The last (I think!) polls we will see this campaign are in.
Peter Hartcher on Lateline makes the point that there have been eleven (!) phone polls in ten days, and that all bar Newspoll have had Labor somewhere between 51 and 53%.
So, he rightly says that the only warrant for believing that there will be a Coalition win is placing one’s faith in Newspoll against all the other evidence.
If the final result is a Labor win, as I think it will be, the flagship poll of the Murdoch papers might need to be dethroned as the only one the press gallery takes seriously.
But – it’s going to be close. The likelihood is that this thing is still up for grabs, but I feel relatively confident the ALP will get over the line.
What was Shanahan talking about that Labor could lose 25 seats in NSW? That’s just silly. 52/48 is fine. It’ll be tight, but Labor will win.
I like your sense of perception Kim. It’s somehow vaguely cheering in the dark tunnel of a residence belonging to an unknown personage by the same of something like Shelob. I just hope to Hell you are right.
Wish I could be as confident. I know I should be but I just can’t make myself ignore that Newspoll.
Fingers crossed and holding my nose. Want a better option than Labor but it sure aint Abbott!
There’s been a huge number of pre poll votes this time, which is significant for two reasons. One, all those votes will have to be collated and sent to counting central, and that will happen over the next two weeks. Two, those votes were case at different points throughout the campaign, when Labor was on the nose, looking good, looking middling etc.
@5 – Sam, yep lots of pre-polls. Not quite getting up to the 30% we’re seeing in some US states recently, but it’s a factor to be sure.
Who knows what will happen? All we can do is assess the evidence.
The averaged polling evidence CLEARLY suggest a narrow ALP win.
An Abbott win is possible, yes – but unlikely. Less likely than a hung parliament, which is, in turn, less likely than an ALP win.
But a lot of postal voting was overseas where post surveys taken outside had most of the votes going towards Julia. Which might be why News Ltd were wondering aloud if Aussies overseas should still be able to vote.
(Oh the ironies)
If Labour win and the greens get control of the senate,I wonder if Labour will change the media laws again and kick Murdock fair in the nuts
Shanahan is a joke.
I predict a Labor win of 12-15 seat majority. Perhaps more.
N’
Before anyone gets too carried away with the Lateline interviews you should bear in mind Peter Hartcher whilst always appearing so confident has been miscalling the campaign wrong for weeks. The other two online polls out late today were the Morgan Poll Labor 51 to Lib 49 and Essential Media Poll same result. Both these polls invariably favour Labor so being that close shows Neilsen out of line (they have been all over the place).Not too many over 55s take part in an online poll by the way.
Too close call unl W A comes in!
We shouldn’t forget the Wednesday/Thursday Morgan Phone Poll of 1872 persons that produced 51/49, run the same days as the Newspoll. Thus those two give you 50.5/49.5 with a narrowing trend toward the Libs.
There is usually a move toward toward the Govt at the end of these things. What Newspoll maybe picking up is this late movement where the usually politically uninterested finally firm up their voting intention. However it seems to be towards the Libs.
It would be interesting if incumbency effect was shared between Labor and Liberals due to Gillard not being perceived as the genuine incumbent.
IF it is a late trend then it should be a little worse tomorrow and mean the Libs picking up additional marginals and holding onto its own marginals.
Thus a late minute disaster could beset Labor.
Morgan’s Phone Polls Don’t favour Labor. They are consistent with all phone polls. It is there F2F that favour Labor, for various reasons. Thus you cannot discount the large Morgan Phone poll.
I think given the polls we are seeing and the weight of money that has been going on the Libs in the last 12 hours there is little doubt that this election will be tight.
You can argue all you like about 2\3 point differences in opinion polls but when the betting markets tighten as they have in the last twelve hours then you know something is moving somewhere and it isn’t moving Labor’s way. Whether this movement will be large enough to tip Labor out of power will be the question.
I would be predicting a Coalition win based on this late movement if it is real. It would be more pronounced in Labor’s worst states which are where all those pesky marginals also are.
My prediction is thus a PM Abbott for two years followed by a PM Turnbull. Question is, who will run against Turnbull?
Trenton, I think the betting follows the polls.
Thomas Paine @ 12, yikes.
Why are prepolls not counted at 6pm tomorrow night? Always frustrates me, that.
Tyro, at this late stage the two sides will know how they are travelling. If Labor were heading for a comfortable victory do you think that some of the insiders might be snapping up the $1.60 odds now available on them?
I read this elsewhere and maybe others know.
Do they call people with mobiles or VOIP phones for phone polling? Because if they don’t then they’re missing a fair chunk of under 30s who don’t have regular landlines. And younger people are more likely to vote progressive.
In other words, I’m not that convinced as to the reliability of these polls at all.
Discuss! lol.
There’s no accounting for young people these days.
My prediction based on money flows on betting and also on last minute Lib Nat performance is an unbelievable slight win in their own right. 25 seats is not likely. Something below that is on the money.
The panel on Sky were saying the Greens have got Melbourne and that Labor have come back a bit in QLD but supposedly western Sydney is the big problem area now for Labor. The pursed lips of Tom Switzer say Labor will lose 16-18 seats in QLD & NSW which I find very hard to believe and I like most think it will be a small Labor win. The hung parliament talk is really heating up too.
I think the swing is on and the ALP are about to be hit by a semi they just didn’t see coming.
