In July, back when Dennis Shanahan was trumpeting the “preferred PM theorem” and the “delayed budget bounce” was thought to be picking up traction as tax cuts wended their way into our bank accounts, we saw the extraordinary spectacle of Chris Mitchell claiming that News Limited understood Newspoll because “we own it”. Everyone else was just a deluded amateur fool with a political barrow to push. Or you know, one of those “webloggers” who write stuff about their cats.
How far have we travelled now? When the latest Newspoll, which is probably a statistical outlier (though it does show no trend back to the Coalition), was published showing the government an extraordinary 18 points behind on the 2PP, we got not just the usual interpretation and spin on Tuesday but also now another bizarre Shanahan column. (Or is it a news article? Who can tell these days?)
The piece seems designed to cast doubt on the accuracy of the Newspoll “owned” by News Limited. Picking up his talking points this time from that psephological wizard Professor David Flint, and retailing the opinions of Ministers as if they were impartial sources, Shanahan runs through a stack of confused and meandering arguments which purport to show that “the circumstances of political polling are changing”, not without apparent self-contradiction both within the article and with respect to the previous overblown claims that only the experienced hacks of News knew anything about how to read polls.
He doesn’t go for the obvious argument about sampling error, because this would be to validate the arguments of the psephologists of the blogosphere and Crikey whom he so loudly denounced so recently.
Yet again, the new Newspoll magus, Martin O’Shannessy, is cited as an authority, though the “preferred PM theorem” he claimed was the lodestar of psephology is nowhere to be found.
“Research by professor Simon Jackman of Stanford University suggests that most major Australian pollsters tended to favour Labor to a greater or lesser degree in the 2004 election. Newspoll’s 2PP house effect was about 2.9per cent to Labor while Galaxy favoured the Coalition, and the average for all pollsters was about 1.3 per cent to Labor,’’ Mr O’Shannessy said.
This surely begs the question of why if his own poll has some sort of bias, he doesn’t adjust his statistical sampling techniques accordingly.
As to the claim about “mobile only households”, if these are indeed predominantly those in the 18-29 age bracket, isn’t this precisely one of the demographics that has swung heavily against the Coalition? Unless you made the very unsafe assumption that those “householdsâ€? were more likely to be Coalition voters… Anyway, the whole thing is piffle. If he knows his business, he should still be able to get a good sample. It’s just a sample. You don’t need to call every 18-29 year old. If the sampling techniques are valid anyway, it shouldn’t matter. If they’re not, he should fix them. He’s the professional pollster.
But what would I know? I’m just a humble social scientist (�cloistered academic�, “failed journalist�, etc, etc). They own the poll and he manages it.
In his new book The Media We Deserve, David Salter claims that the greatest failing of the Australian press is that they’re not just increasingly out of touch with reality, they’re increasingly prone to try to adjust reality to what they think should be happening. That’s being proved more and more true every day we have to endure the gibberish that passes for political commentary and analysis in this never ending election campaign.
The big question is why? We can only speculate. Clearly there’s the claim to authoritative adjudication on politics that has been discussed already here and elsewhere, but there may also be a failure of memory. There has to be – otherwise this stuff is just rank hypocrisy given what was written in the Government Gazette vs. Blogosphere wars of only seven weeks ago. You would have to conclude that self-delusion is what’s really driving this blather.
Elsewhere: More from Not a Hedgehog, Blogocracy, Simon Jackman (who was cited in the Shanahan article), and some actual political science analysis of the Newspoll from him at The Bulletin where he has a gig til the election.
In short, the polls don’t even have to be right on the money to suggest an epic victory for Labor. Even after my ad hoc adjustment of Newspoll for some likely pro-Labor bias we see that a massive Labor win is on the cards. An awful lot is riding on the theory of a post-APEC bounce for the Coalition.
The most striking thing for me about this latest round of punditry (and note that not only Shanahan has talked about the polling, but also Paul Kelly) is that it is not only another demonstration of the self-delusional bias toward the government, but it also shows their complete lack of appreciation of research methods and analysis.
A single poll result which, as you say, is likely to be an outlier, has sent them into a spin. The most logical thing to do would be to note that this is probably an anomaly and until the next poll arrives we can’t read much into it (beyond the fact that the coalition has clearly not gained ground) – but they overlook that possibility and instead look to entirely discredit their own polling operation to preserve their distorted internal representation of reality.
