Oz Politics Blog

Commentators on this blog often make claims about the accuracy of various polling companies. I decided to take a look at the opinion polls within the final weeks of the last three Federal elections to see how the polling companies stacked up. I compared the predicted Coalition and Labor primary vote shares and the predicted two-party preferred (TPP) vote share with the final outcome. I also considered the predicted preference flows to the Coalition.

Where a prediction was within two percentage points of the final outcome, I scored it as a pass (shaded green in the table below). Where it was within three points I scored it as a possible pass (shaded yellow in the table below). Where it was off by three percentage points or more I scored it is a fail (shaded red in the table below).

Taking an average for the three elections, at a two per cent margin of error, ACNielsen was correct 74 per cent of the time. Newspoll was right 48 per cent of the time. And Morgan was correct 22 per cent of the time. If we take a three per cent margin, the scores improve to 96, 78 and 50 per cent respectively.

Is this conclusive? No. It is not conclusive. It was a small sample. And it was possible that three weeks out from an election actual voting behaviour may have been different to that which occurred on the election day. In addition, polling companies can change their methodology at any moment, and the methodologies used previously may not be used for the next election. Furthermore, there is always the risk that I have made a transcription or adding error. Still, it was interesting.

Update: as I had feared, there was a transcription error in my initial set of calculations. I had swapped the election primary votes for Labor and the Coalition in 1998. It has now been fixed. If there are any other errors, please let me know.

The Parliamentary Library has released a research note on preference flows at Federal elections.

It provides good evidence to ignore some of the more excessive polling preference flows, which can sometimes go as high as 80 per cent for Labor. For example, with the 2004 election Morgan was close on the predicted primary votes, but it got its two-party preferred prediction wrong because it had determined that the Coalition would only get 22 per cent of preference flows. Personally, I reckon 60-62 per cent for Labor is a much more compelling assignment of the non-Labor and non-Coalition preferences when examining polling data.

The Parliamentary Library has also released an e-brief on the annual allowance for senators and members.

The University of Western Australia has updated its database of elections, governments, parties and representation for Australian state and federal parliaments since 1890. You can search the database by elections (Commonwealth. state and territory; and by upper and lower house), governments (Commonwealth. state and territory; and first minister), and parties (name, date and type).

The Commonwealth Parliamentary Library has published an e-brief on elections around the world in 2006. The e-brief covers all elections held in the Pacific region, but coverage is selective for Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

The Australian Electoral Commission has launched a periodical, The Tally Board, with information for the psephologically inclined on AEC programs, activities and electoral issues. Key information items in the first edition include:

• The Government introduced legislation into the Parliament on 8 December 2005 to amend the Electoral Act, including requiring proof of identity to enrol, reducing the close of rolls period and changing disclosure thresholds for donations.
• Redistributions are under way in Queensland, which will gain one seat at the 2007 election, and New South Wales, which will lose one seat. (There were boundary changes in the Australian Capital Territory in 2005, but no net impact on the number of seats).
• A new publication, Behind the Scenes tells the complete story of the 2004 federal election.

In yesterday’s Weekend Oz, Dennis Shanahan accused Labor Candidates of being out of step with their electorates. His evidence was the Australian Candidate Study 2004. Leaving aside some of Shanahan’s questionable analysis, I was intrigued and decided to have a look at the study using Nesstar (go to ASSDA -> Australian Studies -> Politics -> Election and Campaign Studies).

The first thing I discovered was the sample size for each party was quite small. For the Coalition it was 81 respondents. Labor had 87. The Democrats had 92, the Greens 122. Family First, One Nation and the Citizen’s Electoral Council each had around 50. With the non-responders, the sample sizes for individual questions are even smaller. So take the results with a pinch of salt.

The first cross-tab I did, picked at random, absolutely floored me. The question was, ‘How proud are you to be an Australian?’ While 96 per cent of Coalition candidates were very proud to be an Australian almost two thirds of the Green’s candidates were either not very proud or not proud at all. It provides an interesting context for Howard’s use of the dog-whistle term, ‘un-Australian’.

Another huge divide between Coalition candidates and the candidates for other parties was their level of respect for individual freedom in respect of the question “How much respect is there for individual freedom and human rights nowadays in Australia?”

How about whether there is more or less racial prejudice in Australia today than five years ago or whether asylum seekers are political refugees.

The same-sex relationships and abortion questions brought the Family First candidates out in droves.

National service was an issue for One Nation. As was law and order, the death penalty, engagement with Asia and Indigenous affairs. No surprises there!

Also unremarkable was the 91 per cent of the Greens candidates who wanted stronger measures against pollution; however, I was intrigued by the almost 7 per cent who did not.

And I would like to meet the five Family First candidates who thought there was not enough nudity and sex in films and magazines. I want to ask them why and why they joined Family First.

Seriously, these last two results suggest some of the candidates may have had difficulty completing the survey forms! (Alternatively, political parties might not do a good job at screening candidates).

Still, all very interesting. It might provide a more empirical base for a party preference tool than my current test.