VIC and NSW Polling

We seemingly have to wait a few days before we get to see the US election results that approach the accuracy we need to run some numbers, so in the meantime there was some State Newspolling released the other day that it’s probably time we had a squiz at.

But first – if you look over to the right in the sidebar and scroll down to the primary vote charts of the States, the Coalition is in front on the primary vote in every State, and with QLD, VIC and SA it happened in the latest poll.

First up NSW:

The big thing here is the complete meaningless of using the two party preferred numbers. When one party is on a primary vote of 29, the other on a primary vote of 42 and where there is 29% support for minor party votes – if we look at the results in terms of a uniform swing of X% with a standard deviation of Y and throw in Optional Preferential Voting, we would expect to see a number of seats where the two party vote breaks down and minor parties would be elected. How many? Statistically it could be from as low as 1 or 2, through to as high as 6 or 7 – it all depends on the geographical distribution of the fall in the Labor vote.

I don’t think we really need to point out how badly the NSW ALP is polling in the vote estimates except to say that when the vote is so bad that the TPP starts breaking down, it doesn’t really get much worse.

The only good thing about the polling for Labor is that they at least have positive net satisfaction ratings and have taken the lead in Better Premier. But when your primary vote is 29, that doesn’t really count for much.

Next up is Victoria where the ALP retains a slight TPP lead within the MoE but have fallen 4 points behind the Coalition on the primary vote.

Yet again, the growing dissatisfaction with the political leadership in Victoria continues to roll on, with the net satisfaction ratings of both parties tanking since the last State election and the Coalition now in negative territory.

There is a strangely consistent pattern happening across the States lately with these sort of satisfaction dynamics.