I don’t think we blogged the Morgan poll on Friday (and there’s lots there to get your analytical teeth into):
The first face-to-face Morgan Poll since Prime Minister John Howard declared indigenous child abuse in the Northern Territory a “national emergency� finds that primary support for the Coalition Government is down 1% to 36%. Primary support for the ALP is up 2.5% to 50.5%.
With preferences distributed as they were at the 2004 election, the two-party preferred vote is ALP 59% (up 1.5%), L-NP 41% (down 1.5%).
We should also be getting some Newspoll numbers tonight, since, as Matt Price says, it will now conform to “News Limited policy”.
Speaking of which (via The Poll Bludger, where as usual there’s a lively thread), Possum Comitatus has a very interesting post on the bias and differences between Morgan and Newspoll.
So, consider this an open polls/political climate/media reaction discussion thread.
Update: Newspoll is more or less unchanged, though with 2 extra points to the ALP on the primary. Numbers and discussion at Poll Bludger’s joint, spin at The Government Gazette.
Why on earth was there no mention at all of the Morgan Poll results in the papers? I mean they had all Friday, Saturday and Sunday to analyse this, I have combed the papers on the internet assiduously and there was nothing, not a peep, not a whisper. God with exciting news like that, you’d think all the resident pundits would be out in force analysing, surmising, reflecting, pontificating – but no. Nothing.
And it’s such an amazing result. The Nat/Libs down to 36% primary vote in July? Man that’s panic stations for them, I can hardly believe it. When is this red hot honeymoon going to end?
Why, St Margaret, why? Because anything that could possibly be said about such polls has already been said.
Labor are ahead in the polls. They have been ahead for some time. They may well be ahead on election day: if so, some seats now held by the Coalition will be held by Labor, and Labor will occupy government ministries. The end.
The weekend papers had the very kind of longterm, incisive articles on longterm social trends derived from census data – the information on which government policy should be based – that makes you realise what the MSM do well when they feel like it. This is the information you need in order to judge what the country needs going forward, and who’s in the best position to give it.
Another reason why the papers may not mention Morgan is because, as far as I know, it is not commissioned by one of them.
The Australian has Newspoll, the Fairfax papers have Nielsen and the Herald Sun/Daily Telegraph have Galaxy.
So I think they just publicise the polls they pay for.
Thus all the scare on terrorism and national security being bought to the fore (the new visa tracking software being fast tracked) starting yesterday.
The tick off boxes goes:
Economy Scare, Poll Boost: Fail
Attack Rudd Scare, Poll Boost: Fail
Attack Unions Scare, Poll Boost: Fail
Racism, Poll Boost: Fail
Security Scare, Poll Boost: In progress.
It’s all there and the timing is so predictable. Bad polls or news for the government and out of the hat comes security. I know it was done for Bush, where is was shown that every increase in the security threat level followed bad polling or news for his administration (It was uncanny how accurately you could foretell the rise and fall of US threat levels on internal political events in the US), but I’m wondering if anyone has ever done it for Howard? Is there a conclusive link between the warnings on security or security being raised as an issue by the government to bad polls or bad news stories for the government?
Morgan polls tend to be the least accurate of the major polls. This result simply isn’t newsworthy. http://www.ozpolitics.info/blog/?p=523
Not sure abou that, mel. To be sure, Morgan has a face-to-face interviewing methodology, as opposed to others who do phone polling.
On the other hand, the psephological sites like this and this have some discussion suggesting that Morgan isn’t so bad – certainly not so bad as to be not considered ‘newsworthy’, anyway.
Morgan has historically tended to overestimate the ALP vote, just as Newspoll has tended to underestimate it. The real news is the trend. Morgan has shown no trend away from Labor. Overestimation or no overestimation, this is bad news for the Rodent.
As for the argument that they don’t publish the results because they don’t hire the polling agency. The Australian hires Newpoll, but it didn’t stop Shanahan and co from beating up Galaxy’s rogue poll that favoured the Coalition.
