I heard it said recently that Galaxy had a strategy of skimping on sample sizes for early campaign polls and then going to town at the end of the campaign, in the hope that their final polls will prove more accurate than the competition – which, by and large, they have done. Sure enough, today’s News Limited tabloids have unloaded a giant survey of 4000 voters covering four marginal electorates in each mainland state. The graphic as published in Perth’s Sunday Times can be viewed here. The surprise is the mild 5 per cent swing across Bonner, Herbert, Longman and Moreton, pointing to a disappointing result for Labor in Queensland. However, it has been widely reported that Labor is on course for bigger swings in the north of the state than in Brisbane, which is over-represented in this sample of seats (though this was also true of Newspoll). Newspoll and Galaxy are also at odds over Victoria, respectively pointing to swings of 8 per cent (a likely gain of five seats) and 4.5 per cent (a likely gain of zero seats). Three of the four seats sampled were the same, the fourth being McMillan in Newspoll’s case and McEwen in Galaxy’s. Where Newspoll surveyed the four most marginal seats in South Australia, Galaxy has ditched Kingston as a lost cause to take on Sturt. One can only speculate how much that accounts for the difference between the two results: a 4.5 per cent swing in Galaxy’s case and 8 per cent in Newspoll’s. It should be noted that two Sturt polls appeared in the week suggesting Galaxy’s swing is nearer the mark than Newspoll’s. Perversely, the state where the two agencies picked the most differing sample of seats, New South Wales, is the one where they produced the most similar results – a 7 per cent swing in Newspoll’s case, slightly higher in Galaxy’s.
Then there is Western Australia, which Galaxy surveyed and Newspoll did not. Here Galaxy points to a swing of barely 1 per cent, less than would be needed for Labor to win Stirling and Hasluck, and perhaps not enough to hold Cowan given the loss of Graham Edwards’ personal vote. For more on Western Australia, see the post below on the Westpoll survey, to which I have now added a graphic from The West Australian. It gives Labor a slightly bigger swing of 3.5 per cent.
UPDATE: Chris Hammer of The Bulletin lambasts Galaxy for not waiting until the campaign launches were done before conducting its poll.
111 Comments
Aaaaand we’re back in the game.
Assuming the poll’s accurate, all it’d take is a 1% narrowing in NSW to pull it back to a Coalition win/hung parliament situation, and we’d have 1998 all over again.
Sure enough, today’s News Limited tabloids have unloaded a giant survey of 4000 voters covering four marginal electorates in each mainland state. The graphic as published in Perth’s Sunday Times can be viewed here.
So that is 4000 people over a total of 24 electorates, less than 200 per electorate, correct me if I am wrong but I make the MOE around 6-7%.
it sounds like bollocks to me.
Hrrrmmmm…
4000 Samples
5 States.
4 Seats in each state.
4000/5 = 800
800/4 = 200
Can anyone see a problem here?
How accurate are individual seat polls? Espeically ones that have a mixture of city and towns.
And with a national 53-55/45 polls I guess it becomes a moot point.
#3: It also means that the MoE across all of them is likely to cancel out (as in some will be coalition-biased, some labor-biased) down to ~2%.
How is it we have reached the final week of the campaign and NOW Galaxy gives us marginal seats which are at odds with months of their own National polls AND Nielsen Polls still have not done marginal seat polls. DOESTHIS MEAN ALL 4 Plling Companies National Polls INCLUDING 3 this week are irrelevant ???
It’s going to be close so don’t get ahead of yourselves Labor voters!
Biggest swings will be in NSW, Vic and SA and heres where we will pick up the most seats, Herbert is in the bag for Labor here in Queensland and so is another 2 or 3 in Brisbane.
WA I think will have a slight swing but not enough for Labor to win more seats, but Labor will hold on to all their seats in that state.
Tassie Labor will win back it’s 2 seats, and 1 seat in the NT.
My prediction is between 79-85 seats to Labor. And remember we need at least 53%+ TPP Labor vote to have any chance. Every change of government SINCE WW2 has occured only if the opposition party recieved over 52% TPP
Justin @ 7:
If, as I suggest, that they are doing in the order of 200 electors per seat, then the MOE is at least 7%.
Is it just me, or is this totally worthless?
Who reckons that a lot of these professional pollsters will need a good scrub to get the ‘egg off there face’s’ come Sunday the 25th!
My call is Labor will win with anywhere from 90 min. to 105 Max. THE GURU HAS SPOKEN!
William, NSW & Vic only I think; no#s…but interesting.
‘The latest Sunday Age/Taverner Research poll shows that 57% of the key mortgage-holder demographic will be voting for Labor, compared with only 43% for the Coalition.
This is a complete reversal of the 2004 campaign, when a Taverner poll conducted then showed the Coalition enjoying an 8-point margin over Labor among mortgage holders. More than one in five mortgage holders who previously supported the Coalition appear to have shifted their allegiance to Labor.’
http://www.theage.com.au/news/federal-election-2007-news/pm-faces-massive-defeat/2007/11/17/1194767024647.html
It’s always been closer than it’s looked in my opinion. I’m still confident of a Labor win on election night, but I think 90 seats is a fantasy. I count about 12 certainties, about 10-15 tossups with a couple of them leaning Labor and then a third tier of ‘if the swing is in the right place’ seats of another 10 or so. Some seat by seat guesses would be interesting, rather than bulk numbers. I think we take down Kingston, Bonner, Macquarie, Wakefield, Makin, Bass, Solomon, Moreton, Lindsay, Eden-Monaro, Dobell, Blair. Probably Braddon as well. It’s tough to see any near certainties past there though… everything not mentioned down to the 6.3% mark of Paterson has to be rated a tossup or lean Labor, except maybe Wentworth is leaning Liberal in my opinion. Still, that’s 14 tossups, so if Labor wins 7 it’ll be a comfortable win on election night with a gain of 19. I’d say there will be 1 or 2 seats that defy the uniform swing and flip as well (i’m thinking Bowman, possibly Flynn, Hinkler or Leichhardt if the swing is unevenly spread across QLD – I used to live in Bundaberg and they are a fickle bunch in Hinkler, big swings wouldn’t surprise me there although the editor of the local paper told me Parr has said some pretty stupid things… Flynn is possible and Leichhardt too if the coalition experiences preference leakage and the retiring member’s personal vote is large enough) and possibly 1 or 2 Liberal pickups (WA), so i’ll go with Labor 79 seats with margin of error of 5 either way.