Great post Mark. It really is the most extraordinary display from the pundits.
Paul Kelly does his little bit.
They really don’t believe it and are looking for a reality that fits.
Today’s article by Shanahan requires translation. He’s lost the plot completely!
Perhaps Morphthing could help lock Howard and Shannascam together to create a permanent record.
well, you know shanahan’s paper is the official organ of the ruling party, in every way imaginable. grossly rounded off with its own onanistic TV propaganda
i hope they’re ready for the paradigm shift
they better get ready. here’s a tip: the howard years have merely witnessed a lazy and disgraceful coasting on the keating economy, its been all easy economic sailing for these brutal, self obsessed thugs of the right. abroad they supported the destruction of the western alliance, and of the people of iraq, in an unnecessary bloodbath every death of which should be laid at their door, in their hundreds and thousands. their painfully retarded US emperor has no clothes, and no ability even to perceive the world, let alone manage it. at home they corruptly stuff the wallets of their mates, celebrate public squalor, manipulate the housing market for their own personal and electoral benefit, run down public infrastructure and viciously persecute that half of the Australian population they hate. they parade around like aztec kings, looking for the next 10,000 hearts to rip out.
get with the program, shanahan
Now the US media are assessing their 2000 anti Gore campaign perhaps we will see a reflection of the GG’s performance in this Australian Election campaign reviewed in seven years time.
I like your remarks about “adjusting reality” in the newspapers. This activity is surely an example of what Berger and Luckmann referred to long ago as “reality-construction” and “boundary-maintenance”. It seems that as “alien” ideas and trends increasingly impinge on the boundaries of some journalists that they are more interested in nihilating information and opinions that contradicts their own socially-constructed reality than in telling a story and fairly covering the spectrum of views. As these journalists patrol the boundaries and reinterpret or fend off the Coalition’s negative poll results it seems that a siege-mentality is developing. We learn more about the attitudes and state-of-mind of those presenting their opinions than we discover about the substance of the poll results and its sampling weaknesses.
More propaganda and dissembling.
When the polls are going your way they are irrefutable. When they go against you, they are not reliable.
Shanahan’s piece is a cut and paste of the media release – see all the “Mr O’Shannessy said”s.
With the political masters and svengalis nervous, some action from the minions was called for.
Why do we have the media we deserve?
Let’s reformulate the question:
How did we get the media we have?
Media ownership in Australia = government-subsidised rent-taking. As one of the Packers said, media ownership is a licence to print money.
The estate agents are the governments who have rented the property for a very low cash payment to the landlords (Australian residents) and have received kickbacks under the table in the form of favouritism from media owners.
Meanwhile, the parrots in the parlour (e.g., Alan Jones) are employed to tell the landlords (us) how good we’ve got it.
Do Australians deserve these media?
All Australians have to do is insist that their estate agents do a better job.
Of course, lots of Australians think parrots are cute.
What about this one?
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22364265-7583,00.html
And who was Frazer’s Treasurer?
The problem for the MSM is that they write ’stories’, so each new poll has to be written up as if it were a discrete incident with unique hooks. They’ve compounded their problems by running so many of the bloody things that poll-to-poll variations have become meaningless but they still have to find a way to write about this week’s as if it provides some fresh insights that weren’t available seven days ago.
I still prefer my idea of the worm – get a big online sample to tell us who they intend to vote for every night before they go to bed. Keen analysts could pay to have the results displayed graphically as a desktop widget and the rest of us could be spared this weekly ritual poll-crap.
If a problem with the sampling is that the pollsters can’t reach a repesentative number of young people, because they have mobile phones only, then that would bias the results against Labor, since young people vote Labor in greater proportions than the population as a whole. (This is a slightly different point to the one about 18-29 year olds swinging heavily against the coalition.)
What happened in 2004 was that there was a late swing against Labor because the Latham-revulsion effect kicked in in the last week of the campaign, combined with the Tasmanian forests fiasco. This was not picked up in the last pre election polls, which were held one week prior to the election.
There’s nothing wrong with the sampling method that these polls use. If there was, they would have got the recent state elections wrong. They didn’t.
