Poll Roundup: The Wobbles Just Got Worse

2PP Aggregate: 51.8 to Coalition (-1.1 in a week, -2.5 in five weeks)
Coalition would win election "held now" with substantially reduced majority

Just over a week ago I noted that the Coalition had an attack of the February wobbles, a common pattern of government polling tanking around this time in an election year.  A shock Newspoll result this week has seen this get a lot worse, as the Turnbull government looks rattled and tired and above all confused about its own tax reform steps, and for the first time in a long time, Bill Shorten has a spring in his step.  A robotic spring, true, but a spring nonetheless.  Government polling seems to be in freefall and no-one really knows where the bottom might be if it doesn't snap out of its tax funk sometime soon.  I've started a Not-A-Poll for anyone with a view on when or whether in this term Labor might get its nose in front.

Since the bullish ReachTEL and the bearish Ipsos discussed in the previous article we've seen the startling 50:50 2PP Newspoll (down three), a status-quo 52.5 to Coalition from Morgan (which has recently leant to the Coalition, but this seems to be diminishing) and a status-quo 52:48 from Essential.  Essential hasn't moved much for a long time, coming out at 51 or 52 for almost every poll since Turnbull became PM, but most of the others seem to be coming back to it rapidly, so I've cut its house effect and could well remove it altogether in another week or two.  Essential's read that voting intention has barely changed since just after Turnbull became PM is so at odds with the story from the others that I can hardly blame Mark the Ballot for saying that he doesn't aggregate it because he doesn't understand its behaviour.

The 50:50 from Newspoll is the first draw Labor has achieved from any pollster since another 50:50 Newspoll in October.  It should be kept in mind that the new Galaxy-run Newspoll seems to lean to Labor by about 0.6 of a point, a lean not affected at all by the switch from Abbott to Turnbull.  All the same this is its biggest deviation from the aggregate so far from a poll that has been far from bouncy.  It might just be an iffy sample but if not it's a massive signal and it alone took a point off the Coalition in my aggregate.  After considering the primaries and my estimate of the (rapidly fading?) house effects I counted the Newspoll at 50.1, Morgan at 51.3 and Essential at 52.7, and this all knocked the Coalition down to 51.8, down 1.1 points on the revised end-of-week figure for last week.

Here's the smoothed tracking graph.  The trajectory looks alarming for the government, but we should remember that "momentum" in polling is a very unreliable thing:

Another Mistake? Newspoll This Time

I'll get onto leaderships in a moment but first I want to point out that again we have seen published polling figures that apparently just don't add up.  This happened with all the leadership questions in the January ReachTEL, and now it's happened with the question of which of Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten is best equipped to handle climate change in The Australian's report of Newspoll.    A (more minor) recent error in another poll probably only escaped publication because I caught it first.

I did mention that errors might be hard to catch in the new Newspoll because of its opacity, but this one appears glaring.  According to The Australian's report, ("Malcolm Turnbull leads Bill Shorten on Labor's turf: Newspoll") Newspoll has Malcolm Turnbull preferred for his handling of climate change 51% to 23%.

According to the party breakdowns, however, Coalition supporters prefer Turnbull on climate change 59:10 and Labor supporters like their guy 65:14.  But with the Coalition on 43% and Labor on 35%, then even accounting for rounding, Shorten must therefore be preferred on this issue by at least 26% of voters even assuming no Greens or Others voters prefer him on the issue.  Perhaps there's some trick here like uncommitted voters being included in the issue poll despite not being included in the voting intention poll, but in that case Turnbull's rating among Green/Other and uncommitted voters would be through the roof.  My money's on the headline figure simply being wrong.

Well done to @sorceror43, who very often spots such things, for spotting this one - and rinse and repeat for my call for polls to publish full crosstabs so that poll-watchers can gauge how common this sort of thing is.  Once again I will be more than happy to publish any response that explains what is going on here so keep an eye on this article for updates - it may somehow be all OK, but I doubt it.

Leaderships

Malcolm Turnbull's Newspoll netsat was crunched from +22 (53-31) down to a mere +10 (48-38).  Previous cases of a PM losing 10 or more netsat points twice in three polls affected John Howard in 1996, 1997 and 2001, Kevin Rudd in 2008 (three times in four polls), and Julia Gillard in February 2013 and again in August-September 2013 (three times in five polls).  Coming off a honeymoon was a factor in the Rudd and first Howard cases, while the last Howard and first Gillard cases were both around this time in an election year.  Shorten improved slightly to -29 (28:57), and Preferred PM narrowed by five points to 55:21 in Turnbull's favour (still a huge lead for a tied 2PP).

