Australian Federal Election 18th of May 2019

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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.

[cp]

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.

[Oryxslayer]

Remember this is Ben Kenobi, 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.

Don't waste your time typing trying to convince posters, on any side, who are already locked into a opinion and refuse to change.

[Wazza [INACTIVE]]

S C O M O M E N T U M

[Smid]

Have they counted second choices or just first.  I would think most Greens would have Labor as second so that should close the gap a bit but probably not enough to win.  At this point either L/NP majority or hung parliament, Labor majority seems next to impossible even if votes counted break their way.  So strong likelihood Morrison stays on as PM.

Yeah all the projections take into account the 2 party preferred

  :Have they actually counted second preferences or just projecting based on polls?  Agree Labor realistically has no path to victory, but just curious as polls might be closer once counted if they haven't already.

I've scrutineered almost every state and federal election where I've lived in the past twenty years (plus a few council ones, plus a few by-elections, plus a couple of interstate elections where I've travelled, minus a couple that I didn't do because I was required elsewhere), so I can probably provide some insight into this question.

First they empty the ballot boxes on the table and just unfold the ballot papers and sort of even them up in bundles (not bundles based on votes or anything, merely bundles of unfolded papers).

Then they put out the names of the candidates on folded sheets of paper (folded to stand upright, like a triangle), and they sort them into primary votes for each candidate, checking for formality/informality. Then they count those primary votes and report the results back to the Electoral Commission. The scrutineers call or text those results also back to party CHQ.

Then they take the votes of the minor candidates (or maybe a major candidate in there - the Commission decides in advance which two candidates they think will be the top two after the allocation of preferences, and this can change during the recount, but tonight's count is only a preliminary count). They allocate these votes to the two chosen candidates and provide a count "Greens to Labor - 220 votes", "Greens to Liberal - 90 votes", etc. This gives a TCP figure that gets phoned back to the Electoral Commission and the scrutineers also phone or text back the results to their CHQ.

Before calling in the primary votes, they probably do a tally to ensure that the number of votes counted matches the number of votes issued - if not, they might look in the bins or accidentally put in the Senate box, but if it's just one or two missing, everyone probably agrees that it's close enough.

When you see the election night coverage, when Antony Green gives 2CP figures, that's based on preference flows at the booths that have reported 2CP figures, not based on polling. If you look at the results page on the AEC website, you can see what time each booth in an electorate reported its primary vote and 2CP vote: https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionPage-24310-302.htm (scroll down). A couple are about a minute apart - I suspect in those booths they completed both the primary and 2CP counts and then phoned both results in simultaneously (or maybe they do it by laptop, I don't know, I'm normally on the phone back to CHQ while the Commission staff are doing that thing).

[Wisconsin+17]

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

I would argue there is, but the error on the part of Australia in particular seems to come from the underestimation of One Nation support. Now, this could be explained in other ways too. It's too early to show for sure. Both explanations given here could also be partially correct. We shall see.

[Wisconsin+17]

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. I called PA for Hillary and VA for Trump. 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.

VA was a miss as was PA because the opening precincts were stacked so heavily for Hillary in PA, and in VA for Trump.

[Smid]

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.

I think the bigger problem in the polling was in the primary vote. Antony Green mentioned a few times that the primary vote difference between the Coalition and Labor was about 8 percentage points, rather than the two or three that had been referenced in the polls.

Generally speaking, preference flows from minor parties tends to be relatively consistent from election to election. I have that data lying around somewhere; if you're interested, I'll try to dig it up. In other words, despite a proportion not following the HTV cards, they're fairly similar each election and can therefore be modelled accordingly (Greens is about 70% - 80% to Labor, minor conservative parties tend to be about 60% to the Coalition, etc) - these are just rules of thumb, but tend to serve well when scrutineering or looking at primary-only vote counts.

[cp]

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.

[Senator Incitatus]

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.

Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves from what I can see.

[Deep Dixieland Senator, Muad'dib (OSR MSR)]

Bill Shorten is the Australian Labor Party's John Hewson

[JonHawk]

Looks like the polls were wrong. Great to see Australia stay blue!

[rob in cal]

  Any indication of how 2nd preferences of One Nation and United Australia voters went. I'm wondering if they went stronger than expected to L/NP as part of an unexpectedly good night for L/NP.

[Matty]

Australia has mandatory voting and 90% turnout

How the hell can polls be off under that scenario?

Lol

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Yeah, I think this comes to Shorten himself (who was always a lousy choice, given that he sort of epitomises the factional hackishness that people have grown to loathe in the ALP), with the coal/Adani issue hanging like the sword of Damocles over those Queensland seats.

1. The ALP should have learned long ago that 'cultural' politics is a net vote and seat loser for them. The nature of the Australian culture war is such that they can't disengage totally, but they should avoid allowing it to dominate. This isn't a matter of 'Left' or 'Right', of course (not that any Australians here will need that note, but people from elsewhere might).

Perhaps they learnt the wrong lesson from the last Victorian election where the Liberals led a very culturally focused campaign (Safe Schools, black African gangs etc) and utterly flopped when compared with Dan Andrews' obsessive focus on infrastructure and development (apparently removing railway crossings is the electoral equivalent of crack in Victoria).

