One Day, Three Polls

Please polling gods, let it not be like this for the next 6 weeks. After one day of the election campaign we have three polls. If this keeps up, we’ll have 126 of the buggers during the campaign – more than even the most avid pollyjunkie could bear.

The first was Sundays Sun Herald/Taverner poll of 979 people in Sydney and Melbourne showing an ALP lead of 59/41 on two party preferred. The poll subsequently broke this vote down into smaller samples based on age groupings, which suggested that the ALP is ahead 73/27 in the 18-29 age bracket, ahead 60/40 in the 30-54 bracket and behind 49/51 in the 55+ group.

The problem with the small samples used in the breakdown is that the margin of error blows out, but if we take them at face value and use them to calculate the potential swing by age bracket in each seat using the 2006 census data, we end up with the following seats falling in Sydney and Melbourne.

Unfortunately, the media reports were all rather confusing, with The Age telling us that it was 60/40 in the 55+ group and the Herald Sun telling us that it was actually the 30-54s doing the 60/40 split.

Next up was Newspoll. Not wanting to be left out of the starting gun madness, Newspoll Tuesday became Newspoll Monday (or rather Newspoll Sunday Night to those in touch with our inner tragic). The big news was no news at all, with the primaries the same as last poll at 48/39 to the ALP, and the TPP was likewise unmoved at 56/44. You can do the whole deja vu thing yourself here.

Next up was Galaxy in the Courier Mail with an 800 sample poll of four marginal Qld seats; Bonner, Moreton, Longman and Herbert.

The primary vote estimates were ALP 45 and Coalition 44. Yet, in a quite remarkable feat of preference distribution, the TPP figure became 51/49 to the ALP. It’s particularly remarkable when you consider that the Greens are getting 7% primary and Independents and others are on 4%.

Also keep in mind here that Rudd has a preferred PM estimate of 54 to Howard’s 38 in the same poll and Howard’s satisfaction is 47% while Rudd has his up at 71%.

Yet from this, Galaxy manages to get a 55/45 preference flow to the ALP?

It’s either courageous or nonsense. Those preference flows smell to high heavens.

The poll also asks about the dreaded soft vote, that boogieman of choice for poll pundits everywhere. Sol Lebovic (the human Geiger counter of the Labor soft vote as one witty commentator put it) would be pleased.

Galaxy found that 74% of the Coalition vote was “locked in” compared to 81% of the ALP vote, and that 24% of Coalition voters “may change” compared to 18% of ALP voters. This is consistent with earlier Newspolls that suggested the Coalition vote is slightly softer than the ALP vote. Comparing the two soft vote polls also suggests that the whole vote is slowly hardening up as would be expected at this stage of the cycle.

After one day of the campaign we have three polls already; it’s going to be a long 6 weeks.