Morgan got the primary vote quite close at the last election but mucked up their TPP figures badly as did Newspoll. There is a good piece by Peter Brent comparing the various polling outfits performances last election here.
http://www.mumble.com.au/federal/walkley_piece.htm
Morgan had a very poor result in 2001 and that contributed to what amounts to nearly an urban myth that they are somehow wildly inaccurate. This is especially the case if people do not really like the results they are throwing up. Regardless of what company does the polling any single poll could throw up a randomly bad result. The Galaxy poll of about a month ago was a prime example.
Last election all major polls got their primary vote about right but they parted company on the TPP vote. The lesson might be that it is probably better to draw your conclusions on the parties primary vote figures rather than paying too much attention to the TPP vote.
Regardless of whether certain polls have inherited biases or not the Morgan poll shows no sign of the big movement back to the government that they would be looking for.
The link in the post, which The Happy Revolutionary has already cited, is worth reading on Morgan v. Newspoll:
http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2007/06/27/jane_austen/
Interesting link Mark. I never knew Jane Austen had such a psephological bent.
Yikes!
Sorry, Robert, I was copying and pasting that link for an email!
Here’s the psephological link:
http://possumcomitatus.wordpress.com/2007/07/06/analysing-the-poll-bias-morgan-vs-newspoll/
And, while I’m at it, Possum Comitatus now has a part II to the Morgan v. Newspoll post:
http://possumcomitatus.wordpress.com/2007/07/08/analysing-the-poll-bias-morgan-vs-newspoll-part-ii/
The link above is to some Jane Austen related material!
My attempt at a bit of tea-leaf reading of the polls:
1. Labor has clearly been way in front of Liberal, consistently, in all polls, since Rudd took over leadership. Even under Beazley, Labor weren’t doing to badly, though Beazley himself was not a popular choice for PM.
2. Even if Morgan is a bit biased, it still suggests that the Liberals are heading for a right whacking.
3. Bryan at Ozpolitics has argued that, over time, the Coalition is slowly clawing back some of its primary vote. At this rate, however, it may not be enough.
4. People assume that, having stuffed it up so many times previously, Labor will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory once again. People also assume that the poll results will narrow once we get closer to the election. These things may happen, but at this point, they’re unsubstantiated speculation, strictly speaking.
5. Though the polls point to a rout, the bookmakers have placed things almost 50/50.
6. The polls don’t tell us enough about individual seats. For instance, a number of safe Labor seats suffered large but irrelevant swings to the Libs in 2004, that are probably being corrected now (and then some). This could inflate the poll results without making a jot of difference to the actual outcome. Also, a seat like Wentworth could be expected, on numbers alone, to easily fall to Labor. In practice, however, this is unlikely, due to a number of factors – i.e. the new electoral laws shutting out young and transient voters, distorted 2004 result as a result of Liberal infighting and the subsequent backlash, potential for mass suicides of business people should Labor hold the seat for the first time in history, etc.
7. The common rejoinder that Labor’s results are merely ’soft support’ hasn’t really been borne out by poll results. The recent question about the Government’s NT intervention suggests widespread cynicism toward Howard, but we don’t know for sure if voters have really made up their minds.
I think it is reasonable to expect a swing to Labor in this election, but this swing won’t be uniform, and it’s impossible to accurately predict at this point where and how large the swings will be. 16 seats is a big ask, but not impossible, and the election is likely to be won or lost in QLD and SA. There’s bound to be a few surprises though, and Rudd may be correct in predicting a very close result.
I don’t really understand the concept of ’soft support’. People don’t get to vote with the intensity of their feelings, and how are we to discern how likely someone is to swing from their responses to a simple question anyway? Most of the people who talk about this concept are employed by the Government Gazette anyway, so are hard to take seriously.
How will it conform to “News Limited policy�?
What exactly does this mean, Kim?
