I’ve often said that the best source for public opinion research around is the Australian Election Study. Some preliminary data has been released [link to pdf] by researchers Ian McAllister and Juliet Clark, presented in graphical form. The purpose of the paper is to enable assessments of changes in public opinion over time, with some of the questions forming a time series going back to 1969. I’ve only had a cursory look at the data, but one thing I wanted to focus on was the data from the 2007 election, particularly as it relates to issue importance and party advantage on particular issues. Basically, this is much better quality data than anything you’d get from Newspoll.
A detailed analysis isn’t possible in the absence of the raw data which would enable regressions and cross-tabs, but there are some interesting patterns in the data that are presented. The first point to make, one that’s made in the current political context ably by Possum Comitatus, is that leadership is much less important to voting intention than is usually claimed in the media. Since there have been long term declines in partisanship and therefore more votes up for grabs in any particular electoral cycle, the whole concept of party “ownership” of issues becomes much more important – hence all the attention focused last year on “economic management”. I’ve previously pointed out that the question in Newspoll on that measure was actually the wrong one – at least insofar as 2007 goes – because Labor polling found that “economic management for working families” was much more important, and it’s there that their advantage lay (as the opposition now knows well, because that’s where all their attack is focused). In this context, it’s also very significant to observe the finding that a majority of voters don’t believe anything the government does has much impact on the economy – what we might term the “globalisation effect” – something very poorly understood by political commentators, I’d suggest.
Last year, industrial relations jumped from 2% of respondents nominating it as the most important economic issue in 2004 to 16% and top position. Labor enjoyed a big advantage over the Coalition – 52 to 32, intriguingly reversing a Coalition lead (when the issue was much less important) in 2004 of 37 to 27. We await the sort of statistical analysis we had a taste of in the infamous Track 33 Crosby-Textor poll last year, but it would be a pretty safe conclusion to draw that WorkChoices was John Howard’s nemesis. On the other questions asked, Labor enjoyed massive advantages on health, the environment and education, all of which were more important issues, with the environment being much more important than in 2004. In fact, Labor led on almost all of the issues surveyed, even having a small advantage on taxation, and drawing even on terrorism. The one issue where the Coalition had a lead – 6 points on defence and national security – wasn’t a very important issue, and was effectively neutralised as a large number of respondents thought there was little difference between the parties. The short story of the last electoral cycle was that Labor managed to shift its issues to the fore, to overtake the Coalition on issues they’d formally dominated on, and to reduce the salience of the issues where their position wasn’t a dominant one – to one where effectively the only advantage to the Coalition came from its own base vote.
There’s a lot more in the paper that’s interesting, but that’s enough for one post! What’s really interesting about this data is that it’s a once in a cycle chance for those who don’t have access to the tracking polls the parties conduct on a weekly or a fortnightly basis to get similar levels of insight into the contest over issues, and to understand what shifts votes. Needless to say, neither of those things is well understood by those in the media who make a living from commenting on polls, or indeed those who claim that they understand polls because they own them. It’ll be worth a look to see if any of this data gets a run in the papers tomorrow.
Update: A bit of perspective on how important leadership is to voting decisions, linking to some more research based on AES data.
I’m often skeptical about the level of understanding the average voter has about the issues they vote on. But, in this case, it seems like people understand a lot better than we perhaps give them credit for!
“it’s also very significant to observe the finding that a majority of voters don’t believe anything the government does has much impact on the economy”
They are insightful. Rudd knows that full well and he seems determined to inform the community on the limitations of government in a market economy. It will take time to destroy the Howard narrative of the ‘government in charge’.
Ferguson’s trip to OPEC is simply an attempt to reinforce the facts that while the Government can do very little re oil prices (true), they will keep trying (political necessity).
I have never fully bought the rather elitist, actually straight out elitist on second thought, oft stated dictum that the public are ill-informed and apathetic. Sheeple. The ‘mob’.
