New Day, New England

I had been hoping to produce a review of the results of the Queensland election before moving on to the citizenship-saga's by-elections, but there are still 5 seats to be called and neither major party yet has an outright majority.

So instead we will look at New England, and the new contest for Barnaby Joyce. Despite the large number of politicians invalidated from holding seats due to citizenship issues, there are only two by-elections scheduled: New England on Saturday and Bennelong two weeks later on the 16th. This is because all of the other politicians who either resigned or were found ineligible to sit by the court of disputed returns were senators, who are replaced by their party without a by-election (because a single-candidate senate election would not be a fair replication of the proportional representational system used to initially elect the senators).

I cannot find any polling for New England except an online poll from the Tenterfield Star which suggests an outrageous swing to the Greens:

The problems with this poll are many and obvious: it is an opt-in poll, it is an online poll thus skewed to a younger, internet-using demographic, it is adjusted for demographics or bias, it is open to manipulation and influence from respondents not eligible to vote, and it would seem to have a very low sample size as evidenced by the large number of candidates on 0%, the absence of any 'likes' on the poll, and five separate candidates (including the ALP) sitting on the lowest non-zero score: 1.09%. It would seem likely that 1.09% represents a single vote, and if so the sample size is less than n=100. In fact, n=92 and the Greens would have 52 votes to the Nationals' 20 and the Science Party's 6: hardly a representative sample.

Polling is hard to get right on such small seat, and is often more expensive than it's worth. Another possible reason there is not much polling on this seat is that the result seems to be a foregone conclusion. Here is the seat's history since federation, based primarily on this AEC data:

Obviously a very strong seat for the Nationals, having been held by them under one name or another since 1920 with two brief interruptions from independents: in 1922 Alexander Hay was ejected from the Country Party and lost his seat to the Country Party in an election months later, and from 2001 to 2013 Tony Windsor held the seat; he will not re-contest this election.

Since Barnaby Joyce began running in the seat he has secured over 50% of the primary vote. Prior to his candidacy, the Nationals easily polled second-best behind Tony Windsor.

Public consensus would appear to be that Joyce will be returned to his seat. In fact, on Q&A this Monday (transcript here) Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister James McGrath apparently misspoke while discussing the possibility of a banking royal commission when he said "Well, let’s see what happens next week, when Barnaby comes back." (emphasis added)

Indeed, New England does seem like a foregone conclusion and i too must predict that Barnaby Joyce will be returned.