Poll update

The polls are noisy and contradictory this fortnight. At 49-51 in Labor's favour, today's Newspoll is the best result for the Coalition since September 2014.  It represents a four point move towards the Coalition over the previous fortnight. However, tempering the celebrations in the Coalition's ranks was yesterday's Morgan poll at 44-56 in Labor's favour. This was a 2.5 percentage point move towards Labor over the previous Morgan poll.

Let's look at the charts. We will start with the polling house-by-house line chart. You will note we have not seen a national Galaxy or ReachTEL poll for some time, as they focus on the NSW election.

Plugging the latest numbers into the Bayesian model, suggests the Coalition's fortunes are improving slowly, but there is a way to go before the Coalition would be in there with a chance at the next election. Nonetheless, the 2.2 percentage point improvement since the spill motion just six weeks ago is not to be sneezed at.

The LOESS model has come back into line with the Bayesian model.

Polling update

This week's Newspoll was unkind to the Coalition (but not as bad as the early February poll). The Morgan poll this week was the most favourable from the polling house since late November 2014.

Collectively, through the Bayesian model, the polls are suggesting a one and a half percentage point recovery for the Coalition since the Prince Philip purple patch at the beginning of February. But they are also suggesting that the Coalition's recovery momentum is stalling.The Coalition could not win an election with these numbers.

February poll update

Since the spill motion on 9 February, the polls have improved for the Coalition. If an election was held now, it would still be a thumping loss, just not as thumping as early February.

I should point out that LOESS regressions can be overly influenced by outliers, especially at the end-points. We will need to see more polls to know whether the recent change in voting intention is as dramatic as that suggested by the previous chart.