Oz Politics Blog

The latest Roy Morgan opinion poll results are out. The government has improved slightly on the previous Morgan poll. According to the pollster,

In mid-April, primary support for the L-NP rose 1.5 to 42%, 4.4% below the result obtained by the L-NP at the October 2004 Federal election. Support for the ALP fell 3%, now at 40%. This is 2.4% above the ALP result at the Federal election.0

Had an election been held in mid-April, the ALP would have won with minor party preferences, the latest Morgan Poll finds.

Among the minor parties, support for the Greens was 8.5% (up 0.5%), Australian Democrats 2% (up 0.5%), Family First 1.5% (down 0.5%), One Nation 1% (down 0.5%) and Other Parties and Independent Candidates 5% (up 1.5%).

While the latest Morgan Poll shows a small swing towards the L-NP, it is still a long way from the Coalition’s January high of 47%.

This result comes after the Federal Government reached an agreement with several of the Labor State Governments, which will result in the abolition of a range of state stamp duties in return for the state’s share of GST funding.

The opinion poll graphs have been updated. You may need to hit the refresh button on your browser to see the latest.

Some time between now and late September 2005, the Chief Minister for the Northern Territory will advise the Administrator to call a general election for the Legislative Assembly.

Under the Northern Territory (Self Government) Act 1978, an election must be held within four years of the first meeting of a Legislative Assembly. Hence, the last possible date for an election is 15 October 2005. The NT Electoral Act 2004 provides for a short campaign period: an election must be held 18 days after the writ has been issued.

The NT Legislative Assembly has 25 single member electorates, and members are selected using preferential voting. The electorates are quite small, with around 4500 voters each. The election will be managed by the newly created NT Electoral Commission. An overview of the electoral arrangements can be found here.

In the current Legislative Assembly, Territory Labor holds 13 of the 25 seats - a bare majority. The Country Liberal Party holds 10, and there are two independents.

There has been a redistribution since the 18 August 2001 territory election, so it is not possible to provide an accurate pendulum for the 2005 election. Nonetheless, my approximation of the 2001 pendulum follows (derived from this data). Seats that have subsequently been affected by a redistribution are asterisked. The seats the CLP lost in 2001 are indicated with a plus sign. It should be noted that a by-election for Kathrine was held on 4 October 2003.

The clear message for Labor is that this election will be won or lost in the northern suburbs of Darwin. For insurance, Labor would also be looking to take Araluen, MacDonnell, Nelson, Katherine, Braitling and Port Darwin.

It will also be interesting to see whether the redistribution of voters from Port Darwin to Fannie Bay has any impact on the Chief Minister’s seat. (Somehow, I suspect not).

Update 26 April 2005: According to the NT News, Labor has taken out a 3 month lease on a campaign office in Darwin City for the 2005 election. Could the NT election be just around the corner?

Update 27 April 2005: scuttlebutt has it that the NT election could be called as early as either Tuesday 3 or 10 May - with the hot money on 10 May. These dates would see an election on either Saturday 21 or 28 May (18 days after the writs are issued). A funny artefact of the NT electoral legislation is that elections are called on Tuesdays.

Update 12 May 2005: gossip schmossip — while the scuttlebutt was misleading, the pundits are still tipping an election before 30 June.

Update 13 May 2005: Just noticed that Antony Green has an NT election site.

Update 31 May 2005: Received an email from the Poll Bludger, who now has an NT election site.

Update 31 May 2005: It’s on! - link to my next post on the NT 2005 election.

As foreshadowed, I have now aggregated the Newspoll, Roy Morgan, and ACNielsen opinion polls for each month since November 2004. The objective was to remove some of the volatility from the individual polls so that one could better identify trends. If the next graph is anything to go by, it appears to have worked.

While not all of the April 2005 polls are in, I have included the 4 polls so far this month as they tell an interesting story. Since January 2005, the Coalition has been on an accelerated decline in terms of its two-party preferred vote, and in April 2005 it entered negative territory. Collectively, the polls suggest that the Australian Labor Party would win an election at the moment, with around 51.5 per cent of the two-party preferred vote.

Depending on your political persuasion, this does not mean it is time to either break out a bottle of bubbly or find an unlocked window in a tall building. Opinion polls are notoriously poor at predicting future election results two and a half years out from the next election (ie. they only get it right about half the time).

However, this accelerated decline may explain why the odds at Centrebet have softened slightly for the Government since 1 April. The Coalition is now on $1.55 to Labor’s $2.30, giving implied win probabilities of 60 to 40 per cent.

Other poll graphs here.

This blog is a case of ‘better late than never’. My apologies, but I have been travelling for the past few days and I did not get the opportunity to report earlier. On Tuesday, Newspoll released the results from its poll on the weekend of 15-17 April 2005.

First the stunning news. For the first time since his resurrection, Kim Beazley was found to be doing a better job as Opposition leader than John Howard was doing as Prime Minister. The movement was substantial, over the last fortnight Howard declined seven points and Beazley improved one point.

But it was not all good news for Labor. The preferred prime minister poll was unchanged from two weeks ago. And the Coalition improved two points on the important two-party preferred poll, and two points in its primary vote.

I was surprised by these poll results. With the Government’s Medicare safety-net back-flip, I had expected the Coalition to fall in terms of both its two-party preferred and primary vote. One possible explanation is the signal to noise ratio in opinion polls. In practice, opinion polls have confidence intervals of around double that predicted by statistical theory (see here). For Newspoll, this is an error margin of just under plus or minus seven per cent.

In conclusion: while attitudes to Howard’s job satisfaction may have changed as suggested by this poll, it is impossible to tell whether the Coalition is back in winning territory. Somehow I suspect not, but I wont know for certain for a few more polls.

I have updated my opinion poll graphs. You may need to hit the refresh button on your browser to see the latest.

The Morgan poll from the last two weekends is out. The poll of 2006 voters was conducted over the weekends of 2-3 and 9-10 April.

The headline result continues the downward trend for Prime Minister Howard in recent polls. If the preferences of the minor parties were allocated as they were at the 2004 Federal election the two-party preferred vote would be 53 per cent for Labor, and the Coalition on 47 per cent. This would deliver a landslide win for Labor.

Since the last Morgan poll, primary vote support for Labor rose by 4 percentage points to 43 per cent. Support for the Coalition fell 3.5 points to 40.5 percent. This is 5.9 percentage points below the Coalition result at the 2004 Federal election.

The spin from the pollster was:

“The latest results must be of concern to the L-NP, and Mr Howard in particular.

“Even before the latest back flip - changing the Medicare ‘Safety Net’ - was announced, there was concern in the electorate about broken promises and the Government not delivering on promises.

“There is also a continued undercurrent of ‘dishonesty’ and ‘lies’ emerging throughout the qualitative research, especially associated with John Howard.

“However, the real concern for the L-NP must be interest rates. Support for the L-NP is driven predominantly by their perceived strength as better economic managers and their ability to keep interest rates low.

“The electorate remains concerned about interest rates, despite the Reserve Bank deciding to hold interest rates in April.

“Continued discussion about the sale of WMC Resources to BHP Billiton and the undercurrent of concerns over overseas control and uranium issues is just another thing for the Howard L-NP Government to deal with at this time.”

Morgan has estimated the primary vote for Labor at a higher rate, and the primary vote for the Coalition as a lower rate, when compared with the other pollsters. This suggests some caution should be exercised with these latest results. Nonetheless, it appears that the post election honeymoon for the Coalition is definitely over.

Click here for my opinion poll graphs, which have been updated will be updated shortly.