The pollsters and the Crikey Electoral Indicator agree. The interest in the Queensland election looks like being a matter of how many seats Labor wins by.

Newspoll this week had a two-party preferred prediction of Labor 58% to 42% for non-Labor. The Crikey indicator, based on the prices of the major internet bookmakers, has Labor a 91.1% chance of winning. Translate the Indicator’s probability into the same format as the opinion polls and the market is predicting a final outcome of Labor with around 53% of the two party preferred vote to non-Labor’s 47%.

But exactly how many seats will Labor win and which seats will they be? They are the questions to be answered in the Crikey Intelligent Person’s Tipping Contest. The bragging rights that go with the title of “Australia’s Champion Psephologist” will be at stake as we get our readers to predict the probability of a Labor victory in each of the 89 seats in the Queensland state election.

It’s like a giant footy tipping contest with the ALP versus the Rest (Nationals, Liberals, Greens, independents combined) in every electorate. Tippers must choose between the two sides and give a probability about being right.

You will find all the details here on the glug website which is providing a fine wine selection for the winner to celebrate with. There are free Crikey subscriptions on offer too.

Because we want to find Australia’s Champion Psephologist we have chosen a scoring system that gives us a good chance of ending up with a single winner. It is used for an AFL footy tipping contest by some very clever fellows at the Clayton School of Information Technology which is part of the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University. It is what they call a “probabilistic” competition.

If interested in the statistical theory, you will find the details on their website.