Oz Politics Blog

The Morgan poll for the weekend of 17-18 March 2006 has been released. The headline national two party preferred vote prediction was 58.5 per cent for labor and 41.5 per cent for the Coalition (was 61 to 39 in the previous Morgan poll). The primary vote predictions were 36 per cent for the Coalition (up three), and 48.5 per cent for Labor (down three points).

Oh dear, the usual suspects have sought to paint this result as meaningful.

Good news for the Government! The latest Morgan poll has been released, and it shows that in the space of only a week, the Coalition has improved its position and Labor’s 2pp has slumped to a nominal 58.5%! Adjusting for bias this equates to 51.5%, probably not enough to win government.

Extrapolating, it will only take another 4 weeks before Howard hits the lead on 2pp even without bias! Yet there are probably another 7 months until the election - plenty of time for the tables to be turned!

There are a few observations that are worth making on that assessment of the latest Morgan poll. With a sample size of around 1000 people, this week’s headline prediction of 41.5 per cent for the Coalition is not statistically different from last week’s prediction of 39 per cent. Furthermore, there was no political event that would explain such a move in public voting intentions.

I think there are two more likely explanations for the 2.5 percentage point movement in this week’s Morgan poll. First, this week’s poll could be a rogue poll and the level of support is actually unchanged from the previous three polls at around 61 per cent per cent for Labor. Second, if you consider the Morgan polls since December 2006, you could argue there has been quite a bit of volatility, around what looks like fairly stable 58 per cent level of support for Labor (or 42 per cent for the Coalition).

Neither scenario implies that the Coalition will be back in front in another four weeks (or seven months). The commentator who predicted this is guilty of reading too much into a single poll.

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