News Limited policy is not to publish newspoll with no explanation if it does not favour the coalition. When the populace complains an explanation is given late in the day that another poll could be out next week.
We are now in next week and waiting with bated breathh to see what stunt is pulled this time.
I still reckon Morgan is the least accurate major poller. In any case, it does Labor no favours to be seen to have an invincible lead over the Libs as it will encourage some undecideds to swing back to the Libs.
“In my analysis of the accuracy of polling predictions over the last three federal elections, I found that ACNielsen was within two percentage points 74 per cent of the time. Newspoll was within two points 48 per cent of the time. And Morgan achieved a prediction within two percentage points 22 per cent of the time. If we use a three percentage point margin, the scores improve to 96, 78 and 50 per cent respectively.” http://www.ozpolitics.info/blog/?p=523
ps. I’m sick of being green. I want to be a goat.
True mel, both parties will fight over the coveted ‘underdog’ status. The thing is, because Labor have lost lost many times before, I suspect many people are pessimistic about the chances, in spite of all the polling to the contrary.
Also, we shouldn’t forget that the Senate half-election will almost certainly see the Libs regain control of the upper house. This, in turn, will eventually lead to a double dissolution sooner or later, where Labor and the minor parties could make significant ground.
As dire as an election loss would be for the Labor party, and, perhaps more importantly, the Labor movement, the Liberal party will be in just as much trouble should they lose the House of Reps. Howard will go, and we might see all sorts of amusing backroom antics from those left behind. Polls show that Costello is pretty unpopular with the electorate, and the alternatives are even worse. Downer is as sympathetic as a soggy crumpet with a bit of mould on it. Abbott is electoral poison of the sort that would make Mark Latham seem a messiah in comparison. Bishop is a bit creepy, and Nelson is none-too-convincing. If Turnbull survives, he could be the only decent option as Liberal leader, but he’ll be contending with a front-bench of squabbling nuff-nuffs.
Wilful – campaigners and political hacks usually talk about soft support, and so it’s not surprising that columnists who get their information from said campaigners and political hacks use the term as well.
It is only really meaningful for campaigners who are basing their assessments on their own internal polling as well as these newspaper polls. So they are basing it on more qualitative polling as well. It generally means that their support is not guaranteed, that they can still be swayed one way or the other. In other words, the people for whom the election campaign show will be performed for.
Price made a dumb comment on his blog, which Gummo discussed here, that has endless potential to come back and haunt him:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/07/03/derailed/
Labor’s primary vote is now 49%, L-NP 35%, Greens 7% and Independent/Others a high 9%.
Of all electors surveyed, 4% did not name a party.
Note it was taken at the height of the Doctors= Terrorism alert and just as Brendan stated the bleedin’ obvious
Not looking good for Ratty.
Yes, and its worth noting this comment, from Possum Politics, via Crikey
I’d go further than Christian Kerr – and argue that the reason for the disparity between voting intentions and the “is the country heading in the right direction” numbers (which are somewhat better for Team Rodent) is the feeling that the country/ economy is going ok, but voters themselves arent doing nearly so well, and fear getting cut out of the action by Workchoices, etc.
Btw – congrats on the spellcheck! Im really going to have to work hard to maintain my low proofing standards now.
I have a pessimistic friend who is convinced that Howard will call some sort of ’state of emergency’ prior to the election to install fear about terrorism. When you think of the number of calls that emergency hotline must get every week, it is a plausible scenario. Once the dust settles it will be too late to realise we’ve been had. Remember Children Overboard…
Kymbos
As has been pointed out, the electorate appears to have very little tolerance for sudden cataclysmic moves by Howard. Unless it was very very clearly a genuine issue, and that it is not possible to raise a reasonably plausible cynical reading of the ’state of emergency’, I think it would bite JWH very hard.
As has been pointed out elsewhere, after reading the nation’s leading journalists lauding the man’s political genius and willingness to do anything to maintain power, it is hardly surprising that the bulk of the population tends to read anything he does as being a pure political ploy with no heart to it.
