Victoria (Australia) is currently governed by the Coalition, a permanent coalition of the centre-right Liberal party and the rural National Party. The opposition is the centre-left Labor party. The Coalition currently command just a 44-43 majority. There is also a single scandal-slicked independent, Geoff Shaw, who resigned from the Liberal party ahead of a vote to expel him earlier in the year.
The next Victorian state election will be held today, the 29th of November, and public polling has become very frequent, ReachTel, Galaxy, Essential, Morgan, Ipsos, and Newspoll have all released polling in the last few days, so it's time to make one last pre-election modelling post.
Venom (Victorian Electoral NOminative Model) is largely based off of my Federal model but has a few additional features to account for a recent redistribution (redistricting) and for systemic polling errors across the entire industry, this refers to an additional variable for accidental systemic bias not an attempt to unskew. Like the Federal model Venom takes into consideration the prior voting history of each electorate, incumbent strength (where applicable), and public polling. Venom calculates a predicted two-party preferred vote for each seat 30,000 times. Venom predicts a Labor majority government 90.4%, a hung parliament 3.8%, and a Coalition victory 5.8% of the time based on final polling.
Voting in Victoria is compulsory and uses a preferential ballot (this means that in certain seats the way parties direct their supporters to allocate their preferences will be crucial) in single-member seats for the Legislative Assembly.
Tables in this diary are colour coded. Shades of red reflect Labor predictions, shades of blue represent Liberal predictions and Nationals predictions are dark green. The percentages indicate the overall percentage of simulated outcomes where one of the Coalition parties wins the seat. The final column is the median two-party preferred result with the Labor percentage first, that is Labor-Coalition.
The column graph shows the number of simulations in which the governing Coalition wins a certain number of seats in the 88 member Victorian Legislative Assembly. Red columns represent a Labor government and blue columns a Coalition government. As Victoria, inconveniently, has chosen to have 88 seats in their Legislative Assembly it is possible for the voters to elect a deadlocked parliament with 44 members from each major party. As Victoria has fixed term elections this could prove to be rather problematic. This column representing this hung parliament situation is grey.
It is possible that not all seats will be won by either Labor or one of the Coalition parties. Current the Coalition are predicted to hold (both mean and median) 40 seats after the election, by implication this would give Labor 48 seats and a 8 seat majority. However...
The Greens have come very close to winning a number of seats in the past and on current polling would be considered non-zero chances of winning one or more of Brunswick, Melbourne, Northcote, Prahran, and Richmond. The Greens would almost certainly support a Labor government if the later didn't reach 45 seats themselves.
Whilst there are no rural independents at present in the Victorian parliament, despite a long tradition, there is always the possibility of unexpected victories. National held Morwell is perhaps the most likely seat to elect an independent as there is significant local resentment at the government response to a mine fire that burned for 45 days and dumped large amounts of toxic smoke on the town of Morwell.
Finally I'll note that there is a chance that Ivanhoe will underperform for Labor as former Labor member Craig Langdon is running as an independent and directing his preferences to the Liberals.
Fri Nov 28, 2014 at 3:22 PM PT: Final Update to VENOM
Quick notes;
A Labor majority government 90.4%, a hung parliament 3.8%, and a Coalition victory 5.8% of the time based on final polling with a mean and median seat result of 48 to Labor and 40 to the Coalition.
