Australian Federal Election 18th of May 2019

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Any locals wanna update on this? We're less that two weeks from E-day and it's hard to discern what's been cutting through among those of us in non-Oz.

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What are the best sites to follow for live updates? I'm on the Guardian right now, but I can't make heads or tails of the exit polling data.

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Looks like an L/NP majority.

Seems like L/NP has made more net gains than ALP so far???

Only 21% of the votes have been counted.

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Good job on not responding to the climate change part.

What about it? Apparently only white people cause climate change.

Can you two children please take your bickering to the intl discussion forum or else stick to the election returns?

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Can you two children please take your bickering to the intl discussion forum or else stick to the election returns?

Finally! Thank you!

That includes you. Taking a troll's bait is as bad as trolling. Stop it.

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Can you two children please take your bickering to the intl discussion forum or else stick to the election returns?

Finally! Thank you!

That includes you. Taking a troll's bait is as bad as trolling. Stop it.

So being concerned about a plantary-level catastrophe is trolling.

Gotcha.

It is on the elections thread. You want to debate, go to the discussion thread.

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As you've noted, there's a few elections that were the other way. Canada's election in 2015 was one, strangely. Polls showed a conservative minority but that's not what we saw. Something like 10-15 percent for a Liberal victory. Pretty much every 'tossup' broke their way, which is very unusual, I've never seen that before or since.

You're wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2015_Canadian_federal_election

Indeed, I was going to say ...

Imagining a 'systematic' left bias is pretty naive (though there's an argument the Canadian libs aren't really left). A better quasi-conspiracy theory would focus on the Murdoch-owned press in Aus/UK/US unfairly facilitating right wing governments and their message framing ... But that's a matter for the discussion thread.

More relevantly, when are the Senate results going to be released?

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Adma, there was a late break in the polling. Ekos as late as October 10th, showed a conservative majority government. I've never seen a ten point break in a little more than a week, all of it going one way.

Still not sure what to think about it.

By Oct 10 that EKOS poll was a clear outlier. The shift happened two weeks earlier following the conclusion of the debates, which are a pretty clear demarcation point for voting intentions. Also, 10-point swings inside a week have happened in UK 2017, Alberta 2015, BC 2013, Spain 2004, and many others besides.

Imagining a 'systematic' left bias is pretty naïve

What else would you call it? Just looking at the polling aggregates, every poll since about 2014 has said Labor victory. The only two exceptions are both elections. That's not one poll but about 50.

At that point we can estimate a (at least in the Australian context, of about a 1-2 percent systematic error in favor of Labor lean.

Given a sample without systematic bias, we'd expect 25 +/- 8, so there would be no more than 37 polls. The chance of all 50 being Labor without systematic bias is, what, 3.5 standard deviations there about? A tenth of a percent or so.

Like I said, the impact of the media is just as likely an explanation for the underperformance of Labor on election day (we are within the margin of error; swing voters, swayed by a compliant press, could easily account for the difference).

Regardless, your argument implied a global systematic bias against right wing parties. Miles rightly pointed out that doesn't hold water.

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Whatever helps you sleep at night, sweet pea

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Blaming Murdoch would be, as I said, quasi-conspiracy theory nonsense ... Just like blaming global systematic polling bias would be.

Stick to the facts. Get back to the polls.

When are the Senate results coming out?

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Besides if biases you would expect pollsters on both sides not always one.

Then why were polls for the last five years, 50/50 for Labor with the only exceptions being both elections? Sheesh if a blind American can see it, surely Australians can.

For the same reason the polls were off for BC 2013, UK 2017, US 2016, and so on.

Which is to say, there was no one 'reason'. A multitude of factors, some local and contingent, some more structural, effected these results.

A damned good inquiry ought to be made, not least by the Labor Party, as to what went on today. Until then, however, everything is blind conjecture.

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If you think that it is a simple case of pollsters always over/underpolling one side, deliberately or not, then it is because you have no idea of how polling actually works (in part because it is hardly in the pollsters own interests to always get it wrong - their own financial viability relies on actually being vaguely credible).

It's not just one poll. It's *every* poll for the last five years. There's a difference. Systematic bias on the part of pollsters is the best explanation given the amount of error and the consistent error of +1, +2 for Labor.

One problem Australia has and maybe this is the reason is for preferential votes, you can rank them yourselves or go by party rankings.  UAP put L/NP ahead of Labor in rankings and it seems biggest errors were areas they were strongest so that is perhaps one possible explanation whereas pollsters go on the assumption every voter will rank individually never mind parties only publish their rankings close to e-day so would only work in final polls if you ask people will you use party or individual ranking, not further out.

Now *that's* a sensible hypothesis.

There's a narrative that helpfully feeds into that idea: a populist surge reinforcing weakening conservative coalitions while liberal/progressive parties struggle to (re)assemble durable voter blocs behind them.

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My hypothesis is that the bias against One Nation is the source of the error. The polling error is equivalent to their improvement in the polls.

... That was not your hypothesis.

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That was not your hypothesis.

That's an explanation as to how and where the systematic error arose.

Indeed it is. It is not, however, a hypothesis that there is a global underestimation of right wing parties (because ... reasons?), which was your original contention.

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the poster who called Alabama Senate for Roy Moore at 50% reporting, despite the clear counting bias and the NYT needle being against him. The justification? A incredibly weak model that assumes there never is counting bias ever and all precincts are reasonablly similar.

I'm not sure how it's an incredibly weak model when I beat out 538 on Trump calls. Missed two. 48-2 for calls on the night. It sometimes misses on incredibly close elections, like Roy Moore's.

The benefit is that I don't rely on exits or precincts at all. It works because of math, not because of election data.


In Moore's case, he was up by 5 percent with 50 percent in. The only time that's been a loser is... Moore.

Think you need to log off, kid. Come back later (or not) when you've cooled down. Right now you're wrecking this thread for everyone.