Pay your money and take your chances. Do you fancy Labor at 55% of the two-party preferred vote? Then the Morgan Poll and Essential Research are your teams. Prefer things a bit closer? Then go for AC Neilsen and Galaxy. They reckon it’s 52% Labor to 48%. But above all arm yourself with a lot of meaningless waffle as you argue that things are getting better for Labor under Julia Gillard or are actually getting worse. And if you are a cautious soul not yet prepared to see a Labor landslide victory or a close run thing, why not wait until tomorrow morning when Newspoll in The Australian can confuse us all a bit more?
How they get it wrong. I produced a little table a few weeks ago on how Newspolls taken from eight weeks or so before polling day right up to their last effort and have rejigged it a little as a reminder of the dangers of taking polls too seriously. The bottom index is the poll number before the last eight elections, from 10 to go to one to go.
The power of football. I alerted Crikey readers on Friday to the latest research showing the influence the success of high attendance football teams can have on support for incumbent governments. If you are one of those who choose to believe that opinion polls can actually measure support then this morning provides further evidence. With Geelong, St Kilda and Collingwood vying for the lead at the top of the AFL ladder, while in Queensland the Brisbane Broncos and North Queensland Cowboys are languishing outside the eight, The Age reports federal Labor are doing much better in Victoria than in Queensland
“In Victoria, Labor is trailing the Coalition 40-42 per cent on the primary vote, but leads 54-46 per cent in two-party terms, thanks to a Green vote of 14 per cent. Queensland, with 10 Labor marginal seats, is by far the worst ALP state, where it trails 45-55 in two-party terms.”
No state figure was given in the Age story for what AC Nielsen found in South Australia, but presumably the government will be hoping Adelaide having a home town girl as prime minister will compensate for the disastrous performance this year of the ‘mighty’ Adelaide Crows and Port Power. Who would have imagined the day would come when a women’s netball team graced page one of The Advertiser as being “the pride of South Australia”?
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