Tag Archive for 'psephological analysis'

Newspoll Monday: Labor 58-42

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Kim
1 year, 1 month ago
in Polls
. 37 Comments

Newspoll’s out early today. Obviously the journos couldn’t wait to see how Malcolm Turnbull’s gambit of rejecting the stimulus package went. It may well be, as I suggested last night, that he had some similar private polling or a tip on the public poll, and that’s why he’s softening his line, because it doesn’t look good. Labor is up 5 on the primaries to 48 (LNP down 3) and up 4 on the 2PP.

Possum on Turnbull’s dissatisfaction ratings:

Turnbull has lost 25% of his uncommitted voters in a single polling cycle and, on net, they have all moved against him.

So much for all those online “polls” on News Ltd sites, and the wisdom of Messrs Andrew Bolt and Dennis Shanahan.

Incidentally, that viral Facebook group we discussed the other day now has 60,270 members.

Elsewhere: The Poll Bludger.

Newspoll: Labor 54-46

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 1 month ago
in Economics, Media and Polls
. 15 Comments

Late last year, I observed that the final Newspoll of the year was “probably an outlier” (Labor’s 2PP lead was 59-41). I also observed that the pundits and the more excitable members of the political class would nevertheless take it seriously, and while we’ve been spared the leadership speculation (unless you count the Barnaby Joyce speculation), we’ve also been spared any real reflection on the continued electoral weakness of the Coalition. And that looks set to continue with the first Newspoll of 2009, as The Poll Bludger reports:

The first Newspoll survey after the end-of-year break shows the Coalition recovering to 54-46 after the shock 59-41 result of December 9. The Australian spruiks this as the Coalition clawing back support, but a more likely explanation is that the previous poll was a rogue. Kevin Rudd’s lead as preferred prime minister is down from 66-19 to 60-22.

Get ready, I guess, for more of the same old same old from the ever astute punditariat.

Of much more interest for the fortunes of political war, I’d suggest, are the findings from the Essential Research survey. Not the ones about the enduring love people supposedly have for Howard (and The Poll Bludger has some good points to make on this one too), but the findings about people’s confidence in the resilience of their financial position. I think it’s still moot as to whether we’re going to be in recession this year, but it’s worth remembering that not everyone does badly in a financial downturn. The government, at any rate, will be banking on that, and hoping that the optimism displayed in this survey is warranted.

Update: Possum, who also thinks the volatility in Newspoll compared to the relatively static trend in other polls suggests the last one was an outlier, makes a number of interesting observations. Aside from discussing the number of uncommitted and refused respondents, he trains his eye on Malcolm Turnbull’s numbers:

Looking at Truffle’s Net sAtisfaction ratings, since he gained the leadership the gap between his raw net satisfaction and his net satisfaction with undecideds removed has closed while simultanously having his raw net satisfaction ratings drop. This means that as people have made up their mind about Turnbull, more of them have been dissatisfied with his perfomance than were satisfied, on balance. It’s not a dramatic movement, but it’s there and it’s something he probably needs to keep an eye on – it’s certainly not as bad as Nelson’s ratings where the undecideds were actually holding up his raw net satisfaction ratings.

Update: Just caught up with this post from Possum giving a breakdown on the financial and job security numbers.

Howard’s back! II

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 2 months ago
in Howardia, Media and Polls
. 72 Comments

The former Dear Leader has received his reward – something a little more prestigious than the weirdly named awards from obscure right wing think tanks he spent some time trotting over to America last year to collect. John Howard will be awarded the “Medal of Freedom” by another soon to be former leader – George W. Bush. Apparently it’s “America’s highest civilian honour”, but I can’t read the name without thinking of all those wingnuts who have “blog[s] of freedom” or whatever.

Anyway, this might be an opportune time to link to a post from Possum – wherein he has crunched some polling data comparing the first year of Howard’s first term with the first year of Kevin Rudd’s. As is his wont, Possum has provided some nifty graphs. A comparison of their respective performances is worth filing away next time the “one term” stuff pops up in the media.

Speaking of Queensland politics…

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 3 months ago
in Media, Polls, Queensland and State/Territory Elections
. 26 Comments

As a bit of a postscript to my last post on the latest Queensland Newspoll, The Poll Bludger advises that Antony Green’s analysis of the redistributed state electoral boundaries has been published as a paper by the Queensland Parliamentary Library. It’s an invaluable resource for any Queensland politics watchers. According to Green’s calculations, Labor now nominally holds 62 out of 89 seats on the new boundaries (up from 59 won in the 2006 election). The LNP now needs to win 22 (up from 20) to form a majority government, and Labor would have to suffer a negative swing of 7.6% to lose its majority (up from -7.2%).

I’d be surprised if anyone sensible in the LNP could put together a target list of 22 or more seats where they have a realistic chance.

