Sky News reveals tomorrow’s Newspoll will show Labor leading 54-46; primary vote Labor 46 per cent (down two points), Coalition 41 per cent (up one). Details to follow.
UPDATE: Preliminary article at The Australian.
UPDATE 2: The Australian’s graphic here.
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697 Comments
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Yes, we know Stephen. Howard will defy all the odds and win the election in a landslide, cure cancer, bring an end to the drought and be joined by Jesus and all the Saints in ending world hunger. Don’t know why we even bother having elections. Might as well just make him President for life.
For anybody who is interested the Newspoll before the 04 election was 2% too low on the National vote and 1.5% too high on the Labor vote. If this is the case here the primary votes would be 43% and 44.5%. This would be more inline with Labor polling and Galaxy.
Also the Morgan poll was much better for Labor at 56.5-43.5 yet the swing was not happening in all the seats Labor needed. People get ready for a long night on Sat.
provision accounts?
328 Stephen, you know it makes me think, and maybe Antony Green’s puzzlement plays into this. Maybe just maybe there’s gonna be more green primaries this time thanks to all the (soft) Liberals who can’t stand Howard, are genuinely scared of Labor, but the news is full of climate change. They go green (and thanks to the miracle of how to vote cards) end up swinging to Labor.
If that’s the case, this last week is going to be huge.. Story after story in the press about climate disaster.
I still think the Victorian marginals are going to stay Liberal. Reports coming in from other states say that the Labor campaigns are much more active on the ground. Plus, Liberal MPs in marginals in other states have screwed up in some way, where as Baressi, Wood, Bailey, McArthur etc are not controversial types. and apart from Cox, there are no stars for Labor, and at least one real dud (Cheeseman in Corangamite). Material from Labor has not appeared in letterboxes for a week in some parts of the marginals. Labor has been unsighted on the ground in some areas. According to contacts, Labor has all but disappeared in Southern Geelong, and Labor needs another six weeks in to win over La Trobe. Deakin is not getting much of the Rudd tour from what we see on TV.
Plus, the anti union thing may work a bit in a state like Victoria with it’s union identities.
Tell me why these seats will fall to Labor?
Richmond has to win a Premiership first.
“322
Marktwain Says:
November 19th, 2007 at 11:15 pm
I like Adam’s analysis. He’s gone all Greek with his hubri and nemesi:
http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/commentary4.shtml”
Not Greek, MT. German. See the sub-heads of Ian Kershaw’s two volume biography of Adolf Hitler. Vol I: Hubris. Vol II: Nemesis.
FWIW, I find this whole ‘Last days in the Berlin bunker’ analogy quite wrong. As coincidence would have it, I was watching Downfall on Saturday night (it was on telly over here), and Eva Braun comes across as a far more sympathetic figure than Janette Howard.
The polls are meaningless and it will be so good to watch a thousand and one socialist keyboard heroes hit the fence on Saturday night when the hopes that were once so grand are finally washed away in Swan and Cowan.
Those Kevin07 t-shirts will be good to wipe up the tears that will fall and the vomit that will be hurled by the ALP stamp-lickers who are going to cop a fifth straight defeat. Badly.
Labor will quite simply fail to hit 16. They’ll get 4 in NSW (Parramatta, Dobell, Eden-Monaro and Lindsay) and 3 in Qld (Bonner, Moreton and Herbert). 3 will go in SA (Makin, Kingston, Wakefield) and 1 will fall in Victoria (La Trobe) whilst both Bass and Braddon will fall.
Just 13 seats – and just remember that most of those victories will be manufactured by the usual electoral rorts of the trade unions and their charming mates.
In contrast, Cowan will be won comfortably by the Liberal Party and, in the sweetest victory, Steve Irons will lower the boom on the useless Kim Wilkie in Swan.
A narrow but satisfying win for the Coalition, for the bookmakers and for decent, patriotic Australians everywhere!
Lefty E @ 332: there was preferential voting in 1943 (introduced 1919), but there were so many seats back then that were uncontested by one or other major party that any national two-party figure is a bit hypothetical.
Lukas @ 308
The reason why pollsters steer away from using the ‘what those polled say’ method of allocating preferences, is because of the huge effective MOE in such estimates. Say we have a poll with a sample size of 800. Say 7% of them, or 56 individuals indicate that they vote Greens. Ask them their second preferences. Now you have a sample size of 56, and you are trying to find out whether they split, say, 80:20 to Labor or 60:40. 80:20 would be 45 saying they preference Labor. 60:40 would be 34 saying the same. In other words if 5 of your sample of 800 were the ‘wrong’ 5, and told you 60:40 but the ‘true’ figure was 80:40, you would get your TPP wrong by 1.25%, and be vilified by the media, and everybody else. All of this is exacerbated by the fact that the reliability of the original 7% Greens vote approximation is not too hot. It could be 5% or 9%. Would you hang your hat on your TPP result?
cheers,
Alan H
Accountants of the world unite!