Then again, I hope i’m wrong and we win 90 seats. It would be sweet to run the table on those tossup seats and see Howard lose Bennelong…
I’m volunteering for Kerry Rea in Bonner, news on the ground is good from what i’ve heard. Doorknocking near the booths that went for Vasta, the response has been excellent so far. I’m going to guess Bonner will be 54-46 on the day. I’m working a booth that went 51% Liberal last time, so I think I might get a good feel for the whole election. Most of the Labor people are very confident of at least winning Bonner and Moreton in Brisbane and Bowman is very much seen as a 50/50 prospect from the people i’ve talked to.
Oh, and hi, i’ve been reading the site for a while now, decided to start posting too.
If I’ve learned anything from Possum and others since venturing into the blogosphere, it’s to observe the trend and be wary of polls with a high MoE. In any case, Galaxy has generally pointed to a lower Labor 2PP vote. This could just be sampling error, or it could be to do with their methodology. In the absence of more information, and without confirmation, Galaxy should be discounted.
Thanks & welcome Oliver.
Actually, I am still trying to understand what they have done here.
4000 samples should give a MOE of about 1.5%… but this is not true random sampling. They are saying that they are sampling the marginal seats, so obviously they this is not proportional to the electorate at large.
I don’t quite know what to make of it. If the swing is smaller here, then it must be larger elsewhere.
#10: If seats such as Hasluck approximate the Labor vote at 5% lower than its true value, then seats such as Moreton could just as easily be estimating the Coalition vote at 5% below its true value. In cumulative error is likely to be in the region of 2%, and some seats will be biased one way, some the other, in the end you’ve still got 4000 people from the seats that matter (this poll), versus 1000 people from all over the place (standard Nielsen/Newspoll/Galaxy national), where you could just as easily argue that the MoE in any one seat was 37%(!).
If you say that about Galaxy you could say the same about Morgan always showing a higher Labor vote. I’m a natural pessimist though, having grown up in the Howard years watching Labor lose election after election, so I find it hard to believe we’re actually that far in front. I also saw John Kerry polling a solid election winning lead one day before the election… almost put money on at $2.25 then thought better of it back in 2004.
I think 52/48 or so on election day, but enough swings in the right places to give Labor a narrow majority. I hope it’s 54-55%… the polls say it should be, but doesn’t 1-2% always fly back to the incumbent on election day?
If it’s more than 52/48 and Labor doesn’t win… the AEC has a lot of explaining to do. Hell, if it’s more than 50.5/49.5, the AEC has a lot of explaining to do.
Oliver a few Labor voters in here have had a rush of blood to their heads and aren’t giving us Mark Lathamist predictions of grand wins.
I’m sure Rudd is going to win, in my mind he is not someone who would lose an election(if that makes senses)
But some of the wild predictions in here of 90+ seats make me laugh… come on back to planet Earth people. Howards still got “the economy” on his side, this is purely a moral and “it’s time” vote that will get Rudd over the line.
I also believe that the longer a member has been in power the harder it is to kick them out(in other words the swing has to be BIGGER nationally). It would be a lot easier kicking out a 1996 elected Lib member in 1998 then it would be in 2007 over 10 years later! I believe a bigger swing is needed every year to kick them out(unless they are a poor member)
Labor needs at least 53% TPP to win government(as seen from historical elections of past a 52%+ vote is required to change government)
Lets hope we get the 54% TPP on the day!
#16: The poll isn’t made to measure the electorate at large, just the marginals, so taking a random sample from within them is perfectly acceptable, and more relevant, because a voter in Grayndler or Bradfield isn’t going to mean anything to the outcome.
From the Age:
In a statement to The Sunday Age yesterday, Vaile said he knew Ian McPhee personally, respected his professionalism and independence, and “I regret questioning the timing of the report”.
Really Mr Vaile!
Justin @ 20:
Ok, looking at the figures, the TPP here is about 51%… we know that the TPP for the population as a whole is about 55%, so the rest of the TPP must be being felt elsewhere.
Where?
I can’t see that these figures are very useful in terms of either party making a prediction and my read on it is that they would both be trusting their own internal polling at this stage (with only 6 days to go).
The main benefit to Labor is to ensure voters don’t “mess around” with their vote and that Team Rudd et.al. maintain their discipline.
It’s all good.
By the way… i’m staying in the Brisbane electorate atm… why is Arch Bevis still paying $1.08 and in Capricornia… $1.11. Moreton is $1.12. Surely there’s a better chance of holding Capricornia than picking up Moreton? I mean, it’s very likely both will happen, but still, it’s weird. Good money on Labor incumbents? It’d be worth considering a $2000 bet or something to win $220. Infact, I should look into that on Friday if there are no changes in polling or odds before then and no time for last minute surprises. Surely that’s even better money than Labor at $1.23. Also, Franklin at $1.14 and Lyons at $1.16? Labor’s at $1.23! Surely we hold our incumbent seats in Tasmania before winning government… Eden-Monaro $1.25? We’re certainly not winning without it and it’s worth more than a Labor win. Macquarie $1.16? It’s a notional Labor electorate! Again, we’re certainly not winning overall without picking up Macquarie.
Logically if Labor is at $1.23 (Portlandbet odds) then shouldn’t the 15th-16th most marginal seats also be close to $1.23?
Kerry Rea’s been backed into $1.04 from $1.10 as a non-incumbent. I’ll have to tell her and see what she thinks of it next week… lol, apparently four times safer than the Tasmanian incumbents.
#22: Maybe there’s been a bigger swing in safe seats.
Maybe the true 2PP is closer to 52-52.5ish at this point in time (fits with both this and the national polls which say 54-55 with a 3% MoE)
Maybe the methodology in this poll is completely out (if it’s fine then my MoE calculator says there’s a 99% chance that it’s within 2% of the true TPP of these seats).
I’d favour the first or second options.
What I don’t get is Labor is @ $1.19 now to win.
You would have to be absolutely raving bonkers to put money down on those odds, when you consider you can put a bet on a single candidate in a pretty safe bet seat like Herbert @ $1.50 win for Labor.
