Mindy suggested a thread on how the outcome of the election differed so much from most predictions. So here it is!
I think only one pundit in the MSM predicted a clear Coalition victory – David Penberthy of The Punch.
Almost everyone else seemed to think Labor would fall over the line.
As noted here at LP, there was a positive plethora of polls in the last week. Mark cautioned us against over-interpreting them, or treating them as predictors. Wise, it would seem! The much touted betting markets also didn’t prove their efficacy in aggregating either the “wisdom of crowds” or reflecting putative insider knowledge.
If there’s one thing this result cautions against, it’s putting much faith in alleged campaign professionals.
If we go back and look at the polls, we can see a swing away from Labor, then a swing back, then a swing away again (going by Newspoll and Essential Research). It’s tempting to ascribe that to events in the campaign itself, but it’s more likely that there was a large amount of “churn” going on (as voters change their minds), and that undecided voters had much less to guide a definite decision one way or another than usual.
As Bernard Keane noted earlier today, judging by Essential, Labor’s final primary was pretty much where it was when Kevin Rudd was dumped. Factoring out all the spectacular events of the last few months, probably the story here is that ALP support had collapsed to a point far below its 2007 levels a fair while ago, and that was reflected in the election result, and probably would have been in an election held around now, no matter whether there’d been a leadership change or not.
The other thing going on is that it’s very hard to predict a hung parliament, as both the logic of polls and of a two party preferred vote calculation drives one towards a result where one major party wins a majority of seats (note that there are quite a number of seats now where the two parties are not the two majors – including Grayndler and Batman as well as Melbourne – ALP v. Greens and the seats held by the sitting independents, Tucker’s former seat of O’Connor, and Denison).
Labor is now looking to get closer to 51% of the two party preferred, but that may yet change.
Bear in mind, also, that most of the movement away from the ALP on primaries was towards The Greens, not the Coalition, except in Queensland (where The Greens still did very well), WA, and to a lesser degree New South Wales.
More important probably was the mood of the electorate, if that could have been guaged. Obviously it was a different mood in Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania from the rest of the country. Elections with big regional distinctions, and little sense of a national story, are difficult to read. Similarly, “sandbagging” seems to have worked in New South Wales for Labor, but not in Queensland, though you can see from the smaller swings in marginals than the state average that it did have some effect.
Some may care to revisit their predictions here.
I think we can safely say, though, that this result has destroyed a range of nostrums which were conventional political wisdom, and as many have remarked here today, it does represent an era of less predictable politics. Eventually the major parties will have to bring both their campaigning, negotiating and governing styles into closer accord with that, as Mark argued this morning. But it may take some time, as the mindsets of the political class are deeply entrenched.
Elsewhere: Rodney Tiffen at Inside Story on broken records.
I wanna see the Coalition gain government because I’m sick of journalists yammering on with their tired old cliches about the ‘bell-wether seat of Eden-Monaro’. Well, Eden-Monaro has an increased ALP majority but currently the Coalition has gained more seats. Rot in hell, you foul journalistic cliche you!
I think a lot of pundits would have been about right on teh “narrow ALP win” but for a last minute 0.5% swing against the ALP that no one picked up – except the very final Newspoll.
People were just going off poll averages, of course. I think there was clearly a last minute dip – and thats whats driven this into hung territory.
Yes, Lefty E, that’s what I was saying, probably a lot of volatility and a late swing against Labor as undecideds broke for the Coalition – in other words, the polls were measuring a fast moving target.
Elsewhere: Rodney Tiffen at Inside Story on broken records.
As an aside this election has established the credibility of Essential Research has it not?
It’s final poll was as accurate as any other.
I’m still comfortable with the prediction of a win for the mining industry. Healthy looking share prices today!
@7 – Tony Windsor supported the mining tax!!!
Hmmm – true Kim, but speculating which way the rural 3 will break is an exercise in frustration at the moment, although share speculators (maybe as reliable as betting markets) have taken a punt.
