapshot of current voting intentions. But at the moment with the punters leaning towards a Coalition victory while the polls are 50-50ish, the difference is actually an illusion. Since 50-50 probably means a Coalition win, at the moment the aggregated polls and the markets are saying much the same thing.

Seat Model Example Output

Finally here's some current output from my seat model, a version of which predicted 140 seats correctly last election. This output lists the Coalition seats the model rates most likely to fall on the assumption that the current 2PP is correct. (Please don't bet on Labor in Barton at 100-1 on this basis since that assumption might be false!)

The model gives the swing required, and then an adjusted swing-required figure that takes into account sophomore effects, retirements, redistributions and a 50% loading for state polling (as of last week; I haven't updated those weightings yet). The model's estimate of the Coalition's chance of retaining that seat if the 2PP is 49.9% is shown on the right. This estimate takes into account seat polls where they are known. Some of the individual estimates are bound to be rubbish because of factors outside the scope of the model, but if the final national polls are accurate then any errors should cancel out.

Mostly, this list gives similar forecasts to the seat betting markets, but there are three notable exceptions: Cowan, Brisbane and Eden-Monaro. For Brisbane it's possible the market is aware of the track record of Queensland polling (but the seat is a vacancy, which is why the model's keen on it falling). For Eden-Monaro the fact that the former member is recontesting may be enough to explain the difference (my model doesn't currently account for this.) But the case of Cowan is an intriguing one - can anyone explain why betting markets expect this seat to be held?

Cowan Update: As of the afternoon of 1 June, Cowan flips bigtime on Sportsbet going to ALP $1.35 but Crownbet has not yet moved. I doubt that will remain the case very long. Should Labor be favourite next week Cowan will be added to next week's colour tracker. Kevin Bonhamhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-59674797542325775142016-05-25T17:03:00.000+10:002016-06-01T02:19:33.262+10:00Poll Roundup and Seat Betting Watch: Not Even A Dead Cat Bounce2PP Aggregate: 50.0-50.0 Dead Heat (-0.1 for Coalition since end of last week)
Coalition would probably win with small majority if election "held now" (seat projection 78-68-4)
No significant move in voting intention detected in the past six weeks

This was a week in which it seemed like things might be starting to happen! First Peter Dutton said some rather provocative things about (supposedly) illiterate refugees. This was widely regarded as a Lynton Crosby "dead cat" maneuver. The idea of that is that if you are hopelessly losing the argument, just say something ridiculous and disgusting and then everyone will talk about that instead of the issue you were losing. A tiny minority of calmer voices pointed out that there was no need for Dutton to "throw a dead cat" since there had been nothing happening in the campaign worth distracting attention from, and suggested instead that Peter Dutton was just being Peter Dutton. But still, perhaps all this was something voters would react to?

Then there was the NBN raid on ALP offices, a seemingly juicy matter that raised questions about the possible politicisation of policing referrals, and made people wonder whether the Prime Minister knew it was coming, and if he didn't know who knew, and who they told or didn't tell. This, the commentariat told us, could only end badly for the Government, since at worst it looked like an unAustralian denial of fair play to a party in the middle of an election campaign, and at best it still focused attention on the government's failure to even deliver a second-rate NBN for anything near what they said they would. Perhaps this then would finally set the polls alight?

Nope. The verdict from the two polls that have been in the field since the above episodes has been still no change to speak of (Labor's primary even dropped a point on both). A common response to this has been that the public aren't paying attention (how dare the voters ignore matters that have been deemed important.) That's probably true, but it is not the only possible explanation. The public could be paying some attention to the campaign but the various events in it could be cancelling each other out. The public could be paying attention to the campaign but failing to find anything they actually care about (because this stuff doesn't really affect them, and they are sick of the media telling them what they should be thinking). Or, it's always possible that voting intention has changed but neither of these polls have noticed. Both Essential and the new Newspoll are often steady to a fault.

What I keep hearing anecdotally is that voters just find the campaign boring, especially when they have to comprehend another five and a half weeks of it. It's not that the campaign lacks for policy differences or content (compared to, say, the farcically dumbed-down 2010 effort from both sides); it's mainly that the nature of debate is so dry that there is little for anyone but policy wonks to really get stuck into. And even for policy wonks, there's not all that much depth to see.

Sampling for last week's Ipsos (51-49 to Coalition, 50-50 by respondent preferences) and ReachTEL (50-50 by respondent preferences, and I get exactly 50.0 by last-election preferences) was done before the raid news broke, and since then we've had 51-49 to Labor from both Newspoll and Essential. All this continues the pattern in which Ipsos leans a bit to the Coalition, Newspoll and Essential a bit to Labor and ReachTEL not predictably to either side. I aggregated the Ipsos at 50.6 to Coalition, the ReachTEL at 50.0, the Newspoll at 49.1 and the Essential (with an adjustment) at 50.1. There's a very strong case for deducting a point or so from Ipsos and adding a point or so to Newspoll, but I'm avoiding it (at the cost of the odd wobble of a tenth or two tenths of a point) since they are both polling often enough that they should cancel each other out anyway. Newspoll is more heavily weighted, but the "global house effect" feature in my aggregate corrects for that.

Here's the smoothed tracking graph. It's especially smooth this week. The beast that has climbed such mountains and plumbed such depths in a pretty tumultuous term has now spent six weeks almost asleep on the 50-50 line.

Readings from other aggregators are (scores for Coalition): Bludger Track 50.0, Andrew Catsaras 50.0, Luke Mansillo 49.95, Mark the Ballot 49.9, Phantom Trend 49.6

Leaderships

If this week's voting intention figures were boring, the leadership stats were anything but. This especially applies to Newspoll which had Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten equal on net satisfaction, each on -12 (Turnbull 38-50, Shorten 37-49). For Shorten this was a gain of seven points in a fortnight - a fortnight in which he impressed many former left-wing sceptics mainly by just being competitive and focused, and also a fortnight in which he was able to show some human touch after a car accident happened right next to his convoy. It was Shorten's best netsat in just over a year, and only a point off Turnbull's worst as Prime Minister. The "better Prime Minister" gap also kept closing, and is now a modest fifteen points (46-31), a more or less meaningless lead in the context of this measure's skew to incumbents.

The better PM figures, for what they're worth, set an all-time record, in that the Turnbull-Shorten gap has now closed by 34 points in six months. There has never (in 30 years of Newspoll) been a case of the gap between a PM and an Opposition Leader closing this much this fast in the direction of the latter, or indeed this much that way in anything under ten months.

What does this new record mean? Well. basically, for all the mythical nonsense bestowed upon better/preferred PM readings, they are actually a messy multi-purpose indicator. All else being equal the PM should lead the Opposition Leader by about 16 points, and this then goes up or down depending on how popular the two leaders are and what the two-party-preferred score is. (It lags behind the PM's netsat and moves with the other two). All this record narrowing of the better PM score is telling us is that we've had an unusually strong combination of the PM becoming less popular, the Opposition Leader becoming less disliked and the 2PP moving towards the Opposition, all at the same time.

Likewise, it's probably time for another reminder that the relationship between Opposition Leader ratings and voting intention is a very weak and messy one indeed; it's normally the PM's ratings that matter the most. The fact that many Labor voters who disliked Shorten mid-term are warming to him makes little difference if they were never going to vote for the Coalition anyway.

In the same six months, the difference between the netsats of the two leaders has fallen from 69 points to zero. This gap isn't quite a record (Keating went from having a netsat 27 points better than Hewson's to being 50 points behind in four months in 1993) but it's been a big relative shift all the same. But Shorten's big netsat recovery is nothing much compared to that of Andrew Peacock in 1984 (Peacock gained 61 points in two months.)

Other pollsters are showing similar changes, though not yet buying Newspoll's claim that the leaders are now seen equally. ReachTEL had Shorten at a net rating of -10.5 (up nine points in two weeks), his best rating since January 2014! Turnbull was more or less unchanged on -6.5 and the forced-choice "better PM" narrowed another two points to 55.6% to Turnbull. (I think this lead might mean a bit more than the one he has in Newspoll.) Ipsos has little change for Turnbull (up two points to +10 (48-38)) but Shorten is up five points to -6 (40-46). Ipsos has Turnbull's lead down as preferred PM down to a modest 47-30, another poll in which the lead has closed by 34 points in six months.

We also have plenty of new attribute polling. The Australian (Federal election 2016: Turnbull 'arrogant' but voters like him) has polling showing Turnbull leading on six of the nine attributes listed, with Shorten leading on "cares for people", "in touch with voters" and (in reverse) "arrogant". Oddly, both compare poorly on many criteria with ratings for Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott, including those taken in April 2012 when both Gillard and Abbott were very unpopular. My conclusion from this is that the Newspoll methods changes have resulted in a lower tendency for voters to agree with these statements about leaders. This could be both a result of the general ease of being negative when pushing buttons on a robopoll, but also the fact that the online segment has to present a neutral option upfront.

Essential has done a fresh leader attributes poll only three weeks after the last, finding Turnbull down on various scores but Shorten little changed. Turnbull tends to score higher on the comparison whether the attribute in question is positive or negative (leading to some misleading reporting that Turnbull was ahead on all fronts!)

ReachTEL also has some issue importance/party trust questions, the results of which are unsurprising. The Coalition does well in its traditional strength areas, Labor does well in its, and economic management scores highest of the list of issues by some margin. Likewise on party trust issues from Essential.

Seat Poll

The only new seat poll I have seen in the past week is a ReachTEL of Macarthur, which finds basically the same result (51-49 to Labor) as the Galaxy poll of the same seat. I get a similar result by seat-specific last-election preferences, which may be a bit misleading because of the redistribution. With so long to go and given the general issues with seat polls, all we can say is this seat is in play, which is what would be expected anyway.

Seat Betting

The usual disclaimer applies - this section is not about promoting gambling or claiming that markets are predictive, but rather tracking whether they are predictive or not.

At present these are the seats considered on the Sportsbet market to be changing hands or else reasonably close:

Loss (Coalition to Labor): Barton*, Paterson*
Close Loss (Coalition to Labor): Solomon, Dobell*,  Macarthur,  Petrie, Capricornia, Hindmarsh, Burt, Hasluck
Tie: Swan, Eden-Monaro
Loss (PUP to Coalition): Fairfax

ALP Close Holds: Batman (vs Grn), Richmond (three-cornered), Lingiari
Coalition Close Holds: Banks, Reid, Page, Gilmore, Lindsay, Robertson, Macquarie, New England (vs IND), Bonner, Brisbane, Forde, Dickson, Lyons, Braddon, Deakin, Corangamite, Dunkley, La Trobe, Cowan, Stirling.

Here's the colour-coded tracker for seat betting odds:

(Red = ALP favourite, blue = Coalition favourite, grey = tie) (Updated with minor corrections).

The changes in the past week are minor. Labor has become favourite in Hasluck again but Eden-Monaro has become tied. The markets sense the Coalition as being vulnerable in a very large number of seats but only likely to lose in a modest number. My own seat model frequently shows the same thing - projecting about 14 total Coalition losses based on the sum of probabilities, but generally only having Labor favourite in about nine specific seats at a time.

For a national 2PP of 50-50 and with a 50% weighting for state polling, my national seat model currently has Labor favourite in Barton, Paterson, Dobell, Petrie, Capricornia, Solomon, Cowan, Hasluck and Burt, with Macarthur and Brisbane as tossups. I may post some detailed sample output from it next week. The model is blind to local factors that may be informing seat betting, unless they are reflected in a seat poll, and because of the lack of information on specific seats it will normally get about ten seats wrong nationwide even in its election-eve version.

(Edit: Crownbet also now has a full seat betting market, showing no difference in favourites above except that Swan is listed as a slight Coalition favourite, and relatively minor differences in the other odds. In the past I've used multiple agencies for this tracking where possible, so that gives the Coalition 81.5 favourites this week. The colour tracker has been updated to reflect this.)

The various exact seat total markets I was tracking last week have all shown no movement since then.

Back next week with more, and the way things are going, it could well be more of the same.

Update Thurs am: Movement at the station - Greens now narrowly favourites in Batman on the Centrebet site but not yet on Crownbet, meaning that an arbitrage currently exists.

Update Thurs midday: That's gone now; Greens $1.50 on both markets.

Tuesday: Morgan Indi: strange indeed

(source:efishalbum.com)

Morgan has released a batch of aggregated seat results for the electorate of Indi taken from the last few years.

The stated voting intentions are:

* For the full term (sample 596), Liberal 37 National 7 Ind 19.5 Labor 24 Green 8 Other 4.5
* Since Turnbull became PM (sample presumably under 200), Liberal 42 National 10.5 Ind 16.5 Labor 16.5 Green 7 Other 7.5

(The primaries last time were Liberal 44.7 McGowan 31.2 Labor 11.7 Green 3.4 Other 8)

The release claims the 2PPs to be 51:49 and 58.5:41.5 to Coalition over Cathy McGowan respectively. This only works if you assume 100% of Nationals supporters prefer the Liberals (in particular Sophie Mirabella) to McGowan. In fact, the fact that they don't is one of the reasons McGowan won the seat in the first place. With a more reasonable assumption (say, 70:30 from the Nationals to Liberals) McGowan still wins 51:49 even off the rather sickly primary vote claimed. Mirabella would still win on the Turnbull-era primaries (about 55:45) but their sample size will be so small (probably well below 200) that they can't be taken seriously.

The pollster has further muddied the waters by lumping voters who didn't give a party preference in with Others. They also claim that not reading out candidate names favours the major parties, but if so why do they say that the profile "shows a tight battle" when by their own admission it may all be a load of rubbish.

Morgan is a panel pollster and as such very prone to local pool selection errors.. It's likely that the re-emergence of the Nats will take some votes from McGowan since several of her votes were theirs to begin with. But overall these primaries look really odd to me (especially the high ALP primary). This is another Morgan release that is such a trainwreck of dubious and contradictory assumptions and calculations that it's little wonder that Morgan draws reactions like this from some readers:

Kevin Bonhamhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-85962433767399251292016-05-22T21:50:00.004+10:002016-05-25T17:11:51.710+10:00Does The New Senate System Advantage Pauline Hanson?Advance Summary

1. There is some thought about that the new Senate voting system may favour Pauline Hanson in the Queensland Senate race because she may poll a primary vote of 3% or so and then not be caught on preferences.

2. The image of Hanson's party One Nation as one that struggled under Group Ticket voting and would do better under optional preferencing owes much to Labor, Green and Democrat preferences defeating it in contests in 1998-2001.

3. Since then with One Nation's vote falling and the collective Others vote rising, it became just another micro-party and became able to attract good Group Ticket preference flows.

4. Had the 2013 election been a double dissolution, then based on the votes cast, Pauline Hanson would probably have won in New South Wales off 1.2% of the primary vote, overtaking several other parties under the old Group Ticket system to win.

5. However in the 2011 New South Wales Legislative Council election, where voters controlled their own preferences, Hanson was overtaken from an otherwise winning position and lost, even though a very high percentage of votes exhausted. This was even though her primary vote was twice as high as in 2013 and the quota was much lower.

6. The idea that Hanson is advantaged by the change of Senate electoral system is, therefore, completely incorrect.

7. Hanson is, however, one of a large number of micro-party candidates who have more chance at a double dissolution under the new system than at a half-Senate election under it.

8. Hanson's chances at the election are most likely to depend on her primary vote and what voters for other parties make of her candidacy, rather than being decided by how many votes are exhausted.

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The battle for Senate reform has been run and won, thanks to a unanimous and emphatic decision by the High Court to throw out Bob Day's and Peter Madden's challenges, but it seems some people still want to fight against it. Previously on this site (click "Senate reform" tag) I've dealt with and disposed of false claims that Senate reform advantages the Coalition, that it would prevent a "progressive majority" and that it would eliminate "micro parties" from the Senate. I've also dealt with the nonsense about it "disenfranchising" micro party voters by pointing out that micro party voters do not necessarily preference other micro parties.

Now comes a new objection from the movable feast of opposition to reform: apparently it will advantage some of those micros it was supposed to eliminate - just the wrong sort. In particular, everyone's favourite ghost from the political past, Pauline Hanson.

The latest round of speculation about Hanson's chances came from Jamie Walker's article in The Australian (Pauline Hanson makes a fresh Senate tilt in Queensland) which contained, among other things, the following suggestion:

The difference today extends beyond the lowered quota. The axing of group ticket voting in the Senate is bad news for the micro-parties, smashing their ability to do preference deals that can inflate their vote off a tiny base, but not necessarily for Hanson. The new system means more votes will exhaust sooner through optional preferential voting. A player in one of the big parties in Queensland says a candidate who polls above 3 per cent primary will be in the running for the 11th or 12th spot.

The article also described Hanson as "a wildcard beneficiary" of the calling of a double dissolution under the new rules. That Hanson benefits from the calling of a DD compared to a normal half-Senate election is indisputable and is also true for all parties likely to poll in single digits in a specific state. But does she benefit specifically from the DD being under the new system as opposed to the old one?

Van Badham, who previously claimed this DD was "a threat to the existence" of the non-Greens crossbench (among other things), thinks that it does:

Firstly, the change in the voting system does not by itself affect the quota at all. The only thing lowering the quota in 2016 is that it is a double dissolution. What it does do, on the whole, is lower the percentage of the vote that the candidates filling the last two or so places in each seat are likely to need to accumulate in order to win. There are some electoral systems in which the quota progressively reduces as votes exhaust but the Senate system is not one of them. It definitely should be now that there will be significant exhaust - and this is a matter for the next JSCEM cycle - but for now it isn't.

However, one can think about an effective quota, in that as votes exhaust from the count the score at which a candidate is certain of victory in practice (even if not actually over the quota) will come down slightly. So on the assumption that not all the seats fall directly on primaries, the effective target score for certain victory will come down - slightly - through the count. What it comes down to will vary between counts and states.

The important point about the impact of the new system, though, is not mainly about exhaust. What will stop micros getting elected from really tiny primary votes, and give parties that poll close to a quota less chance of being beaten, is not that some votes will exhaust but that the votes that stay in the count will spread widely as a result of the varying choices of voters. The 100% preference flows needed to overhaul candidates with really big leads will be a thing of the past - those who poll close to a quota on primaries will win an available seat even if no votes exhaust at all.

Hanson at a DD under the old rules

There is a history of Pauline Hanson losing seats she might have appeared on course to win because the "big parties" (Coalition, Labor and Greens) preference against her. Likewise for One Nation more generally. In 1998 Hanson lost the House of Representatives seat of Blair after being chased down by the Liberals on primarily Labor preferences. In 2001 Hanson ran for the Senate in Queensland and led the Nationals in the race for the final seat with 0.701 quotas on primary votes to the Nationals' 0.6409. Hanson was almost caught by the Democrats on Labor preferences but was ultimately thrashed by the Nationals because Green, Labor and Democrat preferences all went to them (as did those of the Call to Australia party). (She would also have lost that year under the new Senate system, as easily enough voters for left parties would have preferenced the Nationals to stop her.)

A large One Nation lead was also chased down in the WA 1998 Senate race where One Nation (starting in line for the fifth seat out of six with .725 quotas to the Coalition's 2.689, Democrat .448, Labor 2.427, Green .402) were passed by both the Coalition and Democrats. (It's possible One Nation would have won this race under the new Senate system, but I think that even under semi-optional preferencing the non-right parties would have exchanged how-to-vote card preferences and the Democrats would have achieved the c. 33% gain rate per ALP or Green vote needed to beat them.)

From all this has come the myth that the old Senate system was innately bad for One Nation since preferences could be easily arranged against them by the mainstream parties in order to cause them to lose from strong primary votes. This was the case in the primary-vote heyday of One Nation but over time the Senate environment changed. The ON primary vote went down and, more importantly, the vote for micro-parties generally went through the roof.

