Oz Politics Blog

Apology: but I must be at work early this morning, so you will have to wait until this evening for a full report.

Conflicted polls: two polls out last night tell a very different story. Galaxy, has the Coalition in line for a two seat majority, despite losing the two-party preferred vote 52 to 48 in Labor’s favour. ACNielsen, predicts annihilation for Howard with a two-party preferred vote of 57 to 43 in Labor’s favour if preferences are allocated according to what people reported or 56 to 44 if votes are allocated using preference flows from 2004.

I have not updated the other graphs. You may need to hit the refresh or reload button on your browser to see the latest charts.

Yesterday was the 32nd day in the election campaign.

There were no new policies on Labor’s website.

The Coalition had a new policy on public hospitals and health care.

ACNielsen: An ACNielsen poll was released in today’s Age and SMH. The headline prediction was a national two-party preferred vote share of 54 per cent for Labor and 46 per cent for the Coalition.

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

Newspoll: Another cumulative Newspoll, sliced and diced by gender, age, state and urbanity, can be found in the Australian. There are some big movements here that are a little difficult to explain — SA went from Labor on 58 to 53; Victoria went from 55 to 59.

Chris Pyne: The normally safe Liberal seat of Sturt, held by Minister Chris Pyne, is down to a 51-49 knife edge (albeit in Pyne’s favour) according to the Adelaide Advertiser.

Not the report the government wanted one week before the election: The Australian National Audit Office has published its audit into the Regional Partnerships Program. Michelle Grattan said “the Howard Government’s $328 million regional projects fund has reignited claims that the scheme has been blatantly used by the Government for pork-barrelling in Coalition electorates. The report … found the scheme had been plagued by political interference, disregard for rules and guidelines and a lack of transparency.” Peter Martin said the report “paints a picture of ministers keen to approve projects in Coalition electorates regardless of the advice of their officials and so sloppy in the way they went about it that they often didn’t even bother to record the basis of their decisions. It paints their behaviour as venal, lazy, and verging on unlawful.”

The Newhouse saga: The Australian reported that Labor’s Wentworth candidate, George Newhouse, has legal advice. Apparently NSW law states that that the office of any member of the tribunal becomes automatically vacant if he or she nominates for a federal seat. As a consequence, “NSW law is enough to remove any misconception that Mr Newhouse held constitutionally prohibited NSW statutory offices at any time subsequent to his nomination for Wentworth… The Newhouse resignation saga therefore is both inaccurate as to facts and of no significance at law.”

Feedback: Peter sent this comment on yesterday’s blog.

You mention in your blog today (Day 31) that there is a saying in Australian politics that “when the swing is on, the swing is on”. Actually, I believe (although I can’t immediately put my finger on a source for this) that the former (and well-known) Labor Minister (Whitlam Govt) Fred Daly once put it, in a typically colourful way, “When she’s on, she’s on”, meaning a big swing. If you say it with a sharp Ocker accent in your voice, Freddie Daly’s point comes across nicely. There’s only one poll that counts, of course, but the current indications are that on November 24, as Fred Daly would have said (Ocker accent needed again), “She’s gonna be a big one.” But let’s see.

Yesterday was the 26th full day in the formal election campaign. There are only fourteen more days (13 sleeps) until the tally for the 2007 election.

The Coalition had no new policies listed on its website.

Labor announced GP super clinics for Cairns and Onkaparinka, and a commitment on Adelaide’s South Road.

ACNielsen on-line: Today’s Age reported ACNielsen’s third on-line poll. If this poll comes from the same panel as the previous polls, it is arguably the most significant poll so far this campaign. The use of a panel for ACNielsen’s on-line polls was reported with the first on-line poll. The advantage of panel based polling is that the movement between polls represents genuine movement within the panel group. Poll-on-poll differences are always significant and not subject to margins of error (although the application of the poll result as a population-wide prediction is subject to both sampling and systemic errors).

The most compelling observation from the latest ACNielsen poll is the absence of movement between polls. If today’s ACNielsen poll is from the same panel as the earlier on-line polls (see table below), it would suggest the election campaign to date has been a fizzer for the Coalition. There has been no narrowing of the gap between Labor and the Coalition during the campaign.