Personally I’m enjoying it hugely.
On Saturday I wore a maroon LHMU “your rights at work” T-shirt (featuring a caricature of JWH with the legend “Out you Time to go”) to my figure drawing group. In the rather conservative group, an irascible older man remarked that I didn’t support John Howard which I affirmed. He replied “well some of us do!” in that triumphant manner of the getting past it. There were some murmurs of agreement among the others. I replied “Well 60 per cent of the voting population agree with me.” The model laughed, and there were no further comments.
God it was great to do that. : )
The Happy Revolutionary writes:
“The polls don’t tell us enough about individual seats. For instance, a number of safe Labor seats suffered large but irrelevant swings to the Libs in 2004, that are probably being corrected now (and then some). This could inflate the poll results without making a jot of difference to the actual outcome.”
This is perhaps the most important point raised as reason to keep a cool head when assessing polls.
It’s a case of “aggregate numbers versus segmented numbers”, perhaps combined with an appreciation of modern marketing/public relations capabilities such as a cluster analysis of census collection districts (a geo-demographic analysis of Australia as distinct from simpler geographic segmentation by postcode), database management (the real life “Big Brother” capabilities of understanding and interpreting consumer behaviour) and target marketing (and the semantic shifts in word usage that results – the rhetoric of “Howard’s Battlers” to give one example).
However, you can take that sense of “cool head caution” to the extreme, which is why it gets rather boring reading press articles which declare Kevin Rudd to be skating on a thin ice of “soft support” each time the Coalition gets the slightest lift in fortune, even when similar previous lifts haven’t proven to be trend setting.
This criticism of the Mainstream Media ought to be viewed in the context of the way they’ve judged John Howard compared to the way they treated Kim Beazley. Having been a Beazley supporter myself (yes, having belonged to a minority in the world of online pundits), I found it very unfair the way the Press Gallery didn’t report Beazley’s many parliamentary speeches that could have impacted public debate, pointing to his low personal ratings as prefered PM as “reason to snooze”, despite Beazley’s ironic ability to restore Labor’s two-party and primary figures. Yet now the only figures being used lately by the same people to defend Howard (his personal figures as distinct from his party’s figures) don’t even have Howard as Preferred PM!
The subtext has become too obvious for this old Beazley supporter: I’m trying to think of a creative goose/gander line in anticipation of the increasingly predictable coverage of the Newspoll in The Australian newspaper.
At least Herald Sun’s Andrew Bolt has been candid enough on Melbourne Radio 3AW recently to concede that John Howard might be in trouble if his party’s ratings haven’t recovered by the end of July.
While elsewhere in the Mainstream Media, it appears to often be “repeat after repeat” of a Rocky and Bullwinkle scene – with journalists waiting in anticipation of John Howard finally pulling a rabbit out of his hat.
…From Justin
Well said!
Well… at this point Labor has to be the more likely winner…. but exactly how much point is there to dissecting 1% movements in polls and the like?
A fair bit of point when the media keep telling us how “Howard is back in the game”, I’d have thought.
Did anyone see this youtube clip by MSNCB American Journo, Keith Olbermann? sigh.. to have that kind of journalism in Australia. In comparison it really shows how partisan the Murdoch stable is. Keith Olbermann shows us how little criticism Howard has come under by Australian journalists.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGq7mqkDJ7E
The ’soft Labor vote’ thing is just Lib-NP spin that is being regurgitated by credulous cadets and dancing bears, I think. A poll from a few weeks ago (NewsPoll? Morgan?) indicated that a significantly higher percentage of voters had ‘locked in’ their votes, compared to the previous 2 elections. I think the figure 55-60% of voters who said they were unlikely to change their preference before the election.
