I used the marginal swings and state swing as you did and the average swings of the sets as points on a line and used the line to work out seat swings.

If I make the assumption you did, that is the swing imbalance is uniform across the country then I get a swing of 16.63 in Murray and 6.83 in Batman. The Liberals retain 3 seats. Indi Murray and Mallee.

The trouble is we have lost some data. It may be a very hard Lib swing in NSW is swamping the other states. There is nothing in the data that I can see that lets us pull that out.

However being a pissed off Liberal voter I am willing to accept it is liberal seats that are swinging hard and the results for Victoria are in the ball park.

...] detail and context to the election analysis. For starters, Possum Comitatus has posted the latest quarterly breakdown of Newspoll data, and promises to follow up with some analyses in future posts. One quick thing that strikes me – [...

The only scenario he regrets not campaigning harder in his own seat is if the Coalition hangs on and yet he loses his seat. Obviously that’s a fairly large downside for him, but his sycophants in the GG can work it into Teh Howard Legend, sacrificing his seat for the good of the party.

No, for JWH it’s all or nothing: so play global, win local.

But, as Possum has also already suggested, maybe it’s a case of shore up the base and don’t lose by too much …

Howard a good campaigner? Polls bound to tighten during the campaign? Mmm…

Looking at Newspoll one month away from the five elections Howard has contested as leader, and comparing each against the respective election 2pp, gives an average change of … zero. (1987, +2; 1996, 0; 1998, +.5; 2001, -5.5; 2004, +3.) On average, Howard neither loses or gains during the campaign. Notwithstanding, if we are trying to find something positive, of his five elections he only went backwards in one, but it was a biggie of a 5.5 drop in 2001 (56.5 to 51). If we take that out, we might conclude that Howard, on his record, is a modest campaigner with the capacity to make up a couple of percentage points or so. It is hard to say anything more than that.

I did a similar exercise some time ago looking at all elections, state and federal, in Australia since, I think, 1975 and concluded that incumbency is worth about a 4%, on average, gain during the campaign. (If I can find the reference I’ll post it.)

Draw your own conclusions.

Labor’s primary vote has barely shifted from between 47-50% since March. The Liberal Party’s reaction to the recent 55-45 Newspoll was very telling and encapsulates the current political climate. They are well and truly behind and Howard is looking increasingly wizened by the day. He will not be able to campaign as strongly as he has done in the past. This is primarily due to the relentless campaign being waged in Bennelong. A disproportionate amount of his attention will be mired in this campaign. Rudd is not similarly encumbered because he is sitting on a healthy margin of well over 8% in Griffith.

You’re right on both counts. I was just heavily into not counting chickens and pursued pessimistic/paranoid scenarios to see where they led us on Antonys calculator.

Also, there is a frequently unchallenged assumption that Howard is a good campaigner, which doesn’t stack up with past evidence. With Sinodinos no longer wrangling Team Howard, I’d think their campaigning is going to be unsubtle and not particularly effective; so there is no solid rationale to assume they will make up 2% in the campaign.

I don’t mind what you do in your own bedroom, but do you have to flaunt it like this?