DUCKPOND

ABC Online reports, the first poll since the budget apparently did not record the expected “surge” in support for the government. This result, on the face of it, is counter intuitive. Do you mean to tell me the fist full of dollars is not working as an electoral ambit claim anymore. I am shocked!

Bryan at Oz Politics foresaw this result. The impact of a budget cannot be assessed by a poll taken on the next weekend, he suggests, for several reasons including stochastic perturbation (random noice) and effective size of the sample, which he says is far smaller than it looks. He goes on to explain:

Please note: I am not arguing that the post Budget polls would be meaningless. All I am arguing is that individual voter intention poll results must be considered in context: within the time series, in comparison with polls from other pollsters, against the backdrop of political events, and against other information sources (eg. betting markets and qualitative polling). You will need a number of polls following the Budget to come to an informed view about how the government is travelling post budget, and whether that is different from how it was traveling prior to the budget. Unfortunately, you only need one post-Budget poll to come to an uninformed view on the efficacy of the Budget.

To counter the influence of random noise, I tend to place more faith in the moving average, than any particular poll result. The six poll moving average I use with Newspoll and Morgan, and the three poll average I use for ACNielsen, are designed to cancel out some of the random noise. It is not a perfect solution, but it is far better than over interpreting an individual poll result.

I am sure that Bryan is right about the polling aspect, but I would expect the effect of the budget would be lagged, in part because, as he mentioned, people are not fully engaged in the political process, and the benefits to flow into their discretionary income.

Phillip Coorey in The Sydney Morning Herald says that following the electoral redistribution that rush among coalition members to move to safer seats. Howard had this option but told his colleagues to stay where they were. In Bennelong, the betting markets are strongly favoring Howard. He will be more tied down campaigning in his electorate than he really needs to be. In this instance, John Howard might have been better advised to move seats. Why handicap yourself in a close election? Yet in deserting Bennelong, he may well be handing it to the ALP. The politics of all of this, is a lot smarter than I appreciated.

And of course, as Bryan points out and as apparently the betting markets understand, we have to take single poll results with a grain of salt, or at least take them provisionally subject to further information.

UPDATE:

The Newspoll shows the ALP on a two party preferred basis leading 59:41. Perhaps it is time to panic, or wait on the next two or three polls, and trust the Greatest Political Genius to conjure up another divisive, wedge election victory. I am wondering what wedges they have got in the shed: desperate times require desperate means. Still they have not had a chance to run the adds for the “fairness test” changes (via Tim Dunlop) to Work Choices which would have been effective from last Monday had they had some legislative form.

Seriously, the worrying thing about the polls,( err … from a Liberal perspective) aside from a budget bounce which may be delayed, is their stubborn persistence. I am wondering what has taken hold of voterland Australia?