Archive for the 'Polls' Category

Guest post by Ben Eltham: Useless pack of Bankers

Published
by
Guest Poster
1 day, 19 hours ago
in Media, Polls and Sociology
. 19 Comments

Earlier this week at New Matilda, I explored the growing problem of the media’s fascination with corporate-backed reports and surveys. There’s already been plenty of discussion here about the BCA report into emissions trading, and my colleage Ben Pobije put a satirical skewer through Bernard Salt’s pop demography.

I want to specifically have a look at BankWest and the latest edition of that bank’s so-called “Quality of Life Index”. This report got a massive free kick from a range of media outlets. Even the ABC had no problem covering the report, making sure they included the corporate sponsor’s brand when referring to the “BankWest Quality of Life Index” on ABC TV news, before going on to give BankWest executive Ian Corfield some free media on the national broadcaster. A Google News search on this topic yielded 167 mentions — not bad going for a report that has some serious methodological flaws.

The BankWest study because it shows just how easily busy journalists and credulous media outlets can be taken in by what appears to be rigorous research. The media reported the findings of the report with little analysis of what it actually said, and no examination of the dubious reasoning behind its impressive league tables of best and worst local government areas in the nation. “The BankWest Quality of Life Index has debunked the myth of Australians’ ’sea-change’ and ‘tree-change’ desires,” is how the ABC story led.

No, it hasn’t. Continue reading ‘Guest post by Ben Eltham: Useless pack of Bankers’

Newspoll Tuesday: Labor 56-44

Published
by
Kim
4 days, 10 hours ago
in Media and Polls
. 14 Comments

Ok, in the parallel universe that is press reporting of polls, we get this from the West Australian:

Extensive Olympics coverage over the past two weeks may have pushed politics out of the minds of many Australians and be responsible for the minimal changes in the latest Newspoll of voter sentiment and no improvement for the coalition.

Right. Yep. Because the natural order of things is that the Coalition vote should always be rising and its failure to do so is an aberration to be explained away by… stuff that happened in the same fortnight. Whatevs.

Meanwhile, Dennis Shanahan puts it all down to the waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting for Costello to release his book. Which, by the way, the ABC is giving free publicity to by televising a National Press Club speech by the former Treasurer on the day of its release. What’s with that?

But note the common assumption that the Liberals should be gaining were it not for their leadership woes. Really? How do they know? Because they do. It’s not argued. But it’s there as the background assumption on which all the rest rests.

Elsewhere: For actual commentary on the poll, go visit Possum and the Poll Bludger’s crew in comments. The Poll Bludger also links to the rather interesting Essential Research poll (Labor 58-Coalition 42) which shows that there’s a 7% negative differential between state and federal ALP voting intentions among its sample.

Newspaper understands poll shock! And Costello breaks silence!

Published
by
Kim
1 week, 5 days ago
in Howardia, Media, Politics and Polls
. 9 Comments

Props to Peter Hartcher at the Sydney Morning Herald for actually including some vaguely sensible commentary in his column on the Nielsen preferred Liberal leader polling, and not beating it up as “Voters Want Costello!”. Perhaps the Fairfax crew are trying to establish a point of differentiation in the market:

But even so, the poll does not suggest that a Costello leadership would be enough to put the Coalition ahead. “Superficially it looks good for Peter Costello,” Stirton observes, “but when you look at where his support comes from, it’s mainly Liberal voters.”

But to win an election, the Coalition needs to win over people currently supporting Labor. Asked whether a Costello leadership would make them more or less likely to vote for the Coalition, 15 per cent said more likely but 24 per cent said less. “Costello is a net negative among Labor voters,” Stirton points out.

More on the poll from The Poll Bludger and Possum Comitatus.

Meanwhile, the Great Man Pretender breaks his silence! … Continue reading ‘Newspaper understands poll shock! And Costello breaks silence!’

WA election: latest polls

Published
by
Kim
2 weeks ago
in Polls and State/Territory Elections
. 4 Comments

The Poll Bludger has a comprehensive post on what’s happening in the WA state election. The polls are showing it might be a close run race, with a 51-49 result from Newspoll and basically a dead heat in Westpoll (albeit from a 400 strong sample). There’s also lots of electorate level polling to read about.

Newspoll Tuesday: Labor 57-43 (populist bank bashing edition)

Published
by
Kim
2 weeks, 4 days ago
in Economics, Markets, Media and Polls
. 16 Comments

The details can be found at The Poll Bludger’s joint. Nelson’s down 2 points (within the moe) but no doubt that will start off another round of Costello fantasising, even if the audience for that sort of idiocy will be even less than it usually is with the Olympics and all. It’ll be as meaningless as the change in the poll, and the relatively meaningless measure itself.

Of much more interest is the new kid on the polling block, Essential Research (which btw has Labor 58-42 on the 2PP). The online poll has been mixing it up a bit with different questions. You can read all the results here, but I wanted to focus on the question on interest rates and the banks.

Continue reading ‘Newspoll Tuesday: Labor 57-43 (populist bank bashing edition)’

Guest post by Possum Comitatus: Betting markets in the absence of the polls

Published
by
Guest Poster
2 weeks, 4 days ago
in Media, Polls, Sociology and State/Territory Elections
. 7 Comments

MB writes: I’ve always been of the view that the “wisdom of the crowd” hypothesis doesn’t work very well in the case of prediction markets for elections - because the number of insiders who have relevant information not available to anyone else is miniscule. One instance I followed closely was the Queensland state election - where the odds for the number of seats Labor would win very closely paralleled what the polls and the pundits were saying. I actually did have a bit of inside info, and I made about 1500 bucks, which I couldn’t have done if there’d been tons of people with access to such info. Possum’s piece in Crikey today, I think goes some way to confirming my view that the markets are basically parasitic on the polls because in the absence of any, punters went with “received wisdom”, which got the result spectacularly wrong.

