Day 1 of the campaign and we have our first poll – but be warned, the most important thing about this poll is the sample size: 752 people giving us an MoE of 3.6%. This compares to the usual Qld Newspolls that have samples of 1100 plus. The smaller the sample size, the larger the Margin of Error and hence the less certain we can be about saying that any given movement in the polls within that Margin of Error is true. Something Sean Parnell at The Oz would do well to remember before he says any more silly things like:

Two per cent of voters who were previously dissatisfied with Ms Bligh were somehow placated, giving her a satisfaction rating of 52 per cent

Er, no Sean – that’s twaddle. Polling movements that small can’t be taken literally.

The other thing that stands out about this poll before we even get to the figures, is the relatively large 8% of respondents that were “uncommitted” (and a further 2% that either refused to answer or were otherwise excluded). Uncommitted voters are nearly always at the 6% mark for some reason. In a Newspoll, if you are uncommitted the question becomes “IF “UNCOMMITTED”, TO WHICH ONE OF THESE DO YOU HAVE A LEANING?“. With a small sample, a high result of 8% isn’t theoretically unexpected – normal sampling variation  that’s derived from the sample size should give us variability in the numbers like this, but watch out for human geiger counters of the Labor soft vote jumping on this particular meme bandwagon over the next few days.

Anyhoo, the Newspoll gives us primaries running to the ALP 42(down 3)/ 41(up 4), washing into a two party preferred of 53/47 the same way – the ALP down 4 on the TPP since the last poll in December.

We’ll do our QLD polling charts covering just the period since the last QLD election.

Later today we’ll use some Monte Carlo simulations to derive probabilistic election results based on this poll, as well as highlighting the difficulties the LNP faces in terms of gaining the seats needed – even if they were to get good overall levels of voter support at the election.

Elsewhere: The Pollbludger, Larvatus Prodeo, Meganomics, The Tally Room , Woolly Days and completely unrelated – John Quiggin slapping Glenn Milne.