Simon Jackman at The Bullring has done as I did in an idle moment a few weeks ago, deriving various measures of spread from an election’s worth of swing results at national and state level. If Jackman’s interpretation is correct, a state-level poll is little better than a national one as a pointer to a given seat result:
We see that there is less variation in swing within states than there is overall. But not that much less. The measures of spead of the swings (range, standard deviations, the mean absolute deviation around the mean) for each state are still quite large relative to corresponding national figure … There is still an awful lot of variability in swings out there, and I’d be reluctant to start applying uniform swing models within states.
However, he does add “just one caveat to all of this”:
It could well be that when average swings are large (or dare I say massive), there is greater uniformity or even less uniformity than when average swings are relatively small. I haven’t looked at data from previous election to know the answer to that, but it be helpful to know the answer to that.
Which is easily done if you have a spreadsheet full of swing figures, like I do. These three tables replicate Jackman’s for the 1996, 1998 and 2001 elections, two of which saw heavy traffic from one party to the other.
| 2001 | Nat’l | NSW | Vic | Qld | SA | WA |
| Mean | 1.9 | 3.1 | 1.4 | 2.1 | 0.2 | 1.2 |
| SD | 2.4 | 2.8 | 2.0 | 2.4 | 2.3 | 1.4 |
| MAD | 1.8 | 2.2 | 1.5 | 1.7 | 2.1 | 1.0 |
| Minimum | -5.5 | -4.0 | -5.5 | -3.3 | -2.7 | -2.4 |
| Maximum | 10.1 | 10.1 | 4.7 | 7.9 | 3.3 | 3.3 |
| Range | 15.6 | 14.1 | 10.2 | 11.2 | 6.0 | 5.7 |
| N | 142 | 45 | 37 | 25 | 11 | 15 |
| 1998 | Nat’l | NSW | Vic | Qld | SA | WA |
| Mean | -4.8 | -4.5 | -3.2 | -7.1 | -4.0 | -6.2 |
| SD | 2.9 | 2.2 | 2.3 | 3.2 | 2.8 | 2.7 |
| MAD | 2.3 | 1.9 | 1.8 | 2.4 | 2.2 | 1.7 |
| Minimum | -15.3 | -10.2 | -9.8 | -15.3 | -9.0 | -11.1 |
| Maximum | 0.3 | -0.3 | 0.3 | -0.5 | -0.2 | 0.0 |
| Range | 15.6 | 9.9 | 10.1 | 14.8 | 8.8 | 11.1 |
| N | 139 | 48 | 35 | 25 | 11 | 12 |
| 1996 | Nat’l | NSW | Vic | Qld | SA | WA |
| Mean | 5.2 | 7.0 | 1.7 | 8.3 | 4.5 | 2.2 |
| SD | 3.3 | 2.4 | 1.4 | 2.5 | 1.3 | 1.4 |
| MAD | 2.7 | 2.0 | 1.1 | 2.0 | 1.0 | 1.2 |
| Minimum | 0.1 | 2.3 | 0.1 | 4.4 | 2.2 | 0.2 |
| Maximum | 14.0 | 12.0 | 4.9 | 14.0 | 6.5 | 3.9 |
| Range | 13.9 | 9.7 | 4.8 | 9.6 | 4.3 | 3.7 |
| N | 138 | 48 | 34 | 25 | 12 | 11 |
And what do you know. The last time there was a big swing and a change of government, the gap between measures of spread at state and national level was significantly higher than in 2004. However, this was not true of the 1998 election, which saw a substantial swing to Labor but no change of government. That might be due to the effect of One Nation in polarising the cities and the regions, most evidently in Queensland. The even messier picture from 2001 provides support for Jackman’s suggestion that a relative lack of state-level uniformity might be a phenomenon of status quo elections.
UPDATE: Geoff Lambert, who knows way more about these things than I do, offers a well-made point about the leptokurticity (here, use my hankie) of swing distributions in comments.
You may all whinge about ‘The Australian’. But have you realised that you have all provided it with copy?