Under this situation, One Nation had a new business model for attempting to win Senate seats: preference harvesting. There were many right-wing micro parties that were happy to swap preferences with them based on ideological similarities. There were also some left-wing micro parties that would have found One Nation's ideals obnoxious but that saw One Nation as a potentially juicy preference source and therefore made a pragmatic decision to trade with them. Whereas a major party stood to suffer massive vote share loss if it was exposed as dealing with One Nation, micro-party supporters may well have understood that their party needed to play pragmatic games to try to get elected. Even had a left-wing micro-party caused One Nation to win and suffered a massive backlash for doing so, the risk could have seemed worth it.

NSW 2013: Hanson wins DD simulation

In the leadup to the 2013 election it was well known that One Nation (with Hanson as lead candidate) had a great preference flow in New South Wales and they were even rated a chance of winning a seat off as little as 1.6% of the vote. However nobody predicted the massive Liberal Democrat vote caused by voter confusion, which destroyed One Nation's chances. Nonetheless, had the 2013 election been a double-dissolution, Pauline Hanson may well have got in, from a primary vote of just 1.22%. This result was first found in a post on the Truth Seeker blog which projected that had the 2013 election been a DD under the old system, non-Green crossbenchers would have won about 15 Senate seats, probably including one each for One Nation, Shooters and Fishers, No Carbon Tax Climate Sceptics, Fishing and Lifestyle Party,and HEMP. (Ricky Muir probably wouldn't have won.)

I don't have the computing power or time to re-simulate the result exactly using every actual vote cast (something which is in theory possible) but there is a nice trick for approximating it. Using the ABC's old Senate calculator, the last six seats for a DD at a previous election can be tested by this method:

* find the first six candidates who would have been elected, and deduct one DD quota for each such seat from each successful party
* multiply all remaining primary votes by 13/7
* enter them into the calculator and away you go!

This then gives simulated 2013 DD results, based on the assumption that all votes cast were above the line.

The first four seats would have been Liberal-National, Labor, LDP and Green on primary quotas, then one more each for Liberal-National and Labor to get to the start point of the simulation. The Coalition and Labor then get another two each on raw quotas. Then there would be a race for the last two seats by cutting from the bottom up. At the start it looks like this:

(There are many more parties listed below AJP). Ignore the "total votes" and "% votes" figures here as they have been multiplied by 13/7; what matters is the quotas column. Hanson starts the simulation in seventh place, needing to overtake five other parties to win.

As it turns out, she actually does this. Early in this race she falls to ninth as she is overtaken by the Sex Party and the Wikileaks Party on other micro-party preferences, having received preferences of the Non-Custodial Parents and Rise Up Australia only herself. But the preferences of Katters Australian Party put her to fourth. She then drops back to seventh before this critical point:

Now Hanson gets the DLP preferences and goes to fourth. When AMEP is cut she gets preferences from them and Australian Protectionists. When the LDP's second candidate is cut she gets LDP, Stop the Greens and Smokers Rights.

Finally there is this exclusion:

At this point Hanson gets the preferences of every micro that had pooled with the Sex Party and that preferred her to the Coalition and Shooters and Fishers. That includes the Sex Party itself and also Voluntary Euthanasia, Animal Justice and Stable Population. As a result, Hanson beats Shooters and Fishers for the final seat.

Of course, this wouldn't necessarily have happened. A DD in 2013 would have produced different micro-party campaigns and preference deals, quite aside from the extreme stupidity of calling one in the first place. Below the line votes might have altered the exclusion order and changed the result (though it being NSW, they might have not). But we do hence have an example of how Pauline Hanson could have won a DD under the old system with a primary vote of just 1.22%, or 0.158 of a double dissolution quota. So much for group tickets disadvantaging her!

Hanson under something like the new system

We already have one real-life example of how Hanson might go under semi-optional preferencing. In the 2011 NSW Legislative Council election, Hanson polled a primary vote of 2.41%, or 0.529 quotas. The New South Wales system openly allows voters to vote 1 above the line or number as many above the line boxes as they want. Those voting below the line for candidates must number at least 15 boxes. It has far higher exhaust rates than we will see under the new system, because most voters just vote 1 for a party.

This system would seem extremely attractive for Hanson because of the high exhaust rate and the high quota. As it turned out, the big parties won 17 quotas on raw primaries. In the race for the remaining four seats, Hanson started third, with her 0.53 quotas to 0.49 (2.22%) for the Coalition and 0.45 (2.03%) for the Greens. But in fact despite the extremely low percentage of voters directing preferences, and although there were only about two quotas of votes available (most of those exhausting), Hanson was passed by both the Coalition and the Greens and missed a seat. The votes beating her were far from exclusively left-wing and came from a diverse scatter of micro-parties mostly not known for their love of things Liberal or Green.

 In the new Senate system, the proportion of votes exhausting will be much lower, and much larger Hanson leads could be easily chased down by the big parties. On the other hand, some of the parties cut out in Queensland may have voters who are more receptive to Hanson (this especially applies if she can outlast KAP in the cutup).

Scenarios for Queensland

The "big three" scored 9.87 DD quotas (76%) between them in 2013, with PUP scoring 1.29 DD quotas. The PUP vote will collapse, and while there will be new contenders in the form of the Lazarus and Xenophon teams, plus the celebrity value of the Hanson name, it's hard to see the net "others" vote rising, and it may very well go down. It's very likely that the LNP will win at least five seats, the ALP at least four and the Greens at least one.

This then leaves two seats for which all of the following have realistic chances at this stage: the sixth LNP candidate, the fifth Labor candidate, the second Green, Lazarus, KAP, Hanson, NXT, and let's be generous and throw in PUP. Others may even emerge as chances. With such fragmentation of the right-wing populist vote here it's possible even that the "big three" could poll enough between them to win all twelve Queensland seats, but that's a big ask. There will probably be one crossbench winner and there might be two.

I had some dismissive comments about Hanson's prospects a month ago, which I've just revised since I feel I understated her potential to cobble together a much improved primary vote from the smoking ruins of PUP. It's quite possible she will actually poll well enough on primaries to hold off any preference backlash. But a candidate (Hanson or anyone else) is still not likely to win off 3% with a dud preference flow, not even if there are two crossbench winners rather than one or zero. The exhaust rate would have to be almost 100% for that to occur, and it won't be.

Winning off 3% in Queensland is possible, but for a party to do it they will have to be competitive on preferences. And if Hanson can poll close to half a quota on primaries and pick up a decent preference flow from the free choice of voters for other micro-parties, then she will, very simply, deserve to be elected. Moreover, in such a case her election will probably not have much to do with the rate at which votes exhaust, and will have a lot to do with the conscious decision of voters for right-wing parties to preference her.Kevin Bonhamhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-24856524497971484502016-05-18T17:23:00.001+10:002016-05-23T11:07:23.986+10:00Poll Roundup And Seat Betting Watch: Neutrally Geared Edition 2PP Aggregate: 50.0-50.0 tie (-0.3 for Coalition since last week)
Coalition would probably just win election "held now" (seat projection 78-68-4*)
* see note re Greens below

So far a quietish week on the polling front, with Morgan and Essential the only national polls expected or seen. However there are lots of polling snippets to deal with, plus the belated appearance of actual colour in the betting section, so here goes.

The week saw a fairly comfortable audience-scored win to Bill Shorten in a "people's forum" debate watched by hardly anyone, which commentators generally called a draw. With the audience for debates screened on Pay TV basically containing no-one but political addicts, it's doubtful these debates have much influence on voting intention unless something really out of the box occurs. The week-to-week shifts in voting intention so far this campaign (and the mock campaign before it) are so small they could be explained by anything ... or nothing. A campaign about little of consequence meanders along in search of some defining Events.

About the most strategically interesting thing so far is Labor's attempt to tackle negative gearing. The received wisdom for decades has been that negative gearing ideally should be reformed, but wouldn't because the cost of a policy to reform it would be death by scare campaign. At this early stage we're seeing no sign of it hurting Labor significantly and perhaps even signs that voters might welcome Oppositions taking a little bit of political risk now and then - even when they're not miles ahead of the government. We will see if this is still the same in another six weeks' time.

Morgan's poll this week had a really strange (even by Morgan standards) primary result with just 36.5% for the Coalition and 33% for Labor - and supposedly 30.5% for Others, including 15.5% for the Greens and 5% for NXT. The collective Others polled 21% in 2013, including PUP which has since collapsed. It's just not possible to take this aspect of the Morgan reading seriously, and it's probably time for another reminder that Morgan is an amalgam of two methods (SMS and face-to-face), both of which nobody else uses. The last-election 2PP was released as 52-48 for Labor, though those primaries would normally give 53-47. The respondent-preferences 2PP was 52.5 to Labor.

Essential, which has apparently leant to Labor more or less since Turnbull gave Abbott the shove, produced another 51:49 to ALP. Essential included the Nick Xenophon Team for the first time, giving them 3%. After considering all the primaries, I aggregated Morgan at 52.2 to ALP (despite an increasing temptation to just calculate my own 2PPs from Morgan's primaries) and Essential at 50.3 to Coalition (with the point added for apparent skew). All this took the Coalition down a few tenths of a point and at the time of writing it's a tie. All square, 50-50. Here's the smoothed tracking graph:

All up, we've been at more or less 50-50 with no convincing move for five weeks in a row now. It doesn't really mean that things are all that close, since 50-50 would mean a very likely Coalition win, and the Coalition still holds 78 seats on my seat projection model.

One might think polling would be getting more and more predictive as we get closer to the election, but historically this isn't really so until the last few weeks. A lot of strange stuff has happened about two months out from elections (most notably the 9/11 attacks in 2001) and polling seven weeks out only explains about 46% of variation in federal election outcomes. As noted in past roundups I have two regressions which I now and then update - one of which takes into account the Coalition's history of strong performances relative to polling, and the other of which doesn't.

The simple projection now says the Coalition will get 49.9% 2PP (with a standard deviation of 2.1 points) and gives it just a 65% chance of winning, while the more complex one says 50.3% (similar SD) with a 72% chance of a Turnbull return. It's not a tossup since 50-50 isn't really a tie in terms of winning chances, but three more years for this government is far from a certain thing seven weeks out. If the projection were a poll, it would have a margin of error of four points, meaning that pretty much anything could still happen and that confidence that this has to be a close election is misplaced.

By the way, seven of the 11 governments polling worse than 50-50 at this stage lost, but all 15 polling better (since 1949) won.

By the way last week there was a Lonergan (50-50) which wasn't aggregated because a pollster has to do three national polls by the same method for me to include it. However, I'll keep an eye out for more.

The Metapoll aggregate has a new release up with a 50.7% 2PP to the Coalition not counting betting market data, or 50.4% including it. I am unsure what betting market data could possibly account for the difference. Metapoll projects a 78-66-6 parliament (2 for the Greens and one for NXT) but is projecting the Green and NXT seats off "seat level betting market data". I am not sure how seat level data could be used to reach this conclusion since minor party seat odds are notoriously prone to "longshot bias" and are also non-independent of each other.

Other aggregators will be listed here as they update (scores for Coalition): Andrew Catsaras also 50.0, Bludger Track and Luke Mansillo 49.9, Phantom Trend 49.1.

Projecting the Greens

A few weeks back I had a go at finding vote threshholds for the Xenophon Group to win seats. News that the Coalition may direct preferences to the Greens has fired up the possibility of the Greens winning more than just Melbourne this election. Batman (where David Feeney apparently had a $2.3 million memory fail that lasted for years - Barry O'Farrell, move over) and Wills (which is a vacancy and therefore a juicy target) are on the frontline of possible Green pickups. Antony Green has an excellent roundup of the seat targets.

I am holding off doing a specific projection for Greens target seats until we see where the preference situation goes, but if the Liberals do decide to preference the Greens, the Greens are really rather likely to pick up a second seat. Something seen in both the NSW and Victorian state elections was an ability of the Greens to intensify their vote in target seats even if their statewide vote did nothing special. This makes it very difficult to translate their national vote share to seats.

The possibility of the Liberals preferencing the Greens has created some other commentary. The detailed Saturday Paper article argues that the aim is to give the Coalition more chance of having the largest number of seats in any hung parliament hence "conferring the first right to form government in the event that neither side wins a clear majority", but Australia doesn't actually have that tradition. Preferencing the Greens can make sense simply on the basis that Labor then has to waste resources defending seats that would otherwise be easy wins, but the government also wants people thinking that a vote for Labor is a vote for a hung parliament and a rerun of 2010-3. Every word from the Greens about what they would ask for in such a parliament and who they would govern with assists the Coalition.

Leaderships

Not much more leadership stuff this week, but Essential had Malcolm Turnbull with a net negative rating for the first time, even if his -2 (40-42) was only a net drop of two points since last month. Bill Shorten is on -9 (34-43, up 5), his best result for a year. Turnbull leads Shorten as "better Prime Minister" 43-28.

While I've not seen the exact question design or results, there is reporting that when Galaxy asked Western Sydney respondents which leader would do the best for their area, Turnbull was no longer preferred. It would be useful to see this sort of question repeated nationwide to see if voter preference for incumbent PMs in "beauty contest" polling is driven by an abstract view that they would be good for the nation, rather than for the voter's own area.

Seat Polls

The last week has seen the first serious wave of "neutral" seat polling with Galaxy finding the Coalition ahead in Lindsay (54% 2PP), Herbert (53), Leichhardt (52), Gilmore and Reid (51), level in Dobell and Banks and trailing in Macarthur (49). Of course most of these results are within the margin of error for a seat poll. ReachTEL (see separate Tasmanian article as there are some unusual method decisions in these ones) has the Coalition up in Braddon (53% respondent 2PP), Lyons and Bass (51), trailing in Franklin (46) and uncompetitive against Andrew Wilkie in Denison (34, though I don't think the Liberals would be second even on the polled primaries). The Coalition-held marginals in this polling have an average 2PP swing of 1.8 points to Labor, which is about what should be expected given the current national aggregate, the fact that six are "double sophomore" seats, and the non-inclusion of any WA seats in the list. Nothing to see here that we shouldn't already know.

My Little Pony (aka other polling)

Essential found 48-32 support for the government's internships policy, with Labor and Greens voters somewhat against but Others voters slightly in favour. Essential also found that voters tend to think this election campaign is too long.

A coalition of environmental groups released a poll that is another example of the tediously common practice of left-wing "pony polling" in this country. Supposedly 64% of voters say they will be more likely to vote for a party if it supports moving to 100% renewable energy within 20 years. Voters also supposedly say in vast numbers (you can read the figures at the link) that they are more likely to support parties that want more action on climate change, the Barrier Reef and phasing out coal.

Frankly, if this kind of polling worked then the Greens would be in government already, or the major parties would be very much greener, but the majors have been ignoring this kind of polling for ages and have invariably got away with it. The reason it can be ignored is that the way voters respond to issues when confronted with them cold in isolation is very different to how they react when asked to prioritise issues, or when asked an actually nuanced question that plays the environment off against costs or employment. Even if responses are representative, a voter who says they are more likely to vote a certain way based on a policy change might be only 0.1% more likely. (I haven't seen the poll wording, by the way, so I'm assuming the worst about it, but that isn't necessary to the point). The environment probably won't decide the election, no matter how strong or weak any arguments that it should, and for any party trying too hard for green preferences on the back of a simplistic reading of these sorts of findings, a part of the fate that befell Mark Latham in 2004 awaits.

Seat Betting

The usual disclaimer applies - this section is not about promoting gambling or claiming that markets are predictive, but rather tracking whether they are predictive or not. It's time, finally, to break out the colour-coded seat betting tracker.

At present these are the seats considered on the Sportsbet market to be changing hands or else reasonably close:

Loss (Coalition to Labor): Barton*, Paterson*
Close Loss (Coalition to Labor): Solomon, Dobell*, Eden-Monaro, Macarthur,  Petrie, Capricornia, Hindmarsh, Burt
Tie: Swan
Loss (PUP to Coalition): Fairfax

ALP Close Holds: Batman (vs Grn), Richmond (three-cornered), Lingiari, Adelaide
Coalition Close Holds: Banks, Reid, Page, Gilmore, Lindsay, Robertson, Macquarie, New England (vs IND), Bonner, Brisbane, Forde, Leichhardt, Dickson, Lyons, Bradden, Deakin, Corangamite, Dunkley, La Trobe, Hasluck, Cowan, Stirling.

Odds in Batman (Green at $3) have not yet changed following the Feeney property revelation.

I've made a minor change by including Richmond in the close-seats list on the grounds of the odds of the ALP incumbent being longer than $1.40. Both the Coalition and Greens are vaguely competitive in this seat.

One change is that Lyons has moved into Coalition favouritism following a ReachTEL that showed a massive Liberal primary lead (with the relatively close 2PP of 51-49 clearly a result of an aberrant respondent-preferences sample). I have never been convinced that Labor should be favourite for this seat, though at times I have considered it not much better than a tossup for the incumbent, and there is still a realistic chance that it could go.

Whatever happened last week with Lingiari has reversed and there is also movement back to the Coalition in several seats.

Here is a colour-coded tracker of the change in favourites at the times I have checked:

(Red = ALP favourite, blue = Coalition favourite, grey = tie)

The Coalition starts with 91 seats, three of which are notionally Labor, plus Fairfax is a given. Of their 92 seats including Fairfax, there are five Labor has been favoured to gain at every check, while nine Coalition and two Labor seats have seen changes in favouritism (if anyone has done more detailed tracking they may have seen more).

The Sportsbet 2PP market has finally moved and come down to an average 51.6 to Coalition. The William Hill exact seats market (in bands of five) is currently pointing to 77 Coalition wins. There is also an exact seats market in single seats (except for "hung parliament") which has 81 and 82 Coalition seats as joint favourites, but also points to 77 Coalition wins on average. Possihly both these markets are actually a little more positive for the Coalition than they seem, because of longshot bias on the Labor-win ranges. It is worth keeping an eye on exact seat markets in single seats as I have found them to be quite predictive in the past.

I am expecting quite a number of polls to be released next week and will post another roundup around this sort of time then.

Friday Updates:

There are two new national polls out on Friday night - a ReachTEL and an Ipsos. Full details of the ReachTEL are available but for the Ipsos we have just the 2PP: 51-49 to Coalition.

I make the 2PP for the ReachTEL 50.0 by last-election preferences as well so it did nothing to my aggregate, but the Ipsos result puts the Coalition back to 50.1 as an end of week reading and they start the new week at 50.2.

Note that both these results predate the big news story of the last day, the AFP raids on Labor offices and staffers over the NBN leaks.Kevin Bonhamhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-80369071009947408302016-05-15T08:30:00.000+10:002016-05-23T01:20:54.943+10:00ReachTEL Points To Tasmanian Status QuoReachTEL (federal) Bass 51-49 to Liberal, Braddon 53-47, Lyons 51-49, Franklin 54-46 to Labor, Denison 66-34 to Wilkie.
(See comments on 2PP estimates below)
Poll shows Lambie support sufficient for one Senate seat.

This weekend the Sunday Tasmanian is publishing ReachTEL polling of the five Tasmanian federal seats. The poll includes several questions and other questions will be released by the Mercury through the week. At this stage two questions have been released - voting intention and a question on the Budget and economic management.

Tasmania has three marginal Liberal-held seats: Lyons (Eric Hutchinson, 1.2%), Braddon (Brett Whiteley, 2.6%) and Bass (Andrew Nikolic, 4.0%). All were won from Labor at the last election so the new members should have some buffer against swings because of their new personal votes. It also has the Labor-held seat of Franklin (Julie Collins, 5.1%) and independent Andrew Wilkie's seat of Denison (15.5% vs ALP), neither of which have been considered really "in play". Until now there has been no released polling of these seats since Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister. There have been small state samples aggregated by Poll Bludger, which have generally looked OK for the Liberal incumbents except for a wobble after the short-lived "state income tax" proposal.

This is the first large-scale poll we have seen, but it has a number of unusual aspects that make interpreting it challenging. While the Liberal incumbents could take some heart from it, there is plenty of room for other interpretations.

