Something does not add up

A quick perusal of the Newspoll marginal seat figures offers a beacon of hope for the Liberals. At first glance, it appears that the Ruddslide is making a mess of the Nationals vote while their city cousins are holding up.

Newspoll's survey covers the seats of Dobell, Bennelong, Eden Monaro, Lindsay, Parramatta and Wentworth. The average Liberal primary vote in these seats was 47%, while the average Labor vote was 34.8%. Newspoll has the current Liberal 6 seat average at 46%, a swing of precisely nothing, while Labor is at 47%, or around 12%. The upshot of this poll is that all the voters in the 'other category' have turned around and given their primary vote to the Libs during the campaign.

One would expect a high primary vote in Bennelong, given it is the Prime Minister's seat. Even if you buy this argument, one must assume Labor will pick up several percent off the Libs in Eden Monaro (swing seat), Parramatta (a Sydney version of seats like Adelaide and Brisbane showing big Labor swings) and Lindsay in Western Sydney (retiring MP, mortgage stress). I cannot believe that Labor's primary vote is 47% in Wentworth as this is a traditionally conservative seat with a multitude of candidates running on 'Turnbull Minister against the environment'.

I equally cannot believe the corollary of this, that Malcolm of Wentworth has picked up almost all of the (12%) of King defectors and lost none to either the Ruddslide or the bevy of environmental campaigners. An outside possibility is the seat of Dobell is holding something close to the 2004 result on the back of the retiree vote, but that would suggest that Central Coast voters are not under housing stress which is quite simply wrong. I suspect Dobell may end up with a line ball result, which means that the Liberal primary is probably 2-3% less than 2004, similar to the figures in Bennelong.

I suspect that Newspoll is underestimating both the others' vote (i.e. independents) and Green vote in these seats, particularly in Wentworth and Eden Monaro. This also points to an overestimate of the Liberal primary vote 1.5-2% and the Labor vote being exaggerated by 2.5-3%...which sounds remarkably like Galaxy's polling but for the Liberal primary vote.

From this analysis, I would put Lindsay, Parramatta, Eden Monaro in the definite gain category, Bennelong a line ball contest with Labor favoured and Wentworth coming down to preference flows, particularly from climate change candidates, leaning towards Turnbull. Dobell could go either way, although I suspect the figures may have been inflated by the proximity to Howard's grey vote seeking largesse.