US presidential election minus three weeks

“If you squint at the polling averages, things are getting closer”, notes Nate Silver. But you probably shouldn’t.

There’s been a fair bit of chatter around lately about momentum in favour of Donald Trump, but by any reasonable metric the situation remains as it’s been since the dust settled a few weeks after Joe Biden’s withdrawal. Namely, poll aggregates have Kamala Harris up by three points nationally, which translates into an effective dead heat from election forecasts. A narrowing in Nate Silver’s probability forecast from around 56-44 to 50-50 has no doubt been influential, but the fundamental calculus is unchanged: the polls will very likely prove to have been out in one direction or another, and whoever they are underselling will take home the prize. For what it’s worth, The Economist’s and FiveThirtyEight’s models have ticked back a little to Harris over the past few days after narrowing to almost dead level a week ago, respectively putting her at 54% and 56%.

Considerably more depth on all this is available from Adrian Beaumont’s latest for The Conversation. The monthly Resolve Strategic polls for Nine Newspapers have been asking their Australian respondents who they would vote for if they could or would, consistently finding the fifty-first state to be deep blue: the latest has Kamala Harris at 52%, up two on last month, with Donald Trump down four to 21%.

Newspoll: 51-49 to Coalition (open thread)

Marginal changes on the primary vote prove sufficient to give the Coalition a two-party lead in Newspoll for the first time this term.

The Australian reports the latest Newspoll records a two-party lead for the Coalition for the first time since this term, at 51-49 after a 50-50 result three weeks ago, though both major parties are unchanged on the primary vote, Labor at 31% and the Coalition at 38%. The movement is down to a one-point drop for the Greens to 12% and a one-point increase for One Nation to 7%. Anthony Albanese is down three on approval to 40% and up three on disapproval to 54%, edging out past results in August (41% and 54%) and last November (40% and 53%) as his worst net result for the term. Peter Dutton is respectively up one to 38% and steady at 52%, with preferred prime minister narrowing from 46-37 to 45-37. The poll was conducted Monday to Friday from a sample of 1258.

Queensland election minus two weeks

With a fortnight to go, suggestions of an improvement in Labor’s position, though not to the extent of being seriously competitive.

Following a week in which abortion unexpectedly took centre stage of the Queensland election campaign, The Australian’s Feeding the Chooks column reports the issue “has helped Labor’s cause in Brisbane, where it faces losses to the LNP and the Greens”. The evidence for this would appear to be Labor internal polling suggesting Grace Grace is well placed to retain the Greens target of McConnel, outpolling them 27% to 24% with the LNP on 34%. This is quite a bit different from polling the column published from a different source last week, which had the Greens on 37.9%, the LNP on 27.4% and Labor on 27.2%. A “senior Labor insider” is further quoted saying a party that feared a near wipeout regionally, leaving it only with Gladstone outside of Brisbane, now sees “glimmers of hope in Cairns, Rockhampton and Maryborough”.

The other big event for the week was the closure of nominations and ballot paper draws, revealing a decline in the total number of candidates to 525 (5.6%) from 597 (6.4%) in 2020. A breakdown from Antony Green shows Labor, the LNP, the Greens and One Nation are contesting all seats, Family First is putting in its biggest effort in some time with 59 candidates, with lesser numbers from Legalise Cannabis, Katter’s Australian Party, Animal Justice and the Libertarians.

Also of note: the website Australian Election Forecasts, operating off an admittedly shallow pool of data, calculates an 85.8% chance the LNP will have a “clear path to government” compared with 4.4% for Labor, the median predicted outcome being 55 seats for the LNP, 29 for Labor, three each for the Greens and Katter’s Australian Party and one independent.

US presidential election minus four weeks

Bad polls for Kamala Harris in Wisconsin and Michigan. Also covered: the UK Conservative leadership election, the far-right wins the most seats in Austria and Japan’s October 27 election.

Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is a paid election analyst for The Conversation. His work for The Conversation can be found here, and his own website is here.