The Poll Design

The poll uses large samples of around 600 voters (based on recorded-voice polling or "robopolling" of both landline and mobile phones) per seat. Such large ReachTEL samples were also the only public seat polling available for Tasmania before the 2013 election. They predicted the winner of every Tasmanian seat correctly, but had the Liberal 2PP vote on average 4-5 points higher than the ultimate outcome. There was a widespread national tendency of published seat polling to skew to the Coalition compared to both national polling and the end results in 2013. It is probable that pollsters have taken measures to combat this, but I am not aware of any details of such measures.

The main oddity of the poll design as commissioned is the inclusion of the Jacqui Lambie Network in the readout. At this stage, JLN appear to be contesting the Senate only in Tasmania. While including the JLN is very useful in terms of getting some kind of a vague idea of their possible Senate support, this does mean that respondents are being asked what sounds like a House of Reps question ("If a federal election were to be held today, which of the following would receive your first preference vote?") but includes a Senate-only party.

The published preferences are all respondent-allocated. If last-election preferences were used I get some different results. See discussion of the 2PPs below.

As with many other recent ReachTEL polls (but not all) questions have been asked in a two-step format - in the first stage voters can press a button for "undecided", but those who pick that option are then asked which party they are leaning to. While this can provide useful data about the softness of particular party votes, it also means the results of the headline question are not directly comparable to those of other polls like, say, Newspoll.

Primary Vote Results

I have published the results below in a format that more closely resembles that of other polls, eg with the Undecided voters all reallocated. I am showing the swing for Labor, Liberal, the Greens and Wilkie since the last election for each sample. It should be kept in mind that the in-theory margin of error for any given result here maxes out at about 4%, but that is ignoring the impact of scaling, which tends to increase it slightly. Furthermore because so many individual figures are being published at once, it is quite likely that at least one or two will be outside the margin of error.

The inclusion of the Lambie Network creates swings against parties that may not actually exist in a lower house vote (though some of these voters may vote for Ind/Others). However, the Lambie vote in this poll by electorate very closely follows the PUP vote at the last federal election. Whether the Lambie voters and PUP voters are more or less the same people is not so clear.

Bearing all this in mind, the poll shows an average primary "swing" of 1.1 points to the Liberals, 2.3 points against Labor and 3.5 points to the Greens. Seat by seat, the Green vote in Lyons at least looks too high and the Labor vote there too low, and I think this is also true of Franklin and probably also Denison. (The Labor brand can't be too trashed in Denison given that the party just won a Legislative Council seat covering slightly over a third of it with a 10% swing!) Even allowing for this, the primaries look rather strong for the Liberals.

There are three possible explanations for this, any or all of which could be valid or partly valid:

1. The poll could be supporting the finding of the other state samples that the Liberal vote is holding up rather well in Tasmania.

2. The poll could be overmeasuring Liberal support, as the equivalent series did in 2013.

3. While the JLN votes and 2013 PUP votes are distributed very similarly, they might not be the same voters. The Lambie Network might be "taking" more votes from Labor in this poll, and fewer from the Liberals, than PUP did.

A more House of Representatives specific survey design would have assisted in ruling out 3.

Two-Party Preferred

Here I will deal with Denison first. The 2PP has been published as between Andrew Wilkie and the Liberals. However, in 2013 the Greens' preferences in Denison split 55.8% to Wilkie, 40.7% to Labor and 3.5% to the Liberals. With the split from "others" also slightly favouring Labor, my own estimate is that Labor would overtake the Liberals and make the final two in this sample, albeit by only 0.1 of a point. It's very likely that the Labor vote is understated compared to the Liberal vote in this sample anyway, so the poll's Wilkie-vs-Liberal 2PP is likely to be irrelevant. However, the 2PP for Wilkie against Labor would also be about 66:34 based on this sample. Although the sample shows some primary vote swing away from Wilkie (probably down to declining influence and profile in a lopsided parliament, if real) he would still be returned easily on these figures.

For the other seats, the table above includes the pollster's published 2PPs for Labor and Liberal, but also my own estimate of the 2PP based on last-election preferences (2PP (LE)). Here I have assumed the Lambie voters would split fairly evenly between the majors, as the PUP voters did in 2013, but this might not actually be the case. Note that Green preferences in Tasmania flow very strongly to Labor. Anyway, on that basis I find my "last-election" 2PPs to be about a point more favourable to the Coalition on average (52:48 Bass, 53:47 Braddon, 54:46 Lyons, 47:53 Franklin) than those published in this poll. The one that really deserves comment here is Lyons. There is just no way that a Liberal lead of 16.8 points in Lyons would really come down to only a 51:49 lead after preferences. This would require Labor to get about 80% of all preferences!

There are some risks involved in using respondent-allocated preferences in small samples. A sample of 600 has a non-major party vote of about 100-150 voters per electorate. These subsamples then have a margin of error of 8-10 points on a good day, which means that the use of respondent preferences can easily cause up to two points of 2PP error by itself. This then increases the effective error margin on the 2PP estimate.

However, it's possible (especially see the table for question 2 below) that the Lambie voters lean fairly strongly to Labor. If this is the case then the published 2PPs all seem very accurate off the primaries, except in Lyons. In the case of Lyons it may just be that the sampled minor party voters happened by random chance to be unusually pro-Labor.

So What Does It Mean?

Firstly, while the Liberals lead in their three seats in these samples, their leads are narrow. If a properly random sample of 600 voters shows a 51:49 lead in an electorate (as is the published 2PP for Bass and Lyons) then there is actually about a 30% chance the party polling the 49% would win the seat. Even if the 2PPs aren't really that close there would still be a realistic chance based on this sample that Labor would gain one of the three seats (could be any one). The sample also doesn't prove Franklin is safe for Labor by itself; it is just consistent with the widespread belief that this is so.

 Also if the overestimation of the Coalition vote in seat-polling was seen to the same degree as in 2013, it's plausible these results could be re-spun as four ALP wins. (I think this is unlikely). If we take the poll as close to face value as we can, then it's not by itself saying any of the "Three Amigos" are rock-solid, but it is still better for their chances to be polling narrow leads than to have no information.

Lambie

While the poll gives us some insight into the size of the Lambie vote and hence her Senate prospects, this should be treated with caution. Some voters who intend to vote for a major party in the lower house but Lambie in the Senate may have interpreted the question as being about the House of Reps only, so the poll may underestimate Lambie's appeal. On the other hand, Lambie is named in the readout while the major party candidates are not.

Anyway with the undecided redistributed, the poll has the JLN on 5.1% statewide, plus what little it might get from Andrew Wilkie's voters. Although the Senate quota is 7.7%, in practice because of the new preferencing system it is very likely a primary of 5.1% would be enough for Lambie to retain her seat - and this could well be an underestimate anyway. The poll is therefore consistent with the idea that Lambie herself will retain but will not have enough vote for a second seat. The poll provides no support whatsoever for the idea that the Greens will win more than two seats, while the strong Coalition primary points towards them gaining a fifth at Labor's expense (much as I have doubted this outcome recently). Extrapolating such a poll to the Senate is always risky especially given the new parties that may well emerge and become factors.

Economic Management

Question 2 is rather interesting.

Economic management is a Coalition strength area so it would be expected that the Coalition would have a healthy edge here, in the context of a poll showing at most a narrow 2PP lead to Labor statewide. However I think the "and the core issues facing Tasmania" add-on has muted the normal response to economic questions and created a lot more scope for a classically partisan response. Thus, the lukewarm result for the Liberals may not be as disappointing as it looks.

I will update this article with more as more findings are released through the week.

PS I've had a request for the original primaries so here they are. Click for larger versions:

Issue Importance (May 16):

A question on issue importance has been released by The Mercury (sorry, the text here is hard to read):

This is at least the third ReachTEL in the past year in which health has topped the list in Tasmania, albeit against various competition. In the leadup to the 2013 election, "jobs" topped the list in Bass, Braddon and Lyons and was a close second to economy in Franklin. It is possible that the more restrictive wording "job creation packages" has contributed to a lower finding in this survey, but that would not alone explain the massive differences. There are no big surprises here - the preference for health among female voters and the economy among male voters are common and partly reflect the standard tendency for male voters to lean more to the right.

MP Ratings (Tuesday)

The Mercury has now also released a very important question on approval ratings for the five incumbent local members:

We see here that Andrew Wilkie is top of the pops with a massive +51 netsat, which highlights why attempts to unseat him at this election are unlikely to get close even though his primary vote in this poll wasn't all that high. Voters often see Wilkie as having integrity and being something different from run-of-the-mill Canberra politics, and a close election campaign will do no harm to his claims of being able to make a difference. Andrew Nikolic (Bass) scores an impressive +24.7 showing that his tendency to get into social-media scrapes has not harmed his standing outside the political bubble.

Eric Hutchinson (Lyons) has a reasonable net +9.8, but a very high 15.3% score for "never heard of them before", which is consistent with some doubts about I see about whether he has done enough profile-building. He also has the highest "average" score of those listed. Julie Collins (Franklin) also has a high non-awareness rate (perhaps a result of the obscurity of Opposition) but a strong net rating of +22.7.

Brett Whiteley has the weakest net rating in the survey (with almost 20% rating his performance "very poor"), but a net +2.9 is still not especially bad. Recently Whiteley proposed drug-testing long-term welfare recipients and it's possible this culture-war sop to the irate talkback right may have gone down like a lead balloon with the broader community. However there are probably other explanations.

Senatorial Obscurity (Saturday)

The Mercury on Saturday has run a two-pager on Tasmania's senators and their obscure nature. At this stage it's in the print edition only (edit: up online now). The poll asked voters how many Senators they thought they could name, though it didn't put their ability to do so to the test. 20% said they could name no Senators, 34.6% "Three and under", 30.5% "Between three and six", 12.5% "Between six and eleven", 2.4% "All twelve". It's not clear how those who thought they could name exactly three or six would have voted, but it really doesn't matter to the point.

Female voters and young voters were least confident of their Senator-spotting abilities (though it would be interesting to see whether females really performed worse than males when put to the test) and there was not a vast amount of variation by voting intention (except undecided).Kevin Bonhamhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-72278225675582152672016-05-09T23:32:00.000+10:002016-05-19T18:24:53.572+10:00Poll Roundup and Seat Betting Watch: Election Called 2PP: 50.3 to Coalition (+0.6 in two weeks, -0.1 since end of last week)
Coalition would probably narrowly win election "held now" (seat projection Coalition 79 Labor 67 Others 4)
Updated after Essential

On Sunday the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, visited the Governor-General and asked him to dissolve both houses and call a double-dissolution election for the long-expected date of July 2. I hope the G-G asked him if he was absolutely sure the High Court would dismiss the Senate reform challenge case first, but in any case the G-G is in no position to be refusing such requests.

In the last week Scott Morrison delivered his first Budget. So far if there's a budget bounce at all, it's very small. We've got Ipsos at 51-49 to Coalition (up one on last month) but Newspoll unchanged at 51-49 the other way. We've also had two post-Budget appearances from polls not sighted for a while - a federal Galaxy at 50:50 and a Morgan Phone at 51:49 to Coalition. In pre-budget days we had a 50.5 to Labor from Morgan multi-mode (by last election preferences, 51-49 respondent) and a 52:48 to Labor from Essential, which has mostly leant strongly to the ALP since mid-November last year.

The post-Budget ReachTEL has a 0.7 point primary vote swing from Labor to Coalition on last month's. While the 2PP in the ReachTEL was reported as just 50-50, that's a result of firstly ReachTEL shifting to respondent preferences, and secondly ReachTEL respondents giving Labor a much better share of preferences than has usually been the case in other polls (though Ipsos this week has concurred). I calculate the ReachTEL 2PP by last-election preferences at 51.6 to Coalition, or 51.4 applying ReachTEL's previous adjustment for the Nick Xenophon Team.

I'm aggregating the ReachTEL as 51.6, Ipsos and Morgan phone at 51, Morgan multi at 49.6, Galaxy at 49.8, Newspoll at 48.8 and Essential at 48.7. The ReachTEL put the Coalition back in the lead on my aggregate after sixteen days in arrears, and I now have the government at 50.2. Here's the smoothed tracking graph:

The Galaxy was the subject of some poor poll reporting from someone who I would have hoped knew better. (May be paywalled). A 50-50 poll does not mean there is a 50-50 chance of either side winning!

Firstly if the 2PP were exactly 50-50 on election day, the Coalition would be not a tossup for a win but highly likely to do so (Labor's target for a 50-50 chance is probably almost a point higher - see What 2PP Vote Does Labor Need To Win?) Second, even without the deck being in the Coalition's favour, a poll taken this far out is a snapshot of current voting intention, not a prediction of chances. To convert a sample of public opinion into an estimate of victory chances it's necessary to look at the history of how governments, and how the parties, tend to perform relative to their polling at a given time from the election. Even then, doing this from a single poll rather than an aggregate would be very inaccurate. I haven't yet rerun my historical regressions but I expect they'd still give the Coalition about a 75% chance of winning from this point.

Of course it can easily be argued that there are election-specific factors that make Labor's chances better than that, but none of that is proven by polling. The polls plus history are telling us the government should be returned. Whether those patterns actually hold up this time, or whether the government runs a bad campaign and collapses, or whether the polls might even just be wrong (like they weren't last time when many people thought they could be) - this all remains to be seen in the weeks ahead.

Leaderships

A brief roundup of leadership figures:

* Newspoll has Turnbull on a net satisfaction rating of -11 (38-49), his first improvement since November. Shorten is on -19 (33-52), his new least worst since August. Turnbull still has a large "better PM" lead considering his party's 2PP polling (49-27).

* Ipsos has Turnbull down five points to +8 (48-40) and Shorten up eleven to -11 (38:49). Turnbull has the same beauty contest lead as in Newspoll (51-29).

* Morgan phone has Turnbull at +2 (43-41) - bear in mind this poll once had him at +50 - and Shorten at -15 (34-49). Turnbull is preferred 57-24.

* Morgan phone has Turnbull (41) preferred Coalition leader over Julie Bishop (24) and all the rest have single figures. This is similar to what Turnbull was polling for the post before he was installed in it. On the Labor side this series always produces wretched reading for Bill Shorten fans, and he (14) again trails Tanya Plibersek (22) and Anthony Albanese (20) as preferred Labor leader. Supposedly 8% still prefer Wayne Swan!

* Not quite a leadership stat but Galaxy found only 48% could name the Treasurer correctly and only 18% could name "Labor's Treasury spokesman". (Perhaps had they said "Shadow Treasurer" Chris Bowen would have rated higher there, or perhaps not.)

Not so much is being made of Shorten's unpopularity these days, especially with his ratings on the rise. Historically, Opposition Leaders who have been unpopular rarely win at federal or state level, but this is mainly because they are often removed and/or leading uncompetitive parties. I think that Shorten is not really comparable to most other Opposition duds, because part of his poor rating history is that he is disliked by strongly left-wing voters for not being far enough to the left. This might be seen as part of a global tendency (Sanders, Corbyn) for a large chunk of the left to crave something less safe from their side of politics.

Budget Polling

The most critical Budget poll is the Newspoll because of the very long history of the same two questions being asked by it: whether voters think the Budget will be good for the economy and whether voters think they will personally benefit. The budget scored +5 (34-29) on the economic front and -21 (18-39) on personal circumstances.

The latter probably sounds bad but in fact it's pretty normal. Voters are usually negative about their own finances. It's the economic rating that is weak - it rates in the bottom half for all Budgets, and below all but four past Coalition budgets. However given the new Newspoll methods, it's not clear how comparable the figures are. Here's an update to the Newspoll budget poll graph, showing where 2016 fits:

Ipsos found 37% of voters considered the budget fair (43% unfair) and 24% thought they would be better off to 39% worse off.

The first polling on the Budget came from ReachTEL which found 26.2% rating the budget good, 38.9% average and 34.9% poor. Responses were, as usual, party-polarised. There is no comparison available for the 2015 Budget since ReachTEL didn't ask exactly the same question. We can however compare how voters feel about the impact on themselves, with just 7.1% (much lower than other polls) thinking they'd be better off and 33.4% worse this time (compared to 16.4% and 30.3% last year). Coalition supporters were especially less likely to see their economic prospects improving.

Galaxy found that voters were easily whipped into outrage that "only workers earning more than $80,000 get a tax cut" (28% agree, 62% not) and that almost everyone likes Labor's plan to continue the Deficit Levy on high income earners (63:21). (Had the question not specified that this was Labor policy, the response may have been even stronger.)

Essential respondents gave the Budget a net -9 response (20-29) compared to +1 last year. Both the neutral and don't-know responses were much higher than in the last two years, suggesting that the Budget has been overshadowed. I lack the time for a detailed summary of Essential's budget polling but the approval for company tax cuts and internships for the long-term unemployed were interesting. Scott Morrison's advantage over Chris Bowen as preferred Treasurer increased to 31:20.

Seat Polling

I have not seen any neutrally-conducted seat-polls in the last two weeks. There was a Seven News story about internal polling supposed to show the Liberals with the following 2PPs: Eden-Monaro 46.9, Reid 50.3, Banks 50.9, Gilmore 50.2, Bennelong 51.6, Lindsay 51.2, Hughes 58.8, New England 53.1 (vs IND). This was accompanied by reports of a declining trend in some of these seats, so it sounded like some sort of tracking polling. These polls were attributed to the Liberals but the government denied knowing anything about them, as did usual Coalition pollsters, so where these figures come from, the methods behind them and even if these polls exist remains a mystery at this stage.

Anyway, seat polling was frequently cack at the previous election, and this sort of dire internal polling report (always supposed to show something you wouldn't see in the national polls) is a polling trope as old as the hills and with a dismal predictive record. But what's most striking about this lot is that the 2PPs in the first six listed seats actually aren't much worse (on average maybe one point) than should be expected based on current national polling. Indeed on current national polling Eden-Monaro, Banks and Gilmore are all more or less tossups. The alleged poll got attention because of the sacred bellwether status of Eden-Monaro, but one of these days someone will finally win that seat and lose the election. Its past history does not make it immune to local factors.

Betting Watch

The usual disclaimer: the purpose of this section is to monitor the effectiveness of betting odds, and not to encourage either betting nor the belief that betting markets are strongly predictive.

The headline rates as of Friday again had the Coalition between a 69% and 72% implied chance of winning depending on the market.

However there have been massive moves on the Sportsbet seat betting markets. Labor is now favourite in 14 Coalition-held seats. Labor is not even considered close to losing any seat now (apart from one apparent error) while the market is giving it realistic shots in another 20 Coalition seats.

Loss (Coalition to Labor): Barton*, Paterson*, Solomon
Close Loss (Coalition to Labor): Dobell*, Eden-Monaro, Macarthur,  Petrie, Capricornia, Hindmarsh, Lyons, Deakin, Hasluck, Swan, Burt
Close Loss (Labor to Coalition): Lingiari (??)
Loss (PUP to Coalition): Fairfax

Coalition Close Holds: Banks, Reid, Page, Gilmore, Lindsay, Robertson, Macquarie, New England (vs IND), Bonner, Brisbane, Forde, Leichhardt, Herbert, Dickson, Longman, Corangamite, Dunkley, La Trobe, Cowan, Stirling

Assuming Lingiari is a misprint, that makes just 77 Coalition, with 69 Labor and 4 others based on individual-seat favourites, but the number of close holds suggests that the collective wisdom of the seat-betting markets is probably a hung parliament. In coming weeks I'll have a colour chart showing the movement in these seats over time.

The Sportsbet 2PP market is still, however, crediting the Coalition with about 52.5% 2PP. Perhaps the reason it has not come down is that the rake on this market is outrageous so nobody with that much sense goes near it. The William Hill exact seats market which is a slightly less (but still) severe scalp of the poor punter has an implied 77 seats for the Coalition now, and also hasn't moved a lot.

I will update the 2PP estimate tomorrow night post-Essential, and may add further comments through the week. I am on remote fieldwork this week (I expect this to be the last week of it pre-election) and finding time for all this is difficult!