The whole Shanahan story, as always, is a crock.
Media ownership in Australia = government-subsidised rent-taking. As one of the Packers said, media ownership is a licence to print money.
But for most of its history, The Australian has not made money. Its main reason that it is published for its (perceived) influence among the “elite”, not for the profit. NewsCorp makes enough money off the local dailies to subsidise the GG. It’s one big sheltered workshop for hacks. That’s why Shanahan can write so much crap. If he loses readers over his articles, it’s not going to affect HIS bottom line.
Good lord, Kelly’s article is a disgrace. It’s absolute gibberish. This is my favourite section:
Maybe the writers at the Australian are just paying particular attention to ensure that they haven’t been included in a list somewhere.
You’re correct Saigon.
The GG has evolved as part of Rupert’s much larger media strategy. And Rupert is now by no means as commercially driven as our more parochial press barons.
NewsCorp and PBL have opposite interests in regard to government control of media, especially electronic media. NewsCorp wants a more open, unregulated market which would enable NewsCorp’s global reach and economies of scale to dominate local media. PBL wants the opposite, for clear commercial reasons.
It is interesting that Howard (and for that matter, Keating and Hawke) favoured the Packer stable. This was clearly the result of electoral calculus.
Meanwhile, the Australian media arena represents a tiny sliver of NewsCorp’s interests. They can afford to bide their time. Meanwhile Murdoch most wants an Australian government friendly to Bush and the neocon vision.
i think we have all missed the point of kelly’s article today. it’s preparing the ground for a howard resignation prior to the election.for the good of the party,of course.
Nobby, Howard is never leaving. Folks need to let go of that fantasy, politics is all he’s got. He’s going out in a box, ballot or pine.
Howard’s Australia that the GG is so determined to preserve.
It’s worse than that. Because of O’Shannessy’s commercial relationship with News Ltd, his comments have been solicited. It’s no wonder he’s come under heavy criticism from other pollsters regarding his professional ethics.
Does Kelly really believe that Howard will quit?
They’re preparing some sort of spin to put on the election defeat as well, I’d suggest.
Though I still reckon that you should stay away from Dennis Shanahan or any News Limited pundits on election night. The zombies drawn by the multiple brain explosions may prove a danger not just to hack pundits but to innocent bystanders!
unbelieveable, shannon and o’shannesy disowning their own work.
7 weeks ago they were telling us bloggers we were wankers and knew nothing about polls .
what a pair of idiots
steve: the behavior of the teacher was a bit unprofessional, in my opinion. It’s safer (and more satisfying) if the students come up with their own “subversive” opinions in class.
O’Shannessy quotes Professor Simon Jackman as an authority for thinking his own poll is skewed. Here’s the man himself in his new gig at the Bulletin on this Newspoll:
http://thebulletinelection.ninemsn.com.au/history_points_to_a_massive_labor_win.htm
What are these guys smoking!
Blogocracy also gives Shanahan a serve. I hope it doesn’t get deleted again.
The GG have exposed themselves this year as the most irrelevant “insiders” in Canberra. No pollie gives a fig what they think (all govt eyes, fed and state, are on the Murdoch Tabloids); no psephos take them seriously anymore; and the punters never read them to start with.
Cloistered, and subsidized, with a protected ‘national press’ monopoly,they’re unused to competition, and thus are easy pickings in blog flame wars.
They’re a protected species – not meant for a modern, competitive media economy.
Great article Mark and great comments others.
What twaddle coming from traditional media and political commentators! And now the poll owners themselves? Really.
If the methodologies being used in the polls are sound, then the data and the results are valid. Everything else is interpretation. If even the poll-owners are doubting their results, then they can’t be asking the right questions to identify the causes of people’s continuing distaste for the Howard Government. They can’t claim that for the past years their methodologies and methods have been sound and results accurate, and now claim for some reason the results don’t reflect some “reality” of interpretation they can’t get their heads around. It’s called shooting oneself in the feet with both barrels.
All poll-charters would do us a favour if the plotted the margin of error on their charts as well, to draw people’s attention to how many of the fluctuations causing such paroxysms in the traditional media are within the margins of error. As some of the web-based commentators have aptly stated: watch the trend not the individual polls.
just read paul kelly’s blogs,he is coping it in spades despite pointing the bone at the rodent.it seems like there are more baseball bats winding up than he expected.