No overconfidence from me though, and after being burned in 1998/2001/2004 however, all I can do is cross my fingers and toes, and hope. Rudd seems a bit steadier than previous leaders at least. I recall one columnist around the Burke smear fiasco (ahh, remember that, all those months ago? I wonder if anyone else does now, or cares) writing that the experience of withstanding the full force of the Liberal dirt machine would stand in good stead for later on, when things really started to get willing. Time will tell …
newspoll:
56:44, same as last time, before the ‘national emergency’. The intervention is popular and preferred PM has tightened, but not the voting intentions.
I like how newspoll split up the we should get out of iraq vote into three, stay only 1.
A tad deceptive?
only 31% say stay..
I wonder how much of Howard’s 44% is ’soft’?
Someone do me a favour. Square the inconsistency between the aggressive insistence political party leaders have for their respective under-dogship, and the persistence with which left-wing bloggers argue that right-wing media seek to obfuscate left-wing poll leads.
And the graph is here which I note there is no article yet – I predict Shemaham and the Govt Gazette will spin the positive “National Emergency” result and conviently ignore the bad poll result bar the Preferred PM one.
Which is basically meaningless anyway. But no doubt you’re right, Frank. The rest of it is basically “no change at all” and the preferred PM shift is the margin of error.
Shannahans ravings are up.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,22047317-17301,00.html
Of course preferred PM is one of his talking points along with satisfaction ratings, bbqs and sausages. For a man who often writes entire pieces dedicated to one point shifts in opinion polls, he has got a bit carried away when he says Howard has drawn level on preferred PM. Rudd in fact still leads by a point.
That’s a horrible pun.
Are they pissed at the GG when they write this stuff at 12.30 in the morning?
Come to think of it, that scans horribly too. Pretty dubious grammatically as well. Bring back the after midnight subbies’ shift – should be a compulsory thingamebob in the punditariat award.
Well Frank, you wuz wrong this time.
Well Frank, you wuz wrong this time
Ahem
The Lead Story from the Govt Gazette, under the by-line of Signor Shemaham.
Despite the popularity of the move, however, the Coalition has failed to put any dent in Labor’s election-winning lead.
The latest Newspoll, conducted exclusively for The Australian, reveals Labor’s primary support has risen slightly in the past three weeks and its strong two-party-preferred lead is unchanged.
But support for the Prime Minister has improved since he announced the commonwealth takeover of isolated Aboriginal communities and repeated his determination to “stay the course” in Iraq.
And the Editorial is no better.
Talk about spinning crap results for the Govt.
I’m not at all sure that the Iraq War has “refocused” the sort of attention on Howard that he’d like!
What bullshit. Why do they bother?
Shanahan is a snag short of a barbie
and Mitchell plays loyal 12th man to the letter.
Does it really matter what “The Australian” has to say at the moment. The only damage they have done is to their own credibility. Its my view that the electorate is largely decided and any suggestion that Labor’s vote is soft has been answered by the last couple of months of political wrangling. The Galaxy Poll showing 58% of people didn’t think Howard was genuine on the NT intervention combined with the Textor leaked research, showing that Howard’s softening of Workchoices was viewed with suspicion, tells me that his credibility is shot and there is no way way back for him. With little credibility and a long way behind in the polls, politically speaking howard has the arse out of his pants.
Well, I’ve just visited Mr. Shanahan’s Midnight Barbecue and found this point to be the most interesting:
“Labor is intent on maintaining the winning momentum in the polls it has built since December when Rudd became party leader. Yet there are some small but significant trends emerging from the latest polls, which are running counter to the Rudd steamroller.”
In summary, Mr. Shannahan regards John Howard’s consecutive rises in satisfaction rating as “trend setting”. Mr. Howard’s strongest differential – preferred PM – has him only one percentage point behind Mr. Rudd, after having first dropped 12 percentage points behind Rudd in April.
Yet what’s not properly addressed is the party standings, which appears to be a greater indicator of longer-term trend. It’s been proven many times since 2004 how easy it is to tie the Leader’s personal standings of either party to supplementary poll questions related to the most current issues. This appears to be where the Polls are injected with the most discretion and the least standard and I suspect that puts quite some pressure on presenting the most accurate picture.