(Update: Essential moved from 52-48 to Labor to 51-49, and this caused the Coalition to gain another 0.1 on my aggregate.)Kevin Bonhamhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-57331858948480785192016-05-07T08:00:00.000+10:002016-05-14T00:14:29.401+10:00Legislative Council 2016: Apsley and Elwick Live and Post-Count
Apsley: CALLED (c. 7 pm) - Rattray (IND) has retained

Elwick: CALLED (c. 8 pm) - Willie (ALP) has defeated incumbent Taylor (IND).

===========================================

Sunday 8:11 pm: We have a preference throw in Elwick with preferences splitting 53.3:46.7 to Willie, which makes the current result almost the same (53.16% to Willie). It will change by fractions of a point but there are not nearly enough votes left for Taylor to have any mathematical chance. In Apsley Rattray is 20 votes short of an absolute majority. A provisional preference throw shows her gaining 36.8% of Green preferences (wow) to Clark's 35.9% and Hall's 27.3%. Then with Hall excluded, his votes go 68.9% to Rattray giving her a 67.3% 2PP over Labor if we ignore the few undistributed votes.

Sunday 12:20 pm: Apologies again for the random spread of fonts and colours in this piece. I like to have a bit of colour at the top on LegCo nights but the software has a mind of its own.

 Anyway, one key topic of discussion in the Elwick wash-up has been Taylor's claim that she could not compete with the efforts of the ALP "party machine". Here's a dose of historical perspective on that one: since 1980 only three independent LegCo incumbents had previously lost to endorsed party candidates: Jean Moore to Labor's Doug Parkinson in 1994, Stephen Wilson to Labor's Lin Thorp in 1999, Cathy Edwards to Labor's Allison Ritchie in 2001. There have been cases in which major parties have thrown the kitchen sink at incumbents who have thrashed them (the Liberals' heavy loss to Kerry Finch being an obvious case in point). What has happened here is a rather rare event and no reason yet for concern about parties overrunning the Upper House (in which endorsed party MLCs now hold four of 15 seats).

Taylor decided to keep working rather than campaigning as actively as Willie, but plenty of incumbents have made the same call and been returned before. It is hard to avoid suspecting that in the meantime she did not enough to shore up her community support base - or too much that alienated it.

10:22 pm: The TEC have confirmed that preferences will be notionally distributed tomorrow. I expect this to result in both results being declared tomorrow afternoon, though with Rattray currently 15 votes short of an outright majority we could get the amusing situation in which she wins on preferences only to eventually not need them anyway.

9:15 Wrap: A Refreshing Result

With counting done for the night in one seat and almost in the other, we have a predictable and predicted result in Apsley but a refreshing surprise in Elwick. Josh Willie is the youngest new MLC since Allison Ritchie in 2001 (actually depending on his exact date of birth we might have to go back a lot further) and a primary-school teacher with no profile to speak of and a distinct lack of political experience has somehow knocked off one of those MLC super-mayors who are usually elected for life. He's been assisted by a massive party machine effort and by taking six weeks leave without pay to doorknock ten thousand houses, but hard work hasn't always been enough at this level before. I did not think Willie would get closer than about 48:52 let alone win, though he couldn't be written off given the strength of the Labor vote in the area. After such a string of easy retains by sitting MLCs from 2004 on (disrupted only by Lin Thorp's expected but still rather narrow loss), this result is very refreshing. It shows that young candidates can still compete and that incumbents do not have to do everything under the sun wrong to lose.

It's easy enough to find factors that can be used to explain this win after the event, but many of these were well-known before the election and some had been present in previous LegCo elections without anything much happening. Here's a list:

* Taylor's age
* Taylor's comments on social issues
* Politicians' pay increase debate
* Bus timetable changes
* ALP campaign effort
* General friendly issues mix for state ALP

To take the first two, yes Taylor is 69 and yes she's said some idiosyncratic things from time to time, but the same could be said of Ivan Dean, who retained office at 70 last year with a small swing to him. Is the "time to retire" factor judged differently for women? The pay increase debate seems to have had no impact in Apsley though that electorate has had its own economic struggles.

Phil Bayley on Twitter has raised the interesting suggestion that Taylor's community profile as an incumbent MLC could have actually been lower than when she was a recent ex-Mayor (such is the general ignorance of the Legislative Council). I hadn't thought of that!

With Willie's win Labor goes from one to two seats in the Council (the same number in a formal sense as the Liberals) and the LegCo left goes from five seats to six. This will make things tougher for the Hodgman Government which will now need all eight remaining MLCs to vote for any big-picture bills that the left-wing six oppose. It should also be a reassuring outcome for the Opposition Leader, Bryan Green.

As for Apsley this is an extremely convincing win by the incumbent Tania Rattray, but no great surprise since Hall lacked the profile and the others lacked the politics to have a hope against her. There's nothing much to see there for Labor or the Greens with slight swings against both from the dire state election results, albeit against independents rather than mainly Liberals.

Next year we have Ruth Forrest (left-leaning independent) up in Murchison, "independent Liberal" contrarian Tony Mulder in Rumney and centrist independent Rosemary Armitage in Launceston. The last two are first-termers while Forrest was returned unopposed in 2011. While none are in strong Labor areas, after tonight they'll know incumbents can't take re-election for granted.

Thanks all for your interest; I will have more updates in coming days.

==============================================================9:30 pm: I've heard of scrutineering samples with a 57% flow of Green preferences to Labor - no precise details but entirely plausible. That would push Willie up to nearly 54% 2PP (a swing of nearly 10%),

9:20 pm: Prepolls added in Elwick and Taylor would now need 74% of Green preferences to win. The margin's coming down on these late votes but there are not enough to come with 77% of enrolled voters counted (and these elections always fall well short of 100%).

9:00 pm: Rattray gains on prepolls and is now a handful of votes short of an outright majority.

8:17 pm: Labor rubbing it in now by winning the on-the-night count of Elwick postals. So if anyone thought postals might save Taylor, well, um, no.

8:12 pm: All regular Elwick booths are in now. On current primaries Taylor would need 77% of Green preferences and that certainly won't be happening.

8:00 pm: I'm having a colour problem here, I can't stop the software from changing the text below the dotted line to purple! Anyway, all the regular booths are in in Apsley with Rattray on 48.9% so it's still touch and go if she gets to 50 or if we get to see some Green preferences. This irrelevant point may not be resolved until the postals trickle in over the coming several days. For Elwick I suspect there will be a preference throw tomorrow afternoon, though I haven't heard this for sure yet.

7:46 pm: A more competitive performance in the Merton booth for Taylor has knocked a point off Willie's projected margin but there still seems little room for doubt that he has won this.

7:39 pm: A flurry of Elwick booths are in and I'm just processing these to see if I feel like calling it!

7:32 pm: Almost every Apsley booth is in and Rattray hovers below 50% but still has one super-strong booth plus postals to go. The margin from Clark to Hall has dropped down to 4% after Hall won Oatlands (though by less than I thought he might).

7:25 pm: Labor said their man Willie was a star of the future, looks like he's a star of the present! Massive double-digit swings in both Lutana and Windermere put him in an extremely strong position. My projection's gone to 54 now, throw in a point for the likely shift in Greens preferences. Greens voters tend to be young and a young Labor candidate should appeal to them if nothing else, but there is plenty else.

7:16 pm: More trouble for Taylor in Elwick as Willie picks up a 9% swing in the Moonah booth, which he wins though it is far from the electorate's reddest. Willie now projecting to 51.7 after preferences (see note below).

7:13 pm: My projection still says Rattray will get back above 50% and not even be taken to preferences (and it can't even consider postals because it is coming off the state election result.) There are a number of large north-eastern booths remaining which will favour Rattray. However the likely strong performance for Hall in Oatlands could still derail it.

7:06 pm: I've been holding off calling Apsley because of the funny local patterns but 30% is counted now and Rattray hasn't fallen far below 50%. She may be taken to preferences but even if so will win easily.

7:03 pm: We have another booth in in Elwick - Rosetta, one of the less ALP-friendly booths. Again though a swing to Willie of about 5%. After three booths Willie is projecting to 51.3% after preferences assuming the flow from the Greens is as weak as 2010. It probably won't be, so Taylor is still in difficulty.

7:00 pm: Rattray's lead has been dropping and she has now fallen below 50% but on current numbers will not have any trouble winning after preferences. Clark has won another two booths - Kempton in the southern midlands to go with the win in Colebrook, and also Ross in the northern midlands (which is surprising).

6:52 pm: A huge swing from Taylor to Willie in the Goodwood booth (13.4% off Taylor, Willie gains 12.1%). Is the upset really on now? It could be!

6:50 pm: Clark has had a big win in Triabunna (where he grew up) while the Greens appear to have scored zero votes in Levendale!

6:44 pm: A third booth winner in Apsley with Brett Hall taking Parattah which is very near his home base. Rattray third there but my projection still puts her over 50% at the end of the night. The interesting question there is whether Brett Hall can get into second.

6:40 pm: Josh Willie has won the Agfest booth! I wouldn't think that would be especially Labor friendly though there's no match from 2010. It's only a small sample but this could be an exciting count in Elwick.

6:37 pm: A Labor booth win in Apsley, they've won Colebrook. However Rattray is still leading on primaries by 38 points and my projection says little will change. Rattray is just way too strong in the north-eastern booths and can afford narrow defeats elsewhere.

6:34 pm: My projection has Rattray increasing her lead from here though the two NE booths in which she has been super-strong might be skewing things a little.

6:31 pm: Collinsvale in Elwick in and we have a 4% swing against Adriana Taylor on primaries. An interesting night awaits if this is representative. Bear in mind that a swing of this size on primaries accompanied by a swing on preferences might conceivably cause her to lose the seat. However it's only one booth and a "different" one at that.

6:27 pm: A bunch of booths in and Rattray down to a more pedestrian 51%. Just entering them in spreadsheet for a new projection soon.

6:19 pm: A massive start for Rattray with a 79% score in the small Gladstone booth, up 18% on the Liberal vote in 2014! Rattray may be stronger in the NE than other parts of the electorate because of her former Dorset local government base so let's not call it just yet, despite the temptation!

6:10 pm: For those following booths for Elwick there are a few name changes since 2010. I believe Moonah East is the former Bowen Road and Merton is the former Tolosa. Also a few booths (Elwick, Cosgrove and Montrose) don't seem to be on the list this time around. In Apsley compared to the state election we've added Broadmarsh and Targa and lost Pontville and Pipers River. In these cases the new booths are very close to the old ones.

6:01 pm: Polls have closed. For TEC live figures see Apsley and Elwick. Nothing to see there yet.

Opening Post (8am): Welcome to today's live coverage of today's two Tasmanian Legislative Council elections. The menu includes the working-class Glenorchy seat of Elwick, held by independent Adriana Taylor. Labor's Josh Willie needs a 6.1% swing to unseat her. We also have the rural seat of Apsley, for which no margin applies since Tania Rattray was re-elected unopposed in 2010.

My preview for both electorates can be seen here and if you're curious about the leanings of the incumbents there's a piece on voting patterns for those who really like the mathsy stuff.

The polls in both seats are open until 6 pm. Live comments should appear as soon as the first figures come through (probably around 6:30) and counting for the night should be done by around 9 pm. Should either seat go to preferences, news on that will be posted over subsequent days as time permits - bearing in mind that I have fieldwork commitments during business hours from Monday on. Cutups are often done on Sunday afternoon if the exclusion orders are clear.

Once the count starts, refresh as often as you like for the latest comments, which will scroll up from above this post. When I believe a candidate will definitely win, the magic word "CALLED" will appear at the top of the screen for that seat.

It would be a massive upset if Rattray lost, and I think she'll win by at least ten points two-candidate preferred (55%+), assuming that it even gets that far. Elwick is somewhat less clearcut but I also expect Taylor to be returned, with a margin that could be anything from bigger than last time to close-ish. So the mid-range is probably something like 55:45 (though if there is much of a swing to her we won't see a two-candidate count). As usual, there has been no polling for either seat.

The elections have been overshadowed by the looming federal campaign and I especially noticed that there were nowhere near as many signs on the Brooker through Elwick as last time. I also noticed that when given the opportunity to present a convincing case for why the incumbent should be removed (in the debates on Leon Compton's ABC mornings program in the last week) neither Labor challenger could really do so.

Labor would be hoping to at least gain a few points of primary vote on their 2014 state result in Apsley (23.8%) while in Elwick they would be hoping for a smaller margin than in 2010. It's hard to expect too much for the Greens in either case, since these are weak electorates for the party which has not even run candidates who live in them, but anything above 13% in either seat would be some sign they are rebuilding, while anything below 9% would be "why bother?" territory.

Some notes on booth-matching: for Elwick we have the same lineup (Taylor, Labor, Green) as in 2010 so that's all more or less straightforward. Apsley is trickier though as there was no contest in 2010 and the 2004 contest is no use as a model. I'll be modelling the Labor and Green primaries off the 2014 state election. I'll be modelling the Rattray vote off the Liberal vote and the Hall vote off the vote for Others. This will be a bit shaky early on since if Hall gets any vote to speak of, his share could vary greatly around the electorate. Note also that there are new prepoll booths.

In 2014 Taylor got 54.7% of Green preferences, but her track record on social issues may make it harder to keep that flow up this time. All the same preferences usually don't flow strongly in these things. Should Rattray and Clark be the final two in Apsley I'd expect Hall's preferences to favour Rattray and Houghton's to favour Clark, but maybe not all that strongly in either case.
Kevin Bonhamhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-14018384857205409262016-04-28T02:25:00.001+10:002016-05-13T22:55:30.912+10:00Queensland: Compulsory Preferencing And Recent PollingBecause of other distractions (see articles below) I've been a bit slow dealing with Queensland's sudden return to compulsory preferencing, but fortunately in this time a new state poll has arrived that is highly relevant to the issue.

For those who spent a couple of hours asleep last Thursday, that was about all it took for Labor to amend an LNP motion to expand the parliament from 89 to 93 seats and make it conditional on a return to compulsory preferencing. The LNP voted against the amendment but the KAP and ex-Labor crossbenchers supported it and in the end the LNP didn't even vote against the amended bill. It was vintage roughshod Queensland politics in its execution - moving it as an amendment meant it could be passed without prolonged discussion or a committee process, and Queensland of course has no upper house to get in the way. It all gave the appearance of a tactical disaster for the Lawrence Springborg-led LNP (allowing such a major concession while fishing for crumbs) and again raised concerns of friends and foes alike as to whether the Queensland Opposition has all that much upstairs strategically.

The Impact of The Change

Immediate reactions suggested Labor might have voted themselves an easy win at the next election. After all, Antony Green had calculated that had voters whose votes exhausted distributed their preferences the same way as those whose votes didn't, Labor would have won an extra eight seats in 2015 and would have had a comfortable majority. The 2PP might have been about 53.4% to Labor, 2.2 points higher than they actually obtained. (A more accurate estimate could be found from the distributions, but probably isn't necessary.)

However, the number of Labor misses caused by optional preferencing probably wasn't really that large. Especially at the 2015 election, at which the rate of preferencing by non-LNP voters was very high because of a successful "put the LNP last" campaign, it's likely that minor/micro-party voters who exhausted their preferences were unrepresentative. Scott Steel (@Pollytics) on Twitter suggests, based on internal campaign research, that the winnings would have been more like three or four extra ALP seats.

Steel offered some descriptions of the sort of non-major voters who still didn't preference in 2015, suggesting they were "a different political cohort [..] more angry, more hardcore" and suggested examples like anti-asylum-seeker Greens voters, haters of organised politics, "unusual idealogues" and "a whole bunch of fad voters that think "this is the only way", even if that "only" changes from week to week". I suspect that low-information PUP supporters could be added to the mix.

I'll add that projections don't always take account of the votes Labor disproportionately loses to the informal pile when voting is made compulsory. However, in my view the key point is that this change is not about what would have happened last time, it is about Labor's fear of what will happen next time. Quite aside from the waning of the anti-Newman factor, there is bound to be disenchantment from Greens voters about the environmental direction of the Palaszczuk Government, for instance over the approval of the Adani coal mine. Voters for other parties such as KAP may have other reasons for concern. If Greens and Others voters under LNP were to revert to 2012 preferencing behaviour, that could have put the Palaszczuk Government into opposition under optional preferencing even without any swing on primary votes at all.

There is probably nothing that Labor can do about the reversion of non-Green preferences to type sooner or later, after an extraordinary result in which 61% of KAP and 67% of PUP preferences that were distributed went to the ALP (though both parties were carrying votes from other candidates). However, it seems that the wild swings in Green preferencing behaviour could be connected to a certain type of Greens voter - the type who will preference Labor when they detect a strong difference between the parties, but exhaust their vote otherwise. There is strong reason to believe that under compulsory preferencing this voter type will nearly always preference Labor, and hence I see Labor's real goal here as a license to take Green preferences for granted.

(I did wonder how the Queensland 2015 election would have panned out had preferences been compulsory but had voters preferenced as at the 2013 federal election. Labor would have done worse than they did in the real state election, with 50.1% 2PP, which highlights how extraordinary the preferencing behaviour of KAP and PUP supporters was.)

Problems With This Form Of CPV

Readers may be aware that I am not a big fan of compulsory preferencing, nor even of "compulsory voting". I believe that a voter should be allowed to exhaust their ballot for any of these reasons:

* as a strategy to discourage major parties from taking their preference for granted
* when they reach a point where they have no opinion between the remaining candidates
* when they reach a point where they find all the remaining candidates so objectionable that they do not wish to endorse any of them over each other.

The first probably has something to do with the original support for optional preferencing as an anti-corruption mechanism. I think the third reason is stupid since there is nothing wrong with choosing to preference the lesser evil, but I think voters should be allowed to make their own decisions on that.

However, big-picture debates about the merits of compulsory preferencing vs optional preferencing aside, what disappoints me is that advocates of compulsory preferencing are often so unwilling to propose doing anything at all about informal votes arising from unintended numbering errors.

The new Queensland legislation is among the worst cases in this regard, and shows why even a vestige of consultation would have been a good idea. It will allow voters to leave the final candidate blank after voting for all the others, but any other omission or repetition in numbering will see a vote discarded as informal. This applies even if the vote has a primary vote for a party that will clearly not have its preferences distributed, and even if the error involves candidates who will not be in contention for the seat. There will be a significant increase in unintentional informal voting, though most likely the party that proposed this amendment (Labor) will be the biggest victim.

Others such as Antony and William Bowe have made the fine point that this sudden move by Queensland Labor to smuggle this change through without consulting voters at all stands so sharply at odds with the federal party's complaint about supposedly insufficient consultation in the Senate voting system reform process. I could go on about that too, but it would get pretty ugly and ranty. Let's move on.

Polling and CPV

The switch to CPV means that the published 2PPs from Queensland polling since the last election are now junk, since all were based on the assumption of optional preferencing. Some polls were assuming voters would preference as at the 2015 election, some that they would preference as at some average of the last two or three elections, and some were using respondent preferencing or perhaps just plain making stuff up, but in any case it's all irrelevant now. (A possible partial exception could be Morgan - in their very earliest state polls I suspected they might be assuming compulsory preferencing by mistake.)

How we model the 2PP under compulsory preferencing for Queensland is a very difficult question!

The newly released ReachTEL is a useful example. After redistributing those initially undecided voters who can be prodded (in other words giving a headline figure the way other pollsters do), ReachTEL has primaries of ALP 36.9 (-0.6 compared to election), LNP 42.8 (+1.5), Green 10.8 (+2.4), KAP 3.6 (+1.7), Other/Ind 5.9 (-5 mainly down to the demise of PUP). This could be explained largely as the PUP vote coming back to KAP and the majors, plus some of the Labor vote going to the Greens.

Based on these primaries, Labor would have a roughly 50.4% 2PP by last-election optional preferences, but the published headline by respondent preferences is 52:48 to LNP. I'm a bit puzzled by that figure, because multiplying the 60.5% flow to Labor in question 1b by the number of minor party supporters in questions 1 and 1a actually leads only to a 51:49 (50.8 to one decimal) result to LNP, but the core point stays the same. It's not clear Labor will do as well at converting preferences to 2PP next election even with this change as they did last time without it. (By 2013 Queensland federal election preferences, this poll comes out to about 50:50.)

