Blind voting tool produces a result blind Freddie saw coming a mile away.
AUSTRALIANS would re-elect Prime Minister John Howard in a landslide if votes were cast purely on policy – not personality or party loyalty – according to the first results from a “blind voting” tool developed by NEWS.com.au.
Almost 35,200 of the 72,300 participants who have completed the Vote-a-matic were matched with the Coalition, compared with 28,700 participants who were identified as a fit with Kevin Rudd’s Labor Party.
A further 6700 participants have been matched with the Democrats, while around 1700 went to the Greens and 175 to Family First.
The trends in results are a reversal of findings in the authoritative political polls which indicate the Coalition could face catastrophic defeat in the election, due to be held before the end of the year.
At least they can claim they own it.
Elsewhere, Lefty weighs in and so does the GreensBlog.
A Nonymous Lefty has a good post on this.
I went to have a look and couldn’t stop laughing. Witness the policy choices:
ok there was supposed to be an imag there. It’s here.
Yes, Lefty did a post on it here and I’m sure he’ll do an update because he called it.
I’ve done it three times now with minor tweaking on the question of importance and produced a different result each time of Greens, Dems and Labor.
I suspect that the importance you place on a topic rather than the answers to specific questions within that topic have more importance in producing the result.
I tried to answer the questions so that I would end up being classified as a Family First supporter, but they made a Liberal.
“We’d like to vote Labor please.”
“Computer says no’”
with apologies to Little Britain
Does this mean you’d have to be blind to vote Liberal this election?
I hope News have developed a braille version of their blind vote-a-matic whatsit.
The questions are pretty glib. They go something like this:
Q1. Which would you prefer at work?
A. More money
B. Union bosses breaking down the door and eating my babies.
Q2. What is best for the environment?
A. More carbon dioxide. Trees love carbon dioxide.
B. Living in a cave wearing sackcloth and ashes for the rest of eternity and switching on the lights for one hour per day.
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It’s all a bit of a larf, but if that’s what passes for News….
You know, “that’s what passes for News” would be a great slogan for the organisation.
Or, ‘Is that News or is it the news’?
OMG, it seems I’m a dangerous Lefty!
Can someone explain to me what ‘who I would talk to at parties’ has to do with Leadership??
Wallies.
Even more fun in the real world because it looks like the Tories have just done their senate majority.
“You decide: yer money or yer teef?” (Just me thinking aloud about their advertising.)
So it’s kinda push polling by News?
In other News news, their website also has this hilarious headline:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22533205-5012863,00.html
I had a good laugh when I took the quiz yesterday. Seems I’m supposed to vote for the Coalition according to my choices. I thought many questions were laughable and often it was between two or three bad (stupid) choices. Not that News has any credibility but you have to wonder who was responsible for putting that piece of crap out in the public domain.
Also, I wonder if they got any help from Diebold in the US in coding it …after all it got the desired result.
Surely one of the choices for “Who would you talk to at a party?” should be “Anyone who doesn’t look like a Young Liberal”?
And it suggested I should vote Democrat. Like 6700 other people. Who said the Democrats are a spent force?
“Young, sexy and free … we’re the National Party
The Australian has been told the ads, which will run throughout the federal election campaign, will feature the slogan “vote for the Nats not party hacks” – an attack on Labor’s union-dominated candidates.”
Gold. Do you like the way the phrase “Labor’s union-dominated candidates” is just popped in as “reporting” rather than opinion?
On more mature reflection, I think the Vote-a-matic should be seen as a technological tour-de-force – someone finally programmed a computer to be as stupid as Dennis Shanahan! Now that couldn’t have been easy.
Would have liked to complete the “Vote-a-matic” program but it wanted to get too far into my PC and, my PC slapped its face and kicked it out the door!
Ah well, I’m sure it would have told me that I was the direct opposite of my voting intentions.
and now this twist
steve, it’s an obvious wedge.
BBB
Senator Bartlet will be pleased to know that I’m a Democrat, and not a Labor hack.
I’ve done it three times and I seem to be a Democrat every time. Something subliminal just won’t let me be a Family First voter. I’m a bit disappointed that they didn’t give a Hanson option as well.
Hey guys and gals, no comments here on Howard’s reconciliation announcement please because there will probably be a post on that later. Ta.
Ta Ta Howard.
I’ve come out Labor. The stooge at the beginning of the whole thing was probably a give-away. Was it really Habib from Pizza?
… WTF, runner-up Democrats?
Seems fair, it made me Green.
Apparently I’m a Green with the Dems as a runner-up. Talk about push polling!
I thought the questions were ridiculous, especially in health and education, but then it tagged me as a Greens voter so something was going right! (Not that I always vote Greens.)
The Party question surely must tip it massively. It’s pretty thinly veiled: WOULD YOU TALK TO HOWARD OR THE NEW ONE (OR OTHER) AT A PARTY?
Imagine all the introverted Howard haters out there being just tipped over the edge for a Coalition result.
I think it says more about the minor parties than the major parties.
I personally think there is no doubt Democrat policy platform is more palatable amongst the ‘mainstream’ than the Greans platform, so I see that part of the results as probably being quite accurate.
I think what this shows is that, especially for minor parties, branding is very important, and over the last 4 years the Democrats’ brand has been trashed, mostly I suspect for the want of a strong leader.
Greans?
Oh, for an edit function…
I suspect the whole thing was meant to be comedy and you have all had your collective leg pulled. The pictures sort of give you a hint.
Stephen, I think the point is not that the dems’ platform is necessarily more palatable than the Greens’, but that the Dems’ caricature is more palatable than the Greens’ caricature…
The way the test is scored is really dodgy.