Thanks, Jon.
The reason for this (being an out liner) Newspoll, so that when the next poll comes out to reflect the true numbers, say 56-44 or 55-44 to ALP, Shanahan can tell us what a hero JWH is that he clawed back 3 to 4 points and by the time of the election at that rate JWH , the genius that he is, will win the poll that matters.
Any fool can read that into this poll.
Doesn’t it make sense if more people are putting themselves on the do not call register, when they do get that rare call from the pollster, they’d br more likely to agree to spend time answering questions. Even the fatuous market research ones.
I really cannot see JWH resigning before the election. Marie Antoinette will want to hang on to the harbour view from Kirribille House as long as she can. I think the garden at the Eastwood/Hunter’s Hill cottage is so overgrown now its a nuisance to the neighbours. Besides, didnt Keating say some weeks ago that it would be an act of gross political cowardice on JWH’s part?
Howard wouldn’t ever do anything that proves Keating was right. Good strategy, locking Ratty into a nasty defeat.
of course the next newspoll will come back down to 56-44 or so and the same commentators will be claiming an almighty Howard comeback.
Yes, but that would improve the validity of the results. At the beginning of the piece, Shamaham said it would damage it. It is (slightly) plausible that the change may marginally affect the latter results relative to the earlier ones, but so what? This would only show that Labor’s lead has been understated the whole time, which is diametrically opposite to Shamaham’s whole point.
I am working my way through an old telephone book in a certainly little place where I sort of squat sit 1950 s style.And I remember the days long before the intrusion on all Australians by The Australian,and it had to be like the tabloids bought up by Prince Rupert The Only never make the newspaper that friendly with where it could go. I rarely buy Murdoch s range of products because the print ink is deadly . It maybe the same with the telephone book but I dont sense that. What have the owner and journalists etc in that stable of blow aways got in common with me!? Nothing! And that is what they want to retain. So if you find it unusual to be able to understand that which they shape as market sample by question and order…it is therefore a marketing gimmick not to be able to fully comprehend the end result of a gimmick that asks questions and samples markets to continue the evolution of income via the gimmickry.
I’m with David on the point of “Do Not Call” laws. Poor Dennis says this early on:
“A switch to mobile-phone-only households, “Do Not Call’’ laws, voters not deciding until the last minute and a higher “refusal rate’’ from voters could be challenging the representation of polls and their accuracy. ”
Later on, he tells us:
“With political polling exempt, “Do Not Call’’ legislation would benefit researchers in the long-term as people became less wary of answering the phone to telemarketers.”
Panic setting in, Dennis?
i think we have all missed the point of kelly’s article today. it’s preparing the ground for a howard resignation prior to the election.for the good of the party,of course.
I don’t know about ‘preparing the ground’, but it does read to me like a plea to Howard to step aside.
It’s simple. The journalists are panicking, because they don’t control the narrative any more. When your version of events has been taken as gospel for so long (particularly when you’re someone like Paul Kelly, who casts his pompous prognostications as if they were Sermons from the Mount), it is supremely annoying for your interpretation of reality to be undermined in real time.
What the blogosphere has done is to liberate independent analysts from their former servitude as quote machines for pre-determined journalistic templates and made the mainstream media pontificators appear as quaintly redundant as soap box orators in the Domain.
The circus has moved on. Yet the journalists continue to gesticulate wildly to a non-existent audience, insisting that THEIR approximation of reality is the approved version. The truth has not sunk in for them that the public no longer depends on their artificial framing devices. And with so much information freely available, the journalists’ ready access to “official sources” now looks less like an advantage and more like a crutch that has crippled their capacity to think on their feet.
How sweet it is.
I agree Suz; its a plea.
But Howard aint going anywhere, and Kelly is merely demonstrating again that he has no special or privileged insights here.
The Do Not Call Register does not apply to political parties or market researchers (which include the pollsters).
That argument was just pure unadulterated bullshit.
https://www.donotcall.gov.au/
Shorter Shanahan: “I reject your reality and substitute my own.”
