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, Labor announced policies on or funding for cyber-safety, mentors for students, defence and IT projects in Northern Adelaide, congestion on Sydney rail, the botanical gardens in Canberra and a Wimmera-Mallee water pipeline.

The Coalition announced its forestry policy.

Newspoll: Today’s Australian had the latest Newspoll. The headline prediction was 54 to 46 for Labor.

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.

Predictions: Simon Jackman predicted Labor would win 54 per cent of the two party preferred vote (with a 95 per cent confidence interval that the final result would be between 52 and 56 per cent. Drop that figure into Antony’s calculator, and it gives a prediction of 87 seats.

Simon’s prediction aligns with my perceptions of how the polls are trending. However, I discovered I am uncomfortable with the way both Antony’s calculator and mine translated two party preferred predictions into seat counts. We both used a simple, binary cut-off method. This can lead to very lumpy results. For example, with both of our online calculators 54.0 per cent for Labor yields 87 seats; but 54.1 per cent yields 90 seats.

A solution to my problem with the lumpiness of the online calculators came from a conversation I had with Antony Green a few weeks ago. Antony explained how the ABC does its election night seat prediction by summing the probability of the parties winning each seat (based on a booth by booth comparison function within seats). I decided to test a similar approach to converting TPP results to seat outcomes by summing probabilities. This approach allows a better recognition that individual seat swings are typically normally distributed around the national (or state based) uniform swing.

Rather than recording a seat as a win (1) or a loss (0), I have applied a cumulative probability function with a standard deviation of 2.3 percentage points. If a seat is sitting on the same margin as the predicted swing, it would have a 50 per cent chance of being won by both parties. If the seat was on a margin 4.6 percentage points below the predicted swing to Labor (ie. two standard deviations) it is 96 per cent likely to go to Labor. If a seat is sitting on a margin two standard deviations above the predicted swing to Labor, it has a 4 per cent chance of being won by Labor.

The results of my test of this concept follow. While Antony’s and my online calculators suggested 87 seats, the probability model suggested 88 seats. (There were also some minor differences between the probability model below, which is accurate to one decimal place, and the online calculators that round to two decimal places. In the binary cut-off model below, I have scored a seat as 0.5 if the swing equaled the margin).

But this leaves me with a dilemma. How do I compare election predictions from those commentators who have provided a prediction in terms of a TPP percentage, and those who have made a prediction on the basis of seat counts. My resolution is to covert the TPP predictions to a simple cut-off prediction from Antony’s calculator, and the probability prediction from my spreadsheet. The results follow.

As an aside, an advantage of a probability based model like the one above is that it allows for a direct comparison of seat win probabilities with the betting market. This allows for a better identification of under-priced and over-priced odds. In this context, having a view on the state based swings is also useful to model.

Next election, I wiill work on a probability based seat calculator, rather than the simple binary cut-off model I did for this election.

Update: Antony Green sent me the following email.

Just to let you know, my prototype calculator that was based on probability calculations produced 88 seats, not the 87 produced by the web version on the ABC site. That matches your table of calculations.

I get a +/- 5 seats on this prediction. The reason we didn’t do the probabilities on the web calculator was because of the extra calculation load imposed by the probability calculation, plus the fact that the +/- error was roughly the same whatever result came out of the calculator. And the only difference in Labor seats won tended to come out at 1 or 2 seats.

And Will From Kooyong sent me this.

I read your blog this morning, and it’s quite funny how yesterday I had decided to create a Monte Carlo simulator to predict seats that the likelihood of a win for the ALP. I used a std of of 3.05 (based on last election’s swings), and I tried your std of 2.3. The results I got were very close including the probability of seats changing hands.

Here is a post I put on Poll Bludger late last night when I ran it for a 54% TPP for the ALP, 3.05 for the std and 100,000 simulations. (I ran it for a 1m and it was very much the same).

http://www.pollbludger.com/?p=729&cp=3#comment-88637

Yesterday, the Coalition announced its tough on drugs policy.

Labor announced support for the world game, its commitment to lift school standards, and its plan to reduce violence against women and children.

Morgan: Morgan released a phone poll of 1670 voters on 15-17 November. The sample was weighted to marginal seats, with 1,025 electors in 22 key L-NP marginal seats. (I gather the other 128 seats were estimated with a sample of 645 voters) . The headline prediction was Labor on 55.5 per cent of the two-party preferred vote. The Coalition got 44.5 per cent. As can be seen from the next graph, this series has been pretty much a flat line during the election period. Note that I graphed how voters said they would vote, rather than the TPP figure based on preference flows in 2004, to maintain consistency with earlier Morgan phone polls.

I do not have enough data to confirm a house bias with the Morgan phone poll; nonetheless, it appears to track to the left of ACNielsen and Newspoll (see next graph). House bias effects should be taken into account when using a poll series to estimate the final national TPP outcome.

Other polls: In today’s SMH and Age, we have an ACNielsen poll for the seat of Wentworth. The headline result was 52-48 in Labor’s favour.

The SMH reported a Patterson poll of Eden-Monaro, which had Labor ahead 53 to 47 per cent.

Mumble has the latest demographic breakdown from ACNielsen.

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.

Newspoll: Dennis in the Australian reported the latest Newspoll. The headline prediction was a national two party vote share for Labor of 55 per cent, compared with 45 percent for the Coalition. According to Antony’s calculator, if this result was replicated at the 2007 election, Labor would win around 94 of the 150 seats in the House of Representatives.

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.

Other polls: The Daily Telegraph reported on a poll study (N=200) which had Howard and McKew neck-and neck.

The Townsville Bulletin reported a poll (N=209) which would see Labor win the seat of Herbert with 53 per cent of the two-party preferred vote; a nine per cent swing.

Yesterday, the Coalition had no new policies listed on its website.

Labor had no new policies listed on its website.

This week, The Coalition campaign launch is in Brisbane today. Labor’s campaign launch will also be in Brisbane, on Wednesday. (The Age)