We have nothing to lose but our catamite
Sure did, best ALP ad of the whole campaign IMO
ESJ
I have no problem if that is what the employing class want to believe about the history and role of unions- they wont see us coming. I see smarter employers realise the truth of the matter and act accordingly with counter organising strategies straight from US IR firms.
I also see Neo-Con Lib/Nats that dont have a real clue for themselves just buy the Howard/Costello spin on the matter too. “People join unions out of belief, like churches people arent joiners anymore”
If Howard/Costello really believed thier own spin, Workchoices would not bother limiting Unions ability to have a legitimate role in the workplace because removing the arbitration system does the job of making them irrelevant anyway in your opinion.
If employers believed the spin they would have no problem with agreeing to neutrality when it comes to workers getting access to unions to make a free and informed decision would they?
Workers can and will organise collectively and win, with and without arbitration- it happens all over the world and your leaders know it and hate it.
“A narrow but satisfying win for the Coalition, for the bookmakers and for decent, patriotic Australians everywhere!”
Oh the humanity! HA HA HA HA HA HA
“Donation gratefully received from ESJ. Many thanks to all concerned.”
Good for you Edward.
Grooski: about 6 secs.
Not long at all. Probably wouldn’t that much difference in the results if I went up another order of 10. Seems the average and standard deviation of the results are very close when I go higher.
Thanks Poss,
“I keep finding political polling data to behave in ways that are quite unusual like that.
Yep the real world has nobs on it.
352
No thanks I want to be in bed by 9.30, happy with Kevin holding the reigns of power. My little boy doesn’t care about the election. He’s going to wake me up at 5.30 am on the 25th for his feed regardless. So let’s hope for a nice big landslide.
Thanks William! Wondered why no-one used Curtin’s ‘43 win as a peak example.
re Lefty E @ 286
As shows on @292 says, each poll is unique. But the implication is important.
In a poll of 1000 people, the MOE is about 3 points. Suppose you want to know if the Coalition have actually got 49% of popular support (and ALP 51%), which is probably roughly what the Coalition needs to hold on to office. There’s a 1 on 20 chance, when that poll shows 54/46, that it’s actually 51/49 or better for the Libs.
But if another, independently conducted poll, also shows 54/46, then the chance that the real vote intention is 51/49 when two polls show 54/46 is 1/20 x 1/20, ie 1/400.
If a third independently conducted poll shows 54/46 at the same time then the chance it’s really 51.49 is 1/8000. Add a fourth and its 1/160,000.
At the moment three of the four most recent polls show 54/46. The fourth shows 56/44. I think we can safely say that, at the moment, the Libs are not as close as 51/49, probably by a long way.
If the Libs are to win, they will need a huge turnaround in voter opinion in the last week of the campaign. But almost all the headline stories at the start of the campaign are bad for them.
Let’s see, if a poll showed a certain result this far out from the last election and was wrong by a certain percentage, that automatically means a corresponding poll this election will be out by the same amount this time around? Can someone point me to the science, mathematics or whatever that proves this must be the case? Maybe you can Stephen (352), seeing that you espouse this theory.
327
Edward StJohn Says:
November 19th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
“…..Unions couldnt organise in the 1890’s so they formed the ALP to get compulsory arbitration….”
…
among other things, ESJ, among many other things. As you say, it is true that people are not much inclined to “join” anything these days. Having noted that, don’t you think it is amazing that so many people still belong to unions? The union movement is certainly more representative of society, than, say the Lberal party. Unions may not be the universal voice they once aspired to be, but they still speak for very many. John Howard is well aware of that, which is why he sought to destroy them.
My one problem with all of your polls and statistics is that it’s based on people – and people are flawed. Conservatives, Progressives, undecideds. Who knows how the majority of these people in these so called marginals think at any one time? Some may have seen Howard and Costello on Today Tonight and thought “I’m voting for them”. Then something might change their mind on Friday. These are people, not statistics. I love all your analysis and I’m addicted to this website but we’re dealing with a lot of flaky people who know F.A about politics – there could be 8,000 people in one marginal who decide who to vote for as they number the boxes on Saturday. Be afraid, be very afraid.
8, 29, 47 and anyone else picking up the rodents’ drivel about economic management and Labor (blah blah blah) see Peter Martin today http://petermartin.blogspot.com/ (”Don’t doubt it, Labor is ready to govern”).