The US presidential election is on November 5.  In Nate Silver’s aggregate of US national polls, Kamala Harris has a 49.3-46.1 lead over Donald Trump (49.3-46.2 in my previous US election article for The Conversation on Monday).  In presidential elections, the Electoral College is decisive, not the national popular vote.  Harris has at least a one-point lead in enough states to win the Electoral College by a 276-262 margin.

The New York Times released polls from the highly regarded Siena on Tuesday, which had good and bad news for Harris.  Siena’s national poll gave Harris a 49-46 lead, her best position in this poll.  But Trump led by a thumping 55-41 in Florida, which used to be a swing state.  This caused Silver’s Florida aggregate to move two points in Trump’s favour, and he now leads by 5.5 points there.

On Wednesday, Quinnipiac polls of Wisconsin and Michigan gave Trump 2-3 point leads, though Harris had a three-point lead in Pennsylvania.  Silver’s model now gives Harris a 53.5% chance to win the Electoral College, down from 56% on Monday.  There’s a 23% chance that Harris wins the popular vote, but loses the Electoral College.  The FiveThirtyEight model is now very close to Silver, with Harris a 53% chance to win.

Two right-wing candidates to contest UK Conservative leadership

As in previous UK Conservative leadership elections, the final two candidates are selected by Conservative MPs, with Conservative party members to choose between these final candidates.  At Wednesday’s final round of MPs’ votes, the right-wing Kemi Badenoch won 42 of the 120 votes, the right-wing Robert Jenrick 41 and the more centrist James Cleverly 37. 

Cleverly had easily won the previous round of MPs’ votes on Tuesday with 39 votes, followed by Jenrick on 31 and Badenoch on 30.  It’s likely that a tactical voting blunder caused him to finish third and be eliminated, with some of his supporters voting for Jenrick as they thought Cleverly had a better chance to beat Jenrick than Badenoch in the members’ vote.

Members will now decide between Badenoch and Jenrick by an online vote, with the final result to be announced November 2.  A late September YouGov poll of Conservative members gave Badenoch a 41-38 lead over Jenrick.

Labour and PM Keir Starmer’s dreadful start to the term continues, with a recent More in Common poll giving Labour just a 29-28 lead over the Conservatives with 19% for Reform and 11% for the Liberal Democrats, although three other early October polls gave Labour 5-8 point leads.  The latest two polls that have asked about Starmer’s ratings have him at net -30 (Opinium) and net -36 (YouGov).

Far-right wins most seats in Austria

Austria uses proportional representation with a 4% threshold to elect its 183 seats.  At the September 29 election, the far-right FPÖ won 57 seats (up 26 since the 2019 election), the conservative ÖVP 51 seats (down 20), the centre-left SPÖ 41 (up one), the liberal NEOS 18 (up three) and the Greens 16 (down ten). 

The FPÖ had its best result in an Austrian election and it was the first time since World War Two that a far-right party has won the most seats.  However, the FPÖ is well short of the 92 seats needed for a majority.  The ÖVP and the Greens had formed a coalition government after the 2019 election.  A coalition between the ÖVP and SPÖ is the only way to keep the FPÖ out of government.

Japanese election: October 27

The conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has formed government after every Japanese election since 1955 except after the 2009 election.  Of the 465 lower house seats, 289 are elected by first-past-the-post, while the remaining 176 are elected using proportional representation in 11 multi-member electorates.

This election is being held a year early after Shigeru Ishiba replaced Fumio Kishida as LDP leader and PM on September 27 and called an early election.  Polls indicate the LDP is far ahead of their nearest party rival, the centre-left Constitutional Democrats, but there’s a large “no party” vote.  The LDP should easily win yet another election.

Resolve Strategic: Labor 32, Coalition 37, Greens 11 in New South Wales

A slight improvement for NSW Labor in a poll series that still shows it in an unusually weak position for a first-term government.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports Resolve Strategic’s latest bi-monthly read on state voting intention in New South Wales, combining results from its last two regular monthly national polls, has Labor up two points on July-August to 32%, the Coalition down one to 37% and the Greens down one to 11%. This suggests a very slight two-party advantage to Labor, which won on that measure by 54.3-45.7 at the March 2023 election. Chris Minns leads Mark Speakman 37-14 as preferred premier, barely changed from 38-13 last time. The poll was conducted from a sample of 1111, half from September 3 to 7 and the other half last Tuesday to Saturday.