It’s easy for Labor to win these seats, it’s harder for them to win the election
THIS IS WHAT GALAXY DO NOT SAY: the Galaxy Poll of 4,000 voters (is 200 voters in each of 4 seats in 5 states equals 4,000 voters) but Galaxy polled per Poll Bludgers attachment over 5 evenings from the 10th to the 15th November
ie last Saturday night to last Thursday night. In between both Party’s made their Launchs. WOULD GALAXY’s POLLING PER SEAT OVER EACH OF THE 5 NIGHTS BEEN 40 VOTERS PER SEAT EVERY SINGLE NIGHT (TO MAKE UP THE 200 per seat per state ie 800 per state) ?????? if not the polling would be affected by when during the launchs the phone calls were made. does anyone know ??
There is something amiss in that Galaxy table, the figures for Oct 2004 are not the final election results so what are the swings based on? For example the table shows LNP TPP of 54.5 NSW, 54.1 Qld, 55.6 Vic where the election result was 51.9, 57.1 and 51 respectively.
If I’m not mistaken the Galaxy Qld prediction of 51/49 ALP against election 2004 results of 42.9/57.1 is actually an 8.1% swing and not 5% as you stated William.
Justin @ 25:
Hrrmmm… bigger swings in “safe” seats…
This will be fun to watch.
You don’t believe for a second that the TPP is about 52% do you?
I don’t think there has been a single poll in 6 months or more that has reached that low…
If Labor wins by 2 seats then that is fine – the job is done. We will all be happy. AND there is nothing we can do anyway really, except help out the booths and sit and watch.
In reality all the polls all year have pretty much agreed with each other and even now point to a 53 – 55 result. Possum’s model points to 55.1
The most disturbing thing for LNP must be the AC Nielsen since in every election it has been pretty good on the ALP primary and, over estimated the LNP vote each time by a few percent coming into the last week. If it runs true to form again then Possum’s wont be far wrong.
And this has been a terrible last week for Howard – it is all falling apart. Today’s headlines are not going to help and, as has been noted by Anthony Green statistically undecided voters tend to break 2/1 with the trend. The 2001 electioni had a similar break.
With LNP and Howard starting to look like lame ducks in this last week the undecideds will follow their usual pattern which, could actually increase Labor’s position.
You can sit and worry or sit and be confident – it wont change the result. If Labor and Rudd can’t win under these circumstances it will be hard to see when they could ever win.
My original prediction was for 84 seats – I now would not be surprised if it goes 90+ but would be happy with any win.
I don’t believe the nationwide TPP is 52%, no. It’s at the very least 53, but it could well be 52 in these seats given there’s no past polls to say this is an outlier (and the sample size indicates it’s unlikely to be one, anyway) and a lot of the swing could be in safe seats where just about nobody is out campaigning (from the Right side of the fence, anyway).
Let it end,
You may be confusing the tpp in the 4 seats in each seat, with the state tpp. The figures of tpp do add up to the collective 4 seat tpp.
# 32 FTP, LOL, your right, I think I’d better go to bed now
This poll gives 18 seats to Labor, but I don’t think they’ll win Bennelong, Wentworth, Dobell or Paterson, so that’s 14 seats. If Howard takes Cowan, that’s 13 nett.
On this poll I am giving it to Howard by the barest of margins, and real problems from Georgiou, et al, next term threatening to cross the floor.
You can have an error in one or two polls but when you have a group and series of polls from different pollsters pointing to the same thing you would have to accept the reality.
The current TPP is certainly between 53-55 and with upward pressure – not downward.
Justin @ 31:
Glad to understand you properly!
It is so hard to understand these marginal seat polls. I know Possum on the other thread poured scorn on these types of things, and from a layman’s perspective, I would have to agree.
What is to be made of them? In and of themselves, they are not so terribly useful, methinks.
There are larger forces at work, and these particular marginal seats polls, are just a subset (if accurate) of the larger whole.
They are such a strange beast. 800 samples from one seat would be much more useful, to my way of thinking. What actually is this poll representative of?
The Green vote would also suggest that the sleeper of the campaign is Global Warming, whilst most recognise that Howard has totally stuff his IR campaign he has looked shocking on GW. GW is an interesting one as it could increasingly be a ‘vote’ changer.
The very best result for Labor is just enough votes to win the most marginal seat by one vote, the next most marginal by one vote.. and so on.
With this sort of voting pattern Labor could win with *less* than 50% of the overall 2PP but *given* that they are likely to get about 54-55 percent overall *and* that the swing goes up the less marginal the seat is…
Well.. you do the maths
Galaxy’s Poll produces a 2 PP of 50.8% Labor & 49.2% for Liberals. Each state had 800 polled & the results FOR LABOR 2 PP were :
WA 50%
NSW 53%
Vic 49%
Q’ld 51%
SA 51%
WHERE is Labor’s 2PP of 54% per Nielsen and 54% per Newspoll
In safe Labor seats ?????
You have a Newspoll of marginals pointing to a mini-disaster for the LNP and Galaxy of marginals point to an 18 seat loss as well. AND individual seats can be difficult to sample properly. You have national polls pointing to a disaster for the LNP and some want to give it to Howard?
Howard will most certainly lose Bennelong. Wentworth will probably be saved. Howard will need a miracle to save this election.
follow the preferences, you know something, despite the press being determined to label Rudd as me-too the reality is that most sensible voters (forget the ’swingers’ from four corners for a moment) see Rudd as the clear winner on climate change.
can’t wait for some of the latest seriously scary data about climate change to filter through in the media this week…
I wouldn’t get carried away with this Galaxy in opposition to the Newspoll marginals which actually is in synch with the national polling by all the polsters.
The analysis has already been done – the smaller swings are in Labor seats, then LNP marginals and then LNP safe seats.
Mad cow is right – this is why it could actually turn out to be a masacre if the planets line up right.
Next is the Morgan marginals.
CONFUSED !!! CAN ANYONE EXPLAIN ??
Galaxy’s Poll mathematically equals a 2 PP of 50.8% Labor & 49.2% for Liberals. Each state had 800 polled & the results FOR LABOR 2 PP PER STATE were :
WA 50%
NSW 53%
Vic 49%
Q’ld 51%
SA 51%
This works out at 2032 actual 2 PP votes to labor out of the 4,000
which equals 50.8% 2 PP
1/ WHERE is Labor’s 2PP of 54% per Nielsen and 54% per Newspoll
In safe Labor seats ?????