Before we get too excited about the finding of a rather weak flow of preferences to Labor, we need to bear in mind that this is based on a sample of only 260 or so minor party voters, so the 60.5% flow has at least a 6% margin of error, and could easily be up to 1.2 points out on the overall 2PP even if we assume the respondent preferences are broadly accurate. But even at best, it's sobering stuff for Labor: preferencing intentions might already have changed back enough that all this change in voting systems does is cancel that out, if that. The temptation to now add three or four points to all Labor's 2PPs since the election and declare that Labor have been winning by heaps all along (given compulsory preferencing) should be resisted. It's also interesting that this ReachTEL respondent-allocated 2PP is no better than one in mid-2015 under the old system with an LNP primary vote three points higher.

The ReachTEL was very similar to a Queensland Galaxy in February (which had ALP 37 LNP 42 Green 9 KAP 4 others 7). Three Essential samples earlier this year had a slightly rosier picture for Labor when pooled with both majors on 40, Greens around 9, KAP 2 and others 10 (the latter sounds a bit high). Morgan's volatile and unreliable SMS poll had LNP 45.5 Labor 36.5 Green 9 KAP 3 rest 6 in February, but LNP 40 Labor 37.5 Green 12.5 KAP 3.5 rest 6.5 in April. It's likely that a cross-pollster aggregate would look very similar to the current ReachTEL, and that any plausible model of the 2PP would show things to be pretty close. On this basis any view that the recent electoral system change has affected primary voting intention is unfounded, and it wouldn't be expected to.

The next Queensland election will be a mess to model with the creation of four new seats forcing widespread redistributions, on top of the change in the preferencing system. It's likely that the redistributions will dampen the sitting-member-effect advantages Labor will enjoy in many of the marginal seats it is defending, but that these advantages will still exist. I am not going to even try to work out what sort of 2PP the Opposition might need to take government until the redistribution is done. Soon we should also have the benefit of one by-election at which we can see preference flows under the new system.

Other results

The ReachTEL asked Queenslanders for their view of the resumption of compulsory preferencing and respondents gave it the raspberry (27.3% approve, 61.6% disapprove). This question might well be a bit wording-sensitive; for instance "This change requires you [..]" might focus voters' minds on their own burden of numbering extra squares, and not on the benefit to their preferred party (if any) of other voters being forced to. All the same support from Labor voters is lukewarm and other voters are strongly against the change (parties like KAP stand to benefit from it, but Others aren't specifically included in the breakdown.)

The poll shows Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk with a positive net rating of +6.8 and Lawrence Springborg with a net rating of -10.4. These are very similar results to last May's ReachTEL despite minor changes in the options available. 7.7% don't know who Springborg is; how many elections does a man have to lose? Galaxy earlier this year found +19 net satisfaction for Palaszczuk and -3 net satisfaction for Springborg, but with a middle option of "uncommitted" as opposed to ReachTEL's "average". Seven News has been having fun lumping the "very poor", "poor" and "average" responses together to make both leaders look bad, but comparison with Galaxy suggests "average" might be a compliment when voters are describing their leaders.

Edited in later on same day: The full results of the ReachTEL just released also include a question on approval of the increase in seat numbers. It's a pretty neutral response given the natural "what? more politicians?" kneejerk reaction with 33.2% support 42.1% oppose, but what's amusing is that Labor voters tend weakly to support the measure and LNP voters to oppose it. The votes of their parties in parliament were the other way round! It's possible that some voters for both parties may have wrongly assumed the increase was a government-supported measure; in either case the LNP hardly convinced their support base of a need to add more seats (a move aimed at preventing the loss of northern seats in the redistribution).

That should do for this wrap of where things are at in Queensland polling. When I have any idea of who's actually winning anymore, I'll be sure to let you all know. Kevin Bonhamhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-11590039382205504892016-04-24T17:23:00.000+10:002016-06-16T21:04:45.392+10:00How Many Lower House Seats Can The Xenophon Team Win?I have had a fair few questions about the Nick Xenophon Team (NXT) and their seat prospects for the Lower House in South Australia, because my seat projection nationwide still shows only four seats for Others. This rather dry and mathsy piece (about Wonk Factor 3/5) explains my initial attempts to model what sort of vote NXT needs in South Australia, all else being equal, to win one or more of the 11 Lower House seats in the state. These are very broad-brush attempts that don't take account of candidate factors, because until there is specific seat-polling we don't know anything objectively about how well (or badly) specific NXT candidates are going to campaign or be regarded. Comments based on detailed local knowledge are welcome.

In summary, I estimate that NXT probably need a statewide vote in the very high teens to win seats. Once they get well over 20 they start to win multiple seats, and something in the mid-20s could result in spectacular seat gains that would make a national hung parliament quite likely. However there's no reason yet to believe those higher votes will actually happen, based on what little current public polling of the NXT vote exists.

The NXT Lower House run was initially seen as an insurance strategy. In 2013 NXT nearly polled enough vote for two Senate seats but was ganged up on by other parties in preference-dealing, resulting in Labor preferences putting Family First's Bob Day into the Senate instead of NXT's second candidate Stirling Griff. Although how-to-vote cards will be less important in the Senate this election, by running Lower House candidates Xenophon can cause seat losses for any major party that tries to damage his preference flow in the Senate, giving him an insurance strategy he probably wishes he had last time.

It's worth briefly noting a history of near-wins of third-party seats in SA. The Australian Democrats polled 15.3% statewide in 1990 but did not come all that close to winning any seat. Janine Haines (leader) missed second place in the cutup in Kingston by 7.4%. In Mayo the Democrats candidate missed second place by just 2% but it was irrelevant as Alexander Downer had an outright majority. A famous closer miss came in 1998 when the Democrats' Jon Schumann came second in Mayo (although the statewide Democrats vote was only 10%). Schumann needed 86% of preferences to beat Downer and got 81% of them, losing 51.7:48.3. The 1998 result provides a template for what NXT need to do to win seats: outpoll or overtake one major party then win on their preferences over the other. It is assumed that both majors will preference NXT ahead of each other, or that if they do not do so then their voters will do it for them.

What is NXT polling?

The only national polls that currently include NXT in the "readout" are Morgan and, recently, ReachTEL. The national vote for NXT isn't relevant because the party is only going to run in selected non-SA seats and isn't remotely likely to win any of them (an amusing shot at a certain northern beaches relic in NSW notwithstanding). What is of interest is the SA vote.

Morgan have released seven fortnightly readings of the NXT support level starting in late January. These have been (in order) 22.5, 15, 16.5, 18, 18, 22.5 and 22.5, an average of 19.3%; the sample size would typically be a few hundred making these results very wobbly. The single SA ReachTEL reading for Morgan so far (from their April 14 poll) was 17%. I consider ReachTEL more reliable than Morgan, especially as Morgan's combination of methods (SMS and face-to-face) are both prone to overcapture enthusiastic voters, and ReachTEL has the better track record than either of Morgan's current methods. However we will need to see more ReachTEL polling in view of sample size issues to see whether this particular sample was representative.

Other polls that lump NXT with "others" in their SA samples could well be under-recording the NXT vote, but it's worth noting that they generally do point to even lower NXT figures than the above before that is taken into account.

There has been one seatpoll of Mayo in January in which NXT were on 16.3% after redistributing the undecided. That ReachTEL poll had them competitive for second place, but requiring 91% of preferences assuming they could come second, which is too much. Still, a winnable position would be within that poll's margins of error, even then. That is a very old poll now in the context of a new party campaign.

Other polling reported has often showed NXT in an extremely competitive position in Mayo and Sturt especially, but this has always been union polling or internal party polling and none has been released in an adequately documented form. Also, this result hasn't been unanimous, with an AMWU-commissioned ReachTEL showing NXT on only 14.5% in Sturt and 12% in Hindmarsh (add a percent or two for undecided voters). Seat polling is never very reliable at the best of times. A recent tweet from commercial radio station Fiveaa (5AA) is of interest here:

(By comparison, NXT polled 28% in both seats at the last Senate election.)

The "David" in the tweet above is David Penberthy, who has many more such reports (including a suggestion that major party polling has NXT set for four seats with the Greens winning zero - which I find hard to believe given that the Greens shouldn't need a full quota).

Poll Bludger reports seeing an Australia Institute commissioned ReachTEL that has the Team at 24.8% in the Senate but only 16.1% in the Reps and notes that such a disparity seems unlikely.

Where do NXT votes come from?

Modelling whether NXT can win seats is not just about predicting their vote share and using past evidence of seat-based performance to project the size of the NXT vote. It is complex because it is also necessary to model how much damage NXT might do to Lower House major party votes and hence whether NXT can get into second.

So, how do we get a handle on which parties NXT might take votes from?

Across the nation but excluding South Australia, the major parties typically polled a few points worse in the Senate than the Reps (as they usually do), while the Greens polled about the same in both (except in Tasmania where their Reps vote was smashed by Andrew Wilkie). Obvious non-SA exceptions were NSW where the Coalition did 13 points worse in the Senate, and WA where the Coalition did 8 points worse. Both were caused largely by confusion with the Liberal Democrats who had good ballot draws in both those states.

In SA Labor polled 13.1 points worse in the Senate while the Liberals polled 17 points worse. The Greens polled 1.2 points worse and Family First polled 1.7 points worse. SA also had a Liberal Democrat issue, so it may seem that Xenophon was taking votes more or less equally from the major parties and very few from anyone else.

What I found, however, is that there is a reasonably strong correlation between how badly the Labor Party does in the Senate compared to the Reps in SA electorates, and how much the total vote for Others increased in the Senate compared to the Reps (where Others in this case excludes both majors, the Greens, FF, NXT and LDP). Thus, Labor was not only bleeding Senate votes to Xenophon, but also to a massive list of micros. This was less so for the Liberals with the exception of the LDP.

On this basis (and independently via regression) I determined that Xenophon probably had more Lower House Liberal voters on board than Lower House ALP voters. But this isn't because Liberal voters are more attracted to his ideas, it is just because there were more of them. Supporters of each party were about equally likely to vote NXT in the Senate.

I also found that a strong predictor of the extent to which the major parties would underperform in the Senate compared to the Reps was simply the size of their Reps vote in a given electorate.

Modelling NXT damage to major party vote shares

So in trying to model the Xenophon primary vote in electorates, at a first pass, I assumed it would be proportional to his Senate vote in 2013 (Mayo, Boothby and Sturt highest, Grey lowest). To model the damage he would do to the other parties, I allowed 24% of his vote to come from non-major sources and allowed the rest to come more or less proportionally from both majors (actually it seems Labor voters were trivially more likely to have backed him in the Senate), with the amount lost by the majors also proportional to the Xenophon state vote share. On this basis I can then input an estimated NXT state primary and get a crude projection for each seat, that ignores things like sophomore effect, candidate quality, the possibility of Labor running dead in some seats, regional effects of submarine construction debates and so on. Most importantly, the crude version ignores any possible state swings between Liberal and Labor. (The current evidence from Bludgertrack is that they're minor, but we'll see if that remains so closer to the election).

To get Xenophon's team in a winning position in most seats, it's necessary to get them above Labor and with the Coalition far enough short of 50% that the mountain can be climbed on preferences. In some seats, it's the other way around. Provided that the NXT candidate stays in second after Green preferences (which might cause Labor to overtake them in some cases - a big unknown!) the NXT candidate should get almost every Green or Labor preference ahead of the Coalition and might win. But preference flows of well above 80% might be hard for NXT since many SA seats have quite high Family First votes and these may favour the Coalition, or at least split sufficiently between NXT and the Coalition to dampen the overall preference flow.

Here are some example outputs of the basic projection. The "Share Req" column gives the percentage of preferences NXT would need ahead of the leading major party in that seat, on the assumption that they reach the final two. In some cases this share might be low but they might not have a chance of making the top two, in which cases the share required becomes irrelevant. I can't stress strongly enough that these projections don't really aim to predict results for specific seats (there are all kinds of factors not included in this model, and reasons why it might be inaccurate in given cases) but they aim to give a reasonable overall picture of the conversion of votes to seats.

Because of variations in seat patterns, if I project NXT as ahead of a given party by a small margin off a certain statewide vote, it could be that they really end up slightly behind, and vice versa.

1. NXT statewide vote is 17%:

In this scenario, NXT places second ahead of Labor on primaries in Mayo and (by 0.1%) in Barker. However the mountain is too steep in Mayo (86.5% of preferences needed) and especially in Barker, where the "rest" includes the Nationals. On this basis it seems difficult for NXT to win any seat off 17% of the statewide vote, though a very concentrated attack on Mayo or perhaps Sturt, with good candidates, might pull one off. Boothby is also of some interest because the preference share required there is lower and NXT aren't too far off second.

17% is by no means the lowest possible State vote for NXT; I just use it as a starting point for where they could start being competitive.

2. NXT statewide vote is 20%:

In this scenario, NXT should win Mayo, since the preference share they need is more or less exactly what the Democrats got. They probably don't win Barker given that the "rest" column includes the Nationals. They're also competitive for second in Boothby and Sturt and should at least win Boothby on preferences if second there. So, probably one or two seats.

3. NXT statewide vote is 22%:

This starts to show how dangerous NXT become if they make it into the low 20s in the Reps (bear in mind that in 2013 they polled 24.9% in the Senate). They are second in four seats in this projection, and while some of those are close and winning Barker is still dubious, there's also the strong possibility of passing the Coalition on preferences in Kingston and winning there. So, probably three seats, maybe four.

4. NXT statewide vote is 25%:

This is the mayhem scenario. Off a state Reps vote that is basically what they got in the Senate last time, NXT would be second in six seats and fighting for second in two others (in one of which they could well move into second), with only Adelaide and Wakefield (where the major party votes are too high) and Grey (where NXT has little traction) not in play. They could win 6-8 seats off a quarter of the primary votes.

Caution Required!

As usual we need to be careful about the more exotic results being suggested in these cases. At this stage the public polling generally has NXT well below its Senate result from last time in the Reps. There is also concern about whether the Xenophon Team candidates will poll well when voters realise they are just voting for the Xenophon ticket in the Lower House and not for the man himself. Xenophon tickets which don't have Xenophon as a candidate don't do nearly as well (as seen in the last SA election where the "Independent Nick Xenophon Team" polled 12.9%. Maybe this will be different when he is running for the Senate at the same time.

Xenophon notoriously inflicted eight years of Ann Bressington on the SA upper house, and there is good reason to be cautious about his team being a magnet for anti-vaxxers or suffering from other quality control issues, as fourth parties often do. I suspect his candidate-screening will prove better than PUP's, but that is not saying much.

The issue of Green preferences in cases where NXT fights Labor for second is a tricky one. My suspicion is that even if Green voters do prefer Labor to NXT, they won't do so strongly enough to allow Labor to catch NXT from more than, say, 2-3% behind, and that this could also be softened by micro-parties preferencing NXT ahead of Labor.

The other possibility is that one major party gets sick of NXT and decides to scuttle them by either putting them behind the Liberals, or issuing an open ticket in seats that major party cannot win. If Labor for some reason does this then most of the possible NXT wins go completely off the table, requiring NXT to poll very well indeed to maybe take a seat or two on Liberal preferences. However it makes more strategic sense for majors to preference NXT and force each other to waste resources fighting for otherwise safe seats. This only changes if NXT looks to be winning a given seat easily.

This model is all highly experimental and feedback on its doubtless many flaws is welcome. But until something better comes along, it shows the sort of approach I'm going to be using to converting polled NXT vote shares roughly into expected seats. At the moment the available neutral polling is not showing NXT in a position where it would be all that likely to win Lower House seats. However, that could quickly change.

I'll add links to other attempts as I come across them. For starters, Henry Schlechta presents the case for zero Xenophon MHRs, including that dastardly Liberals might even vote 1 Labor to try to eliminate NXT!

(This piece was updated on 28 April to add a few more commissioned poll results.)

Note added 1 June: See more updated coverage of the NXT's prospects here.

Note added 10 June: A rather remarkable seat poll of Grey has NXT winning that seat, which is amusing given that Grey is the worst seat for NXT in the above projection! Of course, the projection does not consider local issues that may have increased NXT's appeal to voters since the 2013 election, so we should keep in mind that these projections are only all-else-being-equal and that in reality NXT might win a seat anywhere in SA. Seat polls are quite unreliable so this extraordinary result should be treated with caution.

Note added 16 June: Some more Xenophonia over here, based on a detailed Morgan release.Kevin Bonhamhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-37978118203674483852016-04-23T21:49:00.004+10:002016-05-22T01:33:04.609+10:00Some Recent Senate Polling And Related ClaimsThis article assumes, for the sake of analysis, that the Senate election will be a double-dissolution under the new Senate system. Neither of these things are yet confirmed, but both appear highly likely.

I thought that there had been no polling at all of the Senate races yet, and innocently told a journalist so this week, but to my surprise reports of not one but two Senate polls have surfaced (one since I made that comment). There are also many reports of an (apparently unpublished) Australia Institute analysis that claims that from five to nine non-Green crossbenchers could get up at a double dissolution, apparently based on commissioned Senate polling from ReachTEL and Research Now. The Research Now (an online panel poll a la Essential) polling has been published but the main thing I can find on the ReachTEL is an AFR report from a month ago (!) that had somehow escaped my notice.

Figures at the lower end of this five to nine seat range should not be surprising, and even the higher end, while a stretch in my view, isn't completely wacky. It's generally agreed that the Nick Xenophon Team has enough gas in the tank to claim at least two SA Senate seats, quite probably three (about 19% of vote required, depending on votes from other parties - guaranteed at 23%) and perhaps even four (27% could be enough, a little larger than it polled last time). NXT also persistently polls about 4% in states outside SA and on that basis seems to have some chance of snagging another Senate seat or two somewhere. However it remains to be seen if this vote holds up when voters are confronted with a full list of options and when individual NXT candidates are scrutinised.

Of the remaining crossbenchers Jacqui Lambie is generally considered highly likely to be re-elected, as Tasmanian independent Senators quite often have been in the past, though I've seen no public polling of her support level. I couldn't rule out her winning more than one seat, though at this stage I doubt it. Bob Day must be a reasonable chance given that he would have got up had the 2013 votes been cast at a double-dissolution under the new system. Opinions vary widely on both Ricky Muir and Glenn Lazarus. The remaining three (David Leyonhjelm, Dio Wang and John Madigan) are likely to struggle, but none can be written off absolutely. Other high-profile names being speculated about by sources other than Glenn Druery (who shouldn't be taken seriously after his nonsense projections for the final Tasmanian seat) include Pauline Hanson (Qld) and Derryn Hinch (Vic).

It's interesting to see a rising awareness on the non-green left that quite a few crossbenchers could be returned, given that the non-green anti-Senate-reform sections of the left foolishly hitched their cart to Bob Day's nonsense about how Senate reform would exclude everyone except Coalition, Labor, Green and NXT. Now that reform is a done deal (subject to High Court confirmation) that line of pseudo-psephology has suddenly gone in the trash-can, where it in fact belonged from the start.

Senate polling is a rare beast and The Australia Institute doesn't have a really obvious axe to grind in this case (beyond that their implied argument will generally be that the Coalition is stupid or out of touch in some way) so let's see how what has been released goes when examined in detail.

Issues with this polling

Starting with the Research Now polling, a few obvious issues stand out. Firstly the Queensland sample has been offered "Liberal" and "National" as separate choices, but in Queensland neither of these parties exist and what needs to be asked for is a thing called "Liberal National Party". Secondly the don't-know rate for the Senate sample is extremely high (18%), probably reflecting a common drawback of online polling in which "don't know" must be offered explicitly as an option on the same level as others. It's hard to say who these don't-knowers are, except that they appear to be about two-thirds female. I suspect that they are disproportionately soft major party voters, especially soft Labor voters. As a general rule voters who are undecided almost never end up voting Green.