RedBridge Group: 51-49 to Coalition in Victoria

The Coalition pokes its nose in front on two-party preferred, amid conflicting reports on the status of John Pesutto’s leadership.

The Herald Sun reports a RedBridge Group poll of state voting intention in Victoria has the Coalition leading 51-49 on two-party preferred, after the last such poll in late July had it at 50-50. The primary votes are Labor 30% (down one), Coalition 40% (steady), Greens 12% (steady). The poll was conducted from a sample of 1516 from September 26 to October 3, hence slightly before reports of a looming move against Liberal leader John Pesutto – which James Campbell of the Herald Sun reports has “stalled because disgruntled Liberal MPs can’t agree on who should be the potential challenger”.

Federal polls: Resolve Strategic, Roy Morgan, Essential Research (open thread)

Essentially steady results from Resolve Strategic and Roy Morgan, although the former has Labor with a three in front of it for the first time since April.

Three new federal poll results:

• The monthly Resolve Strategic poll from Nine Newspapers has Labor up two to 30%, the Coalition up one to 38%, the Greens down one to 12% and One Nation down one to 5%. This pollster does not provide two-party preferred, but if the 15% none-of-the-above vote is treated as a single (it includes an unlikely 12% independent vote), the result is almost exactly 50-50 based on preference flows in 2022. Both leaders are steady on approval and down a point on disapproval, Anthony Albanese to 35% and 52% and Peter Dutton to 41% and 41%, with Albanese’s lead as preferred prime minister out from 35-34 to 38-35. The poll also finds a telling 55% professing no opinion as to which party has better handled the situation in the Middle East, with 22% favouring “Peter Dutton and the Liberals” and 18% “Anthony Albanese and Labor”. It was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1606.

• The weekly Roy Morgan poll had a tie on two-party preferred after a 51-49 result to the Coalition last time, from primary votes of Labor 31.5% (up one-and-a-half), Coalition 37.5% (down half), Greens 12.5% (down one) and One Nation 5.5% (up one). Using the two-party measure based on 2022 election flows, Labor leads 52-48, out from 51.5-48.5 The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1697.

• The Guardian’s routine early drop of the fortnightly Essential Research poll doesn’t include voting intention results. Stay tuned for later today on that one.

UPDATE: Essential Research’s voting intention results have Labor up three points to 32%, the Coalition down one to 34%, the Greens steady on 12%, One Nation steady on 8%, and undecided unchanged at 5%. The 2PP+ measure has Labor leading 49-47, with the balance undecided, after trailing 48-47 a fortnight ago. Further questions find fully 40% saying “our political system needs fundamental change”, compared with 48% who think it “needs some reform but is fundamentally sound” and only 12% who think it is “working well”. A semi-regular question on Israel’s military action in Gaza records, for some reason, an eight-point rise in “unsure” since August to 32%: 32% favour Israel’s permanent withdrawal, down seven, 18% a temporary ceasefire, down three, and 19% consider Israel’s actions justified, up two. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1139.

ACT and NSW state by-election guides

Beginners’ guides to next fortnight’s election in the Australian Capital Territory, where the Liberals hope to end a decades-long drought, and three by-elections for blue-ribbon state seats in New South Wales.

With thirteen days to go in both cases, this site now offers a guide to the Australian Capital Territory election, and individual guides to the by-elections for the Liberal-held state seats of Epping, Hornsby and Pittwater in northern Sydney. The former finds Labor, which governs in coalition with the Greens, seeking a seventh successive victory and an extension on its 23 years in office, in circumstances that are seemingly more promising for the Liberals than those that prevailed when it suffered a dismal result in 2020. Labor has forfeited each of the New South Wales by-elections, but that in Pittwater is of considerable interest in offering a second chance for teal independent Jacqui Scruby, who came within 0.7% of winning the seat at the state election in March 2023.

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