Read the article HERE
P.S. Apoligies if someone already mentioned this. This blog has hundreds of comments within a minute!
Will – I’m sure that Rates Analyst or someone else will correct me, but opting for fixed rates means you’re betting the bank on the way rates will go, and how fast, and also means you pay a premium for the privilege. Generally, you pay a fatter total interest bill over the period of the fix, although you don’t have to find extra money when rates rise. I don’t know what proportion of loans are fixed, but generally you’ll do better by sitting on a variable rate, over the medium to longer term. It’s about the price the bank has to pay for its money, and that’s got likely rate rises factored in to it. The banks generally have a better idea of the doirection of rates than average punters.
Anyway, as someone said, the rate rises that really hurt are the credit card rates!
Yeah, but you’re managing to slowly kill it.
379 Ashley,
They don’t need to run too many attack ads as they are way ahead in the polls. It is proven that the electorate doesn’t like negative campaigning. If they highlight the areas you are talking about though in ads, you are much more likely to see the neutral type ads of “Rudd appearing in his office” or outside in a natural enviroment OR the types of IR ads that are running now using real people.
It is important to portray the message in as neutral and/or positive fashion as they can.
[I dont believe its necessary to have apostrophes or commas on blogs Ashley English is a living language after all.]
Who’s “Ashley English”? There’s an Ashley here, but no “Ashley English”.
Anyway, why does the ALP need attack ads? Joe Hockey and co are fulfilling that role perfectly!
Guido @410…
Pessimism of the left? What? I’m planning a party!
“I don’t know what proportion of loans are fixed, but generally you’ll do better by sitting on a variable rate”.
About 60% are currently fixed and 40% variable. Brokers are favour fixed rates by quite a margin at the moment.
Re CL at 402
Exactly correct. The fixed rate you pay is the sum total of all the expected forward rates. These generally are higher than the realised actual rates. It’s called forward rate bias.
If you fix you are essentially betting with the bank about the direction of rates and paying a premium to do so – but it’s really better to think of it as a from of insurance. You protect yourself from really bad outcomes by settling for a slightly worse outcome than average.
Just like in insurance where you pay money which, on average, you don’t get back.
RA – gee, I’m glad I remembered something from that economics degree!
ESJ,
Well with love, a high interest rate is very important. However, the qualitative and quantitative results are measured in different ways. Economics can come in to it, but not if you select your investments wisely.
It is sometimes better to rent Governments rather than buy. However, it is generally agreed you get well and truly screwed by this Howard Liberal Government
408 El Nino,
That’s a surprise to me. I would have thought Austrlia had much more floating rates. Are they percentages of new business or of outstanding loans?
Ralph Says:
November 7th, 2007 at 11:42 am
I think Rudd wants to win the election, he seems to understand the goal is to get more than 50% of the votes. He doesn’t seem to be interested in making 20% feel real good.
I suspect a good election campaign is one where the party provides are blank canvas that the voter paints enough of their views to be happy with the offering.
If you take this view, then policies are out as a dirt campaigns directed against people the electorate may have an opinion on. Pretty much leaves spending commitments that can be ignored when you get into power and realize Costello didn’t get the budget right.
Well, people say they don’t like it.
But that doesn’t mean it isn’t effective. The interest rate scare in 2004 was highly effective, even if people disapproved of the government running negative ads.
The problem with not running negative ads is that some idiots come to the conclusion that the government hasn’t done anything wrong on climate change, for example. Anyone who was switched on wouldn’t need to be reminded, but people who haven’t been paying attention are easily taken in by government rhetoric 2 weeks before an election.
The line that Howard has been spouting, that Rudd has “me-tooed” him on climate change is particularly offensive. But you’ll find that a lot of ignorant people agree with him because the ALP hasn’t cut through with a message that Howard has been sitting on his hands.
Howard has said “sorry” for the rate rise.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/federal-election-2007-news/pm-sorry-for-rates-rise/2007/11/07/1194329272454.html
According to his theory of when using “sorry” is approrpiate, he must be directly responsible for the interest rate rise, else he wouldn’t of used that word.