2/ Galaxy’s poll is over 5 nights in 20 seats equals 40 polled per seat per night
but the 5 nights were last sat night to last thurs night…would not the poll be affected by WHEN in the week voters per polled ???
Go to Possum’s site – he did a thourough mathematical analysis of where the swings were taking place some time ago.
Look for the series of articles called ‘Pollycide’
http://possumcomitatus.wordpress.com/
THE bad news for the LNP was that the swings were not happening so much in Labor seats but in marginals and especially Liberal safe seats. This is no doubt why you see Howard and Rudd campaigning in LNP safe seats – they are also up for grabs.
If these Galaxy figures are near correct then Howard has some severe problems because not only is he going to lose a bunch of marginals but a very big bunch of safe seats.
It is intuitive in anycase that Labor safe seats will not swing much since they already have a saturation of labor voters. The bigger swings will more likely take place where there are the least Labor vote no doubt.
Laborvoter #19
When, in history, has a government kept power on less than 49% of the vote after an election? I can’t find any such event in postwar elections.
Netvegetable @ 45: Both Hawkie and Howard, from memory, got by with less than 50% of the TPP, whether it was less than 49%, I don’t know.
More I think about it the more I just don’t get this poll. As mentioned in Williams Westpoll comment Lateline reported last Friday night this Galaxy would show Labor TPP of 53/47 and yet it has 50.8/49.2. Very strange.
Hard to believe Vic has the lowest ALP primary vote of 37 for any state, that’s 7 below Newspoll in 3 out of 4 of the same seats.
To me there is something horribly wrong with doing a “marginal” seat poll and then not polling all the most marginal seats. Even worse than that, they have thrown a number of non-marginal seats into the mix – Robertson at 6.9%, Longman at 6.7% and Sturt at 6.8%.
I would suggest that if the result was 53/47 even though it contains these less marginal seats then it points to a big Labor win – it shows that Labor will pick up all the most marginal seats and that there will be a few ’second tier’ seats in play as well.
Also, not all states were polled either, so if you add Soloman, Bass and Braddon to the mix then it makes the position for Labor look even better.
Milne’s assessment of this poll states – “While Galaxy did not poll in Tasmania or the Northern Territory last week, the survey results would also give Labor Tasmania’s Bass and Braddon, and Solomon in the NT.”
Can anyone explain how this could possibly be?
Also, Galaxy covers their butt by saying that just a very small further swing in Queensland would see an extra 8 seats fall. Other seats would fall in Victoria with a similar further small swing.
There are some big questions here:
1) Newspoll shows that NSW has moved for the ALP by + 2% in just two weeks and their last figure now cross-checks welll with Galaxy. Why the shift? was is the interest rate hike?
2) Newspoll and Galaxy differ bigtime in Victoria. The idea that LNP are still ahead 51/49 in Victortian marginal seats (Galaxy), when Newspoll has the whole state for the ALP at 59/41 = WTF?
3) Both Newspoll and Galaxy show QLD and SA to have moderated thier swing to the ALP dramatically and agree the net gain for ALP will be only 5 or 6.
It wasn’t that long ago the polls were showing QLD would deliver up to 10 seats. Does this mean the LNP campaigning has done some great things?
34 Stephen Lloyd – but Stephen why just use this poll. Why not Newspoll or ACNeilsen? Not to your liking?
Following on from The Chinster at #48 I think we need to look at the additions and omissions by Galaxy to the term “marginal”.
From their published list for each state I counted these as possible wins for the ALP, ie swing to ALP greater than the margin in:
WA [1] Cowan
NSW [4] Eden-Monaro, Page, Robertson, Wentworth
QLD [2] Bonner, Moreton
SA [3] Boothby, Makin, Wakefield
VIC [1] Deakin
TOTAL 11
Note that the seats polled included some above 5% eg Sturt, Robertson, Longman, Herbert, McEwen, only one of which is counted as an ALP win.
More noteworthy is those marginal seats NOT polled, which all require a swing less than that indicated by the seats actually polled, such as:
SA – Kingston, Boothby….both of which should be gained by the ALP as requiring less swing than indicated by the state swing as polled by Galaxy.
NT – Solomon…no indication from Galaxy.
NSW – Lindsay, Bennelong, Dobell, Paterson…all 4 swinging more than required.
VIC – McMillan [just] below the swing.
These add up to a possible gain to the ALP [in that they require less than the swing indicated by Galaxy's polling in the other seats in those states] of 7 seats.
That makes the total possible gain to the ALP 18 seats.
Plus, probably, 2 from Tasmania.
The Galaxy poll, plus its implications for the omitted swinging seats, indicates that the ALP is above the swing required to gain a total of 20 seats.
Without looking at ’safe’ seats.
Where have I gone wrong?
Oh well, guess that newspoll yesterday was complete bollocks. lol
Geez talk about poll overdose.
“we’ll hold on in the marginals” is always the rallying cry of a losing government.
If the national newspoll and ACN earliy this week stay at 54-55, all these “marginal polls” will be forgotten.
The election will not be close. Nine months of polling shows a landslide win to labor, yet you choose to one poll (even worse, a Galaxy poll, the LNP equivalent of a Morgan poll) as the yardstick with an MoE of 7%! What do you think the MoE is for the aggregate of 9 months of consistent polling! Next to nothing! Even look at the last few polls taken this week. Some were taken before bothe party launches, most after the LNP party launch and a small portion after both. Seeing as how the Labor launch was the clear winner out of the two, all three scenarios over-inflate the LNP position. And what did they all point to? An ALP landslide. So please cut the Howard might just scrape in crap!
When I was younger and planning a lot of buck’s parties with mates, they used to sit around and plot about how they were going to do a lot of crazy stuff to the young soon-to-be-married victim.
Then, of course, the day would come, I would unload hundreds of metres of rope, duct tape and Nikko pens from the boot of my car, turn to the lads who were going to bring the rest of the gear, and they would say:
“Yeah, nah, we knew someone else would bring stuff..”
In this election, I think a lot of people around the tea-room table at work are banging on about Kev and how they’ll vote for him. When the day actually comes, a lot may just settle down and figure “Well, nah, plenty of other people will vote for him”.
This Galaxy may well be an outlier, they don’t have a brilliant reputation for being right on track with other polls. I still consider the betting market to be a better predictor, for the following reasons:
1. People are putting their hard-earned on their opinions
2. It may be capturing a bigger pool of people than 200, even in a massive poll like this. On average, a complete introvert still knows some 200 people in their community and hear them talk.