Newspoll also had issue comparisons for Shorten and Turnbull as better leader to handle issue.  As I've noted the one for climate change is suspect.  Of the rest Turnbull leads on the economy (58:22), health (42:41), education (42:38), national security (51:22), likeability (71-48) and decisiveness (66-43).  One bad spot for Turnbull is that he is slightly more likely to be considered arrogant (56-49).  (The last three are not competitive - a voter can find both candidates likeable, or one, or neither.)  In the table graphic we find also that Turnbull beats Shorten on tax reform (48:28) and cost of living (42:33) but Shorten scrapes a one-point win on industrial relations (39:40).  Comparisons between the parties rather than the leaders on a lot of these issues might be more useful now.

The economy question has a long history.  Leads higher than Turnbull's 36-point lead (58:22) were seen by John Howard against Simon Crean, against a newly elected Mark Latham, and against Kim Beazley in his second term.  Kevin Rudd also had such a lead against Brendan Nelson shortly after being elected.

Turnbull's lead on health should be a worry for Labor since never in the previous 18 askings of this question has the Coalition leader led.  Education likewise, since a Coalition leader hasn't been near leading that since Howard vs Beazley in 2005-6.

Shorten's likeability score is poor (only Keating and Abbott were lower), and his decisiveness score ties Simon Crean's as the equal second worse ever (only Alexander Downer was lower).  The rest is all to be expected.

Other polling

Essential's respondents again show themselves to be a bunch of pessimists in terms of where economic indicators are going.  More interestingly they have a controlled experiment showing that major party voters react differently to negative gearing policies when told they are Labor's.  Newspoll found Labor's approach going well at this stage (47:31).

Essential also found that Others voters are more inclined to see the Turnbull Government as worse than expected than Labor voters are.  Coalition and Others voters think asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island are well-kept; left-leaning voters don't.   Essential also unsurprisingly found that hardly anyone likes outsourcing Medicare payments.

There is plenty going on on Senate reform at the moment, but I'm yet to see a poll on it.

Senate Reform: It's Finally On!

Today the Treasurer, Scott Morrison, introduced the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment Bill 2016 (see explanatory memorandum) to Parliament.  This bill primarily reforms Senate voting to remove Group Ticket Voting and eliminate the broken preference-dealing system that led to many farcical outcomes at the 2013 election.  The defects of that system have been covered exhaustively on here before (click the "senate reform" tab) and I will not discuss them further here.  This article concerns the system in the new Bill, how it will work and whether it is any good.  I expect to update this article over coming days as news and comments come to hand.

The Bill was read in the parliament today and debate was immediately adjourned.  The Bill will now be scrutinised by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters (JSCEM) with a reporting date of 2 March.  Possibly the JSCEM scrutiny will still result in minor changes.  After that it can be sent to the Senate, where barring anything unexpected it will pass with support from the Coalition, the Greens, Nick Xenophon and possibly others.  Labor's stance on the Bill is not clear at this stage.  The Australian Electoral Commission has said it will need three months to implement the changes, which in theory keeps a July double dissolution in play.

Proposed Changes: Above The Line

The core recommendation of the JSCEM inquiry into the 2013 count was to scrap Group Ticket Voting and replace it with optional preferential voting.  But whereas the original JSCEM system would have openly allowed voters to just vote 1 (which would have led to a quite high exhaust rate), the Bill proposes that above-the-line voters be directed to vote "By numbering at least 6 of these boxes in the order of your choice (with number 1 as your first choice)".

To prevent an increase in informal voting, savings provisions will allow for above-the-line voters who just vote 1, vote for fewer than six parties, or make a mistake before their vote reaches number 6, to still have their vote counted.  Such votes will exhaust once they have passed through all parties they can be assigned to, so if a voter just votes 1 their vote will count for that party only.  

Although major reform of below-the-line voting was also canvassed, in the end the only reform included for BTL voting has been an increase in the number of mistakes permitted in a formal vote from three to five.  

