I’m in Sydney this week prepping for TEDxSydney this weekend, which should be a blast. I’m talking about Politics and the Data Revolution, which will take in a review of some of the ways that the Data Revolution is reshaping political science research — and in particular — making that research incredibly relevant to real-world politics and policy making.

Its a very different kind of talk to lecturing, workshops, or even general audience talks. I’m learning a lot about those other, more conventional modes of giving talks from the prep I’m having to put into being comfortable with the TED format. We’ll see how it goes…

The Guardian Australia announced that I’ll be helping out with their election coverage ahead of the election here in September. It looks like a great group of people they’ve assembled (only one or two I knew about until today’s announcement).

And it seems only a month ago that I blogged about Labor’s price breaking new records for long-odds in the Australian political betting markets, at 7.30 to 1.10 on Centrebet on March 29. Think again.

Its May 2 and Labor’s out to 8.80 at Centrebet, the Coalition in to 1.05. The implied probability of a Labor win is 10.7%. Tom Waterhouse has the Coalition at 1.10.
Do ya best.

And, one of the best parts of a week in Sydney is that I usually treat myself to a workspace with a view like this:

Not too shabby.

Labor’s price is out past $7.00, the Coalition in to under $1.10. The implied probability of a Labor win is under 13%, once you factor out the bookies’ profit margins.

In the 6 years I’ve been watching the national-level betting markets, I think this is as lop-sided a market as I’ve seen. Some state-level markets have exceeded this, from memory (I haven’t been logging those prices), but I think I’m correct in asserting $7.00+ prices are new territory for the national betting markets.

The 10 highest Labor prices I’ve recorded:

The 10 highest Coalition prices aren’t as lop-sided, and almost all date back to the 2007 election:

July 2011 to the present, implied probability of a Labor win, based on the prices offered by some of the better known betting agencies:

A look at Sportbet’s market on the Labor leadership, at least for the four leading contenders…

There is nothing like leadership chatter to help draw some punters back to the Federal election betting market…

In particular, Labor’s price has been improving a little bit over the last 72 hours at Centrebet. At the time of writing, Labor is at 4.80 to the Coalition’s 1.17 (implied probability of ALP winning = 19.6%), in from 5.60/1.13 (16.8%) as recently as 5pm Monday March 18:

Labor had been out on 5.90 to the Coalition’s 1.12 as recently as March 12.

At sportsbet, the Labor leader market has Gillard out to 2.50, Rudd at 1.50. Factoring in the other Labor leader possibilities, this equates to a 44% chance that Rudd is leader at the next election. As recently as March 9, Rudd was at 2.35 (30% probability) and Gillard at 1.60 (44% probability).

…a bit of volatility around the time of the announcement itself, but settling down to Labor’s price easing slightly. See the graphs at the top of the blog or click on the link.

And not much action in the wake of the resignation announcements etc.

Labor at 4.05 on Centrebet to the Coalition’s 1.23, for an implied 77% probability of a Coalition win.

Stick a fork in it, I reckon. Done. And done.

It isn’t really a fair comparison, since there isn’t such a thing as “US election administration.”

Rather, like national elections themselves, there is a “rich tapestry” (um “wild riot”?) of state and county level election administration systems in the United States, with much variance in law, technologies, budgets, professionalism, partisanship and traditions.

Annabel Crabb takes a light-hearted look in this SMH piece, teasing a Foreign Correspondent story (ABC TV). I’ve been banging on about this for years to Oz journos etc; Australians ought to better understand and appreciate the minor admin miracle that the AEC is.

Peter Brent (@mumbletwits) wrote a PhD dissertation (big PDF) that took a solid look at the historical background, how Australia came to get something like the AEC (inter alia). I’ve long thought “it wus compulsory voting wot dun it“: that professional, standardized, centralized, election admin is a consequence of enacting a national-level compulsory voting statute in the 1920s. But last time we corresponded on this (a comment on my blog) Peter said his dissertation research found that Australian election admin was headed in this direction ahead of CV.

I’ve been amazed by the number of friends around the world asking me if I’d seen Gillard responding to Abbott in the Australian parliament.

From one friend (little doubt about her political leanings, but you get the idea):

“Simon, wish you were here, would love to here your commentary. Abbott is a disgrace, and Julie Bishop is a fool, her/the liberals response this morning was one of the unprofessional demonstrations in the history of politics.”

Yes I have seen it, even before everyone started emailing me…! And yes, my computer programs watching the betting markets alerted me that something was up back in Oz (I’ve been paying a bit more attention to the US polling situation of late).

Gillard did a great job, in several respects. She pivoted the debate about Slipper (and what a wretched mess that is) right back onto Abbott. It was a speech that will resonate with many who have watched Australian politics of late and wondered “WTF”. Finally Gillard addressed head-on the bile that she’s had to deal with, speaking plainly, powerfully and from the heart. I think she spoke in a way that will resonate with many women in particular, undoing any damage control Abbott might have engineered in the wake of the Jones matter. It could well be the most “Prime Ministerial” moment I’ve seen from her, in no small measure because it was incredibly personal as well.

Australian politics has been pretty unstable of late, but I’d predict that this shores up any lingering doubts that Gillard will lead the ALP to the next election; she might have even bought herself a point or two or three in the polls.

Slipper did Gillard a great favor by letting the showdown with Abbott dominate the 6pm news, delaying the news of his resignation until after 7pm (as best as I understand it from this distance).

Abbott of course showed incredibly poor taste and a lack of discipline in the “government dying of shame” line. Little surprise that this morning in Australia the Opposition was keen to re-frame the matter as about Slipper.

Finally… My poll tracking in the United States right now has the national story all tied up at 50-50. Obama’s had some bad polling in the wake of a poor debate against Romney last week. In the space of a week a 4.5 point lead in the polls evaporated. It does make you wonder what damage Abbott and Co. have done to themselves over-reaching on this Slipper matter, creating some space for Gillard to perform an amazing piece of political jujitsu.

Centrebet and sportingbet moved in lock step around mid-day yesterday, on the back of a 54-46 Newspoll.

Both sites took their Australian Federal betting markets down last night just after 7pm, when the news re Peter Slipper’s resignation broke. They’re yet to come back up. You’ve got to conclude that they’re worried about being clobbered by insiders when things are swirling in Canberra. Thumbnail below is clickable.

Sportsbet’s Labor price eased out to $3.25 from $3.00 (Coalition $1.33 in to $1.28) between 9 and 10 this morning, but they stayed up overnight.

Implied probability of a Labor win is about 25% at the last Centrebet prices ($3.72 to $1.27).

From a Gerard Henderson column (“Left closes ranks to consign Kerr to wrong side of history”) in the SMH:

In his conversations with me, Kerr made it very clear that he was desperate not to involve Buckingham Palace in an Australian political dispute. There is little doubt that Whitlam would have moved against Kerr if he had been consulted by Kerr along the lines Mason suggests. In the climate of 1975, this would have caused a constitutional crisis and possible political disorder.

(my emphasis).

Uh-huh. Unlike the constitutional crisis we actually did have and the “political disorder” of turfing out a popularly-elected government…?

Which is of course, wholly consistent with how the Right understands 1975. There was no “constitutional crisis”, because “the system worked”…with the GG exercising the Crown’s reserve powers… There was no “political disorder” because Fraser immediately advised a dissolution…that Kerr granted. Whereas Whitlam sacking Kerr? Why that would have been a terrible “constitutional crisis”.

…and some money comes back to Labor. The 3 bookies I follow all have Labor’s odds improving in the last couple of hours:

Yet more evidence of markets following polls…