Nicholson in the Oz

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November 11  Newspoll comparison: Vic in 2006 & NSW in 2003

Victoria Newspoll today says 55 to 45 in the Oz. Victoria, like New South Wales, has fixed four year terms. In March 2003 the Carr government was in the same situation as the Bracks one in November 2006 - approaching re-election number 2. Graphs below show two party preferred Newspolls over two years before both elections. 

Victoria's graph stops - naturally enough - at today's Newspoll, taken Wed/Thurs of this week. The last two points on NSW graph are election day Newspoll, taken Wed/Thurs of final week, and election result. The black vertical line is at a NSW Newspoll survey taken two weeks before election. That is, looking at NSW graph up to only the black line takes you to roughly the equivalent point in time to today's Victorian Newspoll.

Does this tell us anything? Bracks has been more consistently ahead, by large amounts, than Carr was over the two years. On the other hand, with about two weeks to go Carr was on 57, while Bracks is on 55. 

On election day Carr clocked in at (rounded) 56, the same as Beattie in Qld this year; Rann (SA) got 57. We might guess that 56 is 'probably' 'about' what Bracks will get in two weeks - down from 58 in 2002, a loss of 'a few' seats.

(NSW two party preferreds are my calculations from Newspoll primary numbers.)

Victorian Green-Liberal preference deal redundant?

The Australian also has a tiny piece (no link) about a possible Green-Liberal Legislative Assembly preference deal: Greens splitting tickets in most seats in exchange for 'crucial Liberal preferences in four inner-city Labor-held seats'. 

Greens' split ticket might make the tiniest difference in the closest of seats, but the other part of the deal seems a little pointless. I may be wrong, but don't the Liberals always put the Greens ahead of Labor on their how-to-vote cards? Have they ever not? [Update: from readers, apparently there are quite a few examples. Also, Antony Green tells pollbludger the Libs are preferencing Labor ahead of Greens in Vic Legislative Council, a different kettle of fish but still worth mentioning.) 

November 10  Aussie dreams of bigness Peter Hartcher (pictured far right) in SMH again marvels at John Howard remaining unscathed by Iraq, unlike Dubya and Blair. His column ends:

The Australian leader is an international political and historical oddity - the last leader of any of the nations of the "coalition of the willing" who remains in power and seeking re-election, a curiously untouched island of calm in an international sea of recrimination.

What absolute bollocks. Has Peter checked what's going on in Mongolia, Colombia, Palau, Eritrea or any other of the several dozen coalition members? If he's talking about countries with soldiers there now, well there are lots of those too. Just at a glance: Poland, Romania and Denmark all have more troops there than us - in total and per capita. Fiji has more per capita than we do, as does Latvia - population 2.2 million - with 130-odd troops. What do we have, about 450? And some countries have actually lost soldiers in battle. 

Peter's not alone: the weird determination to describe Iraq as a US-UK-Aussie exercise is shared by many Australian journalists. Stephen Matchett in the Australian even ranks us ahead of Britain:

More intellectually acute critics of Bush and Howard know they need to look deeper into the characters of the two men to find an explanation for the war and the foreign policy thinking that created it.

Is there a term for delusions of national grandeur? 

I blame two people: former US Ambassador Tom Schieffer and former Under Secretary of State Richard 'call me Rich' Armitage. The Texan charmer Schieffer no doubt knew his way around a telephone, and we can imagine him regaling reporters with tales ('Peter/Greg/Steve, this is just between us') of Australia's importance to America and the Bush-Howard love affair. (Probably his counterpart in El Salvador - population seven million, 380 troops in Iraq - did likewise.)

(Schieffer's fingerprints were also all over Australian journalists' interpretations of Bush's re-election two years ago - 'stunning!', when it was the second closest result since 1960. He's probably also behind a peculiarly Australian furphy: that Bush broke a century of Democrat rule when he took the Texas Governorship in 1995; the true figure was four years.)

Similarly with buddy no 2 Armitage, who recently informed Greg Sheridan that improving relations with Australia was one of Bush's four biggest policy achievements since taking power in 2001.

It's called ego-massaging, and Aussie journos' egos seem peculiarly wrapped up in a need to believe their country is more important than it really is. Nowhere else on the planet has this phenomenon taken hold.

Peter Ruehl in the Financial Review recently quoted Walter Cronkite as saying: 'Australia - too many reporters, not enough news.' Maybe that's a clue too.

Yes, this is a bee in my bonnet I promise not to re-indulge in for awhile. (More here and here.)

