Comments on: The Liberals, women and the Mad Monk

By: Baraholka

Baraholka — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 11:05:05 +0000

Sorry, that professional opinion from Nielsen pollster John Stirton

Abbott’s views on abortion and other social issues have fostered the perception he is unpopular among women. His colleagues agree with this, but the Nielsen pollster John Stirton does not.

Analysis of recent polls, says Stirton, shows Abbott rated poorly in preferred leader polls with both sexes. ”One thing that would probably lose him more women voters than men voters would be a return to a perceived ‘hardline’ industrial
relations policy,” Stirton says.

By: Baraholka

Baraholka — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 11:01:52 +0000

Two more polls and a professional opinion which suggest that women have no particular problem with Abbott:

Newspoll Dec 7th 2009 ‘Abbott Better Leader Than Turnbull ?’

26% women said Abbott better than Turnbull
18% women said Abbott worse than Turnbull
46% women said about the same

Age December 5th 2009 Turnbull v. Abbott:

21% men prefer Abbott
26% women prefer Abbott

Abbott polls better among women than Turnbull at the moment.

By: Baraholka

Baraholka — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 11:04:56 +0000

James @74

Thanks for the hard data on Abbott and women voters. Anyone else got anything similar?

I tend to agree with those who say that in the main the women who disdain Abbott are those for whom Abortion/RU-486 are vote-determining issues, i.e. serious Feminists.

The Coalition vote-share among serious Feminists is unlikely to change if Abbott was leader or not. Hard to see how this voter segment is going to shipwreck the Coliation vote.

By: James Rice

James Rice — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 03:50:24 +0000

Very true.

I think these figures are interesting because they run counter to many people’s picture of reality. Take the most stark comparison, which is between the popularities of Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott as candidates for the leadership of the Liberal Party. Malcolm Turnbull is more than twice as popular as Tony Abbott among men (19 versus 8 per cent). Among women, though, Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott are in much more equal positions (13 versus 11 per cent). That’s pretty surprising.

By: The Groke

The Groke — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 01:59:30 +0000

This may not be 100% on topic, but as long as we’re looking at the above figures with a gender lens, did you notice that none of the four candidates is female. I’m just mentioning it, yanno, just in case anyone’s interested.

As you were.

By: James Rice

James Rice — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 10:33:51 +0000

Just in case anyone is still interested in women, men, and the leadership of the Liberal Party, while doing something else I happened to come across the following figures from a Newspoll survey conducted between the 10th and the 12th of July, 2009.

Question

Thinking now of the leadership of the federal parliamentary Liberal Party. Which one of the following do you think would be the best candidate to lead the Liberal Party?

Total

Peter Costello: 36
Malcolm Turnbull: 16
Tony Abbott: 10
Joe Hockey: 20
Uncommitted: 18

Male/Female

Peter Costello: 38/33
Malcolm Turnbull: 19/13
Tony Abbott: 8/11
Joe Hockey: 20/22
Uncommitted: 15/21

18-34 years/35-49 years/50+ years

Peter Costello: 33/36/38
Malcolm Turnbull: 13/15/18
Tony Abbott: 12/9/8
Joe Hockey: 19/21/21
Uncommitted: 23/19/15

These figures come from the final page of this document. According to this document, the maximum margin of sampling error for these figures is plus or minus 3 percentage points. This particular Newspoll survey was based on 1,132 interviews among voters.

So, on the whole, Tony Abbott is not a popular candidate for the leadership of the Liberal Party. However, he is possibly more popular with women than men. According to this survey, 11 per cent of women think Tony Abbott would be the best candidate to lead the Liberal Party, while only 8 per cent of men think likewise. Tony Abbott also seems to be more popular with younger voters than older voters.

(The gender difference mentioned above does not seem to be statistically significant at the conventional, 95 per cent confidence level, although the age difference does seem to be statistically significant at this confidence level. The gender difference could, of course, be viewed as statistically significant at less stringent confidence levels.)

I’m just mentioning these figures since I happened to come across them, just in case anyone’s interested.

By: Danny

Danny — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:07:10 +0000

PC(71) ‘Ballz, ew‘ indeed…Who needz ‘em: thanks to Karim Nayernia and a bunch of Geordie lab nerds, sperm can be made from human embryonic stem cells, and there are plenty of gentically fatherless mice running around lab cages to show the next bit, the introduction of crypto-sperm to eggs of impeccable breeding, works to produce an embryo, which can grow up in a regular fashion, or have stem cells extracted from, to make crypto-sperm which can be introduced to a thawed egg, and so on.

Crypto-sperm from girl embryo stem cells should work, though I’m not sure that avoids all possibility of boy embryos resulting. Parthenogenesise now, avoid the rush.

You gotta give it to those Olde Greeke Mythe makers, they did a nice line in irony: Zeus’ awfully big parthenogenetic adventure produced a girl, Athena, while Hera’s couple of lashes at it made boys, Typhon and Hephaistos.

By: Paul Burns

Paul Burns — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 23:10:58 +0000

I blame cammille Paglia.

By: Pavlov's Cat

Pavlov's Cat — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:12:14 +0000

Ballz, ew.

By: Chookie

Chookie — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 09:40:59 +0000

All your ballz are belong to us!!