Our poll predictors hold their nerve

Our panel of opinion-poll-predictors expect little change when Newspoll reports again next week. The consensus of entrants in the competition Crikey runs with Glug.com (which sends $100+ of wine to our bragging rights winner) is that the two party preferred votes will be unchanged at 44% for the Government and 56% for Labor.

I am not sure what has happened to the normal two week cycle of Newspoll as it will be three weeks since the last survey of opinion on 15-17 June. Perhaps The Australian wanted to avoid clashing with the monthly Galaxy poll which appeared in its tabloid stable mates last Monday.

Galaxy, which interviewed 1001 voters on the weekend of 29 June-1 July, ended up showing a two party preferred split of 45% for the Coalition to 55% for Labor.

Because of the delayed Newspoll publication, entries in the Crikey poll prediction contest have similarly been extended.

The results of the first two contests were remarkably accurate which confirms what The Economist magazine reported back in May when it found that “prediction markets can be remarkably accurate, particularly for elections.”

The Crikey Newspoll predictions based on entries received up until last night are shown in the table below while the Crikey Election Indicator, based on the market at Betfair, now has Labor back to favouritism with a 51.3% chance of winning the election compared to the Coalition’s 48.7%.