Saturday morning update

This morning's polls:

• Morgan 45.5 to 54.5 in the Coalition's favour
• Newspoll 46 to 54 in the Coalition's favour
• Nielsen 46 to 54 in the Coalition's favour

Which gives an aggregation:

At this point in the blog, it is my normal practice to remind people that I anchor the above Bayesian aggregation with the assumption that the net bias across all of the polling houses sums to zero. You will need to come to your own view about where the actual level of collective systemic bias lies for all the pollsters. At the 2010 Election (with a different set of pollsters), the population voting intention was about one percentage point more in the Coalition's favour compared with the pollster average (see here). In light of the 2010 experience, it is arguably plausible to subtract (say) half a percentage point or more from the above aggregation to adjust for the collective systemic bias across all of the polling houses. [As an aside, you will note that Simon Jackman, who seeks to anchor his Bayesian models with respect to the outcome of past elections regularly produces an aggregated poll that tracks well below the vast majority of individual poll results]. 

If we limit our analysis to Newspoll and Nielsen.

The latest Newspoll

The latest Nielsen

My prediction? Yesterday I thought it might be in the high 50s for the number of seats won by Labor. Today, with this latest suite of polls, I suspect the low 50s for Labor is more likely. But the high 40s cannot be ruled out.

Nielsen 47-53

Today's Nielsen continues the string of poor poll results for Labor.

If I plug today's Nielson poll into my regular aggregation ...

Updating my Newspoll/Nielsen only aggregation ... notwithstanding the recent slump, Mr Rudd is still doing better in the polls than under Ms Gillard's last three months.

Nielsen 48-52

The second Nielsen poll since the restoration of Prime Minister Rudd has moved two points in the Coalition's favour to estimate the two-party preferred (TPP) voting intention at 48 to 52 per cent in the Coalition's favour.

Interestingly, the Nielsen data suggests this Rudd restoration came in large part from a reduction in greens and others.

Unlike Nielsen, Newspoll has a sizable drop-off in the Coalition primary vote with the Rudd restoration. Nonetheless, Newspoll does have a reduction in the in green-other primary vote following the Rudd restoration.

Turning to the regular aggregation ... if we add this latest poll we find ...

If we restrict our aggregation to Newspoll and Nielson polls, we gt the following ...

Nielsen poll: 43 to 57

Rather than wait until tomorrow for the weekly aggregation, when all of the week's polls are in, I thought I would give a foretaste today, using just Galaxy and Nielsen. I will update the aggregation further tomorrow.

The Nielsen poll particularly caught my eye with its gendered analysis.

I liked what John Stirton had to say in the AFR (pay-walled).  In short, he noted the average of the polls since February has been around 44 to 55 (for the Coalition), and this result is within the margin or error of that average. He also noted that while the hypothetical scenario polls suggest Kevin Rudd might poll better than Julia Gillard, these polls do not take into account the context and consequences of change.

My key Nielsen charts follow.

And on to the aggregation ...

Nielsen 43-57

Today's Fairfax/Nielsen poll has the government one point down on a month ago. This is less sanguine than yesterday's Galaxy poll which had the government one point up on three weeks ago.

The resulting two-party preferred aggregation is as follows.

Nielsen update

Today saw the Fairfax media publish the latest Nielsen Poll. It was very much a status quo result. According to Nielsen, the middle of March looked much the same as the middle of February.

Dropping these figures into the Bayesian aggregation, the combined polling story appears to mirror the Nielsen result. Following the voting collapse at the start of 2013, the middle of March looks much like the middle of February.