Some recent poll-mixes as published in Crikey

6 November 2007

Peter Brent from Mumble Elections writes:

As much as some folks sniffily dismiss small individual poll movements as “statistically insignificant”, a government would rightly prefer a poll to show them trailing by six points (this week’s Newspoll) than one that has them behind by eight (last week’s Newspoll.) It may mean little, but little is better than nothing.

But in this case the difference comes wholly from a one percent primary vote shift from Labor to the Greens, which after preferences is hardly any shift at all. Newspoll allocates all minor party and independent preferences 61 to 39 in Labor’s favour, but in reality Greens flow at least 75% to Labor.

My notional two party preferreds come to 53.5 to 46.5 for both Newspolls – so no real change.

And poll-mix for the last week, containing a Nielsen, a Galaxy and a Newspoll, is 54 to 46 in Labor’s favour.

Graph below; more poll-mix nuts 'n' bolts here.

 

5 November

21. Mumble poll-mix: Time is running out for the Coalition

Peter Brent from Mumble Politics writes:

Mumble poll-mix takes the most recent opinion poll and aggregates back in weekly segments from there. (Before the campaign started, the segments were fortnightly.) This makes it rather volatile: a poll-mix one day might show modest movement to the government, but the next, a few days later, will be flat again.

The most recent data contains today’s Galaxy poll and the ACNielsen published on Friday. The two party preferred aggregate is 54.5 to 45.5 in Labor’s favour.

The graph has the government making modest ground since the election was called, from 44.5 to 45.5, closing the two party preferred gap from eleven points to nine.

On Friday night’s Lateline, Michael Kroger claimed that “the polls have closed by five percent” since the campaign began. He was referring to the size of the gap, but as the graph shows, this only works if you measure from the recent Labor peak two weeks before the election was called.

With the gap today at 9%, even if the trend is on it’ll take until Christmas for the government to be competitive.

That’s a month too late.

2 November

Mumble poll-mix:

Peter Brent from Mumble Politics writes:

Today’s poll-mix, of surveys over the week to Wednesday evening - including most recently the Nielsen and Morgan released today - comes to 54.5 to 45.5 in Labor’s favour. The graph below shows weekly data for the month of October.

With the two party preferred gap still hovering around the ten or eleven percent mark, time is running out for the PM to stage that campaign revival.

 

26 October

Meanwhile, Peter Brent from Mumble Elections writes:

So far during this campaign, polls taken mid-week have been much kinder to the government than weekend ones.

Will this be a pattern? Sadly for the government, elections are held on weekends.

Below poll-mix has weekly data, rather than fortnightly. The last figure includes two Morgans and one Newspoll, and comes to 56.5 to 43.5 in Labor’s favour.