There is no Narrowing – rather there is a Widening. The latest Newspoll shows a 2% move back to Labor, partly reversing the 5% shift to the Liberals shown over the past two weeks. Each of the four main polling companies’ most recent poll shows a movement to Labor. With only 12 days left, the Coalition is still about 5% short of the two-party vote it needs, as it has been for the last three months. This seems an impossible gap to close when none of the Coalition’s campaign themes seem to be resonating with the swinging voters. Provided Labor makes no serious errors in the remaining two weeks, it is very hard to see how the Coalition can win from here.
See my poll table here.
If the final two-party vote is indeed 55%, that represents a 7.5% swing which will cost the coalition about 30 seats. Of course a Narrowing in the last 12 days is still possible, and I would say likely. I am still confident in my prediction of a 20-seat gain
More bad news, however, for the Coalition in a Galaxy poll showing a 50-50 tie in the seat of Wentworth. If a high-profile Cabinet minister with unlimited funds and a generally positive public image is in danger of losing a seat the conservatives have held for 106 years, against a Labor campaign which is generally agreed to be rather shambolic, then the suspicion must be that the Coalition is looking at heavy losses in NSW.
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November 12, 2007 at 1:59 am
Yeah, I’ve never been an adherent to the whole ‘narrowing’ theory.
Yes, it’s a very wide lead. Elections normally aren’t so lopsided. And on that basis a correction (of say, a couple of points) would not have surprised me. But a mere correction would not make for a close election. It simply gets us back to more typical landslide proportions. Howard needs a lot more than that.
I think too many commentators have failed appreciate the size and consistency of the Labor lead. Too many commentators have failed to appreciate the government just doesn’t have the electoral appeal it once had. And too many commentators for some reason have it hardwired into their brains that election ought to be close. There’s no inherent reason why the election should be close.
In fact, I think your gain-of-20 prediction errs greatly on the conservative side.
November 13, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Commentators _want_ elections to be close. Otherwise there is nothing for them to commentate about. If commentators write a month before the election that it’s all over, the fat lady has sung, the people have spoken, the result is a foregone conclusion, and nothing that happens in the next month can possibly make a blind bit of difference, then they’re effectively making themselves unemployable for the next month. Nobody wants to do that. They have to write that it’s close, that it’s all still to play for, that anything can happen, that the show isn’t over till the fat lady sings, that it’s still anybody’s game, in order to make themselves interesting.
Whether they really believe it or not is beside the point.
November 14, 2007 at 1:12 am
J-D, I don’t recall there being many commentators silly enough to talk up any of the recent state elections.
They’ll always find something else to fill the column inches with. In NSW, the scribes just wrote how unsustainable Debnam’s leadership had become.
November 14, 2007 at 2:14 pm
David, I guess you’re right.
But they still _prefer_ elections to be close.
June 30, 2012 at 1:39 am
Wow that was strange. I just wrote an really long
comment but after I clicked submit my comment didn’t show up. Grrrr… well I’m not writing all that over again. Anyway, just wanted to say excellent blog!