Continue reading ‘Speaking of Queensland politics…’

Queensland Labor resurgent: 57-43

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 3 months ago
in Media, Polls, Queensland and State/Territory Elections
. 12 Comments

I’ve said before that I don’t put too much stock in the quarterly state Newspolls, because they’re taken at such a lengthy interval it’s hard to get a sense of when any movement shown has actually occurred, and it’s more difficult to pick a poll which may be an outlier for various sampling reasons. However, the big shift to Labor in both Queensland and Victoria at state level in the latest lot of polling probably is significant. It’s also shot a huge hole in The Australian’s narrative of a voter desire to “balance” federal Labor by turning away from state ALP governments, which I’ve been suggesting for a long time was just nonsense anyway. In Crikey, Richard Farmer has some fun looking at the reactions (or contortions) from various News Limited journos.

So, what’s going on in Queensland? Anna Bligh’s own numbers were down while Labor’s vote surged, to a point above where it was at the last election (which was won very handily indeed). It’s possible that Bligh herself is suffering a little because she doesn’t fit the mould of the “strong leader” which has always stuck to Queensland Premiers, and which Peter Beattie re-invented. Conversely, there may be a bit of a flight to safety effect in the party vote with the economy slowing. However, here we come across one of the conundrums that haunt the analysis of polling. Queensland Labor types have been suggesting that private polling (which I haven’t seen) has Labor’s vote still on the up but not at such quite stellar heights and Anna Bligh’s numbers better than in Newspoll. I suspect they’re telling the truth, but with these things, as I’ve also said before, the interpretation of the public polls shifts political discourse and in particular the strategy and morale of the opposition.

Continue reading ‘Queensland Labor resurgent: 57-43′

Newspoll: Labor 59-41

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 3 months ago
in Media and Polls
. 39 Comments

… and Malcolm Turnbull is approaching Brendan Nelson territory with the PPM at 66-19 in Kevin Rudd’s favour. Of course, political scientists know leadership isn’t that big a factor (and Turnbull’s inability to patch over the same divisions that plagued Brendan Nelson demonstrates that) and this poll may be a bit of an outlier anyway, but in the world of perception, this is the measure the press gallery have anointed. I imagine that it’ll allow them to play their favourite game of leadership speculation over summer. Last Christmas holidays, the Liberals were (supposedly) giving some attention to their long term structural problems. Maybe that was the shock of defeat, a defeat that as they regained their cockiness, they seem to have forgotten. Far too prematurely.

US election: the demographics

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 4 months ago
in Culture, Foreign Elections, Polls, Race, Religion, Sociology and USA
. 22 Comments

The big note of caution should be that this data is drawn from exit polls which don’t take into account the very large early vote, and that exit polls have certain problems of validity and reliability.

However, there’s some interesting reading at both RedBlueRichPoor and FiveThirtyEight. I suspect the absence of the early vote in the sample diminishes the increases in youth and African-American turnout. And it’s just as well to remember that the election was actually reasonably close in the popular vote, and that the electoral vote map has been tweaked rather than transformed. Trends which were operating this year need reinforcing through the upcoming electoral cycles, and much will depend on Obama’s performance in government. You can never claim that there’s a realigning election on the basis of one cycle (06-08), though my bet would be that this will turn out in retrospect to have been one, for a whole host of more qualitative and interpretive factors.

I haven’t seen any comprehensive data as yet on Hispanic and youth votes’ partisan composition, but some evidence presented during the CNN coverage suggested very strong 60+% Obama votes in both populations. It’s worthwhile noting that the demographics of many states which are swinging to the Democrats strongly – or showing signs of such swings (ie in Texas, Arizona and South Carolina) – are fast changing to a much more heterogenous composition. And that generally, the younger cohort is more socially liberal and less hung up on racial barriers and all the baggage of the culture wars – including among younger Evangelicals.

There’s a lot here for Obama and the Democrats to make hay with in terms of partisan and geographic realignment, if they play their cards well.

Continue reading ‘US election: the demographics’

The American Possum (and the Australian Possum)

Published
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Kim
1 year, 4 months ago
in Blogging, Elections, Federal Elections, Foreign Elections, Politics, Polls, Sociology, Technology, The Web and USA
. 5 Comments

When I first discovered FiveThirtyEight.Com (courtesy of Down and Out of Sài Gòn on one of the American election threads here at LP, if I recall correctly), I thought of Nate Silver as America’s Possum. Coincidentally, there’s a profile of Silver published in New York magazine which makes some very similar points about the emergence of a statistician doing psephological wonkery as an avocation into a major source of expertise and information on elections as an article sounding that theme from Monash University Journalism Professor Chris Nash in the new edition of the Pacific Journalism Review.

