Tag Archive for 'state labor'

Rudd’s ratings come down to earth; but he shouldn’t worry

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Mark
4 days, 9 hours ago
in Media and Polls
. 30 Comments

In comments on my thread on the failure of the Abbott parental leave thought bubble to halt a move back to Labor in the polls (and the reasons why), I observed that Possum’s observation provides further confirmation that it was probably private polling inspired in the first place:

Tony Abbott should consider himself a little lucky today with the Newspoll sample, as other unpublished phone polling that was in the field last week and over the weekend picked up movement more akin to Essential than Newspoll. So saying, it all comes out in the wash given enough time. (And no folks, that isn’t a Newspoll conspiracy, it’s simply normal sampling error – put it back in your pants).

So, I still think we’re seeing some movement back to Labor in public opinion, despite the apparent stasis in Newspoll.

Despite the fact that Abbott’s been having a dream run in the media (always seemingly ready to be amused and entertained with something or someone that can be represented as providing colour and movement), it’s actually much more difficult (and probably more unwise) to run the ’seize the attention’ opposition strategy than sometimes perceived. It has a pretty short use by date. And it doesn’t necessarily work; just ask Mark Latham.

I think that the true (if more prosaic) story about the narrowing of the party vote in the polls over the last few months is that it’s a return to partisan normality. Federal governing parties have very rarely enjoyed the sorts of overwhelming advantages state incumbents have had, and not surprisingly so, as the nation is a much more variegated and complex beast. That, and the perceived end of the GFC, leaves less room for Kevin Rudd to adopt the ‘above politics’ stance beloved of Labor premiers (and of ‘New Labor’ administrations more generally); or rather, it doesn’t succeed in hoovering up as much of the soft vote when the opposition unites behind a leader and rejoins the partisan game.

The spin on Newspoll this morning – in the absence of any movement in the two party preferred – was the banner headline of doom for Kevin Rudd’s approval ratings. That’s more or less a waste of newsprint. If we had a breakdown of the Newspoll figures, I strongly suspect we’d find that Rudd’s drop over the last few months has mostly come from Coalition voters. That reflects the perceived increase in strength of leadership and unity among Coalition partisans in the electorate; Rudd’s ratings are still higher by a significant degree than the ALP party vote, which implies that he’s still rated by undecided and soft voters; as does his advantage over Abbott and his commanding lead in the PPM stakes (once upon a time, of course, the all important indicator according to Shanahan and crew). I doubt, therefore, that he’s got much further to fall, all other things being equal, or that there’s any remaining drag effect in the party vote.

What’s up with Rudd?

Published
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Mark
1 month, 1 week ago
in Climate change, Culture, Education, Politics and Sociology
. 55 Comments

Bernard Keane in today’s Crikey email: Continue reading ‘What’s up with Rudd?’

Of honeymoons and polls

Published
by
Mark
4 months ago
in Media and Polls
. 28 Comments

Peter Van Onselen’s new role at Newspoll Central appears to be a second string Dennis Shanahan, adding a second dose of commentary on the almighty Newspoll a day after the master pronounces on how it is to be interpreted. Van Onselen’s special subject is the Liberal leadership. I can’t find him on line today, but the gist is… you know, maybe Malcolm’s not gone by Christmas, but he still needs to prove that he’s not having a third “dead cat bounce”. I imagine that Van Onselen’s value to the Oz is his Liberal connections, but that’s always something of a dangerous game – let’s not forget his breathless performance on Lateline a while back when he’d clearly had his ear bent by a few Libs and was more or less pronouncing that Turnbull was finished, all caught up in the dubious excitement of the brief Hockey speculate-a-thon.

It’s a similar style of proceeding to Imre Salusinszky’s; who, incidentally, looked almost disappointed that Nathan Rees had actually put a bomb under the endless round of destabilisation at NSW Labor conference. All those Chinese lunches and hot tips over yum cha about Della or Kristina Keneally, or someone, being Premier before the month or year is out or whenevs, gone to waste.

Much more astute was the commentary in today’s Fin Review and Crikey – Turnbull is being squeezed by a pincer movement – Minchin within and Rudd without. The commentariat should wake up to the fact that the truth is Labor would like to see Mal go – because he’s actually the most plausible opponent (and who knows what he could have done had he not been forced to lead such a rabble – including the Coalition’s false friends in the media among the troops in constant revolt).

No one else the Libs could put up against Rudd would have even a ghost of a chance.

… which leads me to the “honeymoon is over” theme. If indeed it is true that there has been a bit of a shift in the electorate’s mood (and as I’ve said recently, I think it’s too early to call that), the so-called return to normalcy is much more likely to be a result of relief that the effects of the GFC are finally past us, rather than any supposed “doubts” about Rudd or concerns about asylum seekers. Anyone who’s ever run a focus group can readily imagine how such “doubts” could come up, without having any massive significance. In fact, if you’re doing your job, you’d be asking the same questions about Turnbull. I smell a big rat on this particular media leak. And on the latter, I think it’s much more probable that it’s the messiness of Rudd’s message, and the sheer volume of ‘crisis’ rhetoric that’s likely to account for the blip, if that’s it at all.

