Today brings not one, not two, but three new polls on the vote estimates – with a Morgan Phone poll and Galaxy taken Wednesday night and a Morgan face to face taken last weekend. All the results and their respective changes come in like this:
We normally get some polls out on the weekend papers during elections, so we’ll wait until tomorrow to run our trend measures.Suffice to say that there appears to have been a point or two slip in the Labor vote over the last 7 days.
In other news, very shortly we should have the complete demographic cross-tabs of the Polliegraph that ran on Channel 7 during the leaders debate last Sunday – so we’ll be breaking them down, pulling them apart and seeing what interesting little tidbits pop up over the next few days or so.
20 Comments
Actually, I think a close set of polls is good for the ALP. When faced with the possibility of Tony Abbott as PM, there should be a substantial drift back to the ALP once people have the pencil and ballot papers in their hand. A big margin always left open the possibility that a protest vote gone awry could accidentally gift the election to the Libs.
Has there been a case where that happened? A party was far ahead, but lost because enough people thought it safe to lodge a protest vote?
David, don’t know if it was totally due to a protest vote, but there certainly was an element of that in the 1999 Vic election, where the Kennett Coalition Government was miles in front in every poll, only to lose 15 seats on election day and have the election decided by 3 independents in favour of Labor.
Can’t wait for that Polliegraph analysis!
Actually in Vic in 1999 and Qld in 1995 the polls were level-pegging by election eve I think but nobody believed them.
Hey Poss,
I couldn’t see how Morgan got 54/46 2PP out of those first preferences in his face-to-face poll. So I checked their website and it says 55.5/44.5.
Sorry, just realised one is respondent allocated – but I still don’t see how the labor 2pp could drop from the previous poll on those figures.
Winston – Morgan does two measures on the site, one by allocating prefs on a 2007 election basis and respondent allocated preference result as well.
http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2010/4545/
It’s in the two party preferred column mid way down the page there on the site.
07 prefs gave a TPP of 54/46 last face to face poll – which is the one I’m using because it’s the one I’ve always used for Morgan stuff.
Rounding numbers and the growth in the Others would do it.
But rounding is a lesser issue with Morgan as they round to nearest half percent.
And even assuming a worst case scenario for Labor (i.e. assuming 1st pref Labor vote is 43.3, Coalition 37.2, etc) , I can’t get Labor 2PP below 55.5% using 2007 preference distribution.
It’ s tricky for anyone in this election who actually believes in human rights and the rule of law to get a say or a look in.
And the media with their wee wee problems are getting old and tired very fast.
you’re right marilyn – the cacophony from the exceedingly pro Liberal media concentrating on matters that are either illusory or 10th order priorities at best is drowning out any plaintive pleas from the less powerful or disenfranchised
It’s reminiscent of Moving Pictures’ “What About Me?” .. with the part of the little boy being played by all those without mountains of money or a brainwashed flock of followers dissembling, lying, and distorting in order to pervert the political system.
People have not yet focussed on the election at this point. The treatment of Julia Gillard by the press this week has been appalling with the dog whistle to conservative family values that Tony Abbott has put forward. Certainly when it has been about policy the Labor Party has had a win.
What about this morning’s Neilsen, 52 – 48 to the Coalition?!
If that’s true – then the Australian people deserve the rogering they’ll get from Tony Abbott. A lot of revenge for having the temerity to evict the Born-To-Rule from THE LODGE.
I can’t believe ANYONE putting the LIBS as first preference unless it was first in line for Mme la Guillotine.
Does Mme la Guillotine look like Kate Ellis in leather Dave?
Because that would be just a bonus……..
Geoff @ 4
Newspoll did an election eve poll giving a 50/50 split in the 1999 Vic election, but even Steve Bracks reckoned The Australian was on drugs with that poll result. Nobody predicted what came next. The Kennett Govt in 1999 were widely perceived to win ahead of time, and yet did not.
JamesK @ 15
Kate Ellis in leather. Now you’re talking…
I’m tipping most of the marginals will go to Lib, especially in NSW
Regardless of how this train-wreck of a campaing turns out for Labor, I was thinking about the high disapproval ratings for both leaders and had a question for Poss: does anyone keep track of the total informal vote in House and Reps? Is there any correlation between unpopular leaders and people who simply vote informal as a protest?
I ask because if it is as close as it looks, the margin of victory may be less than the informal vote. But the question is: does the iformal vote vary much from election to election? I know the Senate one was getting large before tick the column voting came in.
David
If Workchoices and IR was the only issue, then Labor would never lose. But it isn’t. For non-workes, and even many workers, it doesn’t affect them. So if Labor thinks they can rely on that alone for victory, they may be in for a very unpleasant surprise.
Socrates – the AEC keeps has all that data publically available on the informal vote. You can see it by division here:
http://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/Informal_Voting/division.htm
And the State and National summaries here:
http://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/Informal_Voting/summary.htm
I can’t remember seeing any analysis comparing that rate to approval ratings before – I’ll go and have a squiz, and if anything interesting pops up we’ll run a post on it soon.