3. People who feel that the betting market is an “easy win” (ie “inaccurate”), will be inclined to balance up that side of the book with wagers.. it is self-regulating.
Grasshoppers,remember what we’ve been taught,look to the next poll,then the next and then the next.The narrative has some way to go yet.The best will be on the morning of the 24th,and even they will contain error,missing those voters who make up their minds on the day.
IMHO I follow Kina’s thinking at 44 above.
Fred at 52,you haven’t gone wrong,that’s how I interpret this poll as well.
For what it’s worth,I hate polls that do not present their figures for proper analysis.In the Sunday Mail we just got the sensationalist story and map.No tables,nothing else.Poor stuff indeed.
I remember the PM saying the Galaxy poll was the one he took most interest in. Wasn’t it the one that was closest to picking the 2004 result?
Good points GO – esp about the bookies.
Galaxy was also gave the Queensland opposition a lead going into their last state election at some point in the campaign. They got it right in the end but what does that say about that poll that had the government behind, given the end result?
Oh,and by the by,I see nothing wrong with a poll that purports to put Howard et al within a bulls roar of winning.IMHO that’s just what we need at this moment.There are ppl out there who will return to the Coalition if they feel Rudd will win by too much.They feel safe to return and argue that they are balancing up the vote and making sure we have a strong Opposition.I’m sure we’ve all met them in our travels,I sure have.
This poll will keep those ppl on track,and others who want to be rid of the Rodent but are still a little disquieted about doing so.
For the record,the swing here in Queensland is still big.The feeling of expectation is immense,it has an infectious excitement all of it’s own.
55 Generic Oracle – I agree re the punters but don’t buy this “water cooler” BS. Everything points to a coalition loss, polls, betting, focus group data and has done for a long time. The ‘people changing their minds at the last moment and voting for the government in large numbers’ theory is just wishful thinking.
Netvegetable,
Howard did it in 1998 on 48.9%, the lowest winning TPP since Federation.
Hawke did it on 49.9% in 1990. The Coalition got away with it quite a bit 1954: 49.3%, 1961: 49.5%, 1969: 49.8%
Just heard that the Sunday Tele has advocated a vote for Labor. In case it hasn’t been posted already.
The Sunday Mail in Adelaide has advocated a vote for the Coalition, not surprisingly. This is the paper that Nicole Cornes used to write for and one that has been mercilessly attacking her since she decided to run for Labor.
For the uneducated is psephology, how is the reliability of this marginal poll any different to the Newspoll released yesterday?
In case it hasn’t been posted:
My 5 steps as PM by Rudd
http://www.smh.com.au/news/federal-election-2007-news/my-first-5-steps-as-pm/2007/11/17/1194767020799.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
So, time to pull out the 2006 U.S. congressional comparison.
In the 2006 U.S. elections there were effectively 2 types of wins for the democratics in house seats, marginal seat win and a few wins off of huge swings.
The best example was in Conneticut where in the 2nd the republican, with a 54-46 margin in 2004, held on by a few hundred votes, in the 4th the incumbent republican, with a 52-48 margin in 2004, lost with a 49-51 to the democrats. But in the 5th the republican incumbent, who had a 60-40 result in 2004, lost 46-54, a 14% swing.
That is the same as if in SA Labor won Boothby, just missed out on winning Sturt and then picked up Mayo.
This pattern was repeated across many states in the U.S. and my feeling is that its how it is going to look next saturday.
Don’t read too much into a poll of 4 (not necessarily marginal) seats in 5 states. The figures cannot be extrapolated to a national figure with any accuracy.
By my primitive calculations the moe is:
20 electorates combined 2%
State basis 4.5%
Individual electorate 7%
Some of the seat choices are curious; not 1 seat in the Sydney mortgage-belt where the government is likely to get hit. Is there anyone in Wentworth whose vacuus opinion hasnt been polled?
In the seats polled (using the state figures) ALP wins 9-10/20. If you’re brave/foolish enough to extrapolate on statewide swings to all seats it’s 15, excluding NT, Tasmania, recent Monkmania & CircusVaile.
She’s apples, Kev
Andrew Fraser
http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/news/local/general/shes-apples-kev/1088300.html
THE KEVIN Rudd-led Labor juggernaut is picking up pace with only six days to the 2007 election, according to a new poll.
A Tasmanian marketing and research consultancy poll shows all five Tasmanian seats being won by Labor, including the return of Bass and Braddon, the two perennial marginals in the state’s north won by the Coalition in 2004.
Bass and Braddon are high on every Labor list of the 16 seats needed to change government.
The poll shows a whopping 60-40 statewide two-party-preferred result for Labor, with the pollster saying that 80per cent of those making up the high Green primary vote of 17per cent had said they would give Labor their second preference.
Mr Rudd was preferred as prime minister by 61-39, with slightly more women than men opting for the Labor leader. John Howard broke even only among voters aged 70 and over, with all other age groups opting for Mr Rudd by margins of between 14 percentage points (55-70 years) and 42 percentage points (18-25 years).
The pro labor bloggers on this site fail to take into consideration history-the Coalition has performed extremely strongly in the Marginals.In South East Queensland Bonner will go to Labor and Blair looks to be in trouble.But Dickson,Longman, and Petrie should be retained by the Coalition because of strong incumbents.For the life of me I would be surprised if Howard is on the nose in Regions;over the past 3 years constituents in seats around Cairns,Townsville,and Macky for example because of the mining boom have been well off-it is the economy stupid -why change?
In NSW I can’t help not forgettting how the ethnic chinese and koreans mobbed John Howard in a Eastwood mall about 3 weeks ago and it took him 2 hours to get to his car.This
Gentlemen, there are a couple of comments to make about the poll.
1. The polling of marginal seats cannot give an accurate statewide population result as the sample taken is not simple random.
2. The selection of seats for polling by Galaxy in marginals has always been questionable. In no way is Longman in Qld marginal, and it is expected to be held easily by Brough. Using a seat such as this does not give any weight to how anyone is performing in the “marginals”, just these seats polled.
3. What to take from the poll? Simple.
In the Qld 4 seats of Longman, Bonner, Moreton and Herbert, the combined TPP is 51-49 with an MOE of 3.5% across those seats. No other result can be extrapolated, especially to statewide or marginal predictions.
