Monthly Archives: November 2007

Quite a day of surprises. Julia Gillard is superhuman, but I’ve never imagined that one person could run industrial relations and education. Even given his victory, Rudd’s dropping of 4 members of the left and centre faction from the ministry is … Continue reading →

Amidst Bernie Banton and the gloriously witty Matt Price passing away; and Mark Vaile and Clare Martin quitting politics, I’ve been rather too stunned to post. But feel free to discuss them in comments – or speculate on whether Glyn … Continue reading →

University of Newcastle economist Steve Easton emails with a tidbit from election night. I thought you might be interested in the data presented in the attached spreadsheet. This is the first time to my knowledge that there has been active … Continue reading →

Inspired by CJ Dennis, Peter Costello has announced that he won’t contest the leadership. I guess it’s Turnbull for opposition leader, then. When it resumes, parliament should be nothing if not entertaining. Update: Sportingbet has opened a market in who … Continue reading →

Taking advantage of the time zones, Christine Neill emails from Canada with a spreadsheet comparing two predictors of the seat-by-seat results: Simon Jackman’s state-specific poll aggregation, and Simon’s last capture of Portlandbet’s seat-by-seat markets. With several seats still in play, … Continue reading →

There’s no sign yet of a concession speech from the PM, but there seems little doubt that Labor’s won. I might post something more substantial later, but since I just had my first call from a journalist asking how well … Continue reading →

Almost election-eve, and Simon Jackman posts the latest betting market predictions. Database last updated at 12:01 November 22 2007 (Sydney time) Analysis tracks prices offered by three agencies: Centrebet, Portlandbet, Sportingbet ALP favoured to win in 80 of 150 seats (# … Continue reading →

I had an opinion piece in yesterday’s AFR, looking at three aspects of sex and voting: candidate gender, voter gender, and child gender. Full text over the fold.

On Tuesday, I wrote: OK, now here’s a challenge for the betting agencies: why don’t one of you run a betting market on the two-party preferred vote? That would give us a direct head-to-head way of comparing polls and markets. … Continue reading →

Amy King and I have a new paper out today, looking at how candidates’ gender affects their share of the vote. Here’s our abstract: Bias at the Ballot Box? Testing Whether Candidates’ Gender Affects Their Vote We examine the relationship … Continue reading →

Over recent weeks, several betting houses have been pooling several polls into one, in an attempt to reduce their standard errors. Now Simon Jackman (who wrote a paper after the 2004 election called “pooling the polls”) has crunched the data … Continue reading →

Philip Clarke, a colleague of mine, naughtily points out that you can place a bet on anti-gambling campaigner Nick Xenophon winning a Senate seat. According to Portlandbet, the odds on him (or another minor party) winning a South Australian Senate … Continue reading →

Our ‘no junk mail’ sticker has again failed to stop leafleters from the ACT Greens.

Andrew Norton on Labor’s higher education announcements. Joshua Gans on Labor’s broadband-to-schools policy. Update: Adrian Pagan guestposts at JQ on WorkChoices research (is this the first time we’ve seen a current or past member of the RBA board in the … Continue reading →

In mid-2006, I released a paper on the distribution of electoral pork during the 2001-04 cycle. Now, some digging by SMH journalist Mark Metherell has unearthed some more recent programs that seem to have a strong political skew. Although 59% … Continue reading →

Several friends and journalists have been asking me lately about the fact that the headline betting odds have Labor a 70% chance to win, while the seat-by-seat markets have Labor as favourite in 77 out of 150 seats (see Simon Jackman’s site for current … Continue reading →