Just think what elections would be like without Possums and Silvers! If all we had to rely on for psephological goodness was the dead tree media…

The growth of The Greens: Two hypotheses

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 5 months ago
in By-elections, Federal Elections, Media, NSW Government, Polls, Sociology and State/Territory Elections
. 109 Comments

William Bowe, aka The Poll Bludger, has an interesting take on the pro-Greens trend apparently evident in recent elections, about which there’s been a bit of talk around the traps. It’s been most evident in the ACT election on the weekend, where The Greens secured a 6.6% swing in their favour. I wonder to what degree this might be an artefact of the ACT’s election system, where there’s a much more transparent representation of voters’ preferences, and thus, conceivably, a greater incentive to vote for a non-major party.

Of course, the ACT isn’t exactly a population representative of Australia. Nevertheless, there may be, as Bowe suggests, some tea leaves to read for inner city Labor held seats federally and in states where Labor is really on the nose. (I’ve qualified the statement about the trend with “apparently”, largely because I think that far too much can be made of comparable results in distinct jurisdictions and similarly, I don’t accept that all the remaining Labor state administrations are in as much trouble as the NSW government. I suspect there’s a significant degree of error – something like the ecological fallacy – committed by NSW-centric media and political commentators extrapolating far too readily from what’s around them locally to other parts of the country.)

The two explanations for The Greens’ increased success in vote gathering tend to be posited – that they hoover up “disaffected left-wing votes” and that there are largely positive reasons based around issues and the party’s own profile and image which are attracting more voters. The two, of course, aren’t necessarily incompatible, though political journalists tend to present them as if they are. I strongly suspect there are some soft Liberal and swinging votes going to The Greens, and for a range of reasons. Here, it would be very useful to have some good focus group research rather than endless voting intention polls. So while I know we’ve got our share of both Labor and Green partisans around here, I’d be very interested in hearing from people who feel less identified with either the ALP or The Greens about what might sway their voting choices, and also from those who are more directly involved in party politics in anything they’re picking up from campaigning (without the partisan hats on!)…

Update: A post on this topic from Andrew Bartlett.

Essential Research Labor 58-42; Interest rates cut by 100 basis points

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 5 months ago
in Economics, Markets, Media and Polls
. 10 Comments

As a bit of an update to my post last night, the Essential Research poll is now out, basically showing no change from last time. Possum has more on all the other questions asked. So, we can now be more confident about suggesting that Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership has yet to really shift any of the trends that were evident under Nelson – this also highlights the vast over-inflation of the importance of Preferred PM and Opposition Leader approval ratings in most of the punditariat’s commentary. It will be very interesting to see what the delayed Newspoll says – since this is apparently the only poll the punditariat focus on. Where to now for the famous “media narrative”?

Peter Martin has all the wonky stuff worth reading on the Reserve Bank’s 1% rates cut, which a number of banks and lending institutions have indicated will lead to a .8% cut in their variable mortgage rates. Dennis Atkins, writing at Party Games, thinks that the Reserve has given the Rudd government political breathing space.

No early Newspoll; interest rates to be cut

Published
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Kim
1 year, 5 months ago
in Economics, Markets, Media and Polls
. 17 Comments

I wonder if no Newspoll is bad news for the pollsters and those who own them. This must be the first Monday in living memory (well, since anyone started paying attention to this stuff before last year’s campaign) when there hasn’t been an early release of selected Newspoll numbers. It couldn’t possibly be because the numbers don’t show any leadership bounce for Malcolm Turnbull, could it? [Update: Or could it be because NSW had a public holiday yesterday?] After all, last week’s Morgan face to face poll showed a straight swap of primary vote from the Coalition to Labor – 1.5%, with Labor on 57.5% 2PP. And ACNielsen and Newspoll a fortnight ago showed a very poor bounce by historical standards for the Opposition.

No doubt we’ll find out.

Malcolm Turnbull has been playing a dangerous game on interest rates. Continue reading ‘No early Newspoll; interest rates to be cut’

The state of Rudd Nation

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 5 months ago
in Climate change, Economics, Education, Federal Elections, Policy, Polls and Water
. 29 Comments

This time last year, we were all feverishly anticipating the calling of the federal election, which was less than a fortnight away. Now, courtesy of the quarterly Newspoll geographical and demographic analysis we can track where and with whom the Rudd government has been travelling well and less well from January to September 2008 and compare the poll numbers with the election result in November 2007.

Possum has all the spiffy graphs.

As The Poll Bludger notes, there are two really interesting trends in the aggregate poll. First, the Rudd honeymoon is still very much alive for the 18-34 demographic (and it will be intriguing to see some good data on how Turnbull’s elevation shifts this – if at all – down the track.) Secondly, Labor is still doing poorly in the West, and has gone a fair way backward in South Australia. (Incidentally, the data supports the point Kim made here the other day about Labor trending upwards in Queensland federally while Anna Bligh’s state regime goes into a slump – albeit a slump which is still of election winning dimensions even if it’s not a Beattie style landslide. And federal Labor hasn’t been hurt in New South Wales by the implosion of the Iemma government.)

