Today Guardian Australia reports on an exclusive poll in the marginal seat of Lindsay, in Sydney's western suburbs. The startling results: the Liberal candidate, Fiona Scott, polled 60% of first preferences, a 17-point improvement over her 43.4% performance in 2010. The Labor incumbent (David Bradbury, the Assistant Treasurer) is looking at a 13-point decline on first preferences: 44.6% in 2010 to the poll's 32%.
This is quite simply a massive swing. Labor lost more than six points of primary vote share in Lindsay in 2010, a little more than the national swing of 5.4 points, but close to the NSW average of 6.8 points. Could an additional anti-Labor swing of more than twice the magnitude of the 2010 swing be on the cards? Could the poll be right?
One the one hand, it was a landline-only "robo poll", with a one-day field period, in an electorate that surely has a reasonably large "mobile-only" population. On the other hand, the pollster (Lonergan Research) reports that after weighting, the respondents' recollections of their 2010 voting closely matches the actual 2010 result. This type of "due diligence" by pollsters is most welcome, bolstering the validity of the eye-popping result.
Lonergan also reported a national poll in July that had Labor at 50% two-party preferred, which was the industry consensus at the time, which also helps lend credibility to this result.
Western Sydney has long been thought to be a weak spot for Labor this election cycle. Recall Julia Gillard's much-vaunted but ineffective visit in March. IVR ("robo") polling from that time pointed to double-digit swings against Labor in other Labor-held seats in Sydney's west. Those results are not hugely different – nor statistically distinguishable – from the result in this poll.
These earlier polls suggested a return to Kevin Rudd as prime minister would dramatically reduce or even reverse those swings; apparently not.
Note too that Newspoll was in the field in two other NSW marginals last weekend (Dobell and Robertson) and found an eight-point decline for Labor on first preferences. This is a considerably smaller swing than what the Lonergan/Guardian Australia poll finds in Lindsay, but of a magnitude to be just as devastating to Labor's chances.
And that's just it. We're right to ask tough questions about poll results as lopsided as this. But the Lindsay poll could be off by a factor of two on the magnitude of the swing and it just wouldn't matter.
If seats like Lindsay are swinging anything remotely close to this much, then the Coalition will win, and win big.