Land ob hope and glory…..mammy how I (how does it go Isabella the patriot)
Grooski – Simulations like that normally take about 30 secs to a minute these days, depending on the software usually. Having some decent grunt under the bonnet helps too (or course)
Isabella,
Why don’t you think the Liberals will hold Makin?
Crikey, this is a nightmare.
Spent a few hours at friend’s place this arvo, trying to WEP into her broadband.
For my laptop, party, at hers.
Harrowing, failure, failure, failure. I have done this elsewhere, successfully, easily, numerous times before.
N relates horror story of problems, connection, modem, etc. All Telstra. So maybe. WTF?
Soooo hard.
Alex returns to N’s. Alex is from Hong Kong. Student. Continually shocked at our delivery speed. Tells me, not for the first time, how different it is in Hong Kong.
All buildings wired. Speeds like Bat out of Hell.
Hey, Alex, can I have a look at your laptop? Check out your settings? Yes, but all in Chinese. Or Mandarin, for all I know.
Finally work out what to do. Got Pollbludger up at N’s, on Alex’s, in English.
Upshot. Will be on line. Saturday.
Any chance of ADSL2, N?
NUP. Thanks, John Howard.
BBD -
Unions can only rebuild when they divorce from the ALP. Your leadership wont allow that because they crave the “power” of ALP affiliation.
I have no problem with legal neutrality for unions. Unfortunately thats not what your leadership in the ACTU is seeking and you know it.
I understand the organising model – doesnt amount to a hill of beans – if it did (and it was introduced in what 1994 after yet another overseas junket) union membership would be rising not declining.
Thats why Crosby advocates closed shops again its just dressed up as making non-members pay for union provided “benefits”.
“346
Robert Bollard Says:
November 19th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
Big Blind Dave,
“Accountants of the world unite!
We have nothing to lose but our….”
Suggestions please.”
Receipts? (well, it usually happens to me)
BTW, all you prol lefty scum out there, as a white-collar wage slave in the City of London, I can assure you that even the accountants are thoroughly fed up with Little Johnny and Capt. SmirkChoices.
And if JWH really believes, as he said today, that people might hate him, but no one thinks the Libs are incompetent, he obviously doesn’t read the same broking house research that comes across my desk on a daily basis. I was amused by one piece of Australian mining research (amused given its a house that tries to avoid political controversy) the other day which said the government had squandered the proceeds of the boom.
ESJ: “Unions couldn’t organise in the 1890s” – they only had established 30% coverage ahead of the rest of the world before they were crushed by a depression. You then go on to say that they rebuilt themselves through arbitration. Bull! Raymond Markey has done some excellent detective work on the rebuilding of unions in the first decade of the 20th Century and has proved that they rebuilt themselves BEFORE arbitration via traditional organising methods. Arbitration was at least as much an attempt to control and civilise a growing movement (which had reached the 30% coveraqe mark by 1912 – before Harvester).
Labor Governments? Didn’t help much as all. The leading union official in the early Labor governments was the President of the WWF, a bloke named Billy Hughes. So maybe the Coalition ads are right. You can’t trust them union bosses.
Will from Kooyong – thanks for establishing the point with groovy numbers. There you go, folks 52-48 means ALP in 89% of scenarios.
Will, I want your simulator on my desk by 9am tomorrow.
VoterBoy @ 357 – you’re quite right. Might I also suggest that Costello is a far less sensitive figure than Heinrich Himmler.
Possum: Dual core mac? hehe. The simulation isn’t that complex really. However if I get a hold of a distribution that better represents the swing distribution then it would take a bit longer.
376 hehe Poss, I remember the days when we would set a N=10000 MC into Lotus and go home for the day
#371 Gary,
Further to your comment, Antony Green touched on this tonight on Lateline. He commented on the 2% variation between Newspoll’s final pre-election poll and the 2004 election result by saying that Newspoll was asking respondents for their preferences last time, and this time they are using distributive models based on where the preferences actually flowed to at the election itself.
Stephen, the last two Newspolls before the election had a rock solid, consistent Coalition primary vote (46,45 and 46.7 on E-Day) and movement between the minor party vote and the ALP vote. That’s where the error in the TPP estimatation came in between the last poll and election day.
This time – the situation is reversed.
The latest UN report on climate change states that the worlds’ oceans have up to 1960 averaged a rise of 1.8mm a year but since 1993, 3.1 mm a year and 11 of the last 12 years have been the hottest on record in the world.
Want more read
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf
unfortunately it is temporarily down.
