Oz Politics Blog

The latest Newspoll was reported in today’s Australian. But there are gaps in today’s reporting (like the Greens’ primary vote), so you will need to wait until this evening for me to update all of my poll graphs.

Newspoll remains the most favourable series for the Coalition.

The two-party preferred result for last weekend (51 to 49) represents a one point movement in Labor’s favour.

The Coalition’s primary vote is also down one point to 45 per cent. And Labor’s primary vote is up two points to 40 per cent.

In terms of satisfaction with their job performance as Prime Minister and Opposition Leader, Howard is on 55 per cent (up four) and Beazley is on 47 per cent (unchanged).

However, dissatisfaction with Beazley is at 36 per cent, up five points to the highest level since he took over from Mark Latham in January

The better Prime Minister result is unchanged from the previous three fortnights, with Howard on 51 per cent and Beazley on 31 per cent.

The lads at Centrebet are up for a lark. They are running a book on the leader of the Liberal Party at the time of the next Federal Election.

The odds and implied outcome probabilities (late on 14 May) were as follows:

• Howard — $1.80 — 44.3 per cent
• Costello — $2.00 — 39.9 per cent
• Nelson — $11.00 — 7.3 per cent
• Abbott — $13.00 — 6.1 per cent
• Turnbull — $51.00 — 1.6 per cent
• Downer — $101.00 — 0.8 per cent
• Anyone else — $34.00 — 2.3 per cent

According to Gerald Daffy at Centrebet on 13 May,

Normally we don’t entertain betting on leadership battles as more often than not several parties know the answer before the public does.

However, the big news in Australian politics for the past week or so has been the simmering tension between John Howard and Peter Costello in relation to the Liberal Party leadership.

Based on that we have decided to open up a market on who will lead the party at the time the next Federal election is called.

John Howard seems to show a reluctance to hand over the reigns to Peter Costello. Added to that is the release of polls this week showing Mr. Costello as the third choice as leader of Australia behind Mr. Howard and his Labor Party opposite Kim Beazley.

John Howard has always said he will stay on in the job as long as the people and his party want him so he has to be the favourite to go into the next election. Mr. Howard is currently at $1.80 with Mr. Costello next in line at $2.

In a major surprise we have taken more bets for the two “new kids on the block” Tony Abbott ($13) and Brendan Nelson ($11) than we have for the federal treasurer. Alexander Downer is theoretically still in the mix at $101 and just in case a budding young politician pops out of the woodwork over the next two years we are offering odds of $34 for anyone else.

The odds for the Coalition winning the next election are unchanged.

• Coalition — $1.50 — implied win probability: 62 per cent
• Labor — $2.40 — implied win probability: 38 per cent

My last post has produced the usual cries that Morgan must be wrong. I got the usual arguments saying the real Coalition two-party preferred result is something like Morgan plus five. Someone even suggested a fudge factor of plus ten.

I am not convinced. While I think Morgan may be to the left of the population parameter, it may well be less than five percentage points.

I agree that Simon Jackman’s work on the lead-up to the last election suggested that Morgan under-estimated Coalition support by 4.7 percentage points and Newspoll under-estimated it by 2.7 percentage points on average. Jackman found that ACNielsen was pretty well on the money.

But simply because that happened then, it does not mean it is happening now.

Anyway, it is illogical to apply Jackman’s bias-set [4.7, 2.7 and 0] to the current trend-lines. While ACNielsen was on the money in the lead-up to the 2004 election, it is now hovering off to the left with Morgan. It is simply not consistent. If anything, ACNielsen is currently validating Morgan, and Newspoll is out of sync.

Furthermore, if you go back and look at the polls in the lead up to the 2004 election, it is possible there was a late swing to the Coalition (starting in early August) that was accurately picked by ACNielsen, but largely missed by Morgan and Newspoll. If you accept this thesis, it also could be used to argue that currently Morgan is doing a better job than Newspoll at calling the mood of the electorate.

Now don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that ACNielsen is right and everyone else is wrong. I have two concerns with ACNielsen at the moment. First, I think it has the Green primary vote implausibly high. Second, I think it is sheeting too many non-Coalition-non-Labor preference votes away from the Coalition. Indeed, I suspect that along with Morgan it is tracking to the left of the population parameter.

I am just not convinced that Morgan is as far out as five points. Besides, I put little store in simplistic rules like Morgan plus five.

Morgan’s poll of 1795 voters on 30 April, 1 May and 7-8 May found two-party preferred support for the Labor party was 52 per cent to the Coalition’s 48 per cent.

Primary support for Labor rose 2.5 percentage points to 42.5 per cent. Support for the Coalition remained stable at 42 per cent.

Among the minor parties, support for the Greens was 8 per cent (down 0.5), Australian Democrats 1.5 per cent (down 0.5), Family First 1.5 per cent (unchanged), One Nation 1 per cent (unchanged) and other parties and independent candidates 3.5 per cent (down 1.5).

The old phenomenon appears to be back. There is a gap between Newspoll and Morgan, with Morgan consistently to the left of Newspoll in terms of the two-party preferred population statistic (see chart here).

I have discussed this deviation between Morgan and Newspoll many times before. I am still of the view that there is some form of systemic bias at work here. Interestingly the systemic bias appears to be manifest on four fronts (in the following order of significance).

1. Morgan under estimated the primary vote for the minor parties (other than the Greens), compared with Newspoll. The error bars give it away. At least one of the Morgan or Newspoll population estimates series is wrong. Anyway, it is implausible that Newspoll’s population estimate is 1.67 times Morgan’s most recent.

   

2. Morgan over estimated the Green primary vote, compared with Newspoll. Again the error bars give it away. There is something wrong with at least one of the pollsters when it comes to the Green primary vote.

   

3. Morgan under estimated the Coalition primary vote, compared with Newspoll. Although some of the data points from the two pollsters are at least consistent with each other.

   

4. Morgan over estimated the primary vote for the Labor party, compared with Newspoll. However, this difference appears less pronounced than the three above. There are more occasions when the data points are consistent.

   

The Parliamentary Library has released a research note on possible electoral redistributions during the life of this Parliament. Its conclusion,

Based on a continuation of current population growth patterns and the 41st Parliament serving its full term redistributions will be held in the ACT and are likely to be held in New South Wales and Queensland during the life of the Parliament.

In short, the ACT redistribution is in progress, and we can expect one to be initiated in NSW and Queensland before the 2007 election.