• The by-election for the Tasmanian upper house district for Pembroke will
be held tomorrow, which in partisan terms is the most interesting such contest for many a long year. Labor will not attempt to retain the seat being vacated by outgoing member Allison Ritchie – possibly a first in Australian electoral history – but two independents, James Crotty (who was expected to win the aborted Labor preselection) and Honey Bacon (the widow of former Premier Jim Bacon), are identifiable with the Labor cause in one way or another. Most interestingly, the field also includes a high-profile Liberal in Vanessa Goodwin, who performed impressively in both the state seat and federal seat of Franklin in 2006 and 2007 without quite bringing home the prize. This is the first time the Liberals have fielded an upper house candidate since 2000, when their poor performance reminded them why they are better off leaving the chamber to independents in most circumstances. This site will provide live coverage of the results tomorrow evening. Anybody wishing to discuss the election is invited to do so on the dedicated thread.

• The Northern Territory government is in turmoil, with Macdonnell MP and Indigenous Affairs Minister Alison Anderson threatening to quit the ALP and reports Chief Minister Paul Henderson faces a challenge from Karama MP Delia Lawrie. The government has been in a minority position since Arafura MP Marion Scrymgour quit the party early last month. Nick Calacouras of the Northern Territory News says Lawrie “avoided the media after Tuesday’s caucus meeting and snuck out the back with Transport Minister Gerry McCarthy (Barkly) and the three indigenous Labor ministers – Karl Hampton (Stuart), Malarndirri McCarthy (Arnhem) and Alison Anderson”. Darwin academic, former Labor MP and Club Troppo blogger Ken Parish is quoted saying Henderson “would be replaced by Christmas”. Anderson has been threatening to walk out over the government’s alleged failure to deliver on indigenous housing promised in a federal-territory program announced early last year. She is not ruling out joining the CLP, which would leave the fate of the government in the hands of independent Nelson MP Gerry Wood. Wood has generally been presumed to be of conservative sympathies, but he has expressed doubt as to whether “some of these new (CLP) members are ready to govern”. In any case, there seems reason to suspect Anderson’s defection threats are born of a desire to strengthen her hand as she seeks a better deal on indigenous housing (UPDATE 1/8/09): Paul Toohey of The Australian doesn’t quite see it that way, saying Anderson was in discussions late last year with the CLP about crossing the floor, and that she “will, sooner rather than later, destroy (Henderson’s) government. She has also raised the prospect of an quitting from politics altogether, which she says she will do in any case at the next election. However, Labor would probably be favoured to win an ensuing by-election, with Anderson’s electorate officer John Rawnsley having won her backing to succeed her for preselection.

• The Right faction of the New South Wales Liberal Party is being rent by a split between forces associated with state upper house MP David Clarke and his former protégé, youthful federal Mitchell MP Alex Hawke. The philosophical basis of the friction involves the Christian social conservatism of the former sub-faction (the “hard Right”) and the laissez-faire economic orientation of the latter (the “soft Right”), although there has also been talk of hard Right elements seeking a purge of Jesuit-educated Catholics. Principals of the Clarke group include state upper house MP Marie Ficarra and Epping MP Greg Smith, while the Hawke camp can claim state party president Nick Campbell. The dispute boiled over on Monday at the AGM of the Sydney University Liberal Club, which Clarke and Ficarra reportedly attempted without success to take control of (subject of a vibrant discussion at VexNews), and again at a Lane Cove Young Liberals meeting the following night. Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald reports the split could deliver soft Right support to factional moderate Philip Ruddock in Berowra, who faces a challenge from Noel McCoy of the hard Right, and Scott Morrison in Cook. Coorey relates that Greg Smith is believed to be carrying the flag for the hard Right’s campaign against Ruddock, which most recently manifested itself in a confrontation during a branch meeting in Cheltenham:

On Sunday night in Berowra, Mr Ruddock and Mr Smith attended a meeting of the Cheltenham Branch in Mr Ruddock’s electorate. By six votes to one, the moderates blocked a bid by Mr Smith to admit three new members. The same majority admitted seven new members sympathetic to Mr Ruddock.