I got it wronger than anyone.
Aside from being in Victoria, one major reason I went the other way is I was expecting there to be a fear factor about Abbott’s social conservatism.
But with the exception of that GetUp ad, that dog didn’t bark. At all. And I’m still puzzled why it never became an issue.
I predicted a comfortable Labor win because I couldn’t believe a large number of Australians would ever support Abbott’s tired old army of Howard second-stringers. Then they go and get a primary vote of 44% …
It’s a bit like watching the yanks abandon Obama in favour of a bunch of lunatics and demagogues and plain old haters … makes you wonder why fate has been so kind to our countries when so many of the inhabitants are obviously concerned with nothing more than their own selfish petty interests and bugger everyone else.
@11 – Ken, the current Coalition primary from the AEC is closer to 43% (43.18 to be precise) which is only about 1% higher than in 2007.
Well, I remember saying, somewhere, just after Abbott took over, that with Tony as leader the Coalition would have a 3 at the start of it’s primary vote.
Nevermind.
I think Possum over at Pollytics had the right approach with distribution of probabilities for the range of possible results, rather than pundits winner-picking. IIRC, on election eve, he had a Labor win as the most likely, at around 40%, and a hung Parliament as the second most likely outcome.
@10 –
Maybe because the Labor party were so prominent in their opposition to same sex marriage? It would rather have hindered them from fighting on the social issues front.
I don’t know, though, could just be the stupid campaign tactics. “Don’t Risk Abbott” without really explaining why not except cuts and Workchoices.
The other constituency that got it badly wrong were the ubiquitous market economists and their media mouthpieces, with forecasts of market ‘mayhem’ in the event of a hung parliament.
As it turned out, the S&P/ASX-200 ended virtually and the $A lost about a third of a cent, which compared to its recent inintraday volatility is nothing.
Possum’s histograms did have this outcome as a possibility, so we could just be on that part of the probability distribution. But I do suspect that there is some sort of “shy tory effect” bias in the polls.
Virtually ‘flat’ that is – down 2 points
*pundits (and we)
I’m still befuddled that no-one decided to ask Abbott about his views on reproductive health (and autonomy!). That would have been the first thing I’d have run with!
I’ll dispute the claim about the inefficacy of the betting markets a bit (I’m not an evangelist for them, but we need to be honest about these things). Since they give probabilities rather than firm predictions ideally you’d need to repeat the election over and over and over to see if those probabilities were correct. That being implausible, the best you can do is compare to previous elections. Most of the previous elections had a massive narrowing of one party in the final few days to the extent there they were an unbackable favourite. In this case, they actually evened up in the past two days and even over the night before the election (I was checking it during idle moments at work, I’m not that tragic!) to somewhere around 60-65% to 35%-40%. They were therefore almost ambilvalent, unlike the consensus in the gallery and the final polls which (bar Newspoll, who were fortunate) overstated Labor’s vote.
I just want to point out that on the strocchiology thread I (jokingly) predicted a greens landslide and government to the greens. Which is very close to what happened, so nyah.
also the morning of the election possum’s simulation did a pretty good job too
Kim @ 12 I was relying on the ABC which currently has ‘Coalition 43.9% + 1.8′ – maybe the discrepancy is explained by the categorisation of the WA and/or NT Nats.
This is all being over analysed. The story of this election is that Queensland swung viciously against Labor. The rest is just noise.
So why did Queensland swing so viciously? A trite answer would be that they didn’t like seeing their boy dumped for a southerner. But the boy got a huge swing against him in his own electorate. Someone earlier today pointed out that the Queensland economy is doing quite badly. This would not have helped. Add the Bligh effect and the canetoad swing is on. Add the mining tax, which was explicitly designed to slow down the mining state economies, and the swing is really on.
Has anyone raised the possibility of Malcom Turnbull defecting to the ALP, with the promise of Minsterial post? Talk about the ultimate revenge….