Let me summarise that point by reiterating the recently quoted line from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair about the modern state of journalism: “the accuracy of a story counts, but it is secondary to impact, and it is unravelling standards.�
The Australian appears to make no secret today that the current discretionary component of the polling aims to define in detail the “impact objective” certain questioning is aimed at achieving.
Writes Martin O’Shannessy, chief executive of Newspoll:
“The two questions (one asked by Galaxy, the other asked by Newspoll) were aimed at two different outcomes.The result achieved in the Newspoll was diametrically opposite to the Galaxy poll, and I would argue more informative in the broader debate. As pollsters, we face a heavy responsibility to ask questions in a neutral way to avoid interpretations that obscure the truth, rather than uncover it.”
The paradox Martin O’Shannessy doesn’t address is that you can’t ultimately confine interpretations about “the broader debate” to questions about a single issue, which means the ultimate outcome of this Newspoll is that there remains “a disconnect” between the personal and party standings, just as there was when Kim Breazley was facing maximum Mainstream Media scrutiny for a poor personal standing, despite leading the Coalition on party standing for most of his term as Opposition Leader.
That’s also “a small but significant trend” in the assembly and interpretation of these polls that warrants a reminder about the words of Tony Blair. It’s as if the most standard components of these quantitative and qualitative questions don’t deserve as much emphasis as the more discretionary single issue lines of questioning, based on quite specific and detailed “impact objectives”.
Theodore Levitt says in a book called Marketing for Business Growth, “Discretion is the enemy of order, standardisation, and quality”.
Mr Shanahan says that:
“Voters drawn to the Rudd barbecue by the sizzle and smell of onions may now be looking for the sausage.”
The problem for The Australian and Newspoll is that one can just as easily redirect this barbecue metaphor to Newspoll’s own attraction to the sizzle and smell of “discretionary” onions at the risk of forgetting it’s the sausages that are the most “standard” feature of a barbecue.
…From Justin
Sweet Jesus that’s some terrible writing.
Honestly, that Shanahan is incorrigible – ‘Howard checks Rudd’s March’ coupled with the woeful news that the Coalition’s polls have budged no further northward than south. Brilliant!
I suppose too that if the polls suggest that a large proportion of people approved of Howard’s intervention in the NT at the same time as they continued to plump for Labor, these are not the issues they are voting for. Could it be WorkChoices? Oooh! don’t say that word!
“Mr Howard’s rating as preferred prime minister has drawn even with that of Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd, who is ahead by just one point: 43 to 42.”
From the ninemsn news. It is possible to be level and ahead at the same time. I just get the feeling if the situation was reversed that Howard would be ahead rather than level. Comic relief.
I actually think Shanahan’s blog is the least ludicrous he’s written in recent times. Sure he clings to the ‘preferred PM’ numbers, but he’s explicit in stating Labor’s ‘box seat’ status. He’s written much worse.
In order to analyse the Rocky & Bullwinkle theme of watching John Howard pull rabbits out of a hat,
Possums Pollytics asks the question:
“We’ve all heard of “peak oilâ€?, that point in time when oil production peaks, after which it becomes more expensive and simply more difficult to get hold of. Put simply, the bang you get for your buck starts to decline.
Has John Howard reached Peak Rabbit?”
I was just about to link to that post!
Mark, I just happen to be finding my way around some of these blogs for the first time. I’m new in town
It’s a recent discovery for me too, Justin.
Yes, sooner or later – if not already – Howard’s rabbit extraction attempts will make him look like a kid with political ADD.
I basically no longer fear him – he’s got nothing in the tank, and no-one’s believes him anymore in any case. Kapunda put it well “with little credibility and a long way behind in the polls, politically speaking howard has the arse out of his pants.”
My only worry is a 1998-style failure to capitalise – locking large ALP swings up in safe seats. But even there, the swinging ‘battler’ vote tends to be in outer marginals, and Team Rodent seems especially on the nose there.