The dissension could result in the state party initiating its federal preselection process as soon as the draft boundaries are announced next Friday, rather than waiting as currently planned until they are finalised early next year. UPDATE (1/8/09): Imre Salusinszky of The Australian reports Noel McCoy saying: “Now that I have clearance from the state director to speak to the media, I can tell you that I am not contesting the seat of Berowra.” Meaning either that there was a lot of smoke without fire, or that recent events have caused him to revise his estimate of his chances.

• Michelle Grattan of The Age reports that “wealthy Toorak businessman” Andrew Abercrombie has emerged as a contender for the Liberal Higgins preselection, in challenge to heir presumptive Kelly O’Dwyer. Nominations for both Higgins and Aston closed yesterday.

• James Massola of The Canberra Times reports on movement at the station in Canberra ALP branches, with Bob McMullan having announced the next election will be his last and expectations Annette Ellis might follow. This would make available both Fraser and Canberra to those aspiring for a safe seat. Massola says that “depending on who you talk to, constitutional scholar George Williams, former Julia Gillard adviser Jamie Snashall, former Mark Latham adviser Michael Cooney and Rudd’s masterful chief of staff Alister Jordan are all in the box seat for one or other of these prize seats”.

• Moonee Valley Community News reports Moonee Valley councillor Rose Iser has confirmed she will run for Greens preselection in the state seat of Melbourne, which the party narrowly failed to win in 2002 and 2006. Also in the field are “former Liberty Victoria president Brian Walters SC, former candidate Jen Alden, and first-timer Bruce Poon”.

• Les Twentyman, youth worker and independent candidate at last year’s Kororoit by-election, has announced he has decided against taking the field at next year’s state election.

• On behalf of The Poll Bludger and all who sail in her, heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of valued comments contributor Judy Barnes, who has died at the age of 71.

If the last two states play out as expected, the final result will be 364 electoral votes for Obama against 174 for McCain, pending one complication: Nebraska, which along with solidly Democratic Maine divides its college votes by congressional district. Two of the three districts have stayed Republican, but in a third Obama trails by just 569 votes, and thus stands a chance to make it 365-173. In any event, the joint winners of the informal Poll Bludger tipping contest (thanks to Juliem for conducting this) will be David Walsh and Ron, who I gather will win a tie-breaker ahead of fellow 364 Club members Grog and Peter Fuller.

Finally, our good friends at UMR Research have published qualitative polling on Australians’ attitudes to the President-elect. Those who harbour an unfashionable element of cynicism about the great man might want to keep a sick bag handy.

10.48pm. Oregon Senate race still close: Republican incumbent Gordon Smith leads Democrat Jeff Merkley 47.7 per cent to 46.7 per cent with 74 per cent of precincts reporting. Coleman now leads Franken by 676 votes (0.02 per cent) with 99.9 per cent reporting.

9.25pm. An extra 0.3 per cent of precincts in Minnesota have widened Coleman’s lead to 2591.

8.45pm. Norm Coleman back ahead of Franken in Minnesota – by 490 votes, with 98.7 per cent reporting.

7.54pm. Al Franken seizes a late lead for the Minnesota Senate (188,073 to 185,786) with 98 per cent reporting.

7.45pm. All precincts reporting from Missouri, and McCain leads 1,442,577 to 1,436,724. Possum writes in comments that there are not enough contested votes to cover the gap.

6.29pm. MSNBC calls Indiana for Obama. Only Missouri and North Carolina still outstanding.

6.26pm. Missouri has gone right back down to the wire with 0.7 per cent still to report: McCain 1,426,779, Obama 1,426,381.

6.06pm. With all precincts reporting, Obama leads in North Carolina by 12,160 votes out of over 4.2 million (0.2 per cent cent).

5.57pm. Earlier chat suggested Republican Senator Ted Stevens was dead meat in Alaska, but he leads 49.4-45.4 with 37 per cent reporting. Partial counts can be misleading though.

5.50pm. Back to lineball in Minnesota Senate. Analyst on Fox News says outstanding precincts are likely to favour Republican incumbent Norm Coleman over Al Franken.