Thirdly the Reps and Senate votes in this poll are suspiciously similar! In the Reps they have Coalition 42, Labor 33, Greens 12 and Others 12, and in the Senate Coalition 42, Labor 31, Greens 12 Others 14. In fact, even excluding the various strange distortions in the 2013 election, it has been normal for many elections for both major parties to underperform in the Senate compared to their Reps vote by 2-3 points nationwide.

Sometimes the Greens are partial beneficiaries, but mostly the benefit goes to the gaggle of micro-parties, care of some voters who don't want their preferred major party to have a Senate majority, or whose preferred micro-party isn't running for the Reps in their electorate. This sample even has the Coalition at 38% in the Reps but 42% in the Senate in Victoria. Polling that shows a major party overperforming its Reps vote in the Senate doesn't make the slightest sense except for the don't-know factor - perhaps left-wing voters from the Reps are more likely to say they don't know who they'll vote for in the Senate. It is the sort of thing where the full cross-tabs frequently seen in British polling would easily show what is going on beneath these numbers.

So there are a lot of reasons to treat these numbers carefully, but this is normal for Senate polling, so let's see where they actually lead if accurate (bearing in mind that the sample sizes for each state are very small and margins of error hence high). To read polling under the new Senate system, firstly divide each party's total by the quota (which for a double dissolution is 7.7%). Many seats will fall to Labor, the Coalition or the Greens (and in South Australia, NXT) on raw quota alone. Then of the rest it is a case of largest remainders win, except where there is good reason to expect that someone will beat someone else on preferences. Here we should bear in mind that major party voters will be often distributing preferences following their party's card, while Greens voters will probably often preference likeminded parties and Labor, whatever the card tells them. Micro-parties will find it harder to corral their supporters' preferences, since they will lack the resources to do so.

Queensland

Queensland is going to be a very interesting Senate race because of the large number of vaguely competitive micro-parties.

Taking the Queensland votes, if exactly the Research Now votes were received then that would be Coalition 5.72 quotas, Labor 3.64, Green 1.30, NXT .65, Lazarus .52, PUP .52 (etc). Five to Coalition, three to Labor, one to Green straightaway. The Labor remainder would be good for four especially on Green preferences and especially given the points above about the don't know rate. Then it's a free-for-all between micros and the Liberals for the remaining two. However the online Research Now method is probably overstating the vote for micros as well as Greens, so let's say six Liberals and one micro.

(There would be no way to usefully say which micro, since the margin of error for each of these micros in the Queensland sample would be a few percent even if the sampling method was otherwise accurate. For the major parties the margins of error would be about 6% in Queensland - nearly a whole quota making this sort of sampling very unreliable!)

The ReachTEL figures reported by AFR however show uniformly lower support levels for the significant Queensland micros - NXT 3.4%, GLT 3%, PUP 2.9%. Not enough details of the poll are published to say if it used a forced-choice method but if it did that could well explain the difference - respondents who will say "don't know" if offered the option will often pick a party if they have to do so to continue the survey. Even on these numbers and with no other details there would seem to be a good chance that one micro or another beats one of the "big three" for the final Queensland spot.

Declaring the final seat in Queensland to be a race in two between NXT and GLT, as the AFR piece does, off a small sample size is extremely premature, as is making any deal of NXT's 0.4% lead in the sample. It's not even clear if all competitive parties were listed.

Survey underpolls unlisted parties

Another point to make on the Research Now polling concerns the vote for remaining micros who they describe simply as Independent/Other. In NSW this is given as 6%, but this would have to include both the Liberal Democrat vote (likely to crash at this election) and voters for the dribble of micro-parties who stood in NSW. In 2013, 13.5% of the NSW vote was scored by a gaggle of about forty micro-parties that each scored under 2%. Some of this vote will go to Lambie Network or NXT, but given the implosion of the PUP vote there's just no way this gaggle will only be good for 6% between them.

In Victoria it's a similar story: if the poll is right then 12.8% of micro party voters, plus some refugees from PUP, plus voters attracted by Muir from the majors (if any) minus whichever of the 3% of NXT voters were already micro-party voters (probably very few) equals ... just 5%. No way!

And in Queensland parties not listed in the poll scored 13% last time but are supposedly only good for 5%, which seems too low even if the poll's combined PUP+NXT+JLN+GLT vote is four points higher than PUP polled in 2013 (with the other three not on the ballot). Katters Australian Party polled 3% in 2013 and isn't even on the list!

I think a real problem with this sort of polling is it doesn't accurately simulate a Senate ballot, where voters have dozens of parties to choose from and where votes do bleed from major parties especially to the micro-parties. Under the new Senate system micros that poll below 2% won't have a ghost of a chance, but their votes will come from somewhere, and to what extent they flow back where they came from (rather than eventually exhaust) is an unclear question. There is no sign so far of micro-parties being chastised into retirement by the new Senate system, but after they all realise that polling even 3% in a DD when you are up against dozens of other micros is very hard, a lot of them should get the message and merge or quit by next time. So are the micro-party voters saying they don't know who they will vote for, or if they are naming a party, which parties' votes are being overstated from the readout as a result?

Overall there are so many issues and unknowns in this sort of polling that drawing meaningful conclusions from it is really difficult. Both polls seem (on the detail provided) to support the idea that non-"big three" parties (including NXT) are in the hunt for one or perhaps two seats in Queensland, but they don't support it all that reliably, and it's not news anyway. If there is news here it's the evidence from both polls that Glenn Lazarus might win but isn't currently likely to do so easily. On the other hand, writing off Muir or Leyonhjelm (or for that matter Hanson, Hinch or KAP) on the basis of the Research Now poll alone would be foolish, since they apparently were not named in the "readout", and since forces not named in the readout are clearly undercounted in these results. The PUP figures from Queensland are also interesting, but the sampling predates the recent Queensland Nickel news which should really have been the final nail in chances of PUP polling a non-risible Senate vote.

If anything, online polling has the most potential to poll Senate voting without problems, because an online survey can include dozens of party names. It will be interesting to see if we see any more Senate polling that gets around the issues in the poll published by TAI.

We also need to bear in mind that Senate polling is very sensitive to late surges, as with Palmer United in 2013. Senate speculation is lots of fun, but it is so sensitive to changes of even one or two percent that it's never a very reliable game. It is a bit easier now that we no longer have group tickets, but that doesn't make it simple or reliable.

Some other comments

Finally, I make the following non-poll-based comments concerning Hanson, Hinch and Muir. In 2013 a One Nation ticket with Hanson at its head received little over 1% of the vote in NSW, while the party in Queensland (albeit without Hanson as a candidate) polled barely half a percent. Hanson is also a notoriously poor performer on preferences because of her image on race issues and because she is still - even now - poison to almost any party that openly preferences her. Given the extremely crowded field of right-wing and populist micros in Queensland it is really hard to see Hanson polling the kind of vote needed to avoid being run down on preferences or just plain beaten on primaries by one or more of them. She might well need 4 or even 5%. An article by the Saturday Paper discussing the Hanson issue at great length just doesn't reference how much Hanson's vote has fallen over time. I suspect some left-wing sources are talking up Hanson's chances in yet another of her endless comebacks because they want to mobilise concern about and opposition to her. [NB See note on Hanson at end of article.]

An SMH piece concerning the Australia Institute polling report has declared Muir to be "toast" but this seems to have no basis other than assuming that because he polled next to nothing last time he will poll next to nothing this time. A counterpoint to this comes from the career of Xenophon, who was first elected in SA on preference harvesting off less than 3% of the primary vote, but look where he is now. Another write-off for Muir comes from Glenn Druery, who is hardly neutral on this given that Muir dismissed him as a staffer. Druery claims that "[..] Ricky will be hidden under the name of the Motoring Enthusiasts party and people won't find him" Druery seems to have forgotten that a picture of Muir will appear as his party's logo!

On the other hand, Nick Casmirri on Twitter has suggested that awareness of Muir is largely confined to the political classes, most of whom won't vote for him anyway, and that there is little awareness of him outside people who pay close attention to politics. This is the most plausible argument as to why Muir might bomb completely.

As for Hinch, there is no doubting his profile, cult following, and understanding of and connections within the media, and he is clearly making an effort. Unless there is polling clearly showing he lacks sufficient support he shouldn't be written off, but I doubt that he is fighting Ricky Muir for a single position. I think they'll probably each win or lose pretty much independently. Hinch and Muir won't compete that much with each other for the same votes, and if Hinch does very well it will probably be at the expense of the majors and especially elderly Coalition voters.

In Victoria the combined fourth-party vote is rather low (16.5% at the last election) meaning that the "big three" should have eleven quotas either locked in or else accessible on left-micro preferences. If Hinch and Muir both poll competitively (and this is a very big "if") then that will probably mean the overall fourth-party vote has gone up a lot, and in that case they could help each other win. Really, any speculations about micro-party wins in Victoria (by Hinch, Muir or anyone else) need to not get too excited at this stage. If the total fourth-party vote there doesn't rise, then getting enough of it to win will be a tough task for anyone.

Anyway, I've started another Not-A-Poll in the sidebar so you can have your say on how many of the eight current crossbenchers will be returned!

Update (April 24): Metapoll Analysis:

Metapoll has a projection out with the Coalition winning 31 Senate seats, Labor 28, Greens 11, NXT 4 all in South Australia, Lazarus and Lambie, assuming a Lower House 2PP of 51:49 to the Coalition.

The usual difficulty with Metapoll arises in that, without any published details of what they used to get this projection, it's impossible to know whether this includes some of their own polling or whether it is based entirely on other published polls plus the odd assumption. But 11 Greens strikes me as generous given that the Greens barely polled a DD quota in the NSW Senate race last election and polled below a DD quota in both SA and Queensland. Even assuming a swing to the Greens of half a DD quota, which would see them on 12.5% nationwide in both houses, they would still have to be reasonably lucky to snag two of those three. And the Greens are just not getting 12.5% nationally at the moment (the polls that have them that high were untested at the last election at which even the established polls all had them too high - and none of the latter currently have them above 11).

I'm also struggling greatly to find 28 ALP seats in a Senate that would have 11 Greens and 4 NXT in SA. Labor is probably not going to increase its Senate primary all that much. There are realistic prospects of five in Victoria and Tasmania, but I don't see how five Labor plus two Green flies in NSW on current numbers and I don't think four NXT, four ALP and one Green will all get in in SA either. So I think this projection is overstating things for the Left overall by at least one seat.

The scenario of Labor plus the Greens winning 38 seats (a blocking majority) in the Senate despite the Coalition narrowly winning the Lower House is possible if the Left gets really lucky, mainly because Tasmania gets 12 Senate seats despite its small population, and from time to time the Left does very well there. Labor and the Greens combined would have won seven seats in Tasmania at a double dissolution in 2001, seven again in 2007 and eight in 2010. The local Liberal preselectors are currently hellbent on giving the Left as many Tasmanian Senate seats as possible again. So while I think Metapoll have overcooked it slightly, I don't think their broad conclusions should be ignored. A narrowly returned Turnbull government might indeed face a Senate at least as hostile as the current one, and numbers to pass bills through even a joint sitting could indeed be touch and go.

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[Note added 22 May re Hanson: One thing my comments re Hanson did not take into account was the extent to which One Nation support in 2013 may have been gouged by the now-more-or-less defunct Palmer United. A pre-PUP One Nation polled 0.91% in Queensland and 0.57% in New South Wales, but that was without Hanson as a candidate. It might be assumed that Hanson's presence on the One Nation candidate list adds votes simply because Hanson is famous, and that on this basis for One Nation to revert to, say, 3% without PUP is quite plausible - which would place her in the mix for a seat, though I doubt that it would be enough.

But lest anyone blame the new Senate system for that, I point out that Truth Seeker simulations soon after the 2013 election showed that Hanson would probably have been one of about 15 crossbenchers elected at that election under the old rules had it been a DD - and this off 1.22% of the vote!]

Kevin Bonhamhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-77891568726460910822016-04-20T12:12:00.000+10:002016-05-18T10:45:45.310+10:00Poll Roundup And Seat Betting Watch: Labor Contesting The Lead2PP Aggregate 50.1 to ALP (+0.7 in a week)
Coalition would still probably win election "held now" (seat estimate 77 Coalition 69 Labor 4 Others)
First ALP lead on my aggregate since Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister

In this issue:
A DD Is The Right Thing To Do
This week's polls
Leaderships
Issue Polls
Fishy Polls Of The Week
Seat Betting

===============================================

In another stirring triumph of tipping skills, a plurality of voters on my sidebar Not-A-Poll have correctly predicted that the Labor Opposition would recapture the 2PP lead on this site in March or April. 35.5% picked this, compared to 34.1% for May or June, 18.2% for not at all, and a dribble for various options that depended on a later election date. It's a trivially small lead, it's not an election winning lead, it's not being replicated by other aggregators yet, and it may not even last long enough to survive on the smoothed tracking, but it's still a big improvement on losing 54:46 just three months ago.

There is some rejoicing and a fair bit of schadenfreude on the left about the direction polling has moved in. Many lefties seem amused that Malcolm Turnbull pulled a constitutional swifty to beef up his argument for a double-dissolution only to find himself in a position where it might not seem like such a great idea anymore. With the rejection of the ABCC bill at the second reading the government has no obvious plan B; to welsh on the threatened double dissolution on account of indifferent or even bad polling would just make the PM a laughingstock.

A lot of this is premature based on current polling. 50:50 eleven weeks from an election is not much different predictively to 51:49 fourteen weeks from one. Incumbent governments polling about 50:50 at this stage are usually re-elected, sometimes comfortably. (The two regressions I track are giving the government 72% and 79% chances of winning based on historical data, though with expected average 2PPs now down to 50.2 and 50.5, which would not result in a friendly Senate.) There's also still the possibility that preference flows will be a lot better for the Coalition than in 2013.

There is no shortage of debate about whether the government would have been better off going to a normal half-Senate election and trying to marginally improve its Senate position. Antony Green provides a strong case that the outlook in seat terms is if anything slightly worse for the Government at a double dissolution. On the other hand, even if the Coalition's seat position is weakened slightly, it could well be offset by a more manageable crossbench with fewer parties to negotiate with, especially should the Nick Xenephon Team win multiple seats in SA. That is assuming the Coalition wins the election at all.

What is missing from all this is the argument that a double dissolution should be welcomed by everyone because it is right, and indeed it ideally should have happened sooner. The ludicrous nature of the old Senate voting system can be seen in its full force with the blocking of the ABCC bill with the votes of crossbenchers Lazarus, Lambie, Muir and Madigan. How terrible/incomplete people might think the ABCC bill is or what one thinks of these Senators is beside the point. At least two and probably three of these Senators would not have been elected under a fair electoral system and only one of them (Muir) still formally represents the party they were elected as a candidate for. Two were elected as candidates for a party that is now actually polling zero. To allow the results of the 2013 Senate farce in particular to continue disrupting Australian democracy for another four years in the name of political advantage would have been a severe disappointment.

This week's polls

I noted the 50:50 ReachTEL in an update to last week's edition. This was followed by a 50:50 Ipsos, a 51:49 to ALP Newspoll, a 51:49 to ALP Morgan (by last-election preferences; 50-50 respondent allocated) and a 50:50 Essential. Not a lot of variety here! My aggregate treated the ReachTEL at 50.4 for Coalition (they have confirmed this as the decimal value but I was going to use it anyway), the Ipsos at 50.1, the Newspoll at 49.1 and the Morgan at 49.2. Essential was aggregated at 49.8. It looks like Essential has ceased favouring Labor compared to other polls, in that other polls have crashed for the Coalition, while Essential (as per normal) hasn't moved. Therefore I've removed the house effect assumption for Essential.

Of the polls that most favoured the Coalition after Turnbull became PM, one (Morgan) strongly appears to have now ceased doing so. For those that have been more Labor-friendly, Essential may have changed but Newspoll hasn't. If anything, it has become more ALP-friendly compared to the consensus of other pollsters. There's a solid case for applying a house effect correction to Newspoll but for the moment I've decided to deal with the issue by ramping up the "global house effect" to 0.2 points to Coalition. There's a case for going slightly further, in which case Labor's 50.1 on this week's reading might become 50-50 or 50.1 to Coalition. Which party is in the lead by so little is not hugely relevant for predicting the election when the benchmark for a Labor win is about 50.9.

On current figures, I still have the Coalition on 77 seats (a majority), Labor on 69 and Others on 4. For those wondering about Nick Xenophon Team, I have done extensive modelling on this and on their current support level (high teens) I don't yet have them winning seats. I was going to explain my modelling approach in this post but the explanation got too long, so I intend to do it in a standalone post soon.

Here's the smoothed tracking graph. Turnbull has kept the Coalition in front for longer than Tony Abbott did but it would be no surprise now if things got worse for him before they got better.

Some other aggregates: Andrew Catsaras 50-50, BludgerTrack and Mark the Ballot 50.1 to Coalition, Luke Mansillo 50.4, Phantom Trend 50.6 to Coalition, Metapoll 50.9 to Coalition (I'm quoting their betting-odds-free figure but note that they are using respondent preferences) and I'll add others as I come across them. Metapoll are now giving the Greens two seats, but I believe they have the Green vote too high at 11.6%. The polls that have it above 11 were both untested in their current forms at the previous election (at which even the more conservative polls overstated it).

An otherwise problematic World Wildlife Fund commissioned ReachTEL (more on that later) had a very interesting finding: Coalition and Labor supporters said they were equally likely to change their minds on which way they would vote, with almost 80% of each saying they would definitely not change their vote, compared to 62% for the Greens. Normally, the Labor vote is softer than the Coalition's.

Leaderships

The most revealing leadership result this week was from ReachTEL. Turnbull's plunge to a -11.1 net rating was no surprise after the previous (-10) Newspoll but what is interesting is that only 25.5% of respondents rated Turnbull's performance Good or Very Good. While Turnbull's net ReachTEL rating is higher than any recorded by Abbott in 2014 or 2015, his combined Good/Very Good score is worse than any polled by Abbott in Abbott's last five months in office. Compared with Abbott in August 2015 (a few weeks before he was dumped) Labor voters are more likely to think Turnbull is doing well (5.8% compared to 2.6%), Green voters are much more likely to think so (13.6% compared to 2.8%) but Coalition voters are less loyal to Turnbull now than they were to Abbott in the circling-the-drain phase of his leadership. 58.3% of Coalition voters thought late-period Abbott was performing well or very well, but only 47.6% of them now think this of Turnbull. This is not because they're all on the fence either - at least as many think he is doing badly.

That finding probably won't be reproduced by other pollsters because of the different scales used. What the result reveals is that the "satisfied" or "approve" responses from Coalition supporters to other polls will include many voters who will only rate Turnbull's performance as "satisfactory" when given the options of "good" or "very good". The base suffered with Abbott because they liked what he was saying, but they expect Turnbull to dominate the polls.

Turnbull polled a net -13 from Newspoll (-3, 36-49), meaning he has now lost 51 netsat points in five months, only four points shy of Keating's record for this or any similar timescale. He's also lost 24 points from his "satisfied" rating in the same time (Keating lost 26). Ipsos' approval ratings have long been kinder than Newspoll's satisfaction ratings but even so Turnbull is down ten points in a month there to a net +13 (51-38).

All polls record a closing of the preferred/better Prime Minister gap: Newspoll by two points to 19 (47-28), Ipsos by 12 points in a month to 27 (54-27) and ReachTEL by 3.2 to 16.8 (58.4-41.6 forced choice). All these are good leads to Turnbull in the context of such close 2PP polling and his own indifferent ratings, but the explanation is that Bill Shorten still struggles. There is some improvement on average across all polls there with Shorten up 8.2 points to net -19 in ReachTEL (his best since May last year), stable on net -21 at Newspoll, and down three to -22 at Ipsos.

Ipsos found that Turnbull keeps flogging Shorten on attribute polls, winning nine of 11 categories with an average lead of 14 points. However he has dropped an average of 14 points on the listed attributes since October, while Shorten's ratings have barely moved.