LOL OT, but I can’t help being reminded by this awesome piece of analysis by Kyle Sandilands, the radical ontologist of Nova, in response to tough questions from Andrew Denton:
I think that as well as directing public opinion, the media have a vested interest in convincing readers that every election is a close battle in which every nuance matters (subtext, keep reading every day).
I remember seeing Hugh Mackay on the 7:30 Report some weeks before the last election, before Latham imploded. Everyone was saying it would be a close battle, but he called it for a comfortable win to the Government. I haven’t heard much from him recently, but it was the most sensible thing I heard all election.
This from the Kelly article:
Unless this anecdote is published somewhere, there are only two people who could have told Kelly this story with quotability.
Kelly is intruding powerfully here into the domestic sphere of Howard’s life.
Howard has protected this sphere determinedly. It could be argued that Howard would resent such an intimate apercu into this intersection of politics and domesticity.
And it is unlikely that Kelly would be unaware of Howard’s sensitivities.
As such this paragraph is a bold shot across the bow of the Howard ascendancy.
Actually, that anecdote was published by Kelly himself in 1984 in his book The Hawke Ascendancy.
Spooky.
I don’t know if anyone has said this already…
Mark, you ask why Newspoll haven’t adjusted their methods based on Jackman’s research. Well they kind of have. Jackman’s research was pre-2004, and Newspoll use a different preference method now. As Jackman notes in his bulletin blog, the problem was with the TPP, not the primaries.
Personally, I think jackman’s guess of the remaining bias, 2% is plucking numbers. I prefer Mumble’s method of using the primaries from the polls then allocating preferences according to a more sensible method. (Which I think is 50% of ‘Others’ and ~70% of greens).
Couldn’t agree more. The other reason that Murdoch persists with the Oz is that has prevented a competitor with deep pockets and, more importantly, differing political views from setting up rival a national paper that might show up the GG for the biased liberal rag that it truly is. Given that modern digital printing and communication technology has made it probably more possible now than it has ever been to start a title from scratch, this is more likely to be significant. After all, what does influencing the “elite” really matter for? After all, they only have 1 vote each – like the tabloid reading people in the outer suburbs. Much as I hate to resort to stereotypes, this election will be decided by a relatively small number of people in suburban swinging seats – most of whom will almost certainly WON’T read The Australian.
Cheers…
I like that this poll, as pointed out by Muskiekemp above, almost certainly ensures a “post-APEC bounce”. I guess this is one way of getting momentum into the campaign trail…
Well if the polls are on the money and Labor wins in a landslide, what are all these pundits going to do? Could they all lose their jobs as their media masters perceive that they have all been barking up the wrong tree? I can’t see Rupert Murdoch backing a losing horse for too long, rusted-on right wing conservative though he is. So would Dennis Shanahan lose his job and be turfed out onto the streets, forced to eke out a meagre living selling cigarettes rolled out of tobacco gathered from butts left lying on the pavement? What would happen to Piggy the Axe, and Peter Hartcher who pretends to be so unbiased but was caught out just the other week predicting signs of a Howard resurgence? Maybe good old Matt Price from the Australian will be the only survivor, because though his heart is small-L Liberal he has been gamely predicting a Labor win for months.
Paul Keating once said that a change of government changes the whole country and I can’t help reflecting that changes of government did seem to bring about massive changes in social attitudes. For instance I remember the Whitlam government coming in in a blaze of glory and people becoming less strait-laced and wowserish. So will something happen this time? What is so frustrating though is the suspense! I can’t think of anything else, not even the gossip columns. I keep reading the pundits and waking up from a recurring nightmare that Howard wins the next election and with that smug, fatuous grin is busy telling everybody soothingly that commonsense has won out after all…
Honestly if Labor wins the next election I am going to sue the Australian media for false advertising occasioning excessive depression and anxiety therefore hurt and injury.
Well… The whole goal of the Whitlam campaign was to emphasise the break with the past. But Rudd is doing his best to minimise difference and portray the image of ‘business as usual’ but without AWAs with a younger face. It’s not associated with a major cultural shift like Whitlam.
Phil, 10:04- “Howard is never leaving.. politics is all he’s got”…
Not so, he and janette are grandparents now, they just may want to enjoy their senior years as such.
