Remembering the death of a conservative government

When you see opinion poll data like that below in The Australian this morning the inclination is to remember that with six months or so to an actual polling day that things can change.

Five percentage points is near enough to the the normal error with so far to go and a 45% Coalition share can easily become 50%. That's the way most people would look at it but deviations can go down as well as up.
If you don't think that's so go to Wikipedia and read about the Canadian election of 1993. The governing Progressive Conservatives were polling at 36% early in September (down from the 43% with which they had won office in 1988) but at the election at the end of October the PCs managed just 16%.
And the result? Down from 169 seats to 2. Just something for Coalition members in Australia to think about.


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