I would be careful using one datapoint to claim that betting markets are inefficient. If we had 11 elections where the favourite was 2:1 and the favourite won them all I would say this is strong evidence that betting markets are inefficient. When the betting markets are giving 2:1 odds the underdog is going to win a few
You just gotta see this S Korean 3D graphic interpretation of the Australian Election!!!
Can someone post it live?
Ye Gods! I’m on hols up in the North Sea and now this!
Travelling through Northern Germany it’s amazing to see just how many wind turbines they have– literally thousands. The Coast is simply covered in them.
On the beach though it’s amazing to see the lack of animal life. For any of you who grew up near the coast and are used to seeing crabs and other animals going about their lives, well you can forget about that here. There’s some bird life up here, but that’s about it, I’m afraid. It should be a warning to us– we need to get serious about saving what natural eco-systems we have left and that’s going to mean serious decisions wrt. our economy.
We can’t afford to have neo-liberals in charge of our political system! More important than the NBN is the Murray-Darling basin. Real security means renewable energy for our economy. Education is not about giving headmasters more power, but giving people the skills to play a part in an increasingly technological world. Labor had a progressive message but the message wasn’t believable. But that people decided to vote for the Liberal Party is a great disappointment to me. Perhaps we will regret the apathy, when the boom is over and we look back and see only the empty beer cans… And a national media that makes a lot of noise, only because it’s so hollow.
Australia has a unique wildlife heritage and it is our responsibility to protect it.
How close it was and remains in 2PP, some interesting calculations still for some seats.
Perhaps it should be renamed the least-preferential voting system here. Some no doubt vote that way.
From AEC current count for boothby some interesting numbers
5996 declared votes to be counted
910 absentees already counted, breaking 59.3 – 40.7 to labour 2PP
If it continues this way
3555 (lab) to 2441 (lib) = 1114 to labour advantage
current gap
37260 (lib) – 36603 (lab) = 657
Anyone want to guess that result even now?
PS
Almost 23% green vote in absentees
That 910 is part of the 5996 so that is real close
CMMC @ 27
… that’s not korean but rather from taiwan, land of parliamentary fisticuffs
Fingers crossed ALP wrenches Boothby from Libns.
I’d completely forgotten about the Strocchiology thread. Okay. I’ll revisit.
Do I get the free Internet?
If Adam Bandt decides the fate of this nation then we are will be in a sorry state.
@ 73, DaOoS, you get my vote – and given my record this election that might even be worth something
@ Kim, should have noticed this ages ago, but surely the thread title should be (and we)?
How did the pundits (and us) get it so wrong?
Us weren’t paying attention during the grammar lessons.
Sam @ 35, us wasn’t.
I don’t recall a prize being mentioned Down’n'Out, but that prediction seems mighty prescient. I would award you an internet but mine has been busted most of the day (‘ken ADSL and PAD0 errors or something) – lets hope for that NBN consenus!
@34 & 35 – reads weird.
But I’ll fix it.
@33 I’m impressed, even with your so-caled “pessimistic” tone.
I predicted climate change would lose again; I hope I’m wrong.
See. Looks weird now.
i didn’t forget about that thread, but when i went to check i couldn’t find my contribution, but was too tired to type it out again, it is there now, and i didn’t get as close as DaOoS, so he gets my free internet. For now.
i have cautious hopes for the postal vote. there are a couple of plusses for the ALP like the “you are worried about your economy?” incredulity factor and that their impressions of the leaders will be influenced by older memories, which in tone’s case is the social conservative stuff that had the ALP rubbing their hands when he became leader, in that sense it was probably a good campaign to miss.
oh and i got that news clip mixed up too. funny tho
yeah, we looks weird
Sometimes correct grammar does look more weird than the incorrect – that tends to be a big reason why common errors flourish.
@44 – at the risk of thread drift, tigtog, I suspect that’s one way linguistic conventions change (and grammar really is a matter of convention and usage, not prescriptive rules).
@ Kim and tigtog, I don’t agree. How would have people reacted to “How did us get it so wrong?”