Update at 10am: I was wrong. I have just received this email, “I thought I better let you know that the Nielsen online poll actually draws a sample from their 90,000 Your Voice panel each poll, so the people doing the poll aren’t the same every poll … As nice as it would be to have a true longitudinal poll, unfortunately this aint it ;-)” Oh well, what can I say? I should have re-read the first report more closely before blogging. Anyway, maybe next election one of the polling companies could organise a longitudinal study (just for the period of the election campaign) of (say) 2000 randomly selected voters so that we can follow the impact of the campaign from week to week.

Finally, while I was wrong about the ACNielsen on-line polls using longitudinal panel data, I was probably not wrong on the flat line observation.

Morgan: Morgan released two poll results yesterday. Last weekend’s face-to-face poll of 990 voters yielded the (implausible in my view) headline prediction of 62 to 38 in Labor’s favour on a two-party preferred basis. I suspect Morgan agrees with me on the plausibility of this poll result, as Morgan did not include this data point in its graph at the top of its report. The chart of the longer-term Morgan face-to-face polling follows. You can see that this series is often quite volatile. I reckon the latest result is more likely to be noise associated with that volatility, than a significant population wide change in voting intentions.

Morgan’s Wednesday to Thursday phone poll of 552 voters yielded a prediction of 56 to 44 in Labor’s favour (which showed some statistically insignificant movement on the previous phone polls - see below).

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

Yesterday was the 18th full day in the election campaign. Twenty-two days remain until the election tally on the evening of 24 November. (In case you have been wondering, Sunday will be the half way point).

The Coalition made a policy statement on family emergency medical centres.

Labor made policy statements on older Australians, people with disabilities and carers, national travel concessions for older Australians, water and sanitation for developing countries and roads in southern Tasmania.

Interest rates: According to Peter Martin, “A cut in US interest rates, a surge in the world oil price and a continuing boom in Australian consumer spending have combined to push the Australian dollar through 93 US cents and push the Australian share market to a new record high, making next week’s hike in local interest rates a certainty.”

Westpac is predicting back-to-back interest rate rises in November and December, and another early in the new year.

Election costs: The Treasury and the Department of Finance and Administration have been releasing formal election costings on the election commitments from both Labor and the Coalition.

Peter Martin estimated the 2007 election campaign has become the most expensive in Australia’s history.

Independent tallies put the Coalition and Labor neck and neck, each promising around $44 billion since the campaign began, with perhaps another $10 billion each before that.

Those totals would bring the total offered per voter up to $3,000, making this by far the most expensive election campaign in Australian history.

The last campaign, in 2004 produced promises worth only $1,000 per voter.

ACNielsen released the findings from a poll of 1476 people between Monday and Wednesday this week. The more-of-the-same poll, predicted that Labor would get 55 per cent of the two party preferred vote, and the Coalition would get 45 per cent. Dropping those numbers into Antony’s Calculator, yielded a prediction of 92 seats for Labor, 56 seats for the Coalition, and two independents.

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

Betting markets: Sportingbet Australia advised yesterday that “the Government odds of winning have gone backwards since the leaders’ debate, although there has been a slight improvement in their chances over the past few days. Labor’s odds are now $1.38 with the Coalition wobbling out to $3.05.”

The Coalition released policy statements on renewable energy and cancer care for teenagers and young people.

Labor released policy statements on solar schools and homes and open government.

Enrolment: George Megalogensis reported on a large youth enrolment for the 2007 election.

Late yesterday the Australian Electoral Commission released its final head count for who is registered to vote. It showed the number of 18-year-olds eligible to vote jumped by 10.3 per cent when compared with the previous election. The upshot of this is that in 2004, when the roll closed a leisurely week later, the number of 18-year-olds had fallen 0.2 per cent against the 2001 figure.

Others commenting on the level of youth enrolment include: Mumble, Simon Jackman, Paul Bibby and Sarah Miles.

Polls:

• Morgan face-to-face: 56-44 (Labor) [20-21 October 2007, n=996]
• Morgan phone: 54.5-45.5 (Labor) [24-25 October 2007, n=520]
• ACNielsen online (from a randomly selected panel): 56-44 (Labor) [23-25 October 2007, n=1415]
• Patterson Research Eden-Monaro: 56-44 (Labor) [22-24 October 2007, n=400]

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

Poll trend: The next graph charts a weekly poll trend based on the average of Morgan (face-to-face). ACNielsen and Newspoll. The weekly averages are then smoothed with a 13-term Henderson moving average.