At this stage there is no "Langer provision" banning voters from advocating a just-vote-1 style vote. However the purpose of "Langer voting" (eg 1-2-3-3-3 in the House of Representatives) was to allow voters to exhaust their preference without it reaching either major party.  In the Senate a voter wishing to do this can deliberately vote for six micro-parties with no chance of election, so it isn't clear why anyone would bother encouraging voters to exhaust their Senate preferences.

Minimal Change Below The Line

Very little has changed for voters wishing to vote for candidates below the line in order to vote across party lines or against preselected orderings.  They still have to number at least 90% of squares for a valid vote, however the number of errors permitted for a valid vote has increased from three to five.  

It is unclear why a proposal to allow BTL voters to number only 12 squares for a formal vote was rejected but some possible reasons could be:

* Since a BTL voter would fill in more boxes than an ATL voter, encouraging ATL voting in preference to BTL voting makes things simpler and hence cheaper and faster for data entry.

* Parties may have been concerned about voters using increased BTL voting to buck their own party's preselection order or vote across party lines.  It was hard to tell whether enough voters would do this to make a difference.

* Parties may have been worried about the risk of votes leaking out of their ticket or exhausting before reaching all listed candidates.

* Parties may have felt obliged to nominate long lists of candidates to ensure that a voter voting below the line could cast a vote which complied with the instructions yet was just for that party.

Of these reasons, the second at least should be considered invalid as it is a purely political reason.

Other Changes

Senate papers will no longer be counted at booths but will instead be transferred to central counting.  (I am not sure yet if they will be counted by direct data entry or if there will be a hand-count for primaries first.)  At this stage it is not clear how soon reliable information on likely Senate results might be available.  See Antony Green's post on this.

Parties will be allowed to display logos on ballot papers to eliminate voter confusion with parties with similar names.

Evaluation

The proposed system ticks the most important boxes for Senate reform.  When I first wrote about Senate reform in detail here I outlined that any Senate system trades off three objectives: high formality, full preferencing and voter control over preferences. 

While Sam Dastyari has been scaremongering about high informal votes, his claims must have been based on a hypothetical version of the system with no savings provisions.  In fact any vote that was formal under the old system will be formal under the new system.  If anything, informal voting might even decrease slightly.  

As with the JSCEM proposal this option values formality and voter control very highly (though the latter not quite as highly given the BTL differences) and sacrifices full preferencing.  However it does not sacrifice full preferencing to anything like the same degree as the JSCEM proposal.

In my view the direction to voters to number up to six party boxes represents an improvement on the JSCEM proposal, the question being how practical it will be.  Expect a bumpy ride here and for it to be an expensive election with a relatively slow Senate count process.

The lack of adequate BTL reform is on the surface disappointing (see more below.)

Impacts

As with any system descended from the JSCEM model, this system is designed to disadvantage preference-harvesters and that is exactly who it disadvantages.  Aside from that there will probably not be any detectable difference in its impacts on the relative chances of Labor, the Coalition and the Greens.  I expect to post some more detailed modelling of the system when time permits, but the results will be broadly similar to my modelling of the original JSCEM recommendation.  Analysis based on results of previous elections is always a little shaky because if the larger micro-parties have even the slightest sense they are already negotiating mergers to increase the chance of fourth-party victories.

The system will completely prevent the election of parties with ridiculously low primary vote shares.  However it is possible in some circumstances that minor party or independent candidates will get up with something like 6% of the primary vote (3% for a double dissolution).  This wouldn't be likely to happen in many states at once, and in most cases a fourth-party candidate will need more like 8% (4.5% for a double-dissolution) to win.  

While some faulty analysis has suggested that only the Xenophon Team and the "big three" would win, I think it's very likely that in a double dissolution some of the other current crossbenchers would survive. This is less clear for a half-Senate election, given the collapse of the Palmer United vote.

I think we should give the new proposed system a cautious tick of approval but be very wary of possible implementation stuffups given the tight timeline and the amount of reprogramming and retraining that may be necessary (see the article below and comments for some more on these concerns.)  

More comments will be added as time permits.

Addendum 1 (Monday): 

There is also a thread at Tally Room where there are lots of comments.  As always the comments from Michael Maley are especially interesting and worth reading.  Michael raises the point that the proposed system is inferior to the original JSCEM proposal because it discriminates against some opinions, which the original JSCEM proposal did not.  Those opinions are those of voters who want to vote across party lines for candidates.  Michael gives the example of a voter who wishes to vote only for female candidates.  Another example would be a Greens voter who wanted to preference left-wing ALP candidates but not right-wing ones.  I personally will often put some ALP candidates high on my ballot but the Shoppie types last or nearly so.

