Pollytrend, Election Sims and Labor’s worst month in government
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Being the end of June, it’s time to crank up the stats and run our quarterly election simulations based on polling aggregates of the last 3 months from all the pollsters that provide state level breakdowns. However, before we do, it’s worth updating our Pollytrend measures as the month of June turned out to be quite the mover and shaker – delivering the ALP its largest voter alienation in the history of the Rudd/Gillard government.
First up, the primary vote trends for the majors (the Greens are pretty flat – you can see them in the sidebar on the right)
While the ALP primary didn’t quite fall off a cliff, it certainly stumbled without grace or poise down a rather steep hill. The June period saw the Gillard government drop 4 points of primary vote – from 33% down to 29% (give or take a couple of tenths of a percent) in around 30 days. This flowed through into the two party preferred estimates as a slightly smaller loss of 3%. The two party preferred chart is starting to look a little horrific for the Labor side.
Again we see the same pattern emerge where the ALP vote flattens off at some level for a while before taking a hit and flattening off at a new, lower level of support – rinse and repeat.
The simulations don’t look much better – especially considering that a full two thirds of the sample period we’re using here – April through June – had the government in a much better position than they face right now. First up, the broad results where we look at the probability of the ALP winning at least X number of seats.
And a close up of the threshold 50% area: 
The most likely result were an election held over the last three months and where the outcomes of the election matched the polling, would have had the ALP winning 53 seats. To give an idea of how far the government has slipped over the last 3 months, it’s worth comparing this election simulation to the last set we ran for the first quarter of 2011. If we look at the same cumulative probability distribution above with last quarter’s, we get:
This chart again shows the implied probability of the ALP winning at least X number of seats – what we find in the comparison is that for any level of probability there’s around a 16 seat contraction in the number of likely elected ALP members. So, for instance, in the March quarter there was around a 60% probability of the ALP winning at least 68 seats – however, by June, the 60% probability level had fallen down to 52 seats. At the 50% threshold level (which gives us our most likely outcome), it fell from 69 seats down to the current 53 seats.
What also happened this month is that the Coalition has found themselves enjoying swings towards them in every state. In March, the ALP had been seeing a swing towards them in WA and the non-capital cities were giving the ALP around the same level of support as they did at the 2010 election. This quarter however has seen everything move towards the Coalition:
Remember – this is from 3 months worth of results where most of that time the ALP was performing better than today. The National swing against the ALP was running at an aggregate 6.4% 5.2% level during the period (thanks biasdetector in comments picking up the spreadsheet cell equivalent of a typo – what do they call them BTW, apart from habitual? 
). As of today, according to out Pollytrend, that swing sits at 7.3% against (which you can see in the sidebar). With a swing of 7.3%, the simulations would probably come in around the mid 40’s in terms of the likely number of ALP seats won.
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Think Gillard is in her worst position now? Just wait next year when Abbott steps aside for Peter Costello to become Liberal leader. With Peter Costello leading the Libs next year, the 2PP will be like Coalition 72% ALP 28% and the preferred PM will be like Costello 80% Gillard 20%.
Costello!!
At last! The return of Abbott and Costello! Except this time Costello is the straight man and Abbott is the comedy relief.
Robina,
That prediction is so far off the reservation, its like the Bob Brown rocket shooting for PM lol.
Who’s Peter Costello? Is he some kind of Liberal Party secret weapon?
I’m scared all of a sudden!!!
…
PS In case you can’t hear my tone, I’m being sarcastic
Thanks for these graphs. I do not like the story they tell but they are powerful and informative
Possum very very powerful
I have sense a slight stablising of the Labor’s position may be seen with more results at 55% although I sense that if newspoll delivers a poll around 57 58% the back benchers will be really scared
Labor is in a really tight bind here. They are forced to keep Gillard by the greens and independents.
independents only back Gillard because she was weak and they wanted a full 3 years (abbott would have gone to the polls with NSW early this year if in power).
if a by-election occurs Labor will be trunced.
As for Abbott everyone underestimates him….he has killed off Rudd and Gillard already! If he becomes PM then is approval will sky rocket
oh Possum your bar swing by state don’t make sense
you say that capital swung by 5.3 and non capitals by 4.2, how can that give you an australian swing of 6.4?
Like wise all states swung by 6.4 or less yet the Australia swing was 6.4 … the numbers don’t add up!
Unless…. the capital and state swings are calculated by newspoll which was markedly more favourable to labor compared to the other pollsters.
Interested in your thoughts
Thanks biasdetector – I had the National Swing value cell linked to NSW swing rather than total swing in the spreadsheet I use to create the charts. All fixed – very much appreciated!
At what stage do Labor say something drastic needs to be done? Do the dare sit on their hands with such polling if continues on? The message is clear, something is very wrong with Labor.
Three things actually Thomas of-the-most-inappropriate-handle-in-the-history-of-the-net.
1. Their policies
2. Their incompetence
3. Their dishonesty.
JamesK
I think you left one point out
4. Our lack of a free press and media
Our situation is the reverse of many places in the world which have a one-party state and the potential, where not suppressed, for a free press to correct the abuses of government. We have a multi-party democracy and a totalitarian media.
If this keeps up, then I’m glad I’ll have my house paid off in two years. It’ll mean a lot less stress about my job when SerfChoices MkII comes in.
Robina – WTF???
Well, it costs me nothing, so I will go out on a limb. I reckon this is the nadir. I’ll give it 12 months before I retract or say “I told you so!”.
Abbott’s gonna win.
Gillard is doing all the heavy lifting at the moment. If she can get a couple of solid perfomers around her (maybe like a more motivated Penny Wong and an enthused Greg Combet) I have no doubt that she can win the hearts (sad but true) and minds of the electorate. Abbot will be viewed as the small-target nark that he is. The biggest obstacle to overcome between now and winning the next election, is to time the humiliation of Abbott to be so precise that there is no time for a switch to Turnbull. Gillard’s Labor is a reforming, aspirational government. Abbott as the leader of the alternative can only lead to the realisation that they are without depth and spine and are a political joke. Need I say more than Pyne, Hockey and Bishop (x2)? Go you good things!
Colin – Abbott jumped the shark when he dismissed Australian economists.
Yep, I reckon Abbott /has/ jumped the shark, and Gillard is there on the jet ski with him. Of all the crazies I’ve heard in the last week though – Crean to be leader?! – the suggestion that Costello will be back leading the Liberal Party is the funniest. Whatever you’re smoking, Robina, I want some!
Well, it cannot get any worse for Labor. You hit bottom eventually then there is a recovery.
If it does get worse…well…wrists, slashing. recriminations, faceless men become really faceless.
I’d be happy if the faceless men just became unemployed, where they can do no more damage to Labor and Australia.
Poss, superbly clear graphs and explanation as usual. The government shoud employ you to explain the carbon tax and compensation. You could put it in context (eg “this carbon tax equals about 1/4 of the recent rises in power prices from other causes, or less than 1/2 the impact of the GST, with tax cuts of comparable size”) and eliminate the fear.
I agree with possum analysis its really good.
As for the price rises it is totally labors fault. We have a readily cheap source of energy in Australia… and that is coal. Taiwan uses our coal and pays a third less for electricity than we do.
Gillard wants to buy the coal power stations and shut them down… this means no one else would even consider opening a new cheap one.
Gillard also insists on renewables and this increases the cost (you still the baseload power station which then sits idly for most fo the time)
You also have Labor friends in NSW which push solar to be installled in peoples homes and then buys that well above market cost.
So be clear these cost increases are due to labor one way or another
Well I think it has 60:40 morgan
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