Issue Polls

Bank-bashing is an Australian national pasttime. Although Australians complain about banks a lot, they are famously reluctant to exert consumer pressure on them by switching. Banks exploit this by charging high fees, and are hence easy targets, irrespective of more specific problems. It's little wonder that Labor's call for a Royal Commission into banking is a big winner at the moment, with the seal of approval from Ipsos respondents (65-26), Essential (59-15), and ReachTEL (54.1-18.3). Essential does another of its A/B sample experiments and finds that respondents who are given the other side of the story (attributed to Turnbull and Shorten) are a little less enthused about the exercise, though that could be because the text gives an argument against but no arguments for. Coalition voters seem most easily pulled into line here. A slight question design difference is also worth noting here: ReachTEL asked whether respondents thought Malcolm Turnbull should call a royal commission, as opposed to just asking if there should be one.

The late-release questions from last month's ReachTEL show the economy rates way above a list of other issues as the most important issue of the election, with 38.7% to just 16.3% for health and 12.2% for education. All may not be quite as it seems: economy's frequent competitor "jobs" wasn't in the readout, while "housing affordability" may have split the left-wing vote.

Newspoll (PDF download) found "The Turnbull led Coalition" preferred 45-31 to "The Shorten led Labor Party" on "most likely to spend responsibly and manage government debt". This is an unremarkable result since the economy is a traditional Coalition strength area. All the same, it is interesting that Green voters broke as weakly as 41-26 in Labor's favour, assuming that figure is accurate (the breakdowns imply that Others voters were nearly all uncommitted). Another Newspoll program finds that respondents prefer to reduce spending to pay down government debt (39%) or to reduce taxes (26%) rather than increasing spending "on government programs" (23%). However I don't trust the design of this question. Had the spending increase been worded as "on health and education" rather than "on government programs" there would have been a very different result from non-Coalition voters.

ReachTEL last month found a slightly negative report card (29.3% positive, 38% negative) for the eight Senate non-Greens crossbenchers, even though the question incorrectly called them all "Independent". Coalition supporters were very scathing about the crossbench while other party supporters were positive. The question might be the first one I have seen to include both "undecided" and "don't know" as options, which certainly helps to separate those who are sure they're not sure from those who don't know if they do know or not! (Others voters were most prone to the ultra-dither category here.)

Fishy Polls Of The Week

Wirrah Award For Fishy Polling (image source)

A closely fought contest for the prize of the week's most dubious commissioned poll.

Some readers might be expecting an easy win for the Greens' poll of Melbourne Ports. This poll's wording (as always, doubtless at the behest of the sponsor and not the pollster) included the questions:

Michael Danby has stated that he will preference the Liberal Party ahead of The Greens, do you support or oppose his decison?

and

Does Michael Danby's decision to preference the Liberal Party ahead of The Greens make you more or less likely to vote for him?

Now, it is literally true that Michael Danby has said he will preference the Liberals ahead of the Greens - on his own ballot paper. But when voters hear questions like this they are very likely to be misled into thinking Danby has caused or even could alone cause how-to-vote cards in his seat to show a recommended preference to the Liberals, something far more significant and which actually hasn't happened. They may even think he has sent preferences to the Liberals in the sort of way that used to be possible under the old Senate system but is now thankfully banned (High Court willing). The result is a skew-poll based around a strawman: the Greens get press attention for apparent voter outrage at a decision that doesn't actually exist.

This is all then topped off by an especially silly claim by Adam Bandt:

"In the three horse race in Melbourne Ports, I expect progressive Labor voters will shift to the Greens' Steph Hodgins-May rather than risk their preferences electing the Liberals"

Actually, any Labor voter in Melbourne Ports who wants to eliminate any risk of their preferences electing the Liberals can achieve this by just putting the Liberals last. Even if they then put the Greens second-last, their own preference will never elect the Liberals. Bandt should know better, he should hope that progressive voters know better, and even if he thinks that they don't, he should refrain from making rubbish claims about the preferential system in a quest for votes. There is quite enough of this sort of nonsense from the majors.

But no, there was another contender! I continually link to a Yes Minister skit in which Sir Humphrey shows how you can train a respondent to give whatever answer you want by bombarding the respondent with the right line of questions. Here's one that actually sort-of does it. After asking respondents what they think about subsidising fossil fuels, the fuel costs of mining companies, the fuel costs of airlines, the fuel costs of farmers, and the production of oil and gas, the World Wildlife Fund poll then at question eight asks which of a bunch of revenue measures voters would prefer in the upcoming Budget. Surprise, one of them is ending fossil fuels subsidies, and would you believe it, it actually wins!

At least WWF didn't throw away the other questions and publish the last (probably because they thought the remaining results were pretty juicy), but their online article did lead with the completely artificial question eight finding. A series of lead-in questions making the case for any of the other options would have led to a totally different result.

Betting Watch

The usual disclaimer: the purpose of this section is to monitor the effectiveness of betting odds, and not to encourage either betting nor the belief that betting markets are strongly predictive.

The headline rates as of Friday had the Coalition between a 69% and 72% implied chance of winning depending on the market.

Checking the close seat list (defined as more than two parties at $3 or less) Paterson has moved from a tie to the ALP column as the incumbent is retiring.

Loss (Coalition to Labor): Barton*
Close Loss (Coalition to Labor): Solomon, Petrie, Capricornia, Hindmarsh, Lyons, Paterson*
Close Loss (Labor to Coalition): McEwen
Loss (PUP to Coalition): Fairfax

Coalition Close Holds: Eden-Monaro, Dobell*, New England (vs IND), Brisbane, Bass, Braddon, Cowan, Burt
Labor Close Holds: Parramatta, Moreton

That's the only change so that's 85 Coalition, 61 Labor, 4 crossbench based on individual favourites. However a market on "number of lower house crossbenchers" now has five equal favourite with four for the first time.

The Sportsbet 2PP market is still crediting the Coalition with about 52.5%, and the "line" market still has the Coalition winning by 18 or 19 seats (about 82-83 for Coalition). The William Hill exact seats market however is down to an implied 76 seats for the Coalition now, so there are some very different expectations on the different markets.

Kevin Bonhamhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-47722954112987216862016-04-10T22:38:00.004+10:002016-04-21T12:18:11.678+10:00Poll Roundup and Seat Betting Watch: Newspoll Uber Alles(Note for Tasmanian readers and anyone else interested: my piece on the Colbeck demotion appears below this one, or click here.)

2PP: 50.6 to Coalition (-0.7 since two weeks ago) - updated from 50.5 following Essential
Closest margin since Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister
Seat projection off this 2PP: 80 Coalition, 66 Labor, 4 Others

After five weeks of reasonably static polling with the Coalition's 2PP at just above 51%, the past week saw another dip that was widely attributed to the government's unsuccessful and apparently half-hearted attempt to convince State Premiers to support state-based income taxes.

Newspoll especially got a lot of attention by finding Labor to be ahead of the Coalition (51:49) for the first time since Malcolm Turnbull took over as PM. Much reporting - with the ABC alas the worst culprit that I noticed here - treated Newspoll as if it was the only poll in town. In fact Morgan was the first poll to have the Coalition ahead on 2PP (two weeks earlier but not in the current week), and reputable aggregates all still show the Coalition with a slim 2PP lead.

The attention on Newspoll in the political classes to the exclusion of most others has long been disproportionate but may be becoming even more so. As evidence that the Turnbull government was in trouble, a single 49:51 result was very flimsy. given especially that:

* Newspoll is, as Antony Green notes here, basically a new poll, albeit one that is asking old questions. Not only is the new Galaxy-run Newspoll untested at an election, but it is also an amalgam of two polling methods (landline-only robocalling and online panel polling) that both have mediocre reputations. Perhaps the well-known skills of Galaxy will succeed in maintaining or increasing the brand's accuracy, but we don't know that yet.

* 51:49 to Labor would be a very lineball result because Labor starts at a disadvantage arising from its drubbing at the previous election. Contrary to the Australian's graphic showing it as a Labor outright win with 78 seats, a 51% 2PP for Labor would be more likely to result in 73 seats (give or take a few) so it is far from clear Labor would win on this percentage.

* The new Newspoll appears to have a slight pro-Labor skew. My estimate of this has now gone up to 0.7 points.

If we take these points into account, the 2PP lead to Labor in this poll is probably illusory in terms of an election outcome, even before we consider other polls. While journalists blame politicians for taking Newspoll so seriously, I believe that it's a feedback loop in which each of the media and the political class makes the problem worse. Newspoll is certainly worthy of more attention than, say, Morgan or Essential, but extent of focus is just silly. Even tonight the ABC were at it again, declaring Turnbull was "behind in the polls".

Other new polls last week were a 51.5:48.5 result for the Coalition from Morgan (52.5% by last-election preferences) and another 50:50 from Essential. I have ceased treating Morgan as having any skew (though this may be generous if the previous fortnight's result was just an outlier) but I still have Essential as leaning to Labor based on a large divergence from the aggregate since mid-November. I aggregated the Morgan at 51.5, the Newspoll at 49.1 and the Essential at 50.7 and my reading as of last week was 50.7 to Coalition. Each weekend I apply a reset which tends to favour the more recent data, and this knocked the government down again to a starting value for the coming week of 50.5. There may not be much happening this week with no major poll known to be scheduled (just Essential). Here's the smoothed tracking graph:

Other current aggregators have recently had: Andrew Catsaras and Phantom Trend 50.4, Poll Bludger 50.8, Mark the Ballot 51.4. We might be all too harsh on the Coalition should preferencing behaviour change sharply at this election, though the historic record shows that it usually doesn't, not even when people and polling expect it to do so.

A new Metapoll release (which does include data from their own polling on preference allocation, but fortunately this time does not include unstated sampling from their own primary-vote polling) had a polls-only 52.1 to Coalition (or 51.8 with the dubious addition of betting odds). It is interesting that their modelling now shows an extra seat for the Greens with the Xenophon Group also close to a seat. Trying to project seats for either off a given primary vote is rather challenging, especially because of the potential of the Green vote to increasingly concentrate in some inner-city areas.

Most governments would be happy to have any kind of polling lead at all twelve weeks from an election, or five or six months from one for that matter. However this latest dip (which might for all we know be down to random flutterings in Newspoll and not caused by any specific issue) again raises the question of how bad things might get. Are we still seeing a shakeout from the leadership change from Tony Abbott in which Malcolm Turnbull still carries and can lose residual goodwill? The closeness of current polling is at least a wake-up call to a government that appears to be struggling to get its economic message in any sort of order. This may all seem a world away when we get to an election with scare campaigns at maximum volume and hard questions about details of Opposition policy, but just for the moment Labor seems so much more cohesive and focused.

Leaderships

Turnbull's popularity plunge in Newspoll grows ever more spectacular. A new worst -10 (38:48) rating this past week means he has now lost 48 netsat points in four and a half months. Paul Keating alone is still ahead of him on that timescale (with 55 points lost in that time) but 55 points is the most Keating ever lost. If Turnbull loses another eight points soon he will set an all-time record for the most netsat points lost in less than eight months, if not longer. Turnbull's lead as perceived better PM was also cut by 10, to 21 points (48:27), the first time fewer than 50% of respondents have preferred him to Shorten. A steady supply of free kicks for Bill Shorten sees the Opposition Leader's personal rating climbing to -21 (32-53), his best since last August.

There was apparently a plan to throw Shorten under the bus if necessary but there now seems little doubt that he will lead the party to the next election, especially if it is held on July 2. I've closed my Not-A-Poll on the ALP leadership and here are the final results:

In the end Shorten's margin and overall vote share are unflattering, but many of the votes against him are old rope and in recent months he has been pulling away from the field.

Newspoll had a rare (for it) poll of preferred Liberal leader between Turnbull, Julie Bishop, Morrison and Abbott, and also on whether Abbott should have been removed. On the latter question, while the margin for removing Abbott has narrowed from 62:27 to 57:31, the narrowing comes entirely from non-Coalition voters, who initially very strongly backed the removal of Abbott but are now adapting to the normal pattern of disliking whoever the leader is at the time.

Essential has a preferred Treasurer poll with incumbent Scott Morrison leading Labor's Chris Bowen 26:23, a four-point improvement for Bowen since January while Morrison's figures have changed little since he took the job.

Newspoll found massive opposition (19:58) to the state income-tax plan, an unsurprising result given that the thought of potentially having to fill out two tax returns is enough to scare many voters off it before they even think about whether it would cause tax rises or whether services might be worse. Essential managed to get a 34:34 split but its wording did stress that federal income tax would fall.

Seatpolls

Two new commissioned seatpolls have been released, one concerning the seat of Indi. The ReachTEL commissioned by The Australia Institute found Cathy McGowan to be leading former incumbent Sophie Mirabella 37.3% to 26.8% on primary votes. This was widely reported as a close result: a small lead, close because of the 10.3% National vote, and so on. Even the incumbent said the result showed she could lose.

In fact on these primaries based on preference flows in Indi last time, McGowan would win massively. Assuming even a 15% flow from the Nationals she would win 58:42, but a substantially higher flow and a margin approaching 60:40 is entirely plausibe. Some people forget that McGowan trailed on the primary vote by 13.5 points and won the seat on some of the strongest preference flows in the entire country. I don't have that much trouble believing that McGowan could retain the seat this easily or nearly so: rural independents once elected often become very popular, and preselecting Mirabella for another shot was such an obvious case of ignoring the electorate's Mirabella-specific message that the only possible benefit of it could be that a heavy loss will shut her up.

The other hails from Mackellar. In the midst of Liberal preselection aggro, a MediaReach poll shows that Bronwyn Bishop would be thumped 54:21 on primary votes by independent Dick Smith, a margin somewhat difficult to credit (though the finding that he would defeat her is not). MediaReach is a robopoll and I can find no evidence that it has been tested at an election under this name, though it may have been tested under a previous identity. Anyway the lack of release of full details of this poll including question wordings is a caution-flag on this one.

Other Polling

There is a vast amount of issues polling out there and as usual I will just select items of most interest.

The Australia Institute has been churning out commissioned polling constantly in its quest to convince newsmakers that we're really all lefties deep down. The findings are mostly unsurprising. Rural voters would support more ABC funding if they got more rural news, film at 11.

The TAI poll on whether to reintroduce the ABCC or to have a broader anti-corruption commission is really a bit of a "pony poll" (everyone loves the idea of a national ICAC if they haven't been told what it will cost or that it will probably sooner or later exceed its powers.) However the wording also uses a leading tactic that the government says blah and that "others" have a better idea (the "others" are not named, so that only one side of the equation is politicised.)

One of the TAI's more interesting recent polls is this one on awareness of different ministers. Some of their recent polls including that one have been using Research Now instead of ReachTEL. Research Now have a history of using online panel polling (a la Essential) and while I've seen claims that they are a robopoll, I can't find any evidence of this. From what I can determine, while Research Now has been about for a while, it has not released any published voting-intention polling that has been tested at an election.

Essential have their usual party attributes polls (ALP, Liberal, comparison) with some slightly surprising findings. It's not clear what the ALP have done to be nine points less moderate than when the survey was last taken, or less moderate even than the Greens-beholden Gillard government. Nor is it clear why Labor scores four points worse for having good policies at a time when it is actually releasing some rather than having none at all. Looking at the overall tendency for both parties to be down on both positive and negative attributes, perhaps this was an especially "meh"-prone bunch of respondents but that doesn't explain those indicators that are up. Anyway the Liberal Party scores poorly on the comparison, winning only on its leadership team, vision for the future, clarity of message (??) and having good policies, while the rest are Labor wins except one tie.

Essential's tax cuts question has been fairly criticised in some circles for implying that either company or personal income tax cuts must be good for the economy (there is no option for saying neither would be good but one would be worse than the other). Naturally, voters more often want income tax cuts and their strength of desire varies by party in a predictable fashion.

Essential finds pretty strong approval (44:23) for calling a double dissolution to break the ABCC deadlock should it persist. Only Others voters say no, presumably in the belief that micro-parties will be eliminated from the Senate.

Betting

The usual disclaimer: the purpose of this section is to monitor the effectiveness of betting odds, and not to encourage either betting nor the belief that betting markets are strongly predictive.

There has not been a great amount of change in seat betting, possibly because not a lot of money is going into these markets yet and polling is relatively static. Based on my usual formula of counting a seat as "close" if two or more parties are at $3 or less, this is the lineup of expected changing or close seats at Sportsbet:

Loss (Coalition to Labor): Barton*
Close Loss (Coalition to Labor): Solomon, Petrie, Capricornia, Hindmarsh, Lyons
Tie (Coalition-held): Paterson*
Close Loss (Labor to Coalition): McEwen
Loss (PUP to Coalition): Fairfax

Coalition Close Holds: Eden-Monaro, Dobell*, New England (vs IND), Brisbane, Bass, Braddon, Cowan, Burt
Labor Close Holds: Parramatta, Moreton

The only changes here from last time are that Dobell is no longer a loss in the markets while Brisbane and Bass are additions to the close seats list. So that's 86 Coalition, 59 Labor, 4 crossbench and a tie, but the Coalition has a few more shaky seats now. Also while the crossbench is only favourite in four, there are many in which some non-major party candidate is at single figure odds. Some further notable examples to those mentioned before are Melbourne Ports (where the Greens are at $5 although Michael Danby has said he personally preferences the Liberals) and Mackellar (where Independent is at $6 because if Bronwyn Bishop is reselected an indie could very well beat her.)

Labor's market favouritism in Lyons has started to make some kind of sense with Malcolm Turnbull more or less ignoring the state in his state tax push; there may also be some feeling among punters that Tasmania's energy crisis could worsen. An unfriendly Morgan sample this week saw the BludgerTrack swing in Tasmania change to 1.9% against the Coalition, which could be enough for the Coalition to lose a seat somewhere, despite sophomore effects. While I have said the Coalition incumbents in Tasmania were well placed to retain, a lot of caution is required if Coalition strategy is to place the state at risk to shore up WA.

The Sportsbet 2PP market is crediting the Coalition with about 52.5%, and the "line" market has the Coalition winning by 18 or 19 seats (about 82-83 for Coalition). The William Hill exact seats market seems much more bearish (I take it as implying only about 77 Coalition seats now) and the Sportsbet seat totals markets aren't online anymore.

I will update this piece with new polls this week, and expect there to be many polls in the week following.

Update: Essential (12 April): Today's Essential came out at 50:50 again, which I aggregated at 51 to Coalition. This brought the Coalition an extra tenth of a point on the aggregate, but 50.6% is still their worst value since Turnbull took over. Essential's relatively mild leader ratings have Turnbull on a netsat of zero (39:39, down ten in a month), Shorten on -14 (30:44; +6) and Turnbull preferred over Shorten 44:22 (compared to 48:19).

Other findings include no real change since March on the ABCC, which 34% of voters consider important and 41% not important (with predictable partisan skew). Support for a double-dissolution should the Senate fail to pass the ABCC bills is up from 34-22 to 39-24.

ReachTEL Update (15 April): I was going to leave the ReachTEL til next week but just a quick note that Seven News is greatly overplaying the extent to which the new ReachTEL points to a hung parliament. It's 50:50, rounded down from about 50.4 to Coalition, which would equate to about 79-80 Coalition seats. 51:49 to Labor (as in the most recent Newspoll) would be a likely hung parliament result and anything more than that to Labor would be a likely outright Labor win. The ReachTEL hasn't actually moved my aggregate at all - it ends the week at 50.6 but the new week will start at 50.4.Kevin Bonhamhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-42868353982473698452016-04-10T18:12:00.001+10:002016-04-14T22:14:24.728+10:00Colbeck Demoted To Fifth On Double-Dissolution Liberal TicketI am working on a belated roundup of federal polling but a quick post on today's Tasmanian Liberal Senate preselection decision is appropriate. The state executive has confirmed a Senate preselection decision to order the Tasmanian Liberal Senate ticket in the event of a double dissolution as follows: 1. Senator Eric Abetz 2. Senator Stephen Parry 3. staffer Jonathan Duniam 4. Senator David Bushby 5. Senator Richard Colbeck 6. Break O'Day Councillor John Tucker. There might yet be federal intervention, but in the absence of such, this article discusses what it may mean. The Liberal preselection process does not include any member balloting or proportional representation and my understanding is it progresses by a series of votes on each position down the list.

