The final list of candidates was released on Friday. A record number of candidates are running in both houses of Parliament – in line with the record number of parties registering at the election.
A total of 1188 candidates are running for the House of Representatives, and 529 are running in the Senate.
Three parties nominated candidates in all 150 seats: the ALP, the Greens and the Palmer United Party. The four Coalition parties collectively nominated 160 candidates, which amounts to ten seats where the Liberal and National parties are competing.
The next biggest party is Family First, who are running 93 candidates. Rise Up Australia are running 77, and Katter’s Australian Party are running 63. The Christian Democratic Party are running in all 48 NSW seats, and their allies the Australian Christians are running in 31 more, bringing them to a total of 79.
Other parties running more than thirty are the Sex Party (36) and the Democratic Labour Party (33).
Antony Green has blogged about the changes in number of candidates since 2010.
I have also updated my spreadsheet, reflecting the list provided by the AEC as well as gender data that I have gathered. Please let me know if you see any errors. You can download the spreadsheet here.
The other news over the weekend was the release of the Group Voting Tickets in the Senate. These releases are always dominated by what parties have made decisions that clash with their political agenda, due to political wheeling and dealing.
Over Sunday the biggest story was the decisions of Wikileaks to put conservative parties ahead of the Greens in the Senate. Wikileaks have claimed an administrative error was responsible for putting the Greens behind Australia First and the Shooters and Fishers in NSW, but have defended a decision putting Greens Senator Scott Ludlam, an outspoken supporter of Wikileaks in the Senate, behind his main rival from the Nationals in Western Australia.
There are a whole bunch of other examples of these sorts of decisions by many parties. The most interesting other result was the failure of a series of right-wing parties to lodge a group voting ticket in Victoria, which will result in those candidates only being able to receive below-the-line votes.
Poll Bludger has gone further in outlining how parties are directing their preferences.
With pre-polling starting soon, the lower house preferences will be out soon. These will be interesting.
The Outdoor Recreation Party (Stop the Greens) and the LDP have the same registered officer in one of the most blatant examples of being a front group in recent memory.
Little wonder they couldn’t get their paperwork in order. It was likely the same person having to do all of it.
So even a number of the parties can’t handle preference allocations on a ballot paper with 110 candidates. If that’s not an argument for optional preferential voting in the Senate, I don’t know what is.
Makes me just a little glad that the Qld senate ballot has only 82 candidates, not 110. Still an absurdly large number, but a little more tolerable. I’m the kind of voter who votes below-the-line every time, because I want to assign my own preferences.
There has apparently been some sort of “dirty deal” done by a bloc of minor and micro-parties in the senate, surprisingly including the Sex Party and Wikileaks along with One Nation, “Stop the Greens”, and a number of other parties. And rumour has it that both “Stop the Greens” and “Smokers’ Rights” parties are actually One Nation fronts, although that sounds somewhat conspiracy theory-ish to me.
Meanwhile, here’s a couple of particularly fascinating deals that appear to have been done in Queensland:
Labor and the KAP have effectively exchanged preferences in Queensland (KAP didn’t put Labor second after themselves, but they are ahead of Liberals and Greens, while Labor put KAP second). That one we knew of. But the more interesting one is this: PUP and Greens appear to have done a deal – PUP has put Greens above everyone except Family First, while Greens put PUP right after Labor.
Also likely to be a notable deal is between the Greg Rudd (Kevin’s brother) independent ticket and the KAP, which put each other very high on their respective tickets; meanwhile, Greg put Labor below LNP, curiously. Another oddity is that they put the Greens very high (ahead of the KAP), despite having criticised the Greens pretty heavily recently; the Greens didn’t return the favour, putting the Rudd ticket well down, behind the PUP.
Georgatos hasn’t just burnt his bridges with the Greens, he’s dynamited them. If it’s Wikileaks preferences that flip WA from a 3-3 to a 4-2 result (the boundary between the two is the only scenario where Ludlam is competing with right-wing parties, instead of Labor #2 or #3), he will never be forgiven. Wirrpanda could make a fine MP, but he’ll still be taking orders from Abbott and Joyce – he’ll just be another number on the coalition side, raising the chance of far-right psychos like the Shooters or CDP getting a piece of the balance of power.