Grammar is not a mere matter of “convention and usage”: it actually has an essential function, so that “the words used .. actually yield on scrutiny the desired sense” (Fowler) – that “desired sense” being what the author is trying to convey.
I’d expect that youse peoples who hang out on LP might like get my drift, man.
PS:
(signed) Humpty Dumpty
Well, a convention isn’t random, Fiona. No one misunderstood the sense of the words, just as they don’t when someone says “Me and Kim talked about grammar”.
Lucky for you, Kim, that I isn’t marking youses lab report next week
How did we (and the pundits) get it so wrong?
Well written, Davey. Gold star and elephant stamp (and no, not being sarky).
“How did the pundits (and we) get it so wrong?”
Easy. You keep ignoring the fact that 1.4 million eligible people are not enrolled to vote and you also continually ignore the fact that a few hundred thousand other people (myself included) generally fail to turn up to vote. Such people get caught up in poll samples and invariably muddy the waters.
(This year when the AEC sends me a “please explain” letter I’ll tell them I was busy on polling day helping a farmer pull his cattle out of the mud. This excuse worked last time, right in the middle of a drought!)
I was going to say “(we and) the pundits”, but I was too late.
The polls weren’t that far out when you take margin of error into account though were they? I thought Labor were going to do much better in seat terms (though I was hoping for minority govt!) because after the SA state election I thought they were much better at running marginal seat campaigns leaving the big swings to their safe seats. Turns out this didn’t work out on a national scale. And rather surprisingly Chris Pyne even got a swing to him in SA.
And predicting a hung parliament in Australian federal politics is a bit like predicting a tossed coin will land on its edge
Yeah, but I wanted more of the blame to go to the pundits!
Chris @ 54…regarding Chris Pyne, apparently he was the 9th biggest spender on radio advertising spots in Australia last week. With Adelaide being a relatively small market, that’s a huge spend by one candidate. Labor was too focused on the northern states to even attempt to combat that kind of campaign.
Sorry I can’t find a link to the above info, but Pyne has a segment on ABC radio and they were teasing him about it this morning.
Instead of a Rudd incumbency effect in the last few days we got a Liberal ‘incumbency’ effect since the previous known legitimate Govt was the Howard Coalition. Which is something I sated on the night of those two polls.
My prediction then (on PB)was that this trend would continue into polling day and that the Coalition would win 74-72-4
If the election were a day or two later then this would have been the result. IMO.
furious balancing @ 57 – yea I heard that – someone called him the million dollar man
Am still surprised by the swing though….
By the way, David Penberthy made not just one but two predictions. Brave of him to make the first one, but I think he was pretty foolhardy to make the second.
Heh.
The pundits didn’t get it wrong! Everybody was saying this election would go down to the wire. It was said a million times. I, on the other hand, did get it wrong. I backed a Coalition win.
And this election is still going down to the wire. ALP need to pull Boothby or Dunkley or Hasluck out of the fire and then (with Bandt and Oakshott) it’s an ALP win 76-74. (And I lose my bet!)
Chris:I thought they were much better at running marginal seat campaigns
I think you’re right. One of the panellists (Labor I think) on election night said that the Libs hadn’t even run a pre-poll campaign in some of the key marginals – so that late counting could be expected to flow to Labor.
I was expecting there to be a fear factor about Abbott’s social conservatism
They tried as hard as they could – especially Getup! – but in fact there is not too much that is controversial about Abbott’s views – especially when Labor exactly matched his views on gay marriage.
Speaking of GetUp! – what a poisonous bunch of weasels they are? Masquerading as some sort of “keep the bastards honest” arms length lobby group, when in fact they have more in common with Socialist Alliance than with either of the major parties.
I predicted Labor 76 on the Strocchiology thread. I got it wrong because I believed what I read here, that Labor would hold some of the Qld marginals.
So it’s all your fault!