Fred #52 ,
1/unfortunately you have listed a TOTAL of 20 wins….IF EVERY SEAT WAS WON BY LABOR. Any bookmaker would lay 75% odds and say 15 was tops
EVEN IF you are unhappy with Galaxy’s selection of 20 seats , most ARE marginal
so 50.8% is NOT encouraging
2/ you said you excluded ’safe’ Liberal seats…so you should because Galaxy is only showing a 50.8% 2 PPF on those 20 seats
IMPLYING the big swing is in safe LABOR seats.
3/ Did Latham take Labor to a low base in LABOR seats in 2004 that is the real question to UNRAVEL Galaxy’s seat poll
As further note , Pollbludger in his article allows a link to the 20 seats. EXCEPT FOR NSW and the exclusion of Boothby SA the rest are the MOST MARGINAL in the other 4 states
Does anyone know how galaxy polling prior to the final poll compared withtheir final poll?
Correction see Poll Bludgers link in his article. Galaxy DID THE 4 MOST MARGINAL SEATS IN WA , SA , Q’LD and VIC (McEwan vs McMillan) then 4 in NSW.
WHERE HAS GALAXY GONE WRONG IN THEIR SELECTIONS OF THE NON NSW 4 states
They are ALL the most marginal and on those 4 states the Labor 2 pp 50.25% !!!!
Anyone got an idea ????
“45
netvegetable Says:
November 18th, 2007 at 3:17 am
Laborvoter #19
Labor needs at least 53% TPP to win government(as seen from historical elections of past a 52%+ vote is required to change government)
When, in history, has a government kept power on less than 49% of the vote after an election? I can’t find any such event in postwar elections.”
In 1998 the Coalition recieved 49% of the vote and still had 8 seats to spare.
But to your question, there has NEVER been a government that has recieved 48-49% of the TPP preferred in an election. All elections by oppositions have been won on landslides on 52%+ TPP, and this just confirms my point.
I don’t get this Galaxy poll. Too many unexplained anomalies.
However if (and I repeat if) this poll is reasonably accurate, and Labor only gains 8 seats outside NSW, Rudd is in bother. Maybe not terminal bother, but serious discomfort nonetheless.
This poll (if believed) puts a different spin on all the leaders’ campaigning that’s been going on in within so-called “fairly safe” Coalition seats (6-10% swing required). If the Galaxy is right, this attention isn’t happening because Rudd’s got the whole thing in the bag and he wants to “mess with Howard’s mind” (as some here have repeatedly claimed). It would be happening because both sides think that Rudd might need 2-3 seats of the ilk of North Sydney or Hughes in order to get across the line.
It’s only one poll in 70 or 80, mind you. The rest of which have all seemingly had Labor winning comfortably.
Fascinating timing, though.
I’d love some work done on a combined outcome for the newspoll and galaxy. It would be a very good sample size and since the two are poles (polls) apart in some areas, we would have a more accurate picture.
Also Galaxy has ALP ahead in 18/20 polled seats which DID NOT include Kingston. If it did, we would see 19/20 wouldn’t we?
So Galaxy point to a close win, and newspoll point to a landslide. Theyre credibility is all in, both are pointing to the same thing though, a Labor win. And even Briggs on meet the press stressed how many more were on a knife edge. If galaxy did poll seats above 6%, then it has polled seats that are not considered marginal, normally. Regardless, the poll points a little shy of my call of 82 seats to Labor. Though, admittedly I’d love to be proved wrong with 90+ to Labor
BBD @ 77,
I don’t think it’s exactly clear what Galaxy have done, which is part of the problem.
But the story seems to be that they polled 20 seats and then used the State-based swings to project the outcome. Which would mean that, even if Kingston isn’t part of the sample, it would be be one of the gains for Labor that this poll is predicting.
I’m not sure if they published the individual results for each seat they polled. Think the published results were at State level.
Ok does anyone know where the table for the newspoll marginals poll is?
Another interesting point of difference
Galaxy- 10th NOv to 15th Nov
Newspoll- 12th Nov to 15th Nov
ALP Launch was 14th Nov.
Neither include Regional Rorts or Abott Gaff II
My prediction is that Newspoll will have a major staffing overhall after this election. I dont know why some of you are trying to discredit these results when Galaxy have a reputation of being the nations most accurate pollster.
Ron Brown, if there is a swing of 3% across 20 seats and the national swing is 7%, then there are a very large number of seats that are swinging greater than 7% to Labor. There is NO evidence to “imply” that this is only in Labor held seats, in fact, the evidence suggests that these swings are occuring across both Labor and Coalition safe seats.
Crosby Textor analysis in July mentioned the largest swings were in government safe seats but the timeframe since then means that little relevance with the analysis remains. That, however, is enough to suggest some safe government seats are still swinging enough to fall.
Another look at these results is quite good for Labor -
1. 53-47 in NSW where Wentworth is previously polled slightly toward Turnbull. Probable gain of 3 out of 4
2. 51-49 in Qld, where Longman is polling well toward Brough and Herbert is around 52-48. Probable gain of 2 or 3 out of 4
3. 51-49 in SA, where Sturt is line ball and Boothby polling toward Coalition. Probable pickup of 2 out of 4
4. 49-51 in Vic where the smallest margin is 5%. Anything showing lineball in 5% electorates means a possible pickup of 1 or 2
In these 20 seats, its showing a pickup of 8-11 (neglecting WA). Add to these, the following “probables” not polled:
NSW: Parramatta, Lindsay, Dobell
Qld: Blair
SA: Kingston
Tas: Bass, Braddon
NT: Solomon
Just going by these figures:
Thats 16-19 minimum. Take the two from WA, that leaves 14-17, worst case scenario for Labor. I haven’t included Bennelong as falling, as that would be a bonus.
If all the swing above 7% falls only in Labor safe seats, then we have a hung parliament/Labor victory.
If the swing above 7% falls anywhere else, this will be a slaughter
Labor voters should believe the worst polls and not the best ones for the ALP. Maybe I’m just a pessimist but knowing this country I’d say Galaxy is more accurate than Newspoll or Nielsen poll. I just want Labor to win – if it’s 15 or 16 seats then fine, as long as they get over the line I don’t care by how much.
OK I have done some caveman maths on my spreadsheet program
I combined the Galaxy and the Newspoll Marginal seats polling. Did not discount for the fact Galaxy runs from 10th Nov and Newspoll from 12th Nov.