Release Bryan!

Several emails have posed the question: what's happened to Bryan Palmer, whose site has been down since the weekend? I tell them I don't know, but the evidence apparently points to his domain name having expired, and if that's so we might deduce he's frantically emailing this and that organisation, swearing, threatening etc. 

Just keep trying his site is all I can suggest.

November 9 Arizona million dollar lottery referendum

Mentioned here a few days ago. It went down two to one - a pity I think.

See all referendum results at CNN. (There are lots, eg Colorado's bid to legalize marijuana came closer to passing, while Idaho's to ban same-sex marriage romped home.)

'Left-wing academic'

Mr Upper House alerts me to a small mention in the blog of Andrew Bolt. Andrew is whinging about the ABC's Victorian election website, and quotes its blogroll (leaving out 'straight election sites for enthusiasts' - eg Pollbludger, Palmer, Upperhouse etc) to leave the usual left-wing suspects, including me. At least I'm not 'manically Left' like Crikey.

November 7 Victorian electoral rolls close today

If you're a Victorian and not yet on the roll, or need to update details, you have until 8:00pm tonight. More at Victorian Electoral Commission where you can print out and fax a form.

Because terms are fixed in Victoria, the VEC and everyone else have known of this date for months, if not years, and so have advertised accordingly. Not so in the federal arena, where elections are called at the government's whim and, thanks to this year's electoral amendments (touched on in November 4 post below) the rolls for new entrants/people who have dropped off the roll close on the day the PM calls the election. (Until this year they remained open for a week; they now remain open for three days for enrolment detail changes and a couple of other small categories - look for 'Integrity Act' two-thirds down here.) 

Despite what you might have heard from the government, this is the only Australian jurisdiction in which this applies. Some government members have also stated (well, implied) that before 1984 the rolls always closed on the day the election was called - absolute rubbish as well. In New Zealand and Canada the rolls close, respectively, on the day before the election and on election day itself, and they seem to manage ok.

Just about anyone who knows anything about electoral law will tell you these changes are designed for nothing other than electoral advantage: if enough young people, renters and others who vote on average left-of-centre drop off the roll, it will likely make the difference in a close election.

 Nielsen yesterday

... which I missed, had 52 to 48.

November 4 An 8 seat majority next year?

Readers will know I favour the federal ALP to win the next election, which everyone expects to be late next year (although it could in theory be early in 2008?). Of course, no-one knows what will happen between now and then, but it is no sillier at this stage to anticipate a Labor victory than it is to anticipate a Coalition one.

An email this week asked me what I expect the result to be. Premature, yes, but let's have a go. I reckon the outcome is likely to lie between a slim Coalition win and a Labor landslide - say between a 6 seat Coalition majority and a 34-seat Labor one. In the middle of expectations is a 12 seat Labor majority (ie Labor on 81, everyone else 69). [Update - reader asks how 12 seat majority is the mid-range result? Answer: assuming three independents, Labor seat numbers range from 69 to 92, the mid-point of which is 80.5, rounds up to 81.]

However, this is without factoring in the government's electoral law changes - worth perhaps a couple of seats. So a narrow Labor win of 8 might be a reasonable mid-point of expectations.

(Circumstances leading to the two extreme results might include: at the one end, a second Lemming eruption, giving us a Gillard-Ferguson (Laurie) leadership ticket which vows to muscle up, do conviction politics, wrestle the government on 'values' and 'win back the battlers'. At the other end is a badly tanking economy.)

November 3 Swanee! The Shadow Treasurer is, as we know, a devotee of the "learn your lines mate, and deliver 'em" school of political communication. This was was the subject of a rather humorous Costello parliamentary taunt yesterday: here, begins near the bottom of the left hand side.

And if you're in the mood for toe-tappin' music, here's a midi of the Gershwin song.

November 1 A million dollars a vote?

The US state of Arizona is holding a referendum with next Tuesday's elections to decide whether to introduce a lottery incentive to vote: if you vote at an election you go into a draw for $1 million. Here in New York Times; google "Mark Osterloh" for lots of links.

(In olden days  - at least in Australia and Britain - people had to pay to get on the electoral roll.)

At first blush at least this proposition seems a fine idea: elections should be 'fun'.

[Update: the referendum failed two to one.]

October 31 Newspoll says 52 to 48

In the Book of Dennis that's "neck and neck". 