PeterTB said:
There’s no contradiction here. They pointed out the salient facts about the parties, and for anyone of humanistic and liberal disposition, the Socialist Alliance/Greens made the most sense. They never said how people should respond however.
Well Down and Out will have to share the internets, as I predicted a hung parliament twice! At the time I feared it would be a disaster, but it may turn out to be a positive result.
Yes Peter TB, how dare the left have a lobby group, and what’s more a lobby group that has success through the courts.
Much better that we have these far right lobby groups masquerading as independent think tanks that seem to ploriferate on the ABC these days, along with their odious spokespeople.
I think those think tanks are capital I Independent not small i independent. Funny how much newspeak there is on the right
Much better that we have these far right lobby groups masquerading as independent think tanks that seem to ploriferate on the ABC these days
Note that the ABC generally introduces these think tanks by prefixing their title with “conservative” or “progressive” or some such. I really don’t think that the MSM has woken up to GetUp! though – their (admittedly clever) ads were played on morning chat shows, with no connection being made to their ideological position.
Is anyone able to confirm whether the major polling companies screen out the 1.4 million unenrolled but otherwise eligible persons (AEC Fig) as well as the 5% of enrolled people who don’t turn up to vote (wiki fig).
At #53 I assume they don’t but I’d like confirmation.
Thanks Kim!
Salient @ 53 – a friend of mine and his wife forgot to vote one year. When they received the please explain notice, he wrote that he had forgotten. His wife said that “due to the pressures of domestic duties I forgot”. He got fined, she didn’t. So the bar is pretty low for acceptable excuses but you still need to make something up
I forgot to vote in a local election once. Well, not exactly. I didn’t know the bloody thing was on. That’s what I told the AEC and they didn’t fine me.
“Note that the ABC generally introduces these think tanks by prefixing their title with “conservative” or “progressive” or some such.”
strange. no such thing occured when 4corners ran a scare-mongering, anti-deficit spending polemic on monday night, when it was produced by a markets fundamentalist
I’m pretty happy with my strocchiological prediction:
Not least because I voted for the 1 GRN…
@ PeterTB, “but in fact there is not too much that is controversial about Abbott’s views”
You’re kidding, right? Right?
No wait, I forgot, saying rape is okay sometimes and women shouldn’t have control over our bodies, that’s not controversial, that’s just par for the course. Sorry, as you were.
“No wait, I forgot, saying rape is okay sometimes …”
What a vicious lie. Abbot never said that. Shame on you.
Yes he did, actually, Salient, on Q&A
Women only have a moderated right to refuse sex clearly means that it’s sometimes okay for a man to have sex with a woman who doesn’t consent. That’s rape last time I checked.
Blockquote fail, can someone fix plz?
Rebekka, I think you’re stretching it a bit. It’s as if you’re determined to find fault with the man.
No determination needed PeterTB. The man is a walking fault line. Tory Rabbit is part of that fossilised school of thought that requires female sexual performance in marriage or else. Sounds a lot like rape to me.
PeterTB, you sound awfully like you’re defending a man who says sometimes rape is okay.
Wow – why didn’t GetUp pick that one up?
PeterTB, I’d quit while you’re behind on that one.
Rebekka’s right on this one. What a sleaze.
Jesus. That Abbott quote is unbelievable. Why wasnt this out?
He’s saying women don’t have the absolute right to withhold sex. That’s rape.
It’s worth remembering that in 1978, when Abbott was already a politically active adult, South Australian became the first Australian jurisdiction to adopt laws prohibiting rape within marriage. The major churches all opposed the legislation on the grounds that when a bride took the marriage vow she thereby consented to have sex whenever her husband wanted it as long as the marriage lasted, and therefore rape could not, by definition, happen within marriage.
If only he’d left those attitudes in 1978…
PeterTB, I’d quit while you’re behind on that one.
Good advice Josh. I’d be wasting my time
Paul Norton @ 86 (and Peter TB, you should be listening too):
and by his own unashamed/ashameless account, well and truly sexually active as well.