## Tuesday, August 11, 2015

### Morgan poll

I first saw it on twitter. The headline for the latest Morgan poll has Labor on 57 to the Coalition's 43 (a three point decline for the Coalition on the previous Mogan poll with preferences allocated based on how people said they would vote). A shocking result for the Coalition.

But peel beneath the surface and all is not what it seems. If preferences are distributed according to how people voted in 2013, the result is 54.5 to 45.5 (a one percentage point decline for the Coalition since the previous Morgan poll on the same basis). But make no mistake, 54.5 to 45.5 would still yield a landslide win for Labor.

A couple of points to note. First, the difference between preference distributions in this latest Morgan poll is the second highest since the last election.

Second, I think of the Morgan poll as being more expressive. When the tide is turning against the Coalition, this is often more evident in the Morgan poll than other polls. In the next chart, it looks like we might be entering a new period of expressiveness.

Because I down-weight the Morgan sample size in the poll aggregation, This has had minimal impact on the overall aggregation.

In the betting markets, there was no change over the past 24 hours with Sportsbet ($1.65 to$2.25 in the Coalition's favour).

However, over the past 24 hours, TABtouch has adjusted its odds from $1.64/$2.25 to $1.76/$2.04. That is a move from a 57.7 per cent probability of a Coalition win at the next election to a 53.4 per cent probability.

### Update

I will be following the bookmakers from here on. I have written a few short python scripts that capture and store the daily odds for me. It is early days, but this is how it looks at the moment.