Both polls have samples of about 200 from each seat so haven’t bothered toweight for that either.
State by state in the marginals ALP have
NSW- 53%
Vic- 51%
Qld- 52%
WA- 50%
SA- 53.5%
I then punched it into Anthony Greens calculator with no change for Tas or the Territories. This makes the marginals swings uniform across each state. Of course other seats will be in play on the night, but not likely to be Lib gains axcept maybe, just maybe in the West.
Green Calcs
ALP- 85 Seats
Coalition- 63 Seats
Saying that, every poll in Tas has a clean sweep and two seat gain for ALP and Solomon may fall to ALP also.
Make of all that what you like- I read it as ALP 88 to Coalition 60 with others in possible danger for LIb/Nat
Reply to Ron Brown at #71
1.Actually Ron I listed 20 seats that Galaxy says the ALP would win and included the seats they did not poll but whose margins were less than the relevant state/marginal swing to the ALP.
I think it is safe to say that if Galaxy says SA is swinging 6.4% average in marginals then a win is “indicated’ [ that is the word I used] in Kingston
In other words Galaxy, not me, is saying the ALP would [possibly]win these seats.
I used their figures and stated the results as ‘possible”.
I would rather be x% ahead than behind, wouldn’t you?
That’s why I didn’t mention the seats [outside the 20] that Galaxy put the ALP less than the required swing.
Personally I reckon some will be probably change places.
2.According to Possum’s analysis the swing to the ALP is higher in safe [6%plus] Liberal seats than in safe ALP seats.
That is, state swings to the ALP are NOT being wasted in ’safe’ ALP swings.
Check his “Pollycide” articles.
Please argue him if you think you have counter evidence, personally I wouldn’t dare argue with Possum.
I did not question the no.s polled or the MOE of Galaxy but simply took their figures as given and noted that initial pessimism from the newspaper analyses was not justified by a closer look at what Galaxy actually reported, or did not report, in their table.
Looks like the markets are starting to drift as well. Sporting bet back to 4.25 for the coalition was 4.50 earlier this morning.
The problems with averaging and rounding! The galaxy marginals poll has a TPP for the 4 WA seats of 50/50. This represents an average 0.8 swing to the ALP. They need 0.925% average to win the 4 seats. Stirling and Hasluck require more individually but can still be won with an average of 1%. Moreover, the current polling is shown on your graphic rounded to a whole number. Was it 49.6% Lib and 51.4% ALP?
Lies, damn lies and statistics!
‘Labor View from Broome’
Sorry, Sunday blues. Last figures should have been 49.6% Lib 50.4% ALP.
Good point Kev
Galaxy shouldn’t publish rounded figures then give a decimal point swing.
Galaxy was only most accurate with their final poll. Seeing as how we haven’t seen there final poll yet, there is no reason to think this result is more accurate than Newspoll. Going by their performance this year in comparison with all the others, you’d have to assume this poll is strongly coalition biased
Gillard has just cleaned the floor with that shit Cassidy – call him a “jilted lover” and said that kevin appearing on Rove tonight was to talked to those that would be asleep this morning and wouldn’t watch him anyway! Oakes is giving Tip the full treatment on 9 – dragging up quotes smirk made when he was an employers lawyer.
The Galaxy result is portrayed as representing a national TPP swing to Labor of only 4.5%.
But that is achieved simply by averageing the resulys across the 4 marginals in each of 5 states, giving equal weight to each state, ie WA is as significant as NSW.
This is clearly not the case – there are over three times as many seats in NSW than WA and over three timrs as many Coalition marginals.
If you weight the state results by the number of seats in each state, it becomes a national swing of 5.3%.
Likewise, if you weight them by the number of Coalition marginals in each state, it becomes a national swing of 5.3%.
But I think the Galaxy method (and the Newspoll method) of polling marginals is in some senses the worst of both worlds. Any four ‘marginal’ seats in a state are not going to behave as a bloc, so you can’t say that a 7% swing in 4 NSW marginals including Wentworth equals a 7% swing in Wentworth (it almost certainly won’t). Really, it tells us nothing useful about what’s happening in Wentworth, and because we know the swing in Wentworth is going to be less than that, we don’t know how much it is dragging down the figures for the other 3 seats.
Similarly, the Queensland figures are probably being dragged down by one, maybe two seats with low swing – the figures from the national polls tell us that across the board Qld is going to swing by a lot more than what Galaxy says.
And because the four marginals in each state can’t be said to be representative of marginals across the state, and in particular can’t be said to be representative of all the seats that might change hands (some may change with swings of 10% or more), these data don’t really tell us about the marginals that haven;t been sampled in each state.
Personally, I take more account of the national polls, and of the individual electorate polls, than of these aggregated marginal seat polls. If you’re going to focus on marginal seats and report the seats in an aggregated manner, you need to survey ALL of them.
The pro labor bloggers on this site fail to take into consideration history-the Coalition has performed extremely strongly in the Marginals.In South East Queensland Bonner will go to Labor and Blair looks to be in trouble.But Dickson,Longman, and Petrie should be retained by the Coalition because of strong incumbents.For the life of me I would be surprised if Howard is on the nose in Regions;over the past 3 years constituents in seats around Cairns,Townsville,and Macky for example because of the mining boom have been well off-it is the economy stupid -why change?
In NSW I can’t help not forgettting how the ethnic chinese and koreans mobbed John Howard in a Eastwood mall about 3 weeks ago and it took him 2 hours to get to his car.This was pop star stuff.Could you imagine Kevin Rudd getting such a response in his own electorate.
Howard and Turnbull will retain their seats because they are strong candidates.
And no one on this blog has satisfactory accounted for the comparitively poor performance of Labor in WA in the Polls.They actually look like going backwards-maybe once again constituents like economic prosperity which they will not enjoy under Labor.
Oh yes labor will win-but in the first 3 years they will implode
Why?
Rudd is a control freak because he has little choice: he’s a friendless leader promising what some in his Labor team don’t want to deliver.
He has few friends in the parliamentary team, and was even at war with his deputy, the Left’s Julia Gillard, until he accepted her on a joint ticket in a deal for the leadership.
Even the unions who have donated tens of millions of dollars to Rudd’s campaign – and are sending ex-ACTU boss Greg Combet into a Rudd government through a safe seat to look after their interests – have left on their tight bright smiles as Rudd is forced to drop some of their demands.