October 26 Get rich (not so quick) scheme

Antony Lowenstein in today's Crikey describes Labor true believers (plus Paul Kelly) meeting at Sydney's Gleebooks last night to ponder the likelihood of the federal ALP winning next year's election. The consensus: pass the razer-blade (but not to Paul).

(Probably the also present Hugh Mackay and Peter Manning aren't describable as 'true believers' either.)

Opposition supporters in Britain and New Zealand are no doubt similarly glum, but I suspect they'll be grinning after their next outings. 

Does anyone know where I can get a multiple bet on opposition victories in Australia, New Zealand and Britain at the next polls? Centrebet currently gives $2.25 for a Labor win, and if we assume the same odds for the other two, that comes to ... $11.40.

Wonderful odds for something that, in totality, has about a 50 percent chance [make that 30; see update below] of happening; the only downside is having to wait until 2009 (next British election) to collect. Best thought of as a nest-egg.

[Update: a reader notes that '50 percent' means each individual odds averaging about 80%.  I had thought the 'about' gave me sufficient wriggle-room, but after closer examination 30 would have been a better number, eg .67x.67x.67.]

Spiritual leaders and born-again feminists

Whose words are these? "While rape or sexual harassment can never be condoned, it is true that some women dress or act provocatively so as to evoke a response ...  It is about as sensible to expect such provocation always to be safe as to walk around some areas of New York with a wad of money sticking out of your pocket."  Click here for the answer.

October 25 Newspoll in Victoria

Splits the difference (below) at 54 to 46

October 24 Two Victorian polls

Nielsen in The Age has Victorian Labor ahead 56 to 44, Galaxy in the Herald Sun a much closer 52 to 48. Big difference in the Greens, which Galaxy has at 7 and Nielsen at 13. 

Nielsen gets its two party preferred direct from the voter, while Galaxy asks only for primary support and 'notionally' distributes minor party etc preferences as they flowed at the last election. 

We should note that in the traditionally Coalition-friendly Victorian electoral architecture, a 52 percent Labor vote is (or was) no guarantee of victory; going into the 2002 election Bracks needed more than that, in uniform swing terms, just to hang on. (He got 58 percent.)

October 23 Iraq to 'finish' Howard?

Aussie commentators' view of  the multinational force in Iraq
How the rest of the  world sees it/the reality

A characteristically chippy Australian delusion has our man up there with Bush and Blair as one of the three big foreign cheeses in Iraq, and marvels at Howard's domestic political stenchlessness compared with 'the other two'. 

The comparison is ludicrous; the rest of the world knows the number is not three but two - plus lots of bit players like Mongolia, Australia, Poland, Azerbaijan, El Salvador, Albania, Romania, Slovakia, Latvia etc etc. Comparisons should be with leaders in those countries.

Iraq will not 'finish' Howard. The war has lounge-room resonance in the two countries who made the decision to invade - and are losing soldiers daily/weekly - but not hangers on like us. Rather, the war belongs with AWB in the 'issues that make the government squirm' category.

The PM is likely to lose next year, but not because of Iraq.

October 18 The Kelly view

Paul Kelly in the Oz on what Labor 'must' do to win next year - be proactive, seize the agenda, look to the future, fight the ideas battle, muscle up and so on.

No doubt lots of truth there, and the ALP must do bits of all those things, but in the end whether they did or not is determined, with hindsight, by the election result. For example, Paul accuses Mark Latham of "focus[ing] on Howard's negatives instead of trying to take control of the political agenda", which contrasts with both the reality and Mr Kelly's writing at the time.

There's this juggling of cause and effect from Newspoll boss Sol Lebovic: "By tradition Labor has been the main party of reform in Australia but since the 1996 election it has lost this position to Howard."

But columns such as this provide a window to the commonly accepted narrative if Labor wins in 2007 (even by one vote in one seat): that Beazley embraced the future by successfully doing each of these things and more, and the ALP once again bubbles with ideas and energy. But if Howard wins (even narrowly), then Beazley failed dismally at all levels, each of his policies was an irredeemable lead balloon and the party remains hopelessly out of touch and imaginatively bereft.

As you know, I believe we'll be singing the first tune late next year.

October 17 Newspoll says 52 to 48

Here in the Oz, from primary support of 41 and 41.

Headline and intro - the bits picked up by the rest of the media - are about Labor's 'election-winning lead'. 

October 16 Me in the Financial Review on Saturday

On satisfaction ratings and their relationship to opinion poll voting intentions and actual election outcomes. 

Read the piece.