He doesn’t want to be anywhere near the seat of power, and therefore responsibility, when the flock of nasty economic, and other, werechickens come home to roost.
It’s like in mid ‘86, when “Australia was on its way to becoming a “banana republic”, the Australian currency had recently suffered a 40 per cent devaluation, the country had lost its Triple AAA credit rating and the current account deficit was reaching for the sky”, and JWH himself said ” The times will suit me”…..to not be in the driving seat, then as now.
He knows very well his has been one long lucky streak, (though PK will protest luck’s got nothing to do with it, at least on the economic front), and time’s up. He’s done his job on the party, kept Costello from having a turn, set it up so Malcolm can have his, after sitting this one out.
George and John and Janette will be be sorting out a suitable retirement post for him, say in Carlyle group… if it’s good enough for John Major…
Nucular power is looking good, Ron W’s already done the groundwork.
I disagree, Danny. John Howard has only ever had one vision for Australia – a country with himself as Prime Minister. He’s only in it for the constant ego-stroking and without that, he’s got nothing to live for. Since he and Janette have turned snubbing and humiliation of their predecessors into a vindictive little art form, they’ll know what they’re in for. Don’t imagine either that JWH will get the Clinton, GHW Bush or Tony Blair big bucks on the international lecture circuit – he’s a nonentity’s nonentity with a charisma-ectomy.
In a few months he’ll be telling people serving him in shops and restaurants that he used to be Prime Minister of Australia and they’ll play along with the crazy old man to humour him – just like Frank Forde use to do. I confidently predict Howard’s rapid physical and psychological decline into a pathetic right-wing Sandy Stone. For survivors of the Howard immigration gulag, there may be some justice in this.
What will they do? Exactly what they do now. Suck up to those in power and their minders and write the same old stuff as usual. Dennis Shanahan will not – although he should – lose his job and be turfed out onto the streets, forced to eke out a meagre living selling cigarettes rolled out of tobacco gathered from butts left lying on the pavement. Glenn Milne will continue to take inappropriate mixtures of alcohol, anti-depressents, pain killers and stimulants. Peter Hartcher will go on pretending to be unbiased. Good old Matt Price will probably get a job in PM&C, even though his heart is small-L Liberal because he has been gamely predicting a Labor win for months.
And they will write lots of in-depth articles about how “serious thoughtful insightful journalism” is going to the dogs.
That is my prediction, anyway.
Cheers…
Jon: on margins of error in sampling -
it’s often stated in the fine print when a poll is published, but very rarely DISCUSSED in the accompanying news or opinion pieces. Which is a shame. Are the writers innumerate? I would have thought “one divided by the square root of the sample size” is not too difficult to explain in a paragraph or too. But then pages of sheer, dreary, tremulous speculation would be exposed for the nonsense they are.
Statistics rules! (plus or minus 3%)
Can anyone explain the association between the term “pundit” as used in Australia, and the honourific “Pandit”? I thought the latter was confined to very WISE men such as Jawaharlal Nehru, who had to do the hard yards in the early days of independence?
Economan, I think the Jackman research in question was about the sample being skewed affecting the primaries, not how the 2PP is calculated. But as well as possible structural sampling error, Newspoll’s basic problem is that it doesn’t give enough options when asking who you would vote for.
Ambigulous, “pundit” is indeed derived from the Hindi – it passed into the language in the 18th century, and its meaning has changed since then.
Hi Ambiguous.
Yes I have Market Research and statistics training. It makes for a more accurate representation of the data to display the error bars +/-3% or so in the charts, but it would restrict the “analysis” and big-grab, absolutist headlines by the traditional media who are happy to portray the data as dead-on accurate when it suits them; especially when there’s a slight “swing” in the Government’s favour.
Whilst it might confuse the general pubic for a time, it would also educate them on what the error margin actually means in relation to the poll results. But maybe they see that as a bad thing, as it might further erode their headline power.
Thanks Jon,
so it’s against their journalistic interests to give a fair and balanced presentation of the ‘results’ of the a poll.
“Hmmmmmm, why is it so?” (with apologies to Julius Sumner-Miller)
Shanahan’s writings have become the newspaper equivalent of magic mushrooms.
You start in, you feel a bit like having a little puke, then it settles down, then everything gets really, really trippy.