5.16pm. McCain hanging on to his slender lead in Missouri, which is looming as my only wrong call.

5.11pm. McCain now ahead in Montana.

5.00pm. Al Franken continuing to fade in Minnesota Senate – probably gone now.

4.46pm. Obama’s lead in Montana rapidly evaporating as the count proceeds to 51 per cent.

4.36pm. Ohio still quite tight: Obama leads 50.0-48.4 with 72 per cent reporting.

4.31pm. Oregon Senate race has tightened up considerably: within 1 per cent now.

4.11pm. My reading of the Senate: Democrats to gain seven Senate seats – Colorado, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Virginia, Oregon, North Carolina and Alaska (no actual votes yet from the latter) – or eight if Al Franken wins Minnesota, where he trails by 0.8 per cent with 53 per cent counted.

4.09pm. Norm Coleman now leads Al Franken by 0.8 per cent for Minnesota Senate.

4.07pm. Obama now with a relatively handy 0.6 per cent lead in North Carolina.

3.55pm. Obama back in front in North Carolina, but not going to win Missouri. I’ve only just noticed he’s looking a surprise winner in Montana, although with only 24 per cent counted.

3.32pm. Correct me if I’m wrong here somebody, but the Democrats stand to gain seven Senate seats – Colorado, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Virginia, Oregon, North Carolina and Alaska – eight if Al Franken wins Minnesota.

3.17pm. McCain concedes defeat.

3.14pm. Close as close can be between Norm Coleman and Al Franken for Minnesota Senate.

3.10pm. Fox reports Roger Wicker holds Mississippi Senate seat for the Republicans, ending the chances of a Democrat supermajority.

2.59pm. CNN calls the election for Obama.

2.58pm. Obama takes the lead in Indiana.

2.54pm. McCain strengthening in North Carolina and Missouri.

2.51pm. Fox reports Virginia went 60-39 to McCain among white voters, but 92-8 among black voters.

2.42pm. McCain’s lead has vanished in Missouri: now 49.4-49.3.

2.41pm. Franken in fact leads Republican incumbent Norm Coleman 43-40.

2.40pm. Fox calls Virginia for Obama. Al Franken reportedly looking good for Minnesota Senate.

2.37pm. Obama leads in New Mexico 50.1-48.7 with less than half of dominant Bernalillo County reporting, where Obama is leading 57.3-41.5.

2.33pm. Crikey blog commenter Stuart: “Wilson and Franklin in North Carolina unreported. Wilson =44000 people total, 47% black. Franklin 2000 in total people 95% white. Looking good for O.”

2.32pm. McCain now narrowly ahead in North Carolina.

2.20pm. McCain leads by 12,839 in Indiana, but extrapolating unreported precincts from Lake County suggests Obama stands to gain over 22,000 votes.

2.18pm. Still tight in Florida, North Carolina and Virginia, but Obama has a handy lead in each case with most precincts reporting. North Carolina his weakest of the three.

2.16pm. Missouri bouncing around the place, but McCain’s lead currently at 2.6 per cent.

2.12pm. McCain’s lead in Missouri reflating.

2.04pm. McCain’s lead in Missouri is narrowing.

2.01pm. Obama narrowly ahead in Florida, North Carolina and Virginia (in ascending order of narrowness).

1.59pm. Fox calls Iowa for Obama.

1.58pm. Obama takes the lead in Virginia.

1.50pm. Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight calls the election for Obama.

1.47pm. CNN calls New Mexico for Obama.

1.33pm. Gap continues to close in Virginia, Obama now only 0.5 per cent behind.

1.25pm. McCain fairly well ahead in Missouri, but nobody’s calling it yet.

1.21pm. Discussion of Indiana on Fox: “central city plus rich suburbs” emerging as the “Obama alliance”, but rural areas holding relatively well for McCain.

1.17pm. Fox calls Ohio for Obama.

1.09pm. Nate Silver: “MSNBC and Fox call Georgia for McCain.”

1.00pm. Fox calls North Dakota for McCain.