It aint over, but ooh mama – Howard is in real trouble.
Bejaysus! I just had a gander at the Gazette. What a hoot.
ALP primary up 3%, and its “Howard checks Rudd’s March”
Bahaha! And weren’t we due a delayed budget bounce this month?
Shanahan is getting caned in the comments. I still can’t get over just how awfully written that piece was, aside from the usual dubious spin.
As you say, LeftyE, no-one believes Howard any more. The true measure of the last week in most voters’ minds will not be the Aboriginal intervention, but Howard’s slapping down of Brendan Nelson for daring to speak the bleeding obvious. Perhaps all those ‘political correctness’ lines Howard used to deploy against his enemies have boomeranged on him at last.
Yes, and it must be said – Rudd is consistently good at meeting the Rodent negatives (noone listens to the lying old coot) with a policy positive. The Housing affordability agenda, even if it comes up with some minor stuff like using super for mortgage insurance, and shared accounts, is a net positive.
The HIA are luvvin Rudd up- while Howard’s ranting pointlessly about land release and boring everyone again with another anti-State govt rant.
Yes, come November and several hundred thousand of the softest of votes could see Tintin installed in the Lodge.
As many people have noted previously, our compulsory voting means that almost every election is decided by the decisions of those who are least committed to politics ie ’soft’ voters.
Indeed.
I think the government has one more month to turn things around – if they don’t improve over the next two sets of figures they will definitely be in trouble.
[rinse. repeat. yawn.]
If the govt does not turn around these poll figures in the next 4-6 weeks, I can’t see how they could not consider dumping Howard. I know that the conventional wisdom is that Costello would fair even worse against Rudd, but look what happened to Gordon Brown in the UK after he suceeded Blair. Whilst he was still the treasurer the polls had him doing worse than Blair against the tories, but since becoming PM the labour govt are back in the lead for the first time in months.
Costello could make a clear break from the Howard era with a completely new cabinet and an indication of a change of direction, giving the impression of a new govt even though the same party remains in power. The voters may then be inclined to take a lets_see_how_he_goes attitude espicially since most voters are happy with the state of the economy.
Costello PM could introduce some major policy adjusatments without losing credability, particularly in regard to Iraq & IR. This may be difficult for some in the Liberal party to take, but I belive they will do anything to stay in power.
A final point from me about this Newspoll concerns what Ed writes in The Australian concerning Iraq:
“While public support remains split on the issue, the Government’s position of staying as long as the Iraq Government wants us there was the most popular individual option, with 31 per cent support. Twenty-six per cent of respondents supported a definite timetable for withdrawal and 23per cent wanted Australia’s troops withdrawn immediately.”
Here’s an issue I’ve genuinely never formed a strongly held opinion about, mainly because my political concerns are concentrated elsewhere.
For this reason, I welcome the fact that The Australian’s polling highlights “three options” for the future direction of intervention in Iraq, rather than narrow the options to “either/or”.
However, I would have assumed the very split opinion on Iraq makes it difficult for any other option than “a definite timetable for withdrawal” to look very practical or credible.
Stuart Wells writes in his 1998 book ‘Choosing the Future: The Power of Strategic Thinking’:
“It is a challenge to separate our filters, biases, and interpretations from the information itself.”
On the issue of Iraq, it is quite difficult to campaign for either “stay the course” or “get out completely” when it can be “interpreted by others” that you have over two-thirds of opinion stacked against you in either case. At least with the “definite timetable for withdrawal” option, it could be argued that “all known factors are being considered”.
Yet that hasn’t stopped Ed from The Australian putting a positive spin on the results of the survey in support of the Howard Government’s position and in the context of the overall narrative being used by Ed to interpret Newspoll, it all looks like a desperate attempt to apply “different treatment” to PM John Howard that the same editorial gave to former Opposition Leader Kim Beazley, despite the fact both men faced “the same problem” of not leading on all differentials (personal and party).