Sure many or most have better things to do, like live life for example, and appear to those who try to put them under microscopes or pull different shades of wool over their eyes to be on a different wavelength and not the one they ’should’ be on. And no doubt there are many, dunno how many, who are indifferent to what is described as politics in this society.
But that could be because they are actually better informed and wiser than the pundits, it could be that the pundits are the blinkered lot and the people, some/many/most, have a better understanding of the reality of politics in this nation.
They realize that the ability of politicians to enact the will of the people is limited. Can’t change petrol prices. No impact on interest rates [big business decides that]. No discernible influence over housing, education etc except as long term trends. Which government or party is going to ‘take on’ BHP or similar?
People have consistently told pollies and MSM et al what the major issues are as far as the public is concerned via numerous surveys/polls etc..They consistently put real life issues top eg health, education, environment and so on. And get ignored.
Then the pollies and pundits are surprised when issues that appeared to be ’sleepers’ come out of the blue as significant. Single mums, IR laws, regugees and indigenous, the response to ‘Sorry’ day was astonishing.
The recent public rejection via poll results,, to some extent at least, of the MSM inspired handwaving of the past few weeks in particular illustrates my point, or at least I reckon it does.
Considering the amount of crap thrown at the public its actually remarkable that more doesn’t stick.
A little bit less arrogance and conceit from the top and a bit better effort to see and understand the lives lead by most and punditry would be far more credible.
Not having a go at you two, just riffing on the theme.
Update: A bit of perspective on how important leadership is to voting decisions, linking to some more research based on AES data.
hannah’s dad, no probs. Most voters aren’t “informed” in the sense that rational choice theory might think optimal, but that doesn’t mean that their decisions aren’t rational. In fact, filtering out most of the garbage in the media about politics might be a very rational strategy for political decision making!
Yes Ive intuitively believed that leadership was not the only factor in successful Government or anything else for that matter. in governments but the ability to implement change. For this in my view you need passion for what your doing !
Hannah’s dad – I’d like to expand a bit on one line of your comment where you state that you/we have things to do, like live. Living, providing for your family and all the things that that entails, is the main purpose in life for the run-of-the-mill resident of Australia. However (comma) you cannot build a highway, you cannot buy thousands of books or get other countries to trade with you by yourself so you elect three tiers of government to do it for you.
“It doesnt matter who you vote for, in the end you always get a politician.” “Pollies are like bananas, the go in straight and green and come out bent and yellow.” Trite, hackneyed but sadly true. The aim of the politician appears to be appeasement. Appeasement to interest groups, individuals and the ephemerous Stakeholder. Appeasement ensures reelection and reelection is the holy grail. Altruism takes a backseat to most and disappears completely in the person who has chosen politics as a way to make a living instead of a way to help their constituency.
There is no solution. Politicians dont give a rat’s if you can or cannot see through their puffery because we are all locked in to the worst of a good system.
As much as I despise Hansonism, the initial results were an eye opener regarding the public’s response to straight talking. (Nothin’ else though.)
Finally, HD, do what you do best and raise your family. But vote with a resigned sigh.
I know that the non-political people I know, for the most part, know very little about politics.
The best issue where the media narrative has become the accepted truth in the community is interest rates. People understand that the government can have some indirect effect on interest rate levels, but they have no understanding of how this happens.
They find budget deficits bad not because of the effect they have on interest rates but because they believe that governments have so much money they shouldn’t need to spend more than they have.
A lot of people understand politics in the simplest terms, when people on here (for good reason, as it is the politically astute) understand it on the most complex terms.
While Brendan Nelson is unelectable, and the government is not doing a bad job really, nothing will change in the polls or public sentiment. However, if Rudd keeps making those unnecessarily long and unintelligible statements like
then a lot of Australians are going to start thinking of K-Rudd as a bit of a Midland Banker.
Howard lost the last election because he became less trustworthy than the other guy. The tipping point for this was WorkChoices, the confirmation among the populace that Howard was a mean ideologue.