12.46pm. Nate Silver on Virginia: “Obama is outperforming Kerry by a 12-15 point net in the Eastern half of the Virginia. In the Western half, he’s not performing much better than Kerry and is actually underperfoming him in some counties. I think that equation works out favorably for Obama on balance, though Virginia will be fairly close.”

12.28pm. Heavily populated Florida counties Orange and Polk are swinging double digits to Obama, blowing away those weaker rural results I was mentioning earlier.

12.12pm. Possum says: “PA has gone Dem, VA has gone Dem – election over”. Adam Carr says: “It’s true that the FL panhandle hasn’t reported yet, but Obama is leading in Orlando and St Petersburg, which are GOP towns. You’d think he’ll win FL from here. Note also Obama’s 75% in Broward – the Jews stuck with Obama despite Lieberman’s defection.”

12.08pm. Discussing Virginia on CNN, confirming the impression that early reporting precincts are rural and we haven’t seen any black areas in the big cities come in. I’m only seeing slight swings to the Democrats in the rural areas.

11.53am. Swings I’m seeing in Florida are also below par: 4.0 per cent in Lake, 2.4 per cent in Manatee, 4.1 per cent in Pinellas. He needs 5.0 per cent.

11.45am. Another substantially reporting Virginia county, Augusta, swinging inadequately to Obama by 5.7 per cent. However, the cities and DC outskirts might tell a different story.

11.37am. Culpeper and Amherst counties in Viriginia swinging 5.1 and 1.8 per cent, against required swing of 8.3 per cent.

11.33am. Manatee County in Florida swinging 2.4 per cent to Democrat – statewide margin is 5.0 per cent.

11.26am. Double digit swings in more counties in Indiana (Clinton, Fayette), but Obama needs 20 per cent across the state.

11.21am. Chesterfield County in Virginia swings 8.9 per cent to Democrat with 94 per cent reporting – the statewide margin in 2004 was 8.2 per cent.

11.09am. Reasonably consistent swings in rural counties in Indiana of around 10 per cent – good, but well short of what Obama would need to win the state if consistent.

10.58am. Swing in Steuben County, Indiana with 68 per cent of precincts reporting is 8.9 per cent: well short of the 20 per cent needed to win the state.

10.52am. 69 per cent of precincts reporting in Vigo County, Indiana – Obama leads by 16 per cent. Bush carried it by 6.4 per cent in 2004 (I’ll be double-posting here on special occasions).

10am. Further efforts will be concentrated above.

4am AEDT. Rain and gusty winds in North Carolina, with rain extending into Virginia. Storms through the north-west, bringing snow to Nevada and Colorado. Weather otherwise very good: fine and warm in Florida and throughout the south, fine and mild through the north-east to the mid-west. You’ll next hear from me at around 9.30am AEDT.

Not sure how illuminating this is, but the following map shows the swing in each state as indicated by Electoral-Vote’s poll averages. White indicates either no change from 2004 or a swing to the Republicans, the latter only applying to Massachusetts where John Kerry presumably garnered a handsome home-state vote. The deepest shade of blue indicates a swing of over 20 per cent. Swing is measured by comparing the vote gap between Republican and Democrats.

This chart indicates how polling in various states has shifted since October 13, as measured by my own polling aggregates. John McCain’s furious campaigning in Pennsylvania has yielded a 7.7 per cent narrowing, which while highly impressive is still nowhere near enough. He has also gained ground in Florida (Obama’s lead is down 4.3 per cent to 3.1 per cent), North Carolina (4.1 per cent to 0.5 per cent), Virginia (3.5 per cent to 5.6 per cent) and Missouri (from 2.3 per cent behind to 0.7 per cent ahead). Barack Obama has extended his lead in New Mexico (up 5.7 per cent to 12.8 per cent), Washington (up 3.8 per cent to 15.7 per cent) and Minnesota (up 3.1 per cent to 9.9 per cent). Ignore Maine, where there have only been a few polls.

Finally, many thanks to reader Viggo Pedersen for compiling this list of poll closing times in Australian Eastern Daylight Time.

So who’s going to win then? The polls of course leave little room for doubt. However, there are a couple of items of conventional wisdom floating around which suggest they might not be telling the full story, one way or another.