It's probable that a fairly high proportion of voters who vote across party lines are very knowledgeable voters who actually enjoy voting BTL - but not all.  Some voters also vote BTL to put particular candidates (like, say, Shoppies) last, a preference for which discrimination is hard to avoid. All this mitigates the discrimination, but doesn't explain it.

Sometimes discrimination in system design is unavoidable, but it's not immediately clear that this is the case here.  I agree with Michael that we really need to see a convincing explanation of why BTL voting was not further liberalised - and also one of why it was liberalised at all, given that the increased error tolerance will affect such a trivial number of votes.  The increased error tolerance smacks of utter tokenism.

Another point raised is that " identical preferences for candidates may produce a formal vote if expressed using the above the line mechanism, but an informal vote if expressed using the below the line mechanism."  This is indeed a new curious feature of the system that even the old system did not have, but I'm not sure it is indefensible.  The voter voting below the line in violation of the instructions when they could have cast the same vote formally above the line following instructions is creating unnecessary work for electoral authorities.  I'm reminded of an extreme example of a perhaps similar principle: a voter listed numbers down one side of the paper then drew a ridiculous nest of arrows leading to the boxes.  The returning officer took the view that even if following the arrows would produce a formal vote, there were limits to how much work a returning officer should go to for a voter who had chosen to make things too difficult.

It was reported on Lateline that Labor would be voting against the bill.

Addendum 2: (Tuesday) BTL Proposal And Explanation Is A Farce

It's now my view that the proposed BTL change should not be made.  It will save trivial numbers of votes, it is tokenism designed to create an appearance of appealling to people who like voting below the line, and it makes manual rulings on formality more difficult, as well as probably requiring unnecessary reprogramming.

What we really need to know is why this embarrassingly token change to BTL, and only that change, was included.  A Twitter exchange started by Peter Brent (who, let's remember, was let go from paid blogging by the Oz so they could continue to pay for all that other stuff) finds Matthias Cormann claiming the model was needed to get Senate support given that Labor were divided.  However the Coalition needs only the vote of the Greens to pass the Bill, and Richard di Natale says the Greens were open to broader BTL reform.

Given that Cormann denies blaming the Greens and states that consultations included those with Gary Gray, one possible explanation is that the lack of broader BTL reform was an attempt to convince the ALP to support the Bill so it would have cross-party support, a noble aim.  However with Labor unreasonably opposed to reform anyway, if that is the case then the Coalition and the Greens now have the option to pass more meaningful BTL reform.  So why don't they take it?

Addendum 3 (Wednesday): Bill Amended

On-the-night counting of primary votes has been restored.  There is also discussion about BTL reform.

Senate Reform: It's Too Easy Being Breen

A quick one by my standards as I am away on fieldwork.   It's sad to report that the so-called "analysis" of Peter Breen and Graham Askey on the subject of the new proposal for Senate Reform has been picked up by The Age.  As many commenters on the Tally Room thread have noticed, the Breen/Askey forecast of a Coalition-dominated Senate is utter rubbish.  Breen is a serial errormaker with an obvious conflict of interest and absolutely should not be reported as if he was an expert in such analysis.  He has received a ludicrously cushy ride in this instance, and it's high time the media gullibility in lapping up this scaremongering guff up because it's an easy story came to a shuddering halt.

The so-called analysis (no copy of which I have yet been able to find) projects that in a double dissolution the Coalition would win seven seats in each of Queensland, NSW and WA, and that in each of these seats Labor would win four and the Greens one.

Poll Roundup: Return Of The February Wobbles

2PP Aggregate: 53.0 to Coalition (-0.3 this week, lowest since early November)
Coalition would comfortably win election "held now", but could lose some seats

Last week, the Coalition government under Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was forced to reshuffle its ministry.  This became necessary following the loss of Human Services minister Stuart Robert to concerns regarding an "unofficial" trip to China, the delayed resignation from the ministry of Mal Brough (under police investigation) and the announced retirements at the next election of Warren Truss and Andrew Robb.  While hardly the worst week a sitting government has endured, it's not something they'd want to repeat. The loss of three ministers to scandals since Mr Turnbull took over hardly helps create an image of post-coup stability, let alone the mirage of "good government".  Admittedly, none of them were major figures.  A second problem for the government has been a perception of planlessness in the conversation it started about tax reform.

