The Crossbench

The crossbench in the 2019 House of Representatives had six members: Adam Bandt (GRN/Melbourne), Helen Haines (Ind/Indi), Bob Katter (KAP/Kennedy), Rebekah Sharkie (CA/Mayo), Zali Steggall (Ind/Warringah), and Andrew Wilkie (Ind/Clark).

After the 2022 election the crossbench has 16 members. All of the crossbench members from the 2019 Parliament were returned. In addition there are 10 new members: Stephen Bates (GRN/Brisbane), Max Chandler-Mather (GRN/Griffith), Kate Chaney (Ind/Curtin), Zoe Daniel (Ind/Goldstein), Dai Le (Ind/Fowler), Monique Ryan (Ind/Kooyong), Sophie Scamps (Ind/Mackellar), Allegra Spender (Ind/Wentworth), Kylea Tink (Ind/North Sydney), and Elizabeth Watson-Brown (GRN/Ryan).

According to the two-party preferred (2PP) count of votes, the crossbench took nine seats from the Coalition and seven seats from Labor.

The notionally Coalition seats are as follows. The swings in this table are the swings in percentage points towards the Coalition (+), or away from the Coalition (-).

	State	2PP Coalition Percentage	2PP Labor Percentage	Swing
Division
North Sydney	NSW	51.26	48.74	-8.01
Warringah	NSW	51.43	48.57	-0.69
Kooyong	VIC	54.18	45.82	-2.21
Goldstein	VIC	54.80	45.20	-2.99
Indi	VIC	55.26	44.74	-7.47
Curtin	WA	55.60	44.40	-8.35
Wentworth	NSW	55.92	44.08	-3.93
Mackellar	NSW	58.60	41.40	-4.62
Kennedy	QLD	60.16	39.84	-4.35

The notionally Labor seats are as follows.

	State	2PP Coalition Percentage	2PP Labor Percentage	Swing
Division
Mayo	SA	48.41	51.59	-4.13
Ryan	QLD	47.58	52.42	-8.45
Brisbane	QLD	45.60	54.40	-9.32
Fowler	NSW	44.28	55.72	8.27
Griffith	QLD	38.93	61.07	-8.21
Clark	TAS	32.76	67.24	-1.07
Melbourne	VIC	22.09	77.91	-10.11

Of note, Fowler is the only one of these crossbench seats that saw a 2PP swing to the Coalition. Mayo, which is held by Rebekah Sharkie (CA) has gone from being a notionally Coalition seat to a notionally Labor seat, according to the two-party preferred count. Brisbane and Ryan in Queensland, now held by the Greens, have transitioned from being Coalition seats to being notionally Labor seats. 

And a quick look at these seats ...

 

Poll performance - 2022 Australian Federal Election

Now that the count is complete we can look at the performance of the final polls immediately prior to the 2022 Australian Federal Election. In terms of the final two party preferred (TPP) outcome, in which Labor won 52.13 per cent of that vote, all of the final polls performed well. The final estimates of TPP voting intention were all well within the margin of error. This is a substantial improvement on performance in 2019.

However, there was some patchiness among the these final polls when it came to estimating the first preference primary votes for each of the major parties. Only the final poll from Resolve Strategic had each primary vote estimate within the 2-sigma margin of error when compared with the election result. The other polls had a tendency to over-estimate Labor's primary vote share and/or under estimate the vote for one or more of the minor parties and independents.

We can sum the absolute values of the differences between the final poll estimate for each party from each pollster and the election outcome, to rank the performance of these final polls in terms of providing an estimate of the election outcome. 

Cautionary Note: This poll ranking should not be seen as a ranking of the pollsters. We expect polls to be randomly distributed around a mean. If we assume ceteris paribus, then then it is just luck (or randomness) as to whether the final poll from one pollster would be closer to the election result or not (when compared with another pollster).

Also note: where pollsters have provided an effective sample size (ESS), this was used to calculate the margin of error. Otherwise the reported sample size was used. 

Link: the Jupyter Notebook for these charts can be found here.