Rudd in government will be alone which leads to an immensely unstable government!
It wasn’t. Though Howard was close.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_federal_election%2C_1998
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_federal_election%2C_1990
Nobody really knows circumstances under which that psephological anomaly occurs.
Personally, I think that if the ALP gets over 51.01% they’ll be pretty safe. It’s just historically unlikely that they’ll fail to win government in that situation.
Whatever happens, there’ll be around 50% of voters dissatisfied – which just goes to show what a gross betrayal of trust it was when Mr Sneaky rammed through his radical IR laws, described by an international expert as ‘the most radical anti-labour policy in modern economic history’. (IMO, the restrictions on collective bargaining are the most insidious parts of the legislation, from both the practical and historical points of view.)
That said, I’m not optimistic about Labor getting the seats it needs and said so in print, elsewhere, back in September. IMO, too much wishful thinking and not enough notice of the realities and consensus after the 2004 election that 2007 would be very difficult for Labor. Can’t believe that Mr Sneaky would have stuck around otherwise. But, … I’ll be glad to be proved wrong.
This is my first comment on this blog.
My advice; read the dead-tree article which accompanies this Galaxy poll, it seems to be highly qualified to me, “a Labor landslide remains a prospect.” unquote.
Look for the unvarnished Galaxy poll on the eve of the election.
It did appear in 1996 that Keating was catching up in the last few weeks but in the end it turned out a Labor disaster.
Yeah, this poll ain’t much use to us.
My own broad equation for calculating 2PP is:
1. Exclude Morgan
2. Average the other three
3. Subtract 0.5 ALP to account for last minute frights, and ‘Howard voting as shameful secret’ factor
Which gives ya 53 ish, and a safe win in the low-mid 80s.
Ther is no intentional bias – the is too much credibility at stake. But there is still something suspect about this polling. I think it showed the majors getting primaries of 42 and 43 – I’ve forgotten which was higher.
This alone looks doubtful. The coalition haven’t been closer than 5 points on the primary – whether marginal or state-wide (except WA). Nothing seems to have changed to suggest a 4 or 5 point fall in the Labor primary. MOE? Maybe one of the psephs could tell us more.
Has anybody done a wrap yet of whom the Sunday papers are endorsing?
The Sunday Mail is SA is endorsing the Coalition. Which isn’t really surprising given recent form, but I’m curious as to what to other states have done?
If there is a wrap somewhere and I have missed it, a link would be most appreciated. One hopes Crikey will remove themselves from the Labor bandwagon tomorrow and post a decent overview, but I am a tad impatient to wait for that.
I read some posters say suggesting the ALP will win over 90 seats as dream stuff and as someone who thinks the ALP could win up to 96 seats know that is unlikely but all year the polls have been showing the ALP heading for a swing greater than what Howard received in 1996.
While its true the marginal seat polling has appeared less then what the headline national polls are saying, but even these marginal seats polls are showing a swing of approx 5% and the evidence is that safer seats are swing by more.
The ALP have been polling around 48% all year, with the Liberals polling around 40% this appears similar to what has been occurring at state level for the past 10 years.
I think we can take it that the result will make the federal map look similar to the state maps this is why I’m willing to suggest seats like Casey may be in play, Casey on paper shouldn’t be mentioned until the call of the board.
I also think If this is right then seats like Hughes may fall before Wentworth.
Putting this poll to one side. The way the pollsters are getting the 2PP is wrong. At the last election there was a protest vote against Latham by Labor supporters. This lead to a very large number of minor party votes which then went back to Labor. At this election Rudd is very popular and unlikely to loose many vote to minor parties. This will therefore lead to less preferences coming back.
Sunday paper endorsements : The Sydney Sun Herald editorial is headed ‘Labor gets our approval’ – mainly on the strength of its education policy.
In other words, the overall 2PP of (I am told) 53/47 ALP/Coalition, is probably accurate to within 2%. But the data on any individual seat is bollocks?
netvegetable @ 106
Is there any data about individual seats? The 2PP vote is useless because the seats start out bias however the swing is likely to be correct for each state with whatever the MOE is for 800 people.
My wife was polled by Galaxy in Stirling yesterday afternoon (Saturday) so presumably there will be another “marginal” result published during the week. That could be the accurate poll to come out just before the election. She said she would be voting ALP but I think I can convince her to vote Green 1, ALP 2.
They wanted someone 18-34, we are both 60+ but the quizzed her anyway. Does anyone know if the pollsters cull out anyone who is outside their demographic target.
They also asked questions such as “do you know who sets Interest rates”. Apparently the girl was chuffed to find someone who knew it was the Reserve Bank!
Stephen @107,
the Galaxy data on state swings, based on just 4 seats, is likely to be much less reliable than that obtainable from averaging the state breakdowns of the major national polls.
4000 voters over 24 marginals. Hmmm. I am no statistician, but even with elementary stats of means and SDs, we can see there is a problem. Just taking the mean over 4000 individuals obviously defeats the purpose, as we are interested in the result for each seat. Therefore we have 24 numbers to work with, not 4000 as such. So where are they, and what is the variation amongst them? I have seen no published list of the 24 measures. With such small sample sizes contributing to each measure, the swings could vary hugely, say from 3% to 10% over the 24. So the standard of error will be high, as stated in an earlier post, and the result useless for present purposes.
Since what is relevant is the result each individual seat, unless each is sampled adequately (as did not happen) combining is no help, on my reading of the situation, ie, GIGO. Someone with expertise might have a different take on this. As I said, elementary.
There are also seats in all states that actually have local issues in the mix as well. Last Federal election for example, the liberal candidate in Corangamite in Victoria got zero/zilch/zip swing to him. This despite nearly every other seat having some sort of swing to the liberals as part of the anti-Latham backlash.
The liberal candidate has held the seat for 28 years and turned 70 several weeks ago. He first held the seat with a 12% margin. At the last election he won with a margin of 5.3%. The incumbent is not very popular, especially amongst Gen-Y and Gen-X voters. He’s probably 50/50 with the Boomers.
The seat has also had an influx of 7000 first time voters in the seat. It also has a large number of first time voters full stop!
If labour get some-type of “Ruddslide” going, expect this seat to fall! The incumbent will definately not be able to use his own personnel popularity to save himself!