A great new Crikey contest every fortnight from now until the Federal election: predict what the Newspoll will show. This is a game of skill for all political aficionados.

Here’s what we need you to do:

  • Nominate the primary vote that the pollster will show for the Liberals, Nationals, Labor, the Greens and all the others.
  • Calculate what Newspoll will show the two-party preferred vote to be.
  • Nominate a standard deviation.
  • Then, for good measure, estimate the satisfaction and dissatisfaction ratings for the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition.
  • And end up by predicting what figures Newspoll will give in answer to the question who would be the best Prime Minister: John Howard or Kevin Rudd.

This is no simple guessing game. Our competition involves the tipper predicting what figure Newspoll will show and nominating a standard deviation.

The standard deviation allows the tipper to express his or her confidence in their choice of margin. The smaller the standard deviation, the more points you will get if the Newspoll figure is close to your predicted one, but if it is too far out, you will receive a large negative score.

The fortnightly winner will receive not only the accolade of being the Crikey Champion Political tipster but a dozen bottles of wine as well.

Click here to go to the competition site.