“Stop the Greens” is the Outdoor Recreation Party; together with Smokers’ Rights, it is clearly a Liberal Democrats front. This happened at the last election where they ran a bunch of independent feeder tickets. If you look on the AEC website, the Liberal Democrats and the ORP even have the same registered officer, while the Smokers’ Rights website identifies Clinton Mead, LDP Campbelltown councillor and Victorian senate candidate (?), as its convenor. They have identical preference tickets.
LDP have drawn some flak – well deserved – for putting ON ahead of the majors, only to see ON renege on a written preference agreement and put them last. Oh, and overlooking to lodge their preference tickets in Vic!
Something salutary about supping with the devil and a long spoon comes to mind.
Smokers Rights and Stop The Greens are associated with the LDP. It’s disputed how close the LDP is to One Nation, but those two microparties are basically fronts for the LDP.
I believe that one of the Victorian Senate candidates for Smokers Rights is an LDP councillor in Campbelltown NSW.
I’m trying to figure out what deals the Coalition have made, they appear low on nearly everyone’s HTV
“There is a whiff of 1975 in what is going on with polling at the moment”. Kevin Bonham – Pollbludger.
Mead is the LDP Senate candidate in Tasmania.
There seems to be a few different sets of micro-party deals. There are several others that have put the LDP and their sister parties well down, but appear to be swapping preferences amongst each other. Tim Ferguson (Senator Online) features quite high on many preference tickets in NSW. A certain woman who recently moved from Ipswich to the Sunshine Coast features highly on many Queensland Senate tickets. However I’ve not analysed this closely enough to tell if these are the intended beneficiaries of these multi-state deals in NSW and Qld.
Latest Essential just out has ALP primary at 40 and the parties at 50/50, http://essentialvision.com.au/federal-politics-voting-intention-6
Morgan multi has ALP 49% & LNP 51% with state breakdowns (Qld down by -3%), http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/51115-morgan-poll-august-19-2013-201308181432
and Lonergan does it first national with ALP 48% to LNP 52%
Not as bad as Newspoll which of course gets the headlines being first of the week. Though it is still the LNPs to lose these will give some ALPers heart.
WB has also published an ave of post Rudd ALP polling on PB;
William Bowe Posted Monday, August 19, 2013 at 3:09 pm | PERMALINK
“Average published Labor two-party preferred by pollster since Rudd’s return:
Morgan 50.5%
Nielsen 49%
Galaxy 49%
Essential 48.9%
Newspoll 48.2%
ReachTEL 48%”
Some weird polls this week:
Newspoll says 54/46.
ER says 50/50.
Lonergan (one of those robopollsters), Galaxy and Morgan says 52/48
Robopollsters painting a very grim picture for the ALP, whereas the more mainstream pollsters are more generous to the ALP. I wonder which is more legit. Gonna say the nation-wide pollsters, but this election could be a case where the ALP do poorly in the marginals but very well in safe seats.
Take a look at the entry of a debate on that on the Guardian election daily, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/18/election-2013-poll-shows-labor-s-chances-slipping-away-politics-live-blog
5.03pm AEST Pollster to pollster – to you
“Peter Lewis from Essential and the Liberal Party’s pollster Mark Textor are having a yack on social media this afternoon about the merits (or otherwise) of robo polls – we’ve seen a lot of them this election campaign.
@markatextor Sorry … what’s your attitude to the spate of robo-calls and their definitive use by media outlets?
— Peter Lewis (@PeterLewisEMC) August 19, 2013
Peter is evidently not a fan. Textor’s more relaxed, with the caveats he mentions. Fine, if you don’t mind donuts.
