From Crikey 4 September 2007

12. Poll-of-polls: ALP gap growing; no nail-biting in sight

Peter Brent from Mumble Politics writes:

Today’s Crikey-Mumble (Crumble?) poll-mix, prompted by the Newspoll, serves as a reminder that that pollster really should take its preferences more seriously.

Newspoll allocates non-major party votes in bulk as they flowed at the last election, which doesn't take into account the Greens (whose preferences greatly favour Labor) getting 7% in 2004, but only registering three points in today's poll.

A better estimate would give (depending on what the primary numbers looked like before rounding to the nearest integer) a Labor two party preferred of about 57 or 58 instead of the published 59.

OK, that’s not a huge deal, but come election time these things matter – as a couple of pollsters discovered last time.

Anyway, today's poll-mix, which takes polls from the last fortnight, weights for sample size, gives greater emphasis to recent ones, estimates two party preferreds from primary voting intentions and rounds to the nearest half a percent (more nuts ‘n’ bolts here) comes to 56.5 to 43.5 in Labor's favour.

A decent three act script, leading to a nail-biting finish, would have the gap narrowing by now, but the direction is, if anything, the other way.

But for those of a dramatic bent, these numbers would translate, in uniform terms, to Labor winning about 100 of the 150 seats in the House of Representatives.

That would dwarf Howard's 1996 win and sit on a par with Mal Fraser in 1975 and 1977, Harry Holt in 1966 and John Curtin in 1943.

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