Read associated comments, quite long and so moved off main page.

October 13 Conviction politician!

As you would be aware, the description of John Howard as a 'conviction politician!' first came from Liberal Director Lynton Crosby after the 2001 election. Like his predecessor Andrew Robb (responsible after the 1996 poll for the phoney concept/phrase 'Howard's Battlers') Crosby knew a post-election narrative vacuum when he saw one, shovelled in a pretty good yarn, and the rest is history.

Anyway, the point of this post is that I just did a world-wide (not restricted to Australian sites) google search of 'conviction politician'. Interesting: most highly ranked references are Australian ones, about our PM, but Japan's recently departed Koizumi gets some mentions, New Zealand Nationals leader Don Brash before the last election, and Charles I[!] Couple it with 'Thatcher' and, not surprisingly, you get lots of matches.

Just interesting, that's all.

The first electoral office

In 1903 the new Commonwealth of Australia held its first (ok, second, but the 1901 election was run by the six states) national election. See illustration of the structure of the Electoral Office at my other site. Over 26,000 people were employed for the event.

October 9 ACNielsen says 54 to 46

To show that an inability to call an opinion poll spade a bloody shovel is a media-wide affliction, not restricted to any one newspaper, note the SMH's headline: 'Labor vote creeping up on Howard', and the link to graphic, 'Labor catching up'

Newspoll out tomorrow. [Update: there wasn't one. Odd.]

October 8 Easson on Howard in Bennelong II

In July I posted a piece by NSW Labor chap Shane Easson on Bennelong, including effect of redistribution. That was a draft; here is the final product. Shane reckons that Andrew Wilkie didn't really aberrate the 2004 2pp result, and convincingly suggests that shifts in demographics leave Howard's grip on the seat tenuous.

Two state elections

Two elections are approaching. (1) Victoria on November 25. Like everyone else, I expect Bracks to be returned with a majority similar to his current one. 

(2) In March next year New South Wales goes to the polls. That's slightly more difficult, with possible outcomes ranging from another massive Labor win to a narrow Coalition one. In opinion polls, Coalition was ahead for a while but movement is now the other way and most recent Newspoll has Labor back at 55 to 45 - landslide territory again. If trend continues we can expect another big win, which would mean at least 16 straight years of Labor rule. My $100 @$2.50 of last year looks good value (and might partly compensate for last month's Queensland bath).

Howard remains as PM?

I reckon we should not totally dismiss the possibility that Howard and Costello did some sort of deal the other month to stem leadership speculation and that the PM doesn't really plan to be here at the next election. Howard is human, and is quite evidently susceptible to flattery, and so part of him probably believes he can keep winning for as long as he wants. But his rational side must give him nightmares about his career ending in defeat, and his then joining Keating, Fraser, Whitlam and McMahon in history's pages, rather than Ming. Worse - much worse - he could conceivably lose his seat. 'Ignominious' wouldn't be strong enough. 

Perhaps a one in five chance Howard is gone before the next election. John and Peter would have a lot of explaining to do, but most of the pressure would fall on Peter; John would be busy on the valedictory circuit.

Nicholson heir/hair cartoon therefore returns at top. 

The facts are these. On election day we will be asked to vote for people/parties. There is no 'satisfaction'/'approval' question. It is just something pollsters made up, presumably originally in the USA, where some sort of measurement is needed mid-term because no opposition candidate exists. It has its uses when imported to measure a Prime Minister's standing, but when applied to opposition leader it means ... what? Inviting respondents to be political commentators? Yet pundits and, apparently, political apparatchiks, treat it with gravity.

Take recent South Australian elections. Up until he took his party to its worst election outcome ever this year, opposition leader Rob Kerin generally enjoyed higher satisfaction ratings than Mike Rann did when he was opposition leader before the 2002 election - which Rann won. But no-one was surprised at the 2006 election result, because surveys of voting intentions indicated the SA Liberals were in for a trouncing. Votes decide elections.

Dennis reckons "Labor has failed many times, even with a two-party-preferred vote of more than 50 per cent, because the primary vote was below 40 per cent." Wrong: Labor has never won the two party preferred vote with a primary vote under 40. Every time it has won the two party preferred vote but lost the election, it has also won the primary vote. (It has, on the other hand, won elections while losing the primary vote, which is probably what a Labor victory next year would look like.) Winning the two party preferred vote but losing the election is all about 'wasting' votes in safe seats, and nothing to do with a low primary vote. It's 2pp that decides elections and a 2pp that relies on lots of preferences is worth exactly the same as one that doesn't. Labor has won with a primary vote under 40 and has lost with a primary vote of 50.