Howard lost support the moment he gained a senate majority. The back of the brain began to be eaten then, and the didn’t like it.
Ta enkew, for the response.
For sure I vote, I even get more involved usually, letter box leaflets/staff polling booth sort of thing. Have done so for years, nah make that decades.
And last election we [wife and self with help from the dog] got super involved putting in over a 1000 hours each in 2 months [thats no exaggeration] in support of the good ‘guys’. Knackered but happy at the end.
I don’t disagree with your thrust, particularly your point about the response of some of the public to Hanson, unfortunately they bought her simplistic ‘can do’ message cos thats what they want, things done.
But voting, or even doing more than that, is not sufficient, ‘it only encourages the bastards’.
It’s in our daily lives that we, all of us, not just some of us, I really mean ALL, need to feel and know that we are a valued and major participant in the decision making processes that detirmine the nature of our society. Thats my working definition of politics.
And that is where I believe the current system fails people tragically.
Ordinary folk, not just those involved in the pursuit of petty parliamentary personality politics at whatever level, but all of us should feel a part of the community decision making processes, have an input into what involves us.
And we don’t. Not sufficiently.
And many/most people are aware of that as they live their daily lives.
They see problems that need to be solved and will even voice ’somebody oughter do somethin’ about that”. But who and how? The ubiquitous ‘they’?
Who has the power?
Not the public.
For example:
Many here on this blog have been expressing various levels and types of dissatisfaction with the MSM.
It [the MSM] should be different to what it is.
Well, what can be done about it and who will do it and how?
Who has the power?
Answer those questions and we will go a long way to understanding the apparent apathy of the public, the disenchantment of many with the present system that disempowers so many in so many ways. Not their lack of awareness but their dissatisfaction with the process.
Another example, take the environment and fix it up. That was a strong message from polls that looked at voters’ issues before and during the election.
I believe it was a major reason for the increase in the vote of both the ALP and the Greens.
So if that doesn’t happen there are going to be a lot of people rightfully feeling disenfranchised…hence [apparent] apathy.
Political scientists have usually argued that leadership is unimportant overall, but party pollsters don’t believe this (and they are paid big $). I suspect the truth is in between. I have doubts about having leadership as one question in a survey and assuming it is unrelated to party scores on issues. Did labor improve its position on key issues precisely because voters thought Rudd was able to make a difference?
Obviously this would depend on the questions asked about “leadership”?
And answers to those questions may well suffer the fate of being altered by the asking.
Some thoughts, in that “leadership” to the general public may also be something processed intuitively. Intuition is a very individual thing – very: as much as would be everyone’s computer operating system programmed differently, notwithstanding any similarities occurring as it happened one and another – so that any discursive data might be meaningless but for the broad questions such as “who do you prefer?”.
Intuition too airy? A feeling, if you prefer. Perception. A take-out. Real factors of individual make-up.
The questioner may easily have in mind a clear and precise frame for questions. That is, the asking is easily more precise than the answering.
“Leadership” questions as a quantifiable poll result of any in-depth, worthwhile meaning? Across the board? Or even of a group particularly?
The data quoted in the post above jolts against these thoughts. The data jerks around the feeling, and vice versa. Help appreciated. Or is this one of those cases where study meets question upon question; and or the meaningful answer is clear all the while.
Leadership! What is it? To whom?
My apologies. I’ve just realised the link to the AES data was the wrong one. It should have pointed here:
http://assda.anu.edu.au/aestrends.pdf
Robert, you can find the wording of the relevant question on p. 48 of the monograph – page 50 of the pdf.
Thanks Mark. Had a quick look and found only one question which might be what is being referred to regarding “leadership”, with these options to answer:
Is this section above what you referred to?
This question appears to refer to personalities rather than aspects of leadership, but my pdf may have generated the wrong page numbers. A search however of “leadership” returned zero.
Mark, the 2007 dataset is in fact available at ASSDA – perhaps not for download, but you can do cross-tabs and (I think) regressions on the site.