With the Newspoll quarterly release this week, we now have enough data to aggregate the pollsters together, break the aggregated sample down into state based components and run our first election simulation for 2011.
Before we start though, it’s worth running though an updated Pollytrend to show how the polls have moved over the January to March period.
As we can see, things were pretty calm over the first 6 to 7 weeks of the year in terms of the two party preferred national results. Over the last 5 weeks however, a fairly large chunk of us went a bit berko over the carbon tax, boat people and other topical favourites of the hyperventilating classes.
What this means in practical terms is that the Labor party are today sitting a little above their aggregate support level of the last 3 months that we use for the simulations – by about half a percentage point of two party preferred thereabouts. Not a massive difference, but worth noting since someone would have in comments anyway.
At the state level breakdown, this is what the last 3 months of aggregated polling suggested in terms of the swings operating since the last election.
The government has boosted its stocks in WA, but have lost ground to the Coalition in NSW, Vic and SA – where most of that lost ground is occurring in the capital cities.
As always, we’re running our quasi-dependency Monte Carlo based simulation method which treats individual seat results as neither dependent nor independent events, imitating the real world effects we see operating in elections where seats “move together” at the state level of aggregation. After 20,000 iterations, the simulation stabilised giving us the following results in terms of the number of seats the ALP would have been likely to win (click to expand).
69 seats was the most likely result, with the implied probabilities of achieving higher numbers of seats dropping off pretty quickly. A more practical way of looking at the results is to change them into the implied probability of the ALP winning *at least* X number of seats:
Zooming in on the critical area around 69 seats gives us:
So we have a 63% implied probability of the government winning at least 68 seats, dropping down to a 54% implied probability of the government winning at least 69 seats (the most likely outcome), before dropping again down to a 44% implied probability of the government winning at least 70 seats were an election held over the last 3 months and the election result was similar to the polls.
In terms of the implied probability of Labor winning government outright or near outright – there was a lowly 8.7% likelihood of the government getting 75 seats and only a 5.4% implied probability of the government winning 76 seats at an election.
Based on the polling of the last 3 months, the government would most likely have lost 3 seats and Tony Abbott would have become Prime Minister.
The sidebar has been updated with the latest Pollytrend results as well as this simulation.
21 Comments
Frightening
Will be interesting to see how the federal polling goes in NSW over the next few months now that the state ALP have had the flick. I’m hoping now that boil has been lanced we will see a bit of a comeback there.
Should send a shockwave to Gillard and Oakeshott and Windsor
@Had Enough
But being answerable to the will of the people, to a man, isn’t really their forte, is it?
JamesK
Gillard and Oakeshott and Windsor will be answerable to the people in 2.5 years time, that’s how the system works.
@3 Had Enough
It is doubtful that it will send shockwaves through the LAB/GRN/IND coalition government. In all probability they would have expected a slump in support after putting the carbon tax back on the agenda. They are working on a 3 year timescale, and are implementing their programs sooner rather than later, to give themselves enough time to build support come election time. It’s all tactical.
Indicating that Arbib the Traitor, Shorten and the rest of the treacherous cowardly backstabbing slime running the ALP were WRONG, and will remain wrong.
@Johnny come lately – I can’t argue with your analysis. But the previous govt were already doing that. The sad thing is Rudd was not a great PM – just a good one.
sickofitall @8, I don’t follow the first part of your post sorry.
RE Rudd: True; he was good, not great. The sadder part is though that I think he would be a great PM now, after going through what he has.
If you are interested in a GetUp campaign to have the ABC return to its Charter, then please comment at here:
http://suggest.getup.org.au/forums/60819-campaign-ideas/suggestions/1684971-petition-for-abc-to-return-to-its-charter
Hi Poss – love your work!
The new Australian Election Study for the 2010 – any chance of a Textor type graph (ala 2007)?
Dear Possum,
Your analysis is badly skewed by a rogue poll. That poll of course is the newspoll that showed the Gillard governement with a TPP lead of 51 to 49.
This poll distorts your graph and I expect the next simulation will show a poorer position for the government.
The news polls on either side of that poll were labor TPP of 46 and 45 respectively
Bias – one poll makes tenths of a percent of difference to the trend line.
Since this was taken, all the polls have shown a movement away from Labor – which we’ll see next week when I run the numbers again. But in the same way they have moved together against Labor over the last week, they moved together for Labor over the preceding period.
Polytrend is designed so that individual polls can be rogue and it doesn’t skew the trend measures – it’s the actual purpose of doing this.
There’s been a number of quite bad polls for the ALP in the last couple of weeks. Can we have an update of pollytrend?
Thanks Possum,
Look forward to the polly trend this week
I need new grundies.
Unfortunately I think this is as good as it gets for Labor. Remembering they have been up against a incoherent Abbott and Co. Now the public are getting more used to him they are/will start to lose their distrust of his style they will be less put off.
Gillard on the other hand is generally sinking and has struggled to win support for the party from the beginning, in fact she has harmed it.
The handling of the budget spin is going to be crucial and going on their past performance at selling themselves to the public I have doubts they will come out in front.
I think this Gillard Labor is coming to the point of no return on poll support. The gradual deterioration will pick up again for her.
Any pollytrend update on the way?
quite close
It is crazy that they are enjoying such a strong swing in WA, maybe it’s because the last poll captured a lot of discontent over the mining tax which moderated overtime.
stephenflegg.blogspot.com
WA is interesting because they have an established Coalition State govt. Perhaps the change didn’t actually change anything and unlike NSW, voters have had time to digest it?
More importantly, one area polls cannot predict is the ‘Black Swan’. A significant unpredictable event such as the Tampa, a GFC or an Australian military involvement exploited to the nth degree by our last Liberal PM.
These things tip polling on its head as voters seek security and familiarity with incumbency.
I think the independents have been brilliant and wish we had more. They’ve been light years ahead of the major parties for dignity, courage and respect. Their main critics are disgruntled conservatives, who chose Abbott as their leader, a man who had 17 days to negotiate a minority government and failed. Have to accept where the blame should lie, instead of seeking out scapegoats.