Hidden among the events of Thursday’s spill was Newspoll’s quarterly release of their polling demographic breakdowns between April and June in The Oz. In what can only be described as very convenient timing, this allows us to pool these Newspoll results with the Nieslen results over the same period (plus one  unpublished phone poll I have from a company that was testing their sampling frame), to not only give us geographical and demographic cross-tabs of the last 3 months of the Rudd government – but also the demographic baseline that the Julia Gillard Prime Ministership starts from.

With these numbers, we can run them through our updated election simulation engine to see how an election would have played out on the ground were it held between April and June – providing results that can only be described as very, very interesting. You may even be surprised.

This is quite a long post, so it may be worth going and making yourself a cuppa first. Read more »