Those who are saying – be afraid of the Coalition coming back and snatching victory. Why fear anything??? This is democracy, and the people will have their say, one way or another. Seems to me that there are some “concern trolls” lurking (not mentioning any names Andrew). On the other end, you have Young Liberals like Isabella, who’s sole aim is to try and be as obnoxious as possible. I could also say things like “Those who vote Liberal don’t have the best interests of this nation at heart; they are not patriots”, but I won’t. I absolutely defend the right of each and every one to have their own view, regardless of my own personal opinions.
BO
Unions speak for about 15% of the private sector workforce and are declining by about 05-1% per annum.
They are no longer representative. Most of the union leadership are not “shop floor” types who’ve worked their way up their young labor activists who worked their way up unions and are using them as platforms to parliament.
Unions are also opponents of reform because they are so financially weakened they refuse to have public sector reform because they still represent 40% of the public sector and they fear privatisation mainly because they know they cant recruit in the public sector.
The ALP would be better without them and unions would be better without the ALP.
Theres a legitimate role for unions but they wont find it until:
a) they divorce the ALP
b) they abandoned industrial arbitration
I feel for some of the younger crowd who buy the union rhetoric because it ultimately creates an unemployable class of union activist which is cynically used by older lairs to perpetuate their own position.
will @345, when I tried that by hand using the federal swing (well known), state swings (roughly well known) and then added a factor to describe the way voters tend to swing more from the more strongly Liberal held seats (since there’s more Liberal voters to swing there)..
Well. the point at which I got a bit less certain was having a sensible standard deviation to apply within each state. I read up on that analysis recently that went back over a number of elections. I also read how the standard deviation goes down as the overall swing goes up. In the end I had to try out a few sd’s that ‘felt’ right. At that point I had some interesting results regarding probability.
And at that stage I compared it to the implied probabilities in the betting markets. Suffice it to say I have some money sitting on this
Anyhow that last point. What is a suitable standard deviation? I don’t have enough data to sensibly apply it to a computer simulation. What factors did you use?
See.. the standard deviation for a seat doesn’t matter much where the seat is close to 50/50 but for a seat like Mayo, it makes all the difference
“383
CL de Footscray Says:
November 19th, 2007 at 11:36 pm
VoterBoy @ 357 – you’re quite right. Might I also suggest that Costello is a far less sensitive figure than Heinrich Himmler.”
And I couldn’t see Mrs Abbott poisoning the kids. Although I could see Mr Abbott getting her to do it. You know, traditional divisions of labor in the home – that sort of thing.
ESJ-
I think you would find that “organising model” is actually working, it is not universally applied.
In fact it is still used by only a minority of unions in its entirety (or close to it).
Those unions are all growing.
Research on the matter has been done by David Peetz and Barbara Pocock and is available if you care to lok it up.
Crosby does not advocate a closed shop he advoactes organising all workers in a workplace to increase likelyhood of success. As opposed to orgainising half and asking arbitrator to do all of your work for you.
When Anty from Aunty says on Lateline this is the most stable polling he has ever seen, it’s time for Glen, GP, Tabitha, ESJ, and all those other deluded souls to stop telling us how they are still chance and start telling us where it all went wrong. So you political cadavers, what happened to turn your kingdom of deceit into a mortuary?
It will still be close. I’m predicting a Labor win – JUST – but it will be so much closer than what people are predicting. We forget that about 15% of people decide as they are WALKING INTO THE POLLING BOOTH! Literally. Could we safely presume that maybe 10% of these people would vote for the incumbent? That 10% of people would give a fair swing back to the Coalition and could be the difference between a marginal seat falling to Labor and being held.
We forget that most people don’t take as much notice as we do. Heck, a lot of people can hardly read, let alone decide who to vote for.
#377. Sadly, I don’t think Bob Day will get there. Trish Draper may have contributed to the success the Party enjoyed in the early days, but her bizaare behaviour has for the pst few years to the Party’s detriment.
A real shame – Bob Day is the sort of industrious, hard-working, entrepreneurial visionary the Parliament needs. Certainly of more value than another illiterate babbling trade unionist/local council hack a la 99% of Federal ALP candidates (the candidates in Fremantle and Eden-Monaro excepted).
Union membership is declining because all workers benefit from union negotiated enterprise bargains. i.e. union and non-union members.
Robert Bollard
Federation happened in 1901, awards and arbitration came in the first decade. Therefore you must be wrong.
EStJ
Union negotiated wage bargains – ShowsON
Wrong.
Wages are higher for comparable non-union workers.
So ESJ you are a direct actionist? You want the unions to abandon arbitration? Welcome to the One Big Union comrade! The IWW never had a recruit with your bourgeois credentials.
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