Mr Shanahan's wisest words are in his final sentence: "When [polls] are continuously high or low, they send a message only the deluded or foolish ignore.' Quite so. Opinion polls over the last six months have had government two party preferred support at election-losing amounts. Dennis can't bring himself to acknowledge it, instead describing the parties as 'level'. He's in denial.

October 4 Sol Lebovic on Labor polls

Newspoll boss enters the recent fray in the Oz, with some interesting points. Sol's model (as mentioned in the Monday's editorial) has voters 'parking' their vote with Labor. That's another way of saying he doesn't believe the ALP vote is sustainable. But his inherent assumption is that a 'neutral', non-parking position is with the government. Is that necessarily so? 

Mark Latham get no mention, presumably because he met most of Sol's criteria for success and then promptly clocked the worst opposition vote since 1977. (Sol might reply that he's comparing the different Beazleys.)

I also suspect all the world's incumbents today enjoy a lead on national security over their oppositions, and if that was a barrier to changing government, well, governments would never change. But of course they do.

October 3 Understand your preferences

Last week I gave an unrefereed paper on pollsters' mistreatment of preferences, arguing that shrinking major party primary votes is making preferences more important, but many pollsters aren't treating them with the seriousness they deserve. It's still in draft written form, and may become a real, published paper one day.

It begins with descriptions of the evolution of (a) preferential voting, and (b) our understanding of preferential voting, in particular of the two party preferred vote. (b) is quite interesting, and of course features our friend Malcolm Mackerras. Here is the very rough draft of that beginning. It's not long. Comments and corrections most welcome.

Newspoll in the states

More data published from the most recent quarterly Newspoll consolidation, with a positive headline and pointer on page 1 of The Australian, but no link. I've snapped the most important table, below.

Newspoll's pro-Labor swings from last election are, in decreasing order of magnitude: Qld 6%; WA 5%; SA 4%; Vic 4%; NSW 3%.  Apart from Queensland, not consistent with my musings on state swings next year.

October 2 Constitutional referendum time Mr Milne reports

Approval ratings etc

[Update: Richard Farmer in Crikey points to today's barking mad Oz editorial which takes up a tinny template to paint a conspiracy of 'the Left', who are in denial about Labor's troubles. Sol Lebovic is enlisted to explain away his polls' findings; instead we should apparently heed the collective wisdom of Centrebet pundits.

It really has to be read to be believed; go to bottom here. I reckon Richard's right that, if anything, being under-estimated will help Labor at the next election. But it also increases the likelihood of a leadership change before then.]

There's been a bit of noise lately about Labor's opinion poll voting intention leads being ignored/downplayed by reporters/pundits. It's not only the Oz - Nielsen surveys in Fairfax papers are similarly accompanied by equivocations, references to a low primary vote, lack of policy etc - but Newspoll is the most watched. It comes down to no-one really believing Labor's lead could be true.

Bob McMullan kind of started this mini-ball rolling a few weeks ago. Also got a run on Insiders yesterday, with reference to this quarterly Newspoll consolidation, showing Labor ahead overall and in the marginals, getting the Dennis treatment. 

This piece in Weekend Oz today deals with it; Mike Steketee adds some balance. Glenn Milne spoke sensibly of it about half way through this Friday chat on Radio National.

A Newspoll graph

Below is a Newspoll graph of leaders' satisfaction ratings and 2pp (my calculations from Newspoll's primary numbers) from November 2004 (the first after 2004 election) until most recent last weekend. (Both Latham's and Howard's approval were very high before the election; not surprisingly, Latham's took a dive after the result came in while Howard's climbed even higher.)

Howard's approval is thin purple line, Latham/Beazley's are thin orange line. Thick blue/red are two party preferred support. You can follow the plot: upon Bomber's return, Coalition remains comfortably ahead on the vote, but approval ratings converge. Then Beazley drops, but his vote climbs.

Labor is now usually ahead in the vote, often by a significant amount, which is of course most important. Elections are decided by votes. See also table below, Sept 26.

Sept 28 Me and my site

There are now, after years of contemplation, the beginnings of an 'about' page. Here.

Sept 26 Newspoll says 53 to 47, from primary support 42 to 41

In The Australian.

The grape-vine has it that internal federal Liberal Party polling is diabolical in NSW. Which slots into last month's crystal-ball gazing.