[Pouring Rain and Blairing Music]

Bill Shorten is the Australian Labor Party's John Hewson

I was thinking Adlai Stevenson II myself.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Perhaps they learnt the wrong lesson from the last Victorian election where the Liberals led a very culturally focused campaign (Safe Schools, black African gangs etc) and utterly flopped when compared with Dan Andrews' obsessive focus on infrastructure and development (apparently removing railway crossings is the electoral equivalent of crack in Victoria).

Yes, I think so. They let that, actually very singular, win go to their heads.

[Wisconsin+17]

I'm not sure why they would have thought what works in Victoria would work in the rest of Australia...

[Oryxslayer]

Australia has mandatory voting and 90% turnout

How the hell can polls be off under that scenario?

Lol

If anything, polls are more likely to be off, since you have a large segment (varrying sizes) of voters in most countries who just don't want to participate. If forced, they might vote for some wacko, or whoever is at the top of the list, or any other weird scenario.

[Theodore]

Long live the Liberals.
Long live ScoMo.
Long live the Coalition.

[jaichind]

Looks like the polls were wrong. Great to see Australia stay blue!

[jaichind]

Any initial projections of what the TPP vote looks like?

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Why Queensland is rather conservative compared to other states ?

Queensland is very distinctive in Australia because its regional and market towns are far more important in the state's identity than the norm. NSW, SA, Victoria and WA have large (I would say iconic, but nobody thinks that about Adelaide) capitals containing the bulk of the state's population; and though towns like Geelong and Newcastle are not unimportant, they have far less distinctive roles and identities than Cairns, Townsville, Rockhampton and Mackay, port towns that act as the economic nexus points for the state's export based economies. The state's capital of Brisbane, meanwhile, was a very humdrum place historically, considered little more than an oversized regional town that happened to host the government.

This is related to the beleaguered economic history of the state. While NSW and Victoria industrialized fairly quickly before federation, fostering a native class of capitalists, Queensland remained a primary industry focused area, reliant on foreign capital for investment and a corporatist governing style. This different style of an economy often led to clashes with the southern states. Queensland were one of the bigger sceptics of Federation (which was largely an elite-driven obsession) and the state where the labour movement enjoyed more early success than any other. Indeed, a lot of ALP historians mark a key impetus for the formation of the party as the strike by sheepshearers in 1891 and the state party enjoined a consistent and uninterrupted government from 1915 to 1958 (Queensland Labour formed the first ever socialist government anywhere in the world). It was a lot more populist and appealing to smallholders than its southern counterparts, but it was still recognisably socialist. Indeed, Queensland's fragmented and backward economy led the state to become a hotbed for IWW activism and radicalism, even electing Australia's only ever Communist MP in the 40's. Billy Hughes even worried about North Queensland revolting, and was pelted with eggs when he visited.

The state's reputation as conservative erupted upon the split and subsequent fall of the aforementioned Labor government, allowing the Country/Liberal coalition to emerge and the eventual rise of Joh Bjelke Peterson, possibly the most controversial Premier in Australian history. The first Premier to really exploit the state's differences with the crowd in Sydney and Melbourne (and the Whitlam government) in a conservative manner, he routed the Labor Party in its rural heartand in 1974. He also led the growth and development agenda - overseeing a massive property boom in the Gold Coast, fostered by both a staggering amount of corruption and hostility towards all potential sources of delay (including labour agitation and environmental laws - JBP's attitude towards the latter can be summed up by him once musing about the economic advantages of blowing up the Great Barrier Reef).

The JBP government fell in the 90's following his aborted attempt to become PM and the steady realisation that the brazen corruption isn't really a great thing in the increasingly modernised economy, but  his shadow isn't really gone. Queensland isn't a conservative bastion the way some describe it - it isn't Bavaria or whatever. In fact, the Queensland Labor Party has been pretty successful in the post-Joh era, winning every election bar their nadir in 2012. However a new factor has become more prominent in recent years: that of decline. With the exception of Brisbane and its surrounding areas in the SE (including the Gold and Sunshine Coasts), all the aforementioned regional centres are losing their economic engines and identities; and the collapse of the old gerrymandered system means that they don't receive disproportionate funding. Queensland was the launchpad of Pauline Hanson, the controversial MP for Oxley (a Greater Brisbane district centred around the mining town of Ipswich), who relied heavily on the economic depression as part of her anti-Asian narrative, and tends to get very good results in peripheral (not necessarily rural) areas that feel most under threat. But there are also a lot populists of a more centrist or "mere" anti-elitist bent: the likes of Katter, based in rural Kennedy, or Palmer, in the Sunshine Coast.

in conclusion Queensand is a land of contrasts

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Your description of Queensland there Crabcake reminds me a bit (in some, not all, aspects) of Western Canada.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

If polls are wrong, it is in no small part thanks to changes in electoral sociology, living arrangements, methods of communication and media consumption habits which make it much harder to pollsters to get it right by using their traditional models.

We live more individually and less collectively than we used to. Opinion polling is based to a huge extent on the assumption that voter behaviour is driven primarily by the latter...

I don't think that quite works as an explanation as the most collective, 'rooted', etc section of the community in all cases afaik where the polls have failed are the older sections of society. And it's been their very solid vote for the Right, often underestimated by the polls, which is why the polls flopped here, in the US, in the UK... If it was great individualism that was the issue than you expect the younger vote to be underestimated, but that doesn't seem to be the case.