.@PeterLewisEMC robes offer a fair topline hit but like sugar donuts offer little analytical meat & 2 many clogs insight’s arteries w/ shite
— Mark Textor (@markatextor) August 19, 2013”
This is the Tim Ferguson from DAAS / Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush / etc. He ran as an independent against Andrew Peacock in Kooyong, way back in 1990. He’s one of the less scary micro-party candidates… SOL are more of a nano-party, but I wouldn’t mind if he got in.
morgieb,
I think you need a keep in mind a clearer distinction between seat polling and national polling. The robopolls for the latter are in line with what you call mainstream pollsters. The two robopolls in that mix are ReachTEL (47%) and Lonergan (48%). Galaxy, a phone poll, and Morgan’s multi-mode poll agree with Lonergan. Newspoll, a phone poll, is one further out than ReachTEL, creating with five polls a range of three percentage points. Morgan’s phone poll, I say again, phone poll, was at 43% on stated preference (with something like 41% or 42% on traditional TPP). Essential, an internet poll drawn from a closed set of people, just moved for the first time since 21 July (two weeks before the election was called), going from 49% to 50%. So none of the outliers is a robopoll, and the non-outliers are clumped together pretty nicely.
Since we don’t have phone polling for individual seats, it is impossible to really say robopolls, as opposed to polls generally, are showing a bleak picture for Labor. As I said somewhere or other on this blog, I’d really like to see Newspoll in the field with a marginal poll (instead of Lyne and New England) so we have a basis of comparison.
As for Labor performing worse in the marginals, there is a good chance that is the case given that DB has been talking about it for months. I don’t know if Rudd’s return initially had any effect there, but if it did, it would make sense that as Labor’s polling drifts back down nationally to where it was six months ago that some of the same dynamics would re-emerge.
Didn’t know about ReachTEL.
I did point out about that Labor could be underperforming in the marginals. I guess we will have to wait and see on election night 😉
From the Guardian about the Lonergan poll, “The Guardian Lonergan poll, taken over the weekend, shows the Coalition on 44% of the primary vote, ahead of Labor on 35%, well under the 38% of the primary vote it achieved in 2010……
But Lonergan calculates the Coalition ahead 52% to 48% on two-party preferred terms – similar to the position it has been in for most of the campaign – largely because of preference flows from a 12% Greens vote…..
It found Labor’s primary vote in Queensland was 34% compared with the Coalition’s 50%. In NSW, Labor’s primary vote trailed 33% to 47% and in Victoria 32% to 44%.”
If you assume the following percentages in voter per state (Qld 20%), (NSW 32%), (Vic 25%)
If that is the case then the total Coalition Primary Vote in Tas, SA, WA, ACT & NT is approximately 35% combined. Something is not right with these numbers.
I guess the sample size for the state breakdowns was fairly small…..always possible to get screwy figures on small sample state-by-state breakdowns.
….or maybe you could start a Right-Wing version of the Newspoll conspiracy theories and claim the evil left-wing Guardian is faking the figures!
Polls taken at a national level are not going to be very helpful when you get down to the small states
The weighted average of Coalition PV support in this poll for Vic, Qld and NSW is nearly 47% and Lonergan get a national Coalition PV of 44%. Oh well, just goes to show how difficult it must be to poll public opinion.
Oops….. I forgot to put my tin hat on.
Just had a reread of an old Nate Silver article on robo polling after someone mentioning it in PB reminded me that I had read previously read it, http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/28/robopolls-significantly-more-favorable-to-republicans-than-traditional-surveys/?_r=0
Obviously, it is written in a completely different context but it is an interesting read.
Back on the subject of preference negotiations, this enlightening post has appeared today on the Stop CSG Party’s Facebook page in response to questions about why they preferenced Australia First, Protectionists and Family First ahead of Greens:
Stop CSG Party Preferences have been very difficult to negotiate this election, with the high number of minor parties. We are a member of the Minor Parties Alliance, and bound by their regulations. We preferenced members of that alliance first, and where possible, of course preferenced parties based on their stance toward Unconventional (including Coal Seam Gas) mining.
Our preference negotiations were, of course, based on getting elected. Some Major parties gave us very favourable preferences in exchange for some lower on the table, and have used these numbers in a negative preference based campaign against us. As we all know, Major parties are vulnerable to making ‘deals’ on issues and legislation as a trade-off to various broad reaching public policy. For us, any decisions regarding unconventional mining will never be watered down under pressure from lobbyists.
All of our dealings with other parties have been based on preferencing those higher that had an anti-CSG stance, followed by political transparency and ethics.