A lot of folks are attributing Labor’s performance in South Australia to the Murray-Darling basin issue. Again, it’s worth noting that Labor still has a primary lead of 3 points over the Coalition, but it is no doubt significant to see eight points knocked off its lead so quickly in the last quarter, after having been stable at 49% more or less since the election. I’d be interested to hear from South Australian LP-ers about what they think is going on.

If it is the Murray-Darling, this might say something interesting about the Rudd government’s ability to deal with relatively intractable problems through its preferred mode of governance. Continue reading ‘The state of Rudd Nation’

Left right hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 5 months ago
in Federal Elections, Media, Polls, Queensland and State/Territory Elections
. 5 Comments

The other day I pointed to ludicrously misreported Galaxy polling showing federal Labor improving its vote in Queensland. Yesterday, the other bit of the Galaxy Poll was published in the Courier-Mail showing state Labor going backwards in Queensland. (Although actually, it only shows this if the comparison is with February – the last three polls show the 2PP bouncing around 52% for Labor and the margin of error isn’t stated. But as usual all the focus is on preferred Premier – where, of course, Anna Bligh is still ahead – but not by so much.)

Richard Farmer has pinged what the national News Limited polling pundits haven’t noticed – the movement in inconsistent directions (although the trend in both cases is weak) shows that their current narrative of “balancing” Labor’s federal dominance by turning on state Labor.

Incidentally, Lawrence Springborg shouldn’t get cocky (heh! bad pun!) about all the good news from the meejah. Continue reading ‘Left right hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing’

Turnbull poll bounce? ACNielsen 52-48, Newspoll 55-45

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 5 months ago
in Media and Polls
. 39 Comments

ACNielsen has Labor behind the Liberals on primaries 42-41, the first time the Libs have been ahead of Labor in the Nielsen poll since September 2006. Labor leads in the 2PP 52-48, and Kevin Rudd leads Malcolm Turnbull on PPM 56-33. Rudd led Brendan Nelson 65-19 in the August poll.

The Liberals have gained 3% on the primary vote and 3% on the 2PP since the August Nielsen poll.

I observed the other day that Possum had calculated opposition leader change bounce averages. It’s for Newspoll, but here it is for purposes of comparison:

…the average Coalition bounce from a leadership change was 5.7% on the primary and 6% on the TPP.

Speaking of Newspoll, The Poll Bludger reports rumours of an early release for the one that normally appears first on Lateline tomorrow night. I wouldn’t be at all surprised, as otherwise the OO will be reduced to writing their new narrative on the basis of a story in The Age. So get in quickly for Possum’s guess the Newspoll bounce competition.

Update: That was quick. Dennis gets to write his story on the basis of the poll he owns. Newspoll has the primaries favouring Labor 42-38 (down 2 and up 1 respectively, and within the MOE as Shanahan notes). The 2PP is 55-45 in Labor’s favour. It was 56-44 last time. Without mentioning the ACNielsen poll, Shanahan has actually written a story that would fit its findings better than Newspoll’s, having to construct his narrative out of the frippery of the PPM where Rudd leads Turnbull 54-24. As The Poll Bludger observes, this matches the Galaxy Poll in the News Limited tabloids on the weekend.

So if we do the comparison with Possum’s calculations, the Turnbull bounce is almost non-existent. Heh.

In reality, we should wait before passing judgement, but it’s fair to say that the previous trend is still very much apparent. Rudd’s losing some of his shine, but Labor’s vote is holding up well.

Continue reading ‘Turnbull poll bounce? ACNielsen 52-48, Newspoll 55-45′

Newspoll: Labor 56-44

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 6 months ago
in Polls
. 8 Comments

Via The Poll Bludger, the same old same old from Newspoll. I think what Rod Cameron had to say on Lateline had a lot of merit – voters will give Kevin Rudd at least another year before making a final judgement. In the meantime, the Liberals probably are wasting their and all of our time with their constant shenanigans. Their best bet would be to lie low and stop making themselves the story. They’re unlikely to, of course. Too much a bunch of prima donnas, plotters and media tarts. And now we’ve got this to look forward to:

But you can be sure that from the end of the next week until at least the end of the following week, it will be all-Costello-all-the-time in the Australian media.

Lord save us.

This question from Essential Research (which incidentally has Labor sitting on a 59/41 2PP split) is a hypothetical, but it’s still an interesting result:

Kevin Rudd is preferred to Peter Costello head-to-head 53 per cent to 27 per cent.

Elsewhere: Possum shows why the Costello dithering is doing a lot of damage to the Libs.