Which pollster was closer to the mark?

Writing in the Oz, Chris Mitchell says Newspoll will be a relief to those who’ve seen pollsters fail to gauge the mood in Queensland and Victoria, and overseas, in the recent Brexit referendum:

“Despite the cliffhanger election result, Newspoll in The Weekend Australian on Saturday was closest to the actual poll result, ­maintaining its three-decade-long reputation as the best and most influential political pollster.”

But what’s this we read in the Fin? Edmund Tadros writes:

“The last Fairfax/Ipsos two-party preferred poll before the election was the closest of any poll to the interim result of the Coalition on 50.1% and Labor’s 49.9%.”

Tadros and Mitchell have pointed to different things to justify their paper’s polling. Mitchell says Newspoll had almost the right level of primary support for the parties, while Fairfax’s analysis is based on the predicted two-party preferred result.

Both The Oz and Fairfax have changed their polling providers this election (as we covered at the start of the campaign), but the new outfits have thrown up no upsets this time.