This follows a previous preselection decision for a half-Senate election, which I did not cover here, in which Senator Abetz retained his position on top of the ticket very comfortably while Senator Parry apparently defeated Duniam for position two by one vote. (Senators Colbeck and Bushby are mid-term so were not involved).

Aside from the state branch not preselecting even one woman to any of the six remotely winnable Tasmanian senate positions, the aspect attracting attention here is the effective demotion of Senator Richard Colbeck, who is currently Minister for Tourism and International Education, from top of the ticket in 2010 to below newcomer Duniam and Senator Bushby. This has been widely and in my view probably rightly seen through the prism of conflict between hardliners and moderates, with the Tasmanian party being dominated by the former. With Eric Abetz demoted from Senate leadership and all of the "three Amigos" in the Lower House being first-term backbenchers, Colbeck is now the most senior (though not the most longserving) Liberal in Canberra and topped the Coalition ticket for the 2013 election.

Two possible reasons for Colbeck's demotion are his perceived support for Malcolm Turnbull and his perceived status as a moderate within the party. He is reported to have campaigned for a conscience-vote on same-sex marriage last year, while not actually supporting same-sex marriage. He did not publicly declare for either Abbott or Turnbull but did inform the candidate he voted for of his support, and is widely suspected of having voted for Turnbull whereas other Tasmanian Liberals are all believed to have supported Abbott. Other reasons for Colbeck's effective potential demotion may be claimed, but any referring to potential to advocate for Tasmania's interests should be taken as code for being perceived as too close to the Prime Minister.

However, the move could also be strategic. The Turnbull government's state income tax proposal/strategic gambit/thought-bubble (any of these perceptions may be valid) was widely seen as ignoring Tasmania, which would suffer terribly under such a proposal unless compensated because of its low average income and high dependence on government services (including those, like health, that would become state funding matters). While there would presumably have been compensation for Tasmania, the fact that it was not front and centre in attempts to sell the proposal would have fuelled views that Turnbull wasn't taking Tasmania seriously. A perception that Turnbull might not mind throwing state Liberal seats under the bus if it shored up seats in WA (the WA Premier Colin Barnett supporting the move since WA would benefit from it) is growing hard to avoid. Dumping a Senator who Turnbull would see as an ally to a non-automatic position could send a message to Turnbull that he cannot neglect the state and endanger its House of Representatives seats without cost.

Another way of framing the ticket order is in terms of the allocation of Senators to three and six year terms following a double-dissolution. A method by which this can be done is to recount the election as if the election had been for six positions only, but the Senate is not obliged to follow this. By this method, assuming the Liberal Party won five seats, Senators Abetz and Parry would receive the six-year terms they would have received at a half-Senate election anyway, while Senators Bushby and Colbeck would receive three-year terms. Jonathan Duniam's position would depend on whether the Liberals were allocated two or three Senators from the six-year block.

Overall, Duniam's chance of winning a six-year term from third (if the method outlined above was followed) is probably slightly lower than his chance of winning a six-year term at a half-Senate election. The reason for this is that the vote for the Jacqui Lambie Network will certainly be higher at a double dissolution with Lambie as lead candidate, meaning that Lambie herself could win a six-year term, or could take enough votes from the Liberals to make it easier for the Greens to win one even if their vote was poor. However, Duniam is the big winner out of this since the payoff for a poor Liberal performance changes from nothing to a certain three-year term.

Duniam's potential elevation (should there be a double dissolution) marks an obvious moment of renewal for the party with such a young candidate (he's in his mid-30s) preselected. However those expecting renewal in political ideas might be disappointed. Duniam describes himself as more conciliatory than Abetz but does not deny being his ideological successor.

Senator Colbeck is the obvious loser from the change because fifth position is just a likely win and not a guaranteed one. Generally in recent years the Coalition has polled well enough to win at least five Senate seats in Tasmania at a double dissolution (see Antony Green's graph). However, in 2010 the Coalition would only have won four seats in Tasmania under the new Senate system, with the Greens winning three. This followed a Coalition campaign in Tasmania in which the party was widely seen as neglecting the state, especially in the area of broadband policy. 1998 deserves comment too: the party polled only 4.4 double-dissolution quotas, and would have won five seats but only on the basis of luck with the distribution of remaining votes.

While a result of 5 Coalition, 4 Labor, 2 Green and Lambie has appeared (at least to me!) to be the most likely double-dissolution outcome in Tasmania, it is far from locked in. Another campaign seen as neglecting the state could well result in 4-5-2-1. Lambie might (although I am sceptical of it in the absence of polling) have enough support for two seats, making it extremely hard for either major party to win five. On the other hand, it might be that Lambie has very little support and loses, in which case five seats should be easy in the absence of a very high Green vote.

It is also interesting to note that two poor performances by the party in the state have come with Abetz at the top of the ticket, although he was also top of the ticket for the 2004 election at which the party did very well in the state (mainly as a result of Mark Latham's forestry policy.) Abetz is certainly a polarising high-profile figure and has recently been one of the leading figures (alongside Kevin Andrews) in the pro-Abbott rump following the leadership spill. For all that one hears anecdotally about Abetz's prominence turning some Tasmanians off voting Liberal, there has not been any polling of Tasmanians' views about him or any other Senator.

There is some potential even for the contentious demotion of Colbeck to further endanger Colbeck, but it's very easy to overestimate the impact of these sorts of things. I think the vast majority of voters pay no attention to Senate preselections at all, and that most Tasmanians would be flat out trying to name any more than maybe three of the state's twelve Senators.

I may well have more comments on this issue in coming days or weeks. For comparison, I also posted pieces on the contentious Labor preselection and the secretive Greens effort, but neither of these parties has yet (to my knowledge) revisited their preselections for a possible double dissolution.

PS Hobart Lord Mayor Sue Hickey has given Liberal preselectors an almighty serve for their attitudes. Matthew Denholm's piece in The Australian (Richard Colbeck suspects Senate ranking payback for leader vote) is also interesting. And 2013 Franklin Liberal candidate Bernadette "Instagram of Lolcats" Black has also backed up Hickey's account.Kevin Bonhamhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-44332826167516702472016-04-04T09:12:00.000+10:002016-05-07T22:28:37.074+10:00Legislative Council 2016: Apsley and ElwickAdded May 7: For live results and postcount comments go here.

This is my candidate guide and preview for the two Tasmanian Legislative Council seats that are up for elections this year. Nominations closed on April 15, and the elections are on Saturday May 7th; I expect to post live comments on the counts as per normal. However I will be busy in the week leading up to the election so updates may be briefer or less frequent than usual.

These elections are important for the future legislative program of the Hodgman Liberal Government. At present it usually but not always has the numbers upstairs (see voting patterns). If both seats fall to Labor, then the left will have a blocking majority on major contentious issues. Even one Labor win would be quite significant for the balance of the chamber.

Despite the implications of Legislative Council elections for state politics, many LegCo elections are decided in a similar way to local council voting, based on personal profile, community connections and "parish pump" type campaigning. Attempts to attack incumbents both right (Wilkinson, Dean) and left (Finch, Gaffney) over their voting records have failed spectacularly in recent years - but at least state political issues are now being discussed at all in these campaigns.

It is rare for incumbent Legislative Councillors to lose their seats. Small electorate population bases make it easy for incumbents to become entrenched, close overlap with local government areas often results in local mayors becoming unbeatable "super-mayors" in the Legislative Council, excessive funding restrictions make campaigning difficult for challengers, and a voter preference for independent MLCs puts parties at a disadvantage. Two incumbents were unseated in 2003, but only one in the twelve years since. Since 1960, recontesting incumbents have been re-elected 83% of the time if challenged, or 87% including those returned unopposed.

Independent MLCs may have a further advantage this year. The Legislative Council inquiry into the Tasmanian Electoral Commission has reported that "At the time of drafting this report, it has been determined that candidates can now identify themselves as 'Independent' on the ballot paper." This is consistent with the TEC now listing non-party-endorsed candidates as Independent whereas previously they were listed as blank.

Note that this page will be updated and edited to reflect candidate declarations and my views as things happen (or don't) through the campaign.

Apsley: Profile

Apsley is a large rural electorate that includes the east coast, the bulk of the Midlands and almost all the non-urban north-east including Flinders Island. Its largest towns are Scottsdale and St Helens, each with populations of around 2000. Other towns include Bagdad, Bicheno, Campbell Town, Evandale, Lilydale, Oatlands and one of my pet indicator booths (because of the massive swings it produces over forestry issues) Triabunna. Industries include farming, more farming, what remains of forestry, coal mining, fishing, and tourism.

Apsley was formed from large parts of the abolished electorates of South Esk (north-east), Monmouth (east coast) and Macquarie (midlands) in the 1998-9 redistribution. None of these electorates had ever elected an endorsed party candidate. Incumbents were often very conservative and tended to have very long careers. The latter is also an attribute of the federal seat of Lyons, which much of Apsley belongs to, and a possible reason is that the large number of dispersed small towns in this area makes profile-building difficult for challengers. Apsley's first incumbent was former South Esk member Colin Rattray, and on his retirement after two terms in 2004 the seat was won by his daughter Tania (see below).

At the 2014 state election, the Liberal Party won 41 of 42 booths in Apsley with only Mathinna's 88 voters keeping the red flag flying. In 29 of these the Liberals more than doubled Labor's score and the size of some of the Liberal votes in quite large towns (77% in Bridport and 76% in Scottsdale) was astonishing. Overall the Liberals polled 59.2% (eight points above their state average), Labor 23.8% (3.5 below) and the Greens 11.0% (2.8 below) in Apsley booths. Swings of over 20% to the Liberals were seen in several booths, especially timber booths, including a 29% swing at Fingal.

Apsley: Incumbent

Tania Rattray is the two-term incumbent in Apsley. In 2004 she narrowly topped a diverse field of ten candidates with 16.7% of the primary vote, but pulled away on preferences for a 55.5% two-candidate result against her final opponent Brendan Thompson. In 2010 she was re-elected unopposed.

In my earliest review of LegCo voting patterns on this site I found Rattray to be one of the most conservative independents, but in the last year especially she has been less predictable, causing me to change my assessment of her voting on the Council from "right" to "centre-right". Her support for medicinal hemp trials was an example of this. Offhand I cannot remember any example of Rattray being involved in any controversy extending beyond disagreements with her political views.

Apsley: Challengers

The declared Labor candidate is Darren Clark (TV ad). Clark is the CEO of the Tasmanian Police and Community Youth Clubs and is a local from the south of the electorate with a background in "hospitality, manufacturing and retail" and small business. Clark was an endorsed Labor candidate for Lyons in 2014 and polled 1080 votes (6% of Labor's total); his share of Labor's tally was strongest at Triabunna where he grew up, and varied little elsewhere.

Oatlands farmer Brett Hall (Twitter) of the Tasmania Party is contesting. The Tasmania Party is a populist rebadge of the "Tasmanian Nationals", a shortlived branch of the National Party that was soon disowned by the federal Nationals. This outfit ran a strange campaign at the 2014 state election, averaging 1% in the four seats it contested, and the party is not currently registered at state level. Hall holds several chairmanships in the beef cattle industry, is a local fire chief, and has recently been prominently involved in anti-gasfield/fracking campaigns.

The Greens candidate is Sophie Houghton who was a minor Greens Senate candidate in 2007. Houghton describes herself as "self employed"; she appears to run a guest house and vineyard at Hawley Beach (which is well out of the electorate.)

Apsley: Campaign and Prospects

Apsley candidates can be heard here (interview starts 1 hr 12 mins in and goes til 1:30). (Houghton was a no-show.)

Sign activity for both Rattray and Clark were detected as of the start of April. Clark also (according to his Facebook page) has electorate offices in Swansea and Campbell Town and brochures out. In early May signs for Rattray were the most common in the midlands and inner north-east, with some large Clark and Hall signs. The Hall ones are quite modern and colourful while the Rattray ones are traditional with no candidate photo. Clark claims to have seen a Liberal Party car putting up Rattray's signs, which Rattray strenuously denies; no hard evidence has been produced to my knowledge.

Clark is pitching his campaign especially as an attack on a 10.5% pay rise for MPs being put to the Legislative Council. The Tasmanian Industrial Commission recommended this but all three Lower House parties have opposed the increase, effectively leaving the Legislative Council to make the decision by itself to the disgust of many MLCs. While Clark states the election will be a referendum on the pay rise issue, I don't expect it will be. Clark's TV advertisement also suggests that Labor is painting the incumbent as not hardworking enough.

The 2014 election results show that Labor suffered severe brand damage in this area. Disgust about the Labor-Green forestry "peace deal" may have faded but isn't likely to have gone away and the task of rebuilding trust will be longer than two years. Unless the incumbent does more or less nothing, or something really silly, I don't see how Labor would win, but a favourable state issues mix generally (energy crisis, Turnbull state tax proposal) may soften the margin.

Hall will be much more competitive in a smaller field that takes in his local area than he was at the state election. He is unlikely to have the profile to be a serious threat but his credentials suggest he should poll reasonably if he campaigns well, and will have opportunities as a candidate to further push his anti-fracking message. Examples of minor parties other than the Greens contesting LegCo positions are very thin on the ground so it is hard to say what impact his party status (which won't appear on the ballot paper) will have.

As the seat profile notes, Apsley is not rich pickings for the Greens and their result will mainly be useful as evidence of the party's rebuilding or lack thereof. Anything substantially into double figures would be a good result here.

Elwick: Profile

Elwick includes most of the Glenorchy City Council area in the northern suburbs of greater Hobart. It is an expanded version of the former electorate of Buckingham. Since the Second World War, MLCs in this area have generally had Labor connections, but have varied as to whether they were formally endorsed. The sole exception was Ken Lowrie, MLC from 1968 to 1986. Lowrie was Mayor of Glenorchy when he won a famous contest against 26 year old rising star Doug Lowe by 110 votes. Lowrie went on to become Leader for the Gray Government (although he did not formally join it) before the now ex-Premier Lowe fancied a rematch and defeated Lowrie with a massive 72.7% vote. Lowe was followed by Labor Treasurer David Crean, then by popular Glenorchy Mayor Terry Martin, who was expelled from the Parliamentary Labor Party for his vote against the proposed Gunns Bell Bay pulp mill. Martin retired after the side-effects of medication contributed to him being charged in a child-prostitution scandal, and Taylor, his successor as Mayor, replaced him at the 2010 election. See the Tasmanian Times 2010 preview (co-written with Peter Tucker) for more electorate history.

Elwick is a working-class Labor stronghold. Amid the 2014 state wipeout Labor still topped all its booths bar two (Moonah and Rosetta) and polled 45.8% (18.5 points above the state average) to the Liberals' 35.1% (16.1 below) and the Greens' 10.7% (3.1 below). Despite this it is not so rusted-on as to be unable to vote for anyone else, as seen not only with Taylor's election but also when Andrew Wilkie had no trouble winning booths there at the 2013 federal poll.

Elwick: Incumbent

Prior to winning the seat of Elwick, Adriana Taylor (Facebook link) was Mayor of Glenorchy. After a fairly close initial win in 2005, Taylor was re-elected by massive margins in 2007 and 2009. A former ALP member, Taylor had allowed her membership to lapse prior to contesting the 2010 election for the LegCo seat. She ran in more or less Labor colours but was opposed by endorsed Labor candidate, unionist Tim Jacobson, running in yellow and blue. Taylor polled 48.9% in a field of three which became a 56:44 margin over Labor after preferences. She is now one of six ex-Mayors in the Council, and one of ten MLCs with a former local government background.

In her six years in the Council, Taylor has consistently placed in the centre of the Council based on voting patterns. Apart from often voting with Nelson MLC Jim Wilkinson, she has not strongly tended to agree or disagree with any other MLC. Her voting tends to be religiously conservative on "moral issues" (she was by far the most strident opponent of proposed state-based same-sex marriage) and moderately left-wing but individual on other issues. Early in her career she agreed with Liberal MLCs Goodwin and Hiscutt on only 44% and 39% of contested divisions respectively; this has now increased to 48% and 47% but she is hardly a reliable vote for the Government.

Taylor has sometimes attracted social-media criticism, as well as mine, for daffy arguments on religious morality issues. In the state-based same-sex marriage debate she was criticised for, effectively, arguing that because her son was bullied for having red hair, allowing same-sex marriage would make no difference to sexuality-based discrimination.

Such issues aside, Taylor has been a powerful and fairly high-profile MLC whose vote is often decisive and closely watched on the more closely contested matters. Taylor announced she was recontesting late last year.

Elwick: Challengers

After rumours of all sorts of high-profile contenders, the actual endorsed Labor candidate is Josh Willie, a primary school teacher. I had not heard of Willie before this campaign and have found little about him online so far but there is quite a buzz about him in the party as a young star of the future.

Serial Greens candidate Penelope Ann is again the endorsed Green candidate. This is at least Ann's ninth run for the Greens since 2010 and her third LegCo run for a third different seat, all in the Greater Hobart area. In 2011 she came fourth out of six with a 13.4% primary in Rumney and in 2012 second out of six with a 22.6% primary in the ultra-green seat of Hobart. This Hobart result appeared to be a good showing given that the competition included former long-term Hobart Lord Mayor Rob Valentine (who won easily) but Ann did obtain a small unfair advantage through an advertisement for her being illegally published on election day. Ann, a heritage accommodation owner, has also contested State and Senate elections as a minor Greens candidate and polled just 1.6% as a Greens candidate for Clarence City Council in 2014.

Other challengers will be added as they are declared.

Elwick: Campaign and Prospects

Candidates for Elwick can be heard here (starts 45 mins in, goes to 1:13).

Willie is presented as a "new voice" with "new energy" and Labor is calling for renewal (and also reform) of the Legislative Council. The LegCo, sometimes derided as a "Boomer house", has an average age of 61 with only one member under fifty. Taylor, who will turn 70 later this year, is the second-oldest. However age has been no barrier in Tasmanian politics in recent years, with Ivan Dean easily re-elected at 70 and David Llewellyn returning to the House of Assembly at 71. On the other hand, it has been very rare for candidates under age 35 to win Upper House seats in recent decades. Taylor's age is unlikely to count against her after just one term and in an electorate with a high proportion of pensioners.

As noted above, the general issues mix (energy crisis, health, Turnbull states tax proposal) is highly friendly to Labor at the moment. However it will be difficult to turn this into any kind of attack on an opponent who has no connections to the state government. Labor is very energised about this contest and making an especially serious effort, with Willie doorknocking a vast number of houses in six weeks of unpaid leave. My perception is that while Taylor has not campaigned as much, she hasn't been invisible and has done enough to not give any real credence to any Labor attack. While this is well worth watching on election night to see what impact Labor's young contender makes, it is hard to see an objective case why Taylor should actually lose.

One local issue Willie is running on is the recent change to Metro bus services. Metro carried out a radical timetable revamp (probably more good than bad in my own area, by the way) that has received blowback from disadvantaged residents, partly because a reduction in "route variations" has resulted in some side-routes being discontinued while other trips have become longer. There are comments by Willie and Taylor in the ABC audio link above on this.

Labor is also running on the 10.5% pay rise issue in this electorate (see Apsley above) claiming that both incumbents would vote the pay rise through.

The Greens won't be winning this seat any decade soon but their result will shed some light on how the party's rebuilding effort is really going. They polled 13.2% in 2010, which was closely in line with their 2010 state result.

On 6 April the Mercury reported that a pamphlet for Josh Willie was under investigation by the Electoral Commission for allegedly offering to donate a salary rise to charity if elected. This rookie error has a history with Ivan Dean having even been charged with bribery (though the charge was ultimately dropped) after making a similar promise when running for Mayor of Launceston. Past experience is that this sort of controversy tends not to affect candidate votes to any detectable degree.Kevin Bonhamhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com