Continuing my point from 414, how many average joes realise that the government refused to set up an emission trading scheme for years, before finally backflipping half way through the year. Very few voters are informed enough to recognise the two-faced position of the government when they trumpet the fact that they are setting up an emissions trading scheme (which won’t start till 2012!).
Just went past a Liberal office in Oakleigh Melbourne. Not one picture of John Howard, and the candidate is there to save our community!
Rates – yes, the banks have much more info about likely movements than the average borrower. Fixing sounds good as insurance but you can bet that the bank is not going to give up a cent of interest along the way.
Agree with Ashley. Rudd should run some positive ads with negative press headlines in the background. “Howard continues support for paedophile-sympathiser Hollingworth”, “150000 dead Iraqi civilians since war started”, “Haneef cleared:Howard locks him up”. I’m sure you can come up with some more.
Yeah, bugger pessimism. What a yawn.
Rodent will lose this election, and it wont be close either. Conceded on the night.
Schedule your parties, and enjoy the abject humiliation of the MSM commentariat who have walked backwards – huddled together, for warmth, chattering inanely as a herd – off a cliff; having ignored the large flashing neon “Warning: Cliff ahead” signs they’ve been reading for the past 12 months.
It will be a victory of the bleeding obvious over the arcane “poll-owning” feel-it-in-me-waters folkways of the GG.
Oh look, all those polls were telling us something after all. Who knew.
Still some debate over whether the electorate wants to thump 5 or 6 types of piss out of Team Rodent, yes (im personally with 5, viz, 85 seats to ALP); but it aint one or two!
ShowOn@415, nice deduction.
of topic… and i asked thi slast night but no one had an answer.
On election night, each party has a HQ in each electorate… like the local hall etc. can anyone cruise along and poke their head in? Or is invite only for the party people and volunteers etc.
I live in Rudd’s electorate and know where he normally has his election night HQ, and woudl love to walk the three blocks to watch him delier his acceptance speech. (If the ALP win of course!)
Any have an idea?
“It is proven that the electorate doesn’t like negative campaigning.”
They say the don’t like negative campaigning.
But political parties use it all the time. Why? Because it works.
Shows On
Howard will have annoyed the RBA with these statements:
Mr Howard said the RBA’s statement that high levels of investment were adding to investment capacity gave lie to Labor claims that high inflation was due to capacity constraints caused by under-investment in infrastructure.
“(It) couldn’t be more wrong,” he said.
“All the signs are is that investment in infrastructure is growing apace … and (may) be one of the things adding to inflationary pressure in the economy.”
What the RBA really said about ivnestment was:
…”and high levels of investment are adding to productive capacity in some sectors.”
I would suggest that Government spending in infratructure is NOT one of those sectors.
Middle man, I can’t give you an answer. But I reckon if you emailed them you’d probably be able to buy yourself a ticket with some letterboxing.
Labor may have lost 1-2% of their TPP preferred vote based on polls since the campaign got underway. But even that is debatable as no real trend has emerged. Whatever they are doing seems to be paying off, so I reckon they should just stick with their game plan.
I have been quite surprised about the lack of advertising. Even the ACTU ads appear kind of half hearted given they are so infrequent. They say that swinging voters decide in the last 2 weeks of the campaign (whether thats true or not), so I suspect that the ALP will start revving up their engines real soon.
Re negative advertising. Perhaps Howard should go around saying not to vote for him.
Guy from Anglicare on news radio just now saying that interest rates rises are passed on ‘quite quickly’ to rent rises.
ShowsOn 415
Yes, Howard has a quite “confused” view on what he means by “sorry” at present. When people tell him to say sorry he says he is not responsible, yet just yesterday he said that he wasn’t responsible for interest rates, but now he is sorry anyway? What a strange little man.
Perhaps he is like the little boy caught out for cheating on his economics exam. If he says sorry often enough he hopes the teacher will not punish him? Or maybe he is sorry for himself – sorry he’s been caught lying.