The biggest failing of the public polls, unlike the parties’ tracking polls, is that they don’t ask any questions which would disclose the salience of issues and events to vote shifts. That’s why a lot of the hackneyed commentary is just that. If they did, of course, it would cost a bit more, and they’d need to know a bit more about stats to interpret them, and it would also forever destroy the myth that there’s some privileged insight political journos have.

But in the absence of access to such data, the more prosaic hypothesis is that voters want to see the government act on what it promised to do – bread and butter improvements in service delivery, primarily. The Rudd government, if not the commentariat, will be aware of this, and I’d expect a switch in the rhetoric very quickly after parliament rises for the year and the political shenanigans around the CPRS wear out their use by date as political fodder for beating up the opposition.

So – does this mean that Labor’s support is “soft” in the absence of something the government portrayed as a national emergency? Well, yes, sort of. Continue reading ‘Of honeymoons and polls’

Queensland Labor resurgent: 57-43

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Mark
1 year, 3 months ago
in Media, Polls, Queensland and State/Territory Elections
. 12 Comments

I’ve said before that I don’t put too much stock in the quarterly state Newspolls, because they’re taken at such a lengthy interval it’s hard to get a sense of when any movement shown has actually occurred, and it’s more difficult to pick a poll which may be an outlier for various sampling reasons. However, the big shift to Labor in both Queensland and Victoria at state level in the latest lot of polling probably is significant. It’s also shot a huge hole in The Australian’s narrative of a voter desire to “balance” federal Labor by turning away from state ALP governments, which I’ve been suggesting for a long time was just nonsense anyway. In Crikey, Richard Farmer has some fun looking at the reactions (or contortions) from various News Limited journos.

So, what’s going on in Queensland? Anna Bligh’s own numbers were down while Labor’s vote surged, to a point above where it was at the last election (which was won very handily indeed). It’s possible that Bligh herself is suffering a little because she doesn’t fit the mould of the “strong leader” which has always stuck to Queensland Premiers, and which Peter Beattie re-invented. Conversely, there may be a bit of a flight to safety effect in the party vote with the economy slowing. However, here we come across one of the conundrums that haunt the analysis of polling. Queensland Labor types have been suggesting that private polling (which I haven’t seen) has Labor’s vote still on the up but not at such quite stellar heights and Anna Bligh’s numbers better than in Newspoll. I suspect they’re telling the truth, but with these things, as I’ve also said before, the interpretation of the public polls shifts political discourse and in particular the strategy and morale of the opposition.

Continue reading ‘Queensland Labor resurgent: 57-43′

The truth of polls and the epistemology of politics

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 3 months ago
in Elections, Media, Polls, Queensland, Sociology, State/Territory Elections and Victoria
. 13 Comments

The Poll Bludger has the numbers on the latest Nielsen poll for Victoria. Labor leads on the 2PP 55-45.

The Age trumpets this result as Victorian Labor “defying the national trend”. No doubt other papers are saying the same – I haven’t looked.

I’ve been arguing for a while that there is insufficient evidence to conclude that there is a national trend against Labor, and that in fact thinking about disparate polls in seven different jurisdictions with differing political histories, cultures and current circumstances as constituting a trend makes little sense. My contention for a long time has been that elections are unrepeatable and singular events and that epistemologically we can know much less about electoral behaviour and find grounds for prediction with much less certainty than we think. Political behaviour follows few laws and a lot of conclusions reached after the fact are questionable.

But there is a sort of reflexivity feedback loop built into the way we think about politics and the way polls are reported. Particularly at state level – where polls are few and far between – one poll which struggles to form a series can have a large impact on perceptions, and thus the interpretations of the public and the press and the morale of politicians and “momentum”.

Continue reading ‘The truth of polls and the epistemology of politics’

Labor states on the nose!!!

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 4 months ago
in Federal Elections, Media, Polls, Sociology and State/Territory Elections
. 58 Comments

I’ve written before about why I think that the “media narrative” masquerading as psephological analysis that there’s some sort of automatic fall in support for state Labor parties because of some putative desire among voters to have different parties governing at different levels. I suspect the proximate origin of this meme is actually the “wall to wall Labor” scare the Liberals ran in last year’s election. As Kim was suggesting the other day, this is a political tactic that normally indicates despair among incumbents, and it’s completely wrong to assume it reflects some sort of psephological law or reality in voting behaviour. Anyone familiar with the political science literature knows that attempts to demonstrate any posited strong correlation between state and federal partisan choices over time falls down very quickly – even in New South Wales where it’s long been political myth that the strongest case can be made. In part that’s because there are two few cases of actual partisan change in elections over much of the postwar period – something that becomes immediately apparent when you think about the fact that the federal government didn’t turn over at all between 1949 and 1972.

There was another outbreak of this guff on Monday in The Australian, apropos of quarterly newspolls in New South Wales and Victoria. There was the usual news story and two op/ed pieces to ram home the point. It was intriguing to see the frame applied to the comments of ABC election analyst Antony Green: Continue reading ‘Labor states on the nose!!!’