Oz Politics Blog

Mumble recently suggested a 4 August election (see 24 June and Crikey). Although to be fair, in Crikey he argued for an early August election. Mumble is not alone. Glen Milne has speculated on an August election, as has Karen Middleton in today’s Canberra Times (page B7 — no link).

I am not convinced. In fact I am skeptical. Deeply skeptical.

John Howard will call the election when he thinks he has his best shot at winning it. I am not convinced that would be in August. At the end of June, Howard had made up three or four percentage points in the polls since March. But he is still six points behind where he would want to be for an election. If Howard continues to claw back a percentage point each month, a late 2007 election would have to be the best bet.

By Monday evening we will know if Mumble is right about the fourth of August and by the following Monday evening we will know if he is right about early August. According to the AEC timetable elections must be called at least 33 days beforehand.

In the interim, I wonder if Mumble is up for a small wager on his early August proposition.

So far this June, there have been five opinion polls, with a combined sample of over 6000 people. Collectively, these polls suggest a significant decline in Labor’s primary vote for the first time since Kevin Rudd’s appointment as Labor leader.

I looked at excluding the Galaxy poll from the first weekend in June as it appeared anomalous. Galaxy predicted a two-party preferred vote share for the Coalition of 47 per cent. The weighted average prediction from the four other polls for June was 42.9 per cent. However, even if you exclude the Galaxy poll from the first weekend in June, there appears to be an early June trend back towards the Government (see below).

Notwithstanding this movement, the June polls to date suggest that were an election held in the first weeks of June, it would have been a Labor landslide win.

Today’s Australian reported on a Galaxy Senate poll of 1,100 people. The poll predicted that the Coalition’s vote in the Senate is down from 45 to 34 per cent. Labor’s vote has risen by three percentage points to 38 per cent. The Greens have jumped to 13 per cent. The Australian Democrats got just 1 per cent.

GetUp!, a left-leaning political campaign organisation, commissioned the poll. GetUp! is launching a campaign to reclaim the Senate by encouraging voters to place the Coalition last on their ballot papers.

GetUp’s campaign, while national, will focus its resources in the ACT, South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria, the states and territories in which expert psephologists say control of the Senate will be decided.

It is not clear when the GetUp! poll was conducted (although the PB said it was the weekend before last). It is also unclear what questions were asked, and in what order. For example, were the Senate questions part of last week’s Galaxy/GetUp! poll announcement on same sex relationships? It is also worth noting that the sample appears to include 16 and 17 year olds, who do not vote.

Thanks to Dan for the tip.

Since last Sunday, there has been little movement to report. One bookmaker has moved in Rudd’s direction just slightly. Three have moved in Howard’s direction, again just slightly. One is unchanged. Today the average probability for a Coalition win at the 2007 election is 48.8 per cent. It was 48.5 per cent last Sunday.

What is the betting market doing? I have no idea. Nonetheless — and just for the fun of it — I fitted three regression curves to the market movements since 1 January 2007. These market movements are represented by the purple points on the chart in the 5 bookie average series.

The first curve is linear and explains 53 per cent of the variance to date. It suggests the market will continue to trend in Rudd’s favour. The second curve is logarithmic. It explains 67 per cent of the variance to date. It also suggests the market will continue to trend in Rudd’s favour, but at a slower rate than predicted by the straight line. The third curve is a fourth order polynomial. It explains 99.9 per cent of the variance to date. It suggests the market will turn back to Howard.

To help understand the regression formula, the x axis is expressed in days since 1 January 1900. So, for example, the constant 39073.4 in the logarithmic equation is late morning on 22 December 2006.

Finally — and this should not need to be said — none of these curves can be used as a serious or reliable projection of where the betting market will be when the election is called. I just thought it would be interesting to speculate on what sort of trends may be manifest.

The other graphs are here. You may need to hit the refresh or reload button on your browser to see the latest graphs.

You have probably seen the national media advertising campaign encouraging all Australians to value their vote and to enrol before this year’s federal election.

If you have changed address since the last election the chances are that you have been removed from the electoral roll (or will be by the time the election is called), and you will need to re-enrol. Obviously, if you turned 17 years since the last election, you wont be on the roll and you will need to enrol before you can vote.

In previous years, there was a small window of time after the election was called, in which you could enrol or re-enrol. This election year, however, that window has all but closed.

You should enrol to vote before the election is called. In most circumstances, your enrolment must be with the Australian Electoral Commission before 8pm on the day the writs for the election are issued. If you are not enrolled, your vote wont be counted.

You can verify your enrolment here.

If you need to enrol or re-enrol, get the appropriate form from here and follow the instructions.

Update: Overseas Australians need to go here for information about i) enrolling if the elector is overseas and not yet enrolled, and ii) registering as an overseas voter if they are overseas and already enrolled. [Thanks to Berian James for this tip].