Oz Politics Blog

The last general election was held on 24 November 2007 and the current House of Representatives first met on Tuesday 12 February 2008. Therefore, this House will expire on Friday 11 February 2011, and the next election for the House of Representatives must be held on or before Saturday 16 April 2011.

If a double dissolution election is not called, the most likely timing for the next Federal election is between August and October 2010. An election on or after August 2010 would allow for a concurrent half-Senate election. A November-December 2010 election would clash with the statutory requirement for a Victorian election on 27 November 2010. A January 2011 election would be in the middle of the holiday season. And a February-April 2011 election would clash with the statutory requirement for a New South Wales election on 26 March 2011.

You can read more here …

And today we have the graphs that compare the pollster’s predictions for each of the parties. The same house bias that has existed for some time appears evident in the latest graphs.

Still more graphs; this time from the laboratories of ACNielsen. Unfortunately, ACNielsen only started their monthly polling cycle in May, and there are not enough data points for a 7 term (or even a 5 term) Henderson moving average. I plan to use the 7 term average once I have enough data points.

Today’s graphs come from the house of Morgan. I have only captured the face to face polls in the following graphs. I will think about what I do with the irregular Morgan phone polls at another time.

Morgan’s Government Confidence Rating is a newish feature. It is calculated using the difference between the percentage of people who say the country is “going in the right direction” and the percentage who say the country is “going in seriously the wrong direction”, and then adding 100 to that difference.

I have started work on the graphs for the new Parliamentary term. What follows is a selection of the Newspoll graphs. To get away from the false hysteria of two points up one week and two points down the next; I have made the Henderson smoothed moving average the focus of the graphs.