The implications of this bias ought to be viewed in a broad context. What’s good for the Red Goose is not good for the Blue Gander. How ironic that in politics today, the “rhetoric of fairness” has headed in one door at the same time the “reality of fairness” has headed out of another.
These actions expose how much more there is to “partisan politics” than whether or not you publicly declare your individual or organisational voting intention, as I myself have done long ago (I’m a Labor voter, but do not always align my opinion with the so-called Left of politics).
If there is indeed lots more to partisan politics than public voting declaration, then keep in mind the words of Stuart Wells – “It is a challenge to separate our filters, biases, and interpretations from the information itself” – readers should take note of one point raised by Grooski on The Poll Bludger blog (July 10th, 2007 at 10:17 am):
“In all aspects, pay very little attention to anything but primary vote intention – this is the hardest question to assign an ambiguity to. TPP often is skewed by previous election intentions where there may have been a protest and is often educated guesswork. Preferred PM and other opinionated questions are just rhetorical drivel.”
When I was writing online in defence of Kim Beazley last year, I was pushing for a similar redirection of media emphasis, which is why I now attempt to place the Mainstream Media’s treatment of Howard in a historical context that compares with their past treatment of Beazley.
In speaking up for “the essence of democracy” before the 4th of July commemorations on MSNBC, Keith Olbermann says something relevant in historical context about government keeping to “standards of democracy” that I think is also relevant about the need for all media to keep up “standards of reporting” to guard against the filters, biases, and interpretations of a privileged few from getting in the way of revealing the most accurate snapshot possible of voting intentions in a democracy:
“We Americans decided that rather than live under a king, who made up the laws, or erased the them, or ignored them, or commuted the sentences of those rightly convicted under them, we would force our independence and regain our sacred freedom. We of this time… must now live up to those standards which echo through our history.”
In closing summary, my articles today, supported by quotes from Tony Blair, Theodore Levitt, Stuart Wells, Grooski from Poll Bludger and Keith Olbermann, calls for greater attention to the issue of “standards versus discretion” in order to make the Mainstream Media coverage of politics more accountable, given the current state of reporting, summed up well by Graeme at Poll Bludger who says (July 10th, 2007 at 11:13 am):
“The government remains in the doldrums, and any fluctuation in the figures is indistinguishable from statistical noise.”
…From Justin
More Spin from Shemaham.
Mr Rudd today said he had been saying all along that the election would be close. “I always have believed the election’s going to be tight because we’re up against a very cunning and clever politician in Mr Howard,â€? he told reporters.
“But can I say on election day itself, the vote will be about which side of politics has the best plans and the best fresh ideas for future challenges in climate change, water, education, and the cost of living pressures being faced by working families.
“And I am absolutely relaxed about the way in which this campaign is unfolding.�
And more spin from Rudd!
More Gazette headline magic.
Wait for it, cos its gold.
I bet he is!
Though
also has a nice ring.
” we’re up against a very cunning and clever politician in Mr Howard,â€? he told reporters.”
Must … stay … on …message.
Anyway, personal approval ratings are meaningless, as are preferred PM ratings.
Keating rated higher than Howard all the way up to the 1996 election, and a fat lot of good that did
the Labor Party.
The news is in the trend, or lack of it.
Labor jumped to a mid 50s to mid 40s lead over the coalition as soon as Rudd became leader, and nothing has changed since, apart from survey sampling error, which goes up and down each month, but cancels out over time. The Australian’s editorial, which tried to make a grand narrative out of this sampling error, was simply risible.
So far, voting intentions have been unmoved by: budget giveaways; attacks on Rudd’s wife; the union bogeyman scare; attacks on Gillard and Garrett; taxpayer-funded government propaganda, sorry, information campaigns; Howard riding into the Northern Territory to Save the Native Children; and terrorist attacks in the mother country with alleged local Muslim co-conspirators.
Labor’s lead is starting to look robust.
But, you never know. After all, Mr Howard is a very clever politician.