If you look over on the right sidebar, you’ll notice a few new things. At the top there’s a graphic of two electoral projections where the first one is a simple electoral pendulum result based on the current phone poll average, while the second is the result of the latest monte carlo election simulation using the quarterly aggregation of Newspoll and Nielsen polls, where we utilise their state level data. The former will be updated weekly or as phone polls come in, the latter can only be done every three months.
The poll averages have also been changed, now having three rather than four. The phone pollster average is the simple average of the most recent phone pollster results taken over the last 5 weeks. The all pollster average is the simple average of the most recent result from all the pollsters, while the weighted average is the same as the all pollster average, except where we weight by the sample size of the poll.
Pollytrend is as it always has been, showing the medium term changes in the two party preferred vote trend.
I do have a question though that needs your input – I have a spiffy table of the demographic breakdowns using Nielsen and Newspoll quarterly data which track the current vote estimate, the estimated result at the last election and the change between the two periods (Greens voters rejoice, for you are included as well!).
Do you want this placed in the sidebar below Pollytrend, or would you rather have it stuck somewhere else on the site that can be easily accessed?
Finally – is there anything else you’d like to see or like to see removed?
UPDATE:
I’ve added the demographics to the sidebar, replaced the State Polling charts with a more condensed graphic and cleaned up things generally.
18 Comments
Possum,
Suggest an actual 2007 election result row under “Pollytics Poll Averages”, and MOEs highlighted?
With the State Quarterly results do News use a separate sample to the one published fortnightly?
A total row for your data sets (apart from Greens above) would be useful.
Can do on the poll averages and the Totals row – the MoE’s though no longer really apply with the simple averages because of the maths, and the lack of raw respondent level data from the pollsters.
The Newspoll quarterly results are just the 6 odd polls Newspoll takes over a 3 month period and aggregated together before being broken down into their demographic components.
As the Pollytics Demographics table is long, if it’s included on the side bar in toto it will push everything else down quite a lot. So my preference is that the bold heading ‘Pollytics Demographics’ be placed just below the Pollytrend graph, with the title linked to the table.
Thanks for the very useful additions of Pollytics Projections and Pollytics Demographics. Pollytics keeps on improving.
Poss,
What a great idea and underneath the polly trend works. I wonder if you could perhaps split the seats into House and Senate.
Thnx
Dogma
With the seat projections could you add a row in smaller type giving the current seat numbers (for those of us who aren’t political tragics)..
Dogma, I can’t really split the seats because these are really only for the House. Senate polls aren’t worth much in terms information, so we cant really project the Senate – and the last seat in any given state will often come down to preference agreements between the parties (which havent yet been decided).
Caly,
That I certainly can do.
I’ll take on board all the suggestions and fix everything up on the weekend.
Possum,
This might help.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_IkNKKhBCLc8/SRx7dcs7aBI/AAAAAAAAAOo/hTa8AlhcvPc/s400/a+round+tuit.jpg
Poss dear
I would appreciate metro/non metro splits, too – I know some polls do them.
Pretty please and I’ll put an apple on the feed table for you…
Zoomster,
The best we can do is Capital City/Non-Capital city splits – and for some reason, I put them in for TPP terms and for the Greens, but not for the primary votes of the ALP and LNP.
Ooops!
I most certainly will add them in for the major party primaries.
That’ll do.
I’ll just nip out and put the apple on the table for you…
That’s great. Nice, clean and easy to read.
I agree with Ad Astra, a link in the sidebar would be sufficient.
Possum
I think the convention would be for the “Election 07″ column to be to the left of the “Current” column in the Pollytics Demographics tables.
with all those minus figs for the Coalition and the ALP, the greens do not appear to have taken up the slack where have they gone or am I missing something obvious
William – the broad “Others”. Family First, Independents, Sun Dried Tomato Party etc. Together, they usually poll around 8 to 10%.
It’s Time,
That’s an interesting quandary! Should information follow left to right chronologically from Election-> Current Result -> Change
or
Should it go by pertinence, where the current value is first (from left to right) because that’s the most important metric, followed by the Election result (the baseline), then the change value?
I agree with you that there is a widespread temporal orthodoxy as far as these things tend to go – information is usually conveyed according to time. I wonder if our brain likes the orthodox way of doing these things because it conveys info in the easiest way for us to absorb, or if we just like it because that’s what we’re used to?
It’s a bit of an obscure question – but heh!
And now we’ve got the capital city/non capital city splits up —
anyone care to speculate why the rise in the non capital city vote for Labor is their highest (apart from SA)? On 3.7 for primaries and 5% for 2PP, this trumps any other swings on the table – certainly far greater than the movements towards the Greens, which has chewed up far more commentary.
Poss, any potential for an analysis here? Or are the figures still too small? (although, as I’ve pointed out, you’ve done a couple on the Greens, with far smaller numbers).
Possum
Graphically, time is always plotted left to right on the X axis. If you we to also include a column for Election 04 percentages, would you be comfortable for that column to be on the right to give:
Current Election 07 Election 04?
Furthermore, when giving a change in a variable, it usually means change from the first column figure to the second column figure. I find the current arrangement counterintuitive.
If you want to emphasize the latest figures because they are most pertinent, why not bold the figures in that column and leave your total rows underlined?
BTW, would someone who reads normally from right to left (Arabic?) have different conventions?
Hey Poss.. whatever happened to that roller coaster generator? The latest upswing in Pollytrend looks just the thing for the self-abusive
Oh, btw.. I think it was the Sunripened Warm Tomato party. But my favourite remains the Party! Party! Party! party