• The Bradley effect. A compelling paper by Dan Hopkins of Harvard University examines the popular notion that polls overrate the performance of black candidates in biracial contests due to white voters’ reluctance to appear illiberal when interrogated by pollsters. Hopkins finds the effect was a serious factor into the 1980s, most famously when black Democratic candidate Tom Bradley failed to win the Californian gubernatorial election in 1982, but has ceased to be so. Pew Research charts a corresponding decline in the number of respondents willing to admit they would not vote for a black candidate, from 16 per cent in 1984 to 6 per cent. Hopkins notes a very sudden decline in the Bradley effect (he prefers the “Wilder effect”, after Virginia Governor Douglas Wilder) “at about the time that welfare reform silenced one critical, racialized issue”.

• The reverse Bradley effect. Strictly speaking, a “reverse Bradley effect” would involve voters telling pollsters they were voting for McCain or were undecided when they were in fact set on Obama, which is plainly not on the cards. Far more likely is that turnout of black voters is being underestimated in pollsters’ determinations of “likely voters”, which in many cases go on whether they voted last time rather than what they say they will do this time. Whatever methods are being used to account for the certainty of higher black turnout, I’m pretty confident they are overly conservative. When a pollster is required to explain inaccuracy after the event, “I was going on past experience” makes for a more professional sounding excuse than “I made a wrong guess”. I haven’t studied this systematically, but the one example I have looked at has proved to be an eyebrow-raiser: the most recent SurveyUSA poll of Pennsylvania has 10 per cent of black voters among its overall sample, whereas this paper from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies tells us it was 13 per cent in 2004. Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight provides support for this and related impressions in taking to task pollsters who have gaps of 4 to 6 per cent between results for “registered” and “likely” voters.

• The late Republican surge. I recently heard it said that Republican candidates tend to come home strong in the last week or two of campaigning. Remembering how much of Bill Clinton’s lead vanished shortly before the 1992 election, I thought this sounded plausible and went burrowing through the archives for evidence. The following chart plots the last 15 days of polling at presidential elections from 1992 onwards, day 15 being the election result. I have used composites of polling obtained from Real Clear Politics for 2000 and 2004; Gallup tracking polls for 1996; and a list of various pollsters’ results I found in the New York Times for 1992.

The case of 1996 stands out, but this might well point to a general inaccuracy in the Gallup series I was using rather than a late surge to Bob Dole (unfortunately I could only locate one poll from the final week). Beyond that, the chart provides pretty thin gruel if you’re in the market for a McCain comeback in the last 10 days. The 1992 Bush recovery was less dramatic than I remembered it once I removed Gallup from the equation, which exasperatingly shifted from “registered” to “likely” voters in the final week, eliminating much of Bill Clinton’s lead at a stroke. If anything the trends from 2000 and 2004 point the other way.

• Front-runner decline. The aforementioned paper on the Wilder/Bradley effect by Dan Hopkins informs us that polls “typically overstate support for front-runners”, which is demonstrated in the scatter plots under “Figure 3” (see right at the back). These suggest a candidate like McCain who is on about 42 per cent is probably being underestimated by as much as 2 per cent, while a candidate like Obama on 50 per cent is probably being represented accurately – unless he’s black, in which case he will suffer a Bradley effect of a bit over 1 per cent.

• Advertising. The Washington Post informs us that the cashed-up Obama campaign is fielding “as many as seven commercials for every one aired by Republican Sen. John McCain”.

My guess is that point one will be comfortably countered by point two; point three is worth little if anything; point four might help McCain close the gap by 2 per cent, but some of this gloss should be taken off after accounting for point five. In sum, there seems little reason not to take the polls more-or-less at face value. That being so, my final prediction is that Obama will win every state where my polling aggregates currently have him ahead except North Dakota, where the result is derived from two small sample polls, one from an agency of little repute. The margin in Florida is narrow enough that front-runner decline might be expected to account for it, but I find it hard to believe Obama would fail to carry so marginal a state when he’s up by eight points nationally. That makes it 375 electoral votes for Obama and 163 for McCain.