Preference deal with UAP looks likely to pay off for Coalition

With one in four voters now ­selecting a minor party or independent, the task of allocating preferences becomes increasingly difficult when we calculate the two-party-preferred vote from our estimates of the primary support for the parties.

The obvious way to determine the preference flow for each party would be to ask respondents whether they will place Labor or the Coalition higher on their ballot paper. However, this method of “respondent allocated preferences” proved unreliable and so Newspoll adopted a system in 2004 of allocating preferences based on previous elections.

This approach has proved ­reliable as the preference flow for most of the minor parties has a high degree of consistency. For example, the preference flow from the Greens to Labor at federal elections has been: 2004 (80.8 per cent); 2007 (79.7 per cent); 2010 (78.8 per cent); 2013 (83.0 per cent); 2016 (81.9 per cent).

The preference flow from Pauline Hanson’s One Nation at recent state elections has shifted substantially since the 2016 federal election when just 50.5 per cent of their preferences went to the Coalition. At the West Australian and Queensland elections the party did not preference against the sitting member and this resulted in the following preference flow from One Nation to the Liberal Party/LNP: WA (60.6 per cent); Queensland (65.2 per cent).

When we noted this shift in preferences we recalibrated the Newspoll preference flow allocation from One Nation to the Coalition from 50 to 60 per cent.

In this week’s national Newspoll we are seeing the impact of Clive Palmer’s advertising blitz, with primary support for the United Australia Party up to 5 per cent. With the UAP there is no historical trend data we can refer to in order to estimate the likely preference flow to the major parties. We do know, however, that in the 2013 election 53.67 per cent of the Palmer United Party vote was ­directed to Coalition candidates.

That was without a preference deal, but in the forthcoming federal election the Liberal Party will swap preferences with the UAP and this can only result in an even higher proportion of UAP votes being directed to the Coalition.

Evidence of the leanings of UAP voters may be seen in the latest Newspoll. When asked which of the two leaders they were more likely to trust, 53 per cent of UAP supporters selected Scott Morrison and only 13 per cent chose Bill Shorten. If trust in politicians plays any part in how people vote then a notable proportion of UAP voters can be expected to direct preferences to the Coalition.

Considering all these factors, in this latest Newspoll we have ­allocated 60 per cent of UAP support to the Coalition.

This is an estimate but we can be confident that directionally we are correct.

David Briggs is managing director of YouGov Galaxy