Some early preference deals are made to bolster the probability of your party surviving to later deals. Sometimes votes are harvested deliberately to deny others the opportunity to progress in the Count. Sometimes this means making hard decisions that “look bad” but are made for good and strategic reasons.
Final Election results can take HUNDREDS of rounds of Counting!
Paula Sinclair, Party Vice President and Campaign Manager 2013.
Got robopolled by Lonergan today. About half a dozen questions about CSG, plus voting intention.
So, just had a look at Essential’s polling results, as provided by Poll Bludger. Interestingly, they asked about firmness of voting intention, and I think the information agrees with my supposition.
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/files/2013/08/Essential-Report_130819.pdf
56% of Lib/Nat voters are 100% certain of their vote choice, compared with 45% of Labor voters and 27% of Greens voters (and even fewer for minors/independents). On the flipside, only 11% of Lib/Nat voters think it is a reasonable possibility that they would shift their support, compared with 16% of ALP voters and 24% of Greens voters (and 44% of those planning to vote for minors/independents).
I would suggest that this backs up my suspicion that those leaning towards Liberals are firming in their support more quickly than those for other candidates, thus skewing the results. It would also explain why Labor appears to be gaining back some of their lost support after having suddenly lost it, without requiring any sort of massive set of outliers or any sort of conspiracy; as the campaign continues on, Labor voters are starting to firm up – hence why Labor comes out well ahead of Greens and others in terms of firmness of support. I just wish I could view last week’s numbers on this (as it’s implied that they routinely ask), to gauge changes in firmness.
Also interesting from the poll is the major party attribute comparison. Labor is seen by two thirds of respondents as “divided” (less than one third felt that way about the Liberals), and slightly more people see the Liberals as having a vision for the future than Labor. 5% more think that the Liberals keep their promises than Labor (although neither breaks 35% of respondents). And significantly more (7%) think the Liberals are clear about what they stand for than Labor.
On the other hand, Labor is seen as looking after the interests of working people (53% to 36%), has good policies (46% to 38%), and isn’t as out of touch with ordinary people (51% compared with 58%), and 6 in 10 think that the Liberals are too close to big corporate and financial interests (only 31% think that of Labor).
The curious part, to me, is the “good policies” part. 38% of respondents think the Liberals have good policies, but 41% of respondents plan to vote for the Coalition. At least 3% of voters will be voting for the Coalition despite not thinking that they have good policies, and that scares me.
And just for fun – apparently the ABC TV, SBS TV, and ABC Radio are the most trusted sources of campaign coverage, all in the vicinity of 50% trusting a lot. On the other end of the spectrum, the Courier Mail was the least trusted, at just 23%, with the Telegraph and commercial radio at equal 25%. SMH and The Age are more trusted than any of the News Corp newspapers, although the Australian and the Herald Sun are more trusted than commercial TV.
The irregular AMR now out with ALP 38%, LNP 41% & GRNS for a 50-50 2PP on a small sample. http://www.amr-australia.com/asset/cms/AMR_Federal_Election_Poll_19.08.2013.pdf
I really think that Newspoll gets too must publicity being the first with everyone rushing to report a narrative of “plunging polls for the ALP” that subsequent released polling hasn’t exactly endorsed. And the Greens vote still appears to be holding.
Obviously, the trend has been to the LNP in the last 2 weeks and the individual seat polling was all bad for the ALP but perhaps the situation is not as much as Newspoll suggests?
Since Newspoll 46-54 LNP it has been:
Essential 50-50,
Morgan multi 49 – 51 LNP
Lonergan 48 – 52 LNP
AMR 50-50
Which one of these 5 looks like the outer? Looking forwards to PBs analysis later today…..
Glen: They last asked the question two weeks ago Definitely won’t change mind were Labor 40, Coalition 59, Greens 23, Other 18. Very unlikely: L 35, C 25, G 36, O 25. Quite possible: L 18, C 14, G 35, O 49.
Yappo, that seems a little selective as there are more than four recent polls. Fixing the date at Monday (and by the way, Morgan multi and Essential both polled over the same period as Newspoll, not since) is a little odd. If you look at all other polls taken in early July and taken again recently, they have shown movement toward the Coalition.