Besides, Howard shouldn’t worry about interest rates. He won’t feel a thing personally. After all, he lives in Kirribilli, a multi-million dollar mansion on Sydney Harbour, rent free at our expense. Nothing to be sorry about at all.
one more time Rudd has been caught “me-tooing” with Howard: he cuddled the same baby that Howard did before 🙂
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/07/woz107.xml
“…John Howard and Kevin Rudd visited the same shopping centre north of Sydney within an hour of each other. Both were pictured cuddling 14-month old Austin Byrnes, whose bemused mother said she was surprised to bump into the two leaders while doing her weekly shop….”
hahahahhh 🙂
and as always, Rudd has the upper hand: the mother’s baby said she’ll likely vote for Rudd.
Guido @ 401,
The GG really has some gall to run that piece. Especially this bit:
“The Australian’s analysis of the result is always wrong.”
That’s because it, um, is.
Ashley @ 416
Most people have a go a governments, Liberal or Labor, for comming up with their policies only just before an election and doing little throughout the rest of the term. What people need to remember is that the policies are released at this stage so that people can vote on them. The party with the best policies should win (this does not always happen). It is undemocratic for a party to implement policies that have not been voted on. Just look at work choices.
yes but these are white people socrates, of course he says sorry.
From Crikey today:
The Daily Telegraph Editor David Penberthy writes: Re. “Tips and rumours” (yesterday, item 5). Crikey published: “The Daily Telegraph is sitting on a big story on Kevin Rudd that will make the Scores story seem irrelevant by comparison. The Tele will run with the story this Friday.” Can you please let us know what our story about Rudd is? We may need to put on extra staff.
Mmmm… looks like it was BS
394 Edward StJohn. That’s very interesting coming from a Liberal, as we continually hear from your side of politics about the bad spelling coming out of school leavers. Does that mean one standard for you and a different one for everyone else?
So who won the debate, Julia or Joe? As if I didn’t know.
Howard did not say, “Sorry” for the rate rise. He said sorry about the rate rise.
As in, “I’m sorry your dog got run over, but can you hose the footpath down please?”
Alternative interpretation: I BET HE’S EFFING SORRY! (He’s going to be even sorrier)
Did I just hear an election campaign starting gun? Rudd said in his interview he was about to, up the tempo, of the campaign. 🙂
You call that sorry. I’ll show you sorry!
415
Did he say sorry Jim?
Another thing about “Sorry John” – this is the sixth interest rate rise in a row, but I don’t recall him personally saying sorry for the other five. Why now? Was there something that made him feel specially guilty about this one? I’m sure its not just the timing. After all, Sorry John realy cares about the nation, not just his survival.
Pathological Logic @ 431
Take that article as very much a backhanded compliment.
I’m sure they are keeping an eye on the increasing post counts and site traffic and realising that The Poll Bludger is fast becoming the Yang to the Oz’s Yin.
Like good Howardists, the Oz’s response is to try and destroy the opposition’s credibility with a smear campaign.
Thanks Pancho.
412 – that is whole book but might be slightly biased towards new business – it is a back-of-the-enveope number. I believe new business might be running at an even higher proportion.
Samuel K, thanks for passing that on. I have a work deadline that has been horribly due for the past 2 days, and I haven’t got ANY work done since that “tip” first arose for discussion here on PB.
I’m finally starting to be optimistic about this election.
Hey William, Possum – given this interest by the Oz and others, have either of you received offers to go over to the dark side?
The liberals last defence – the sleeping pill. I’m rather surprised i haven’t heard Andrew Robb on the airwaves today. or mean Andrew ‘the sleeping pill’ Robb.
Uh – it’s official. Black is now white:
Rate rise proof of good management: Costello
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/11/07/2084177.htm
Why is it that the rodent always get elected because of a lie? First Tampa/children overboard, then interest rates? There’s just got be another huge smear/lie/scare story coming. Its his only tactic.
Pancho @ 446: I heard that PollBludger will soon be acquired by google.