Actually, all the polls bars News suggest the swing isnt on enough.
ALP to win by a 4-6 seats, Phoney conceding defeat on the night.
Thomas Paine, I like Turnbull so I hope I’m proven wrong, but I doubt he will become Prime Minister if Abbott somehow vacates or is forced to vacate the position. His autocratic leadership style and his moderate politics alienated much of the Liberal Party room and I doubt they’d give him a go again so quickly. Methinks it will more likely be someone like Joe Hockey
@Aussie Unionist #19, as a data point of 1 tech-head family with two voters, I can tell you that since we dropped our landline for VOIP a few years ago we have not only never been called by any polling service, but neither are we ever called by any general telemarketers.
The peace and quiet around dinnertime is bliss.
In the past both parties have been too scared of what the media moguls might do to them to actually insist on some reform. But what else could the Murdoch papers do that they haven’t already? I say line up Rupert’s scrotum and let fly with the Timberlands.
The coverage from News has been breathtaking. I couldn’t believe that hacks like Shanahan still had a job after 2007 but they just kept right on churning out the same old shit. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. News Ltd aren’t interested in news. Just propaganda.
What has disturbed me though is how the ABC has joined in. I don’t know if the ABC is suffering from Stockholm Syndrome after its decade of torment by Howard and has come to identify with its captors of if Howard’s peculiar board choices have had a flow on effect into senior and middle management. Whatever it is, if Fran Kelly is still doing RN Breakfast next week I’m going to change over to Red Symons. (Yes. It’s become that bad.)
It just horrifies me that in Australia all the main-stream-media is now Right wing. Soft Right in the case of Fairfax and the ABC, Hard Right in the case of The Australian and most of the News Ltd dailies, but right wing nonetheless. If the government is returned it needs to put some serious brakes on what these guys can get up to. Maybe something really radical like insisting that if a story is shown to be untrue, they correct it with exactly the same space they reported it in the first place. Maybe kicking back a bit harder at the partisan dancing bears, rather than trying to make friends with them. They don’t like the ALP. They will never like the ALP. The only time they will pretend to be your friend is so they can get closer for a better swipe at you.
I want there to be a free press. But, with freedom comes responsibility. It’s time the MSM were made to face up to their responsibilities.
Hartcher on Lateline was absolutely right, absolutely professional. Shanahan was Shanahan.
The thing which has disturbed me most about Newspoll’s credibility was listening to its managing director, O’Shaunnessy (sp?), on ABC News Radio today spinning every bit as much as a gallery hack relying on major party talking points (and pro-Coalition talking points, natch, as per Dennis of the OO).
He ended up defending Newspoll’s outlying result that goes against the 51%/53% consensus figures by saying, “Well, if we’re wrong it’ll be because our 50/50 information will have helped drive some undecideds back to Labor.” Absolutely appalling. The guy basically admits Newspoll is more interested in shaping narrative than in registering actual reality.
On the other thread I wrote that Newspoll obviously couldn’t afford to look unethical at this point, that it’s in their best interests to at least follow the lead of American pollster Rasmussen and just report the damn facts on polling day, get their numbers in line with what the more honest pollsters are reporting, regardless of how biased thay’ve been for the rest of the electoral cycle (this is a phenomenon that the likes of Nate Silver have commented on RE Rasmussen’s credibility).
Apparently they don’t even have this defence mechanism. They’re actively whoring for the Liberals, and they don’t care what anyone thinks. They’re don’t even care to say “our last poll was right on the money, therefore our methods are unimpeachable.”
Hoepefully they go down with the ship when NewsCorp pulls the plug on the moneypit that is the ‘Australian’.
If Labour win and the greens get control of the senate,I wonder if Labour will change the media laws again and kick Murdock fair in the nuts
We can but hope, John Ryan @9.
Amused, I actually think the hostility of the meeja and the Murdoch media in particular, puts Gillard in a stronger position to do something about media laws in this country, especially if the Greens have BoP in the Senate.
What are they going to, badmouth the government and its policies? They’ve overreached disgracefully during the last 8 months or so and in the lead up to and during the election campaign, so now Gillard has nothing to lose. I hope she dons the hob-nailed boots!
Malcolm @25, Turnbull has proved he is not a good leader. He has very poor judgement and no political nous. I table Godwin Grech and emailgate as evidence.
I don’t think Smuggles is a good leader, either. In fact not a leader’s bootlace. I dread to think of him meeting foreign heads of state.
His strings are being pulled by the Eye of Mordor. Smuggles will do as he’s told and he is being told by big mining, big baccy and big meeja.
tigtog @26, I’ve wondered about this. Considering the number of young people in particular who don’t have landlines, it leaves a huge number of people who will never be phone polled. Although we’ve got a landline, no mobile service where we live, and have never been phone polled.
If Labor still haven’t learned the lesson, with the Morloch press, they never will.
I would have thought the first thing they would have done in 2007 was begin clearing the Howard appointed scabs out of public broadcasting. Blow me down if they didn’t actually reinforce the damge already done!
Now they are burned by these bas-ards (scratches head).
I’d say serve them right, but an Abbott government is likely to mean blow back, for someone like me.
paul walters @30, I don’t think Gillard is made of such gentlefolkly stuff as Rudd. Hopefully, there will be a few pink slips and no references in certain pigeon holes come Monday.