AMR has movement to the Coalition of a point on TPP since July, but the others tend to show more like two (Morgan is the outlier in the Coalition’s direction at 4.5 points). Oddly, it also shows a drop in the Coalition primary of two points. I struggle to credit that poll.
Essential is the other oddity. When Rudd returned, its TPP was at 48 for Labor and stayed that way for two polls. That was followed by four straight polls at 49, and now this week 50. That is also hard to credit.
The last Newspoll does appear to be high, but no farther off the mark than AMR and Essential.
Taking the polling in the round, something around 48 for Labor is about right, and as it happens has been what the polling aggregators have been showing. Kevin Bonham’s is currently at 52.0 to the Coalition right now, and Poll Bludger is at 52.6. The former includes AMR; I’m not sure about PB.
Early In person voting starts today at 8:30 am.
Yappo,
The Essential had Labor’s primary at 40% when the others have it 34-37%, and the AMR had the Coalition primary at 41% when everyone else has it 44-47%……so it looks clear which ones are the outliers….
MDMC – they’re all outliers in one way or another. More importantly, they’re all within each others’ MoE, so you really can’t call any of them an outlier.
I suspect that a lot of people don’t fully understand how these things work – the poll numbers that come out aren’t raw numbers. Each polling company “works” the numbers, rescaling according to certain assumptions and certain available data (such as proportion of male and female respondents relative to voting population). This is why you get so much variation in the actual results, and why some companies appear to favour one side of politics or the other.
In other news, it looks like KAP are giving Labor their preferences in a few more QLD seats. The Courier Mail (so take it with a little bit of salt) claims that KAP will be preferencing Labor in Forde and Petrie, and is considering doing so in Lilley, Rankin, and Leichhardt. These are in addition to the previously confirmed Herbert, Hinkler, Capricornia, and Flynn.
Yappo
In terms of credibility I’d put them in the following order:
1. Newspoll
2. Nielsen
3. Galaxy
4. Robopolls
5. Essential
6. Morgan face-to-face.
The fact that Newspoll is 54/46 and it correlates with the Robopolls (and to most internal polls) indicates Labor are a long way behind.
I’m looking forward to the next Nielsen as that with confirm or refute the Newspoll trend.
Labor seem to be indicating that their ‘rolling’ polling shows some improvement over the last 4 days. I’m not seeing it. I think it is part of a last ditch effort to save the election, but I suspect the Coalition will unleash next week.
MDM – I find it hard to believe the Coalition primary will be less than the last election. Nearly every poll for the last 2 and half years has started at 44%. Also, major polls tend to understate major party support in primary vote at the expense of the Greens and Others. I don’t think the Greens will get 9%+ and I don’t think the others will be 10%+. Knock one off the Greens and give to Labor and knock two of the Others and give one each to the Coalition and Labor.
If things stay as they are, the Coalition will get a primary vote of around 47%.
Id probably put galaxy and face to face and essential as the top 3. Its easy to say one thing to a phone but face to face you have to be more honest
I think putting Essential below the Robopolls is a bit rough. Essential at least have their 2010 election record to run on, in which they pretty much nailed it. I’d put them above Galaxy.
RichR: “Yappo, that seems a little selective as there are more than four recent polls. Fixing the date at Monday (and by the way, Morgan multi and Essential both polled over the same period as Newspoll, not since) is a little odd. If you look at all other polls taken in early July and taken again recently, they have shown movement toward the Coalition.”
Yappo: “Obviously, the trend has been to the LNP in the last 2 weeks and the individual seat polling was all bad for the ALP ” “I really think that Newspoll gets too must publicity being the first with everyone rushing to report a narrative of “plunging polls for the ALP” that subsequent released polling hasn’t exactly endorsed.”
You may have missed my point or I did not articulate it well enough. My assertion is that Newspoll being the first out usually late Sunday gets all the headlines and it thus able to almost dictate a narrative “plunging polls” etc. I’m with George Mega that since Newspoll went fortnightly we have become too obsessed with small changes and editors need to find copy every fortnight.
However, we are in an election campaign so weekly polls are required. I listed 5 polls that were all released on Monday – it was not selective and I mentioned that the LNP have increased their lead in the last 2 weeks. (I also listed WB’s ave of polling.)
