New South Wales Wrap-Up

The candidate lists for the federal election are released tomorrow, after which I will be providing my regular state-by-state summaries of the parties in play. Therefore, it is time to conclude the NSW election coverage with this summary of predictions.

Lower House

In the lower house, we got 86 of the 93 seats correct, which is  a respectable 92%

SEAT	FORMERLY	PREDICTION	RESULT
Albury	LIB	LIB	LIB
Auburn	ALP	ALP	ALP
Ballina	GRN	GRN	GRN
Balmain	GRN	GRN	GRN
Bankstown	ALP	ALP	ALP
Barwon	NAT	NAT	SFF
Bathurst	NAT	NAT	NAT
Baulkham Hills	LIB	LIB	LIB
Bega	LIB	LIB	LIB
Blacktown	ALP	ALP	ALP
Blue Mountains	ALP	ALP	ALP
Cabramatta	ALP	ALP	ALP
Camden	LIB	LIB	LIB
Campbelltown	ALP	ALP	ALP
Canterbury	ALP	ALP	ALP
Castle Hill	LIB	LIB	LIB
Cessnock	ALP	ALP	ALP
Charlestown	ALP	ALP	ALP
Clarence	NAT	NAT	NAT
Coffs Harbour	NAT	NAT	NAT
Coogee	LIB	ALP	ALP
Cootamundra	NAT	NAT	NAT
Cronulla	LIB	LIB	LIB
Davidson	LIB	LIB	LIB
Drummoyne	LIB	LIB	LIB
Dubbo	NAT	NAT	NAT
East Hills	LIB	ALP	LIB
Epping	LIB	LIB	LIB
Fairfield	ALP	ALP	ALP
Gosford	ALP	ALP	ALP
Goulburn	LIB	LIB	LIB
Granville	ALP	ALP	ALP
Hawkesbury	LIB	LIB	LIB
Heathcote	LIB	LIB	LIB
Heffron	ALP	ALP	ALP
Holsworthy	LIB	LIB	LIB
Hornsby	LIB	LIB	LIB
Keira	ALP	ALP	ALP
Kiama	LIB	LIB	LIB
Kogarah	ALP	ALP	ALP
Ku-ring-gai	LIB	LIB	LIB
Lake Macquarie	IND	IND	IND
Lakemba	ALP	ALP	ALP
Lane Cove	LIB	LIB	LIB
Lismore	NAT	GRN	ALP
Liverpool	ALP	ALP	ALP
Londonderry	ALP	ALP	ALP
Macquarie Fields	ALP	ALP	ALP
Maitland	ALP	ALP	ALP
Manly	LIB	LIB	LIB
Maroubra	ALP	ALP	ALP
Miranda	LIB	LIB	LIB
Monaro	NAT	ALP	NAT
Mount Druitt	ALP	ALP	ALP
Mulgoa	LIB	LIB	LIB
Murray	NAT	NAT	SFF
Myall Lakes	NAT	NAT	NAT
Newcastle	ALP	ALP	ALP
Newtown	GRN	GRN	GRN
North Shore	LIB	LIB	LIB
Northern Tablelands	NAT	NAT	NAT
Oatley	LIB	LIB	LIB
Orange	SFF	ALP	SFF
Oxley	NAT	NAT	NAT
Parramatta	LIB	LIB	LIB
Penrith	LIB	LIB	LIB
Pittwater	LIB	LIB	LIB
Port Macquarie	NAT	NAT	NAT
Port Stephens	ALP	ALP	ALP
Prospect	ALP	ALP	ALP
Riverstone	LIB	LIB	LIB
Rockdale	ALP	ALP	ALP
Ryde	LIB	LIB	LIB
Seven Hills	LIB	LIB	LIB
Shellharbour	ALP	ALP	ALP
South Coast	LIB	LIB	LIB
Strathfield	ALP	ALP	ALP
Summer Hill	ALP	ALP	ALP
Swansea	ALP	ALP	ALP
Sydney	IND	IND	IND
Tamworth	NAT	NAT	NAT
Terrigal	LIB	LIB	LIB
The Entrance	ALP	ALP	ALP
Tweed	NAT	ALP	NAT
Upper Hunter	NAT	NAT	NAT
Vaucluse	LIB	LIB	LIB
Wagga Wagga	IND	IND	IND
Wakehurst	LIB	LIB	LIB
Wallsend	ALP	ALP	ALP
Willoughby	LIB	LIB	LIB
Wollondilly	LIB	LIB	LIB
Wollongong	ALP	ALP	ALP
Wyong	ALP	ALP	ALP

The 7 incorrect predictions fall into one of three categories: strong SFF results; unexpected Coalition resilience and Lismore.

The strong SFF results hold Orange while picking up Barwon and Murray. The prediction in Orange was an underestimation of the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party, but should have favoured the Nationals (as written in the text of the previous post) rather than the ALP (as shown in the tables). In the other two seats SFF was not even on my radar. I don't think there is much that can be done to remedy this without polling considering the SFF and other minor parties to give some data to play with.

The swing against the Coallition was not as strong as polling indicated, which saw the parties hold on better than expected, especially the Nationals who did not have accurate polling availible. This was the case in East Hills, Monaro and Tweed. This can be remedied in future by making seperate estimates for Liberal and National polling.

That just leaves Lismore. Previously Nationals, predicted Greens and won by the ALP. This was a weird case where the previous result was a NAT v GRN result. Simplistic predictions of a shift from right to left thus gave this to the Greens, without an appreciation that the Greens polled well by besting Labor and taking the lion's share of their preferences; a shift from the Nationals is unlikely to fall directly to the Greens but instead vest in Labor who then beat and assimilate the Greens vote. This is an oversight on my part not to be repeated.

Upper House

The upper house prediction was as follows:

PARTY	CONTINUING	ELECTED		TOTAL		ERROR
		Predicted	Result	Predicted	Result
Coalition	9	8	8	17	17	0
Labor	7	8	7	15	14	1
Green	2	2	2	4	4	0
Christian Democrats	1	1	0	2	1	1
Shooters, Fishers & Farmers	1	1	1	2	2	0
Animal Justice	1	0	1	1	2	1
One Nation	0	1	2	1	2	1

Although the error column sums to 4 this is actually only two errors, losses from the predicted results of the ALP and Christian Democrats to the Animal Justice and One Nation parties. The possibility of ALP only einning 7 seats and the Animal Justice Party continuing their previous success to win one were forseeable posibilities but not ones I am too concerned about. There is always some guesswork at the pointy end of the preference count. The failure of the CDP to win a seat, however, is a significant departure from tradition, and the rise of One Nation (again) shooting from 0 to 2 seats is startlling (though probably unlikely to repeat any time soon, given recent scandals involving the US NRA). I think the lesson to be learned from that is not to put too much weight on historic voting trends, particularly for minor parties.

Overall, this was a decently successful set of preductions with a couple of key lessons: don't assume coalition polling is indicative of the Nationals' votes and don't relytoo heavily  on historical patterns in upper house contests.