The four polls in the last week have all suggested the government has come down a little from the cloud that it started the year on.  This week's Ipsos has only 52:48 to the Coalition, down from 56:44 in November.  ReachTEL has 54:46, down from 55:45 a few weeks ago; Morgan is down from 54 to 52.5 by last-election preferences, and Essential is stable at 51 but off marginally worse primaries.

Can Required Multiple Preferencing Solve The Senate Reform Mess?

Senate reform has been a major focus of this site since the farcical outcomes of the 2013 Senate election.  The massive gaming of the Senate system by preference-harvesting micro-parties resulted in candidates being elected from very low primary votes, in a candidate being elected because of confusion about party names, in one state's election having to be cancelled and rerun because of the loss of a relatively small number of votes, and countless other absurd things.  Nearly two and a half years after that election, and almost two years after the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters delivered a unanimous report in favour of an alternative, we were, until very recently, still to see any serious commitment to fixing the disaster from either major party.

The JSCEM proposal was to scrap group ticket voting and instead allow voters to distribute their own preferences above or below the line, although if they did so below the line a minimum of six numbers would be required.  Voters could continue to just vote 1 above the line, but if they did so then once all candidates from their chosen party were elected or excluded, their vote would exhaust from the count.  This is very similar to the system used in the NSW Upper House.

The JSCEM proposal has come under a number of attacks, claiming it would unfairly exclude minor parties (wrong), that it would advantage the Coalition (wrong and wrong again), that it would permanently stop "progressive" control of the Senate (wrong), that the existing system is sound (wrong and wrong) and so on.  Beyond the reality that there is no perfect solution, none of the attacks have had any merit at all, but there is still a lot of wariness of the JSCEM proposal, especially in Labor ranks.

Poll Roundup: Shorten's Latest Shocker - Or Was It?

2PP Aggregate: 53.8 to Coalition (updated to 53.4 on 1 February)
Coalition would win election "held now", probably with increased majority.
(Newspoll update added at bottom 1 February)

Pollsters are gradually emerging from their summer hibernation and over the next few weeks we will get a clearer picture of how the Turnbull Coalition government is placed as it kicks off the election year.  I am not sure exactly when Newspoll will emerge but enough data have come out in the last few weeks to make some quick comments about the overall state of play.  The 2PP estimate above will be updated and any further comments added tomorrow night following Essential, but it never alters the picture all that much.

So far this year we've had two Morgans, one Essential and one ReachTEL.  Morgan and Essential were the most strangely behaving polls late last year, with Morgan showing a massive swing to the Coalition immediately following the replacement of Tony Abbott with Malcolm Turnbull, but Essential showing a much more modest change that other posters soon stopped replicating.  Anyway the first Morgan was 55.5% two-party preferred to the Coalition by last-election preferences while the second was 54% (the closest since just after Turnbull was installed - and this off primaries that would normally have been good for only 53%).  Last week's Essential reading was just 51% to Coalition.  The Morgan had a 15% primary for the Greens, which I'm certainly not taking seriously.

Lapoinya Scrapes The Barrel Of Tasmania's Forests Conflict

Tasmania has seen some big environmental contests down the years.  Lake Pedder, the Franklin dam, Farmhouse Creek, Wesley Vale, the Bell Bay pulp mirage, Ralphs Bay.  The latest flashpoint, Lapoinya, isn't one of them.  To many veterans on either side it must be astonishing that we now have a barney over the logging of forty-nine hectares of regrowth - that anyone would bother protesting it, let alone getting arrested over it, or on the other hand that anyone would bother with the logging or arresting.  To put it into perspective, bushfires in Tasmania have burnt almost 900 Lapoinya-coupes worth of native vegetation in the past fortnight alone.

The Lapoinya argument seems like nothing more than a vintage example of Sayre's Law (the contest is so bitter precisely because the stakes are so small).  Behind what has become a comically petty contest in the context of the battles of the past, however, are some players with a bigger game to play.  But before I get onto specifics of Lapoinya (then all that), I'd like to look at how we got here.