Newpoll goes first and the morning media picks that up and that is the days narrative. The 4 other polls were subsequently released which paint a different picture. More informed watchers analyse the weighting and methodology of each poll seeking an average which is why I enjoy reading KB & WB at PB. I don’t really care who is ahead – clearly the coalition is, has been all along and basically can’t lose. Newspoll may be the most credible polling organisation and clearly that is why its results get the stories that they do.
However, what concerns me is that there is a clear absence of objective analysis in some media and narratives get a run which don’t really represent the whole story. The trend is clear – to the LNP – but the story is more complex as the other polls suggest. This is representative that the days of quality, objective reporting seemed to have passed. Part of the problem is the 24hr news cycle.
We’ll see what Nielsen says and how it is reported.
Observer – Shy tory factor with face-to-face polling. I’m actually writing about it. It is the least credible in Australia.
Well I’d say to that coalition supporters are actually more proud of saying how they vote. Telephone polls don’t favour immigrants and the non Anglo-Saxon population which is generally labor
MDM: “The Essential had Labor’s primary at 40% when the others have it 34-37%, and the AMR had the Coalition primary at 41% when everyone else has it 44-47%……so it looks clear which ones are the outliers….”
Indeed, I’d probably agree with you there. We can all use various parts of polling to support a certain view.
My query on the 2PP numbers is not so much to assert that one is an outer but to make the observation that though the trends have been there the last few weeks giving such narrative & editorial weight to one poll overs just seems narrow when the picture is more complex.
I don’t know what the real situation is and neither does anyone else. The weighted aggregate analysis seems the best way to deal with this and WB at PB has a good overview of yesterdays polls which is worth a read, http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2013/08/20/bludgertrack-52-6-47-4-to-coalition/
BludgerTrack is currently at “52.6-47.4 in the Coalition’s favour” for a net gain of 10 seats. That seems a reasonable representation at this stage but probably a few more seats should be added.
KB’s weekly is out with some good analysis of the weekends polls. A little lower aggregate than BT but with a higher seat gain.
“My aggregate ….is now at 52.0% for the Coalition. The Coalition would win an election “held now”, probably by about 15-20 seats.”
http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/poll-roundup-and-seat-betting-watch_20.html
Yappo, I guess what MDM and I were reacting to was your “outlier” comment. It made it seem as though you were saying Newspoll was out of step with everyone else rather than that it is overhyped in the media.
DB, I don’t entirely agree with the rankings. Essential is more reliable than it is credible, which is to say it routinely overstates the Labor primary relative to other polls and spits out results that are, from month to month (let alone week to week) eerily resistant to movement, beyond what you’d expect from its being a rolling average. Morgan’s poll is no longer just face-to-face, and the multi-mode sticks closer to the pack than the FtF ever did. After the hiccup around Rudd’s return, it has returned to normal. So I’d reverse those two on the list.
I disagree essential use to understate labors primary vote compared to other polls
PUP reveals lower house preferences tomorrow. Should be interesting.
An interesting but slightly implausible scenario, http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/08/21/how-labor-could-hang-on-with-49-of-the-2pp-vote/
Oz article with analysis of Newspoll since Rudds return states ALP could gain 4 QLD greater Brisbane seats but lose up to 10 in NSW plus up to 3 in Vic & SA. (No mention of WA or Tas). No specific seats are named.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/election-2013/kevin-rudd-saves-north-but-rest-of-nations-vote-goes-south/story-fn9qr68y-1226701681859
In the Griffith thread, Observer and DB were discussing the leaders forum. Observer said it was crucial for Abbott that he perform better, but didn’t. A discussion ensued.
I question the initial assertion. Abbott needed to perform reasonably well and avoid any major gaffes (as in one that would swing the election away from him). In short, he just needed to play defence. Was the tetchy question about Rudd shutting up a major gaffe?—I suspect not, but only time will tell.
Rudd needed to blow Abbott out of the water. He is behind, he needs a major boost, so the burden of turning the forum into a vote-shifting event was on him. I don’t think he moved the needle. I assume that this weekend’s polling is far enough from the event that we’ll see whether it did or not.
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