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.

Queensland election minus three weeks

Multiple indications of a double-digit swing against Labor, including from the seats of McConnel and Waterford.

Some accounts of private polling from Queensland to relate, all of it adding a picture of an election-losing swing headed the way of the Labor government:

• The Australian’s Feeding the Chooks column relates that union-funded polling by DemosAU has the Greens on 37.9% in the Labor-held Brisbane CBD seat of McConnel, up from 28.1% in 2020, with the LNP on 27.4%, down from 31.0%, and Labor on 27.2%, down from 35.3%. The suggests Labor separately has an even chance of surviving to the final count and winning when it gets there with the help of LNP preferences. The polling also suggests a 10% swing statewide and a Labor seat tally of 31 out or 93.

• Last week’s Feeding the Chooks column had Labor sources saying their polling showed Health Minister Shannon Fentiman facing a 13% swing in Waterford, where her margin is 16.0%. The report noted “confusion about who commissioned the dire phone poll by Labor’s preferred pollsters Talbot Mills (business partners with banned lobbyists Evan Moorhead and Fentiman’s ex-husband David Nelson), but the smart money is on the MP’s own union, the AMWU”.

• Madura McCormack of the Courier-Mail reported on Thursday that a Greens-commissioned YouGov poll had Labor on 31% in Brisbane and the Greens on 16%. Assuming this is Brisbane broadly defined, it suggests a fifteen-point drop in Labor support from 2020 and a three-point increase for the Greens. The poll also found the Greens on 13% statewide, compared with 9.5% in 2020, and 54% support for its proposed cap on rental increases, with the report neglecting to say how many were opposed and how many undecided.

• Katter’s Australian Party has announced it will direct preferences to the LNP over Labor in the three Townsville seats of Townsville, Mundingburra and Thuringowa, which it has apparently never done in the city before, citing Labor failure on youth crime.

• The campaign leaders’ debate was conducted on Thursday, highlighted by David Crisafulli’s promise to stand down if crime victim numbers did not fall on his watch. There did not appear to be any effort to evaluate voter impressions of who had won.

Weekend miscellany: Fowler preselection, SECNewgate survey, SA by-election news (open thread)

Labor seeks amends from the voters of Fowler, a poll finds softening enthusiasm for the renewable energy transition, plus the fall and fall of former SA Liberal leader David Speirs.

There may be a Resolve Strategic federal poll through later today, but in case there’s not, a new open thread is order despite there not being much new to relate:

• Labor has chosen Tu Le, whose preselection bid in 2022 was scotched when the national executive imposed Kristina Keneally, as its candidate to recover the western Sydney seat of Fowler from independent Dai Le. Tu Le is a lawyer and daughter of Vietnamese refugees, and the decision to cast her aside to accommodate Keneally’s move from the Senate, where she had failed to secure a competitive position on the party ticket, was evidently received poorly by voters in an electorate that encompasses the Vietnamese community hub of Cabramatta. Dai Le defeated Keneally at the election by 1.6% after preferences, after trailing by 36.1% to 29.5% on the primary vote.

• SECNewgate’s semi-regular Mood of the Nation survey finds positivity towards the transition to renewables at its lowest level since the Albanese government came to power, at 47% positive and 26% negative; Labor favoured by 30% on managing the cost of living, steady from July, with the Coalition up two to 29%; 58% favouring Kamala Harris over 22% for Donald Trump; and a downward trajectory for the perceived performance of the Western Australian state government.

• A South Australian state by-election looms in the highly marginal Liberal-held seat of Black after former party leader resigned from parliament yesterday after being charged on two counts of supplying a controlled substance. Police allege the offence took place “between August 2 and 3 and on August 9”, the latter date being a day after he stepped aside as party leader. On September 9, The Advertiser revealed a video, seemingly filmed in the small hours of June 30, appearing to show Speirs snorting a line of white powder in what appeared to be his home. Speirs claimed the video was a deepfake, but The Advertiser published advice from experts who believed otherwise. The police were seemingly likewise unconvinced, having raided Speirs’ house and arrested him on September 26. The last by-election in the state, on March 23, resulted in Labor gaining former Liberal Premier Steven Marshall of Dunstan, overturning a 0.5% margin with a 1.4% swing.

US presidential election minus five weeks

Polls and forecast models continue to find little or nothing to separate the two presidential contenders.

All three of the main forecast models are now very much singing from the same song sheet, with The Economist and FiveThirtyEight both putting Kamala Harris’s win probability at 56% and Nate Silver’s differing only insofar as it goes to one decimal place. A very similar story is told by a regularly updated YouGov MRP poll presently drawing on 100,000 respondents, which rates Harris favourite in enough states to get within 13 electoral college votes of a majority and another two (Pennsylvania and Georgia) as toss-ups each with enough votes to get her over the line. Adrian Beaumont’s latest overview is available at The Conversation.

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