Possum writes: If you were to look at the betting markets for the NT election last week, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the ALP had a greater chance of being abducted by the latest outbreak of NT UFO’s than they had of being beaten by the CLP. Yet, with no major pollster running pre-election surveys in the Territory, should we be at all surprised that the markets got it so wrong in terms of the chance of Labor retaining government?

As much as political polling is scorned as reducing important political issues down to little more than horse race commentary, it fulfills one fundamentally important role — it stops people talking sh-t.

From politicians to columnists, from reporters to your average Joe – political polling encourages all but the learned types at The Australian to keep it in their pants.

Continue reading ‘Guest post by Possum Comitatus: Betting markets in the absence of the polls’

Queenslandism II

Published
by
Mark
3 weeks, 6 days ago
in Brisbane, Elections, NSW Government, Polls, Queensland, Sociology, State/Territory Elections and Urbanism
. 21 Comments

I note that Brian Costar has been thinking along similar lines to me and Andrew Bartlett on the subject of the formation of the Liberal National Party. He’s put his finger on the key challenge for the Borg and his crew, who haven’t had any amalgamation bounce if today’s Galaxy Poll is to be believed:

The new party is almost certainly to be more conservative than the pre-existing Liberal party – especially on social issues – and this might not prove attractive to the urban middle classes, who are certainly more numerous in Queensland than when Bjelke-Petersen mis-governed the state. Unless the party can harvest Brisbane seats from Labor it will not win government.

Continue reading ‘Queenslandism II’

On the meaninglessness of political analogies

Published
by
Mark
1 month ago
in Federal Elections, Foreign Elections, Media and Polls
. 18 Comments

Here’s an article close to my heart.

The best thing about the year in analogy is how diverse the comparisons have been. Almost simultaneously, Obama has been described as 2008’s version of 49-state winner Ronald Reagan as well as its incarnation of 49-state loser George McGovern–in fact, he’s been compared to every presidential candidate since World War II. A vote for John McCain has been likened to both a third term of George Bush as well as a first victory for the unelected Gerald Ford. The comparisons also don’t end at the border: Obama critics have derided him as the second coming of Canada’s Pierre Elliot Trudeau; McCain’s admirers see British titan Benjamin Disraeli when they gaze at the Arizona Senator. Meanwhile, the campaign they’re fighting gets equated with struggles as varied as the elections of crisis-afflicted 1860 and prosperity-tinged 1996. Prominent pundits at different points have managed to compare Obama to both parties’ candidates in the 1980s election.

Continue reading ‘On the meaninglessness of political analogies’

Reality and unreality in the pundits’ world

Published
by
Kim
1 month ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Climate change, Economics, Energy, Environment, Immigration, Media and Polls
. 17 Comments

Let’s take a look at today’s political “news”, News Limited style, and the ongoing construction of the “media narrative” that according to the press gallery gang, is the only news fit to print.

As noted here, The Opposition Organ spent a bucket of dosh to add extra questions to Newspoll, and chose to run with “Voters Want Costello” as its front page headline over the (presumably less welcome to the masthead of denialism) numbers on climate change, showing overwhelming majorities attributing climate change to AGW and support for an ETS, with a big majority for “not waiting on the world”. So that’s establishing the news agenda through polling to feed the current “media narrative” - centring on the Liberal leadership and Peter Costello lovin’ in particular. And selectivity in emphasis. Then we get selectivity in reporting. The numbers in Newspoll, as Possum points out, don’t show that the voters the Liberals need to persuade are particularly persuadable by a putative Costello return:

The Coalition needs ALP voters to shift to the Coalition, yet ALP voters have a breakdown of 15% more likely and 20% less likely. If Costello became leader, he might not lose voteshare, but neither does he look like he would gain much based on these results.

But Dennis Shanahan doesn’t mention that.

Let’s go back a bit and remember, as Mark pointed out in his review, that the extracts from Inside Kevin07 that kicked the Costello talk off were themselves highly selective - one bit of research done before Rudd became leader and highlighted while the other internal polling and focus group research showing Costello for PM being about as appealling as a piece of wet lettuce was studiously ignored. And let’s not forget either that the “Costello the Saviour” narrative basically depends on the publication date of a book! Leadership calculation by publishing schedule! Melbourne University Press and book distributors hold the nation’s future in their hand!

Then, the big showdown Bolta talked up on the Coalition’s emissions trading scheme stance comes - and Nelson gets rolled.

Meanwhile, the Labor government has basically done away with mandatory detention.

I would venture to suggest that is rather more important than all this other confected nonsense.

Continue reading ‘Reality and unreality in the pundits’ world’

The state of political blogging II

Published
by
Mark
1 month ago
in Culture, Federal Elections, Media, Politics, Polls, Sociology and The Web
. 2 Comments

Last year I shared some thoughts on the state of political blogging in Australia. Trevor Cook has just examined the claim that the blogging phenomenon is “losing impetus”. I’m not sure that’s so, and coincidentally, I’ve just sent off a write up of the talk I gave at the Public Right to Know Conference at UTS last year, for a special issue of the Pacific Journalism Review being co-ordinated by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism. You can read it here [link to pdf].

Continue reading ‘The state of political blogging II’

Newspoll 57-43

Published
by
Kim
1 month ago
in Media and Polls
. 35 Comments

Newspoll has Labor up to 57 from 55 last time (within the moe) and Nelson flatlining at 14% PPM. Commenters at the Poll Bludger’s thread predict that it will be spun by News Limited as a cri de coueur from the public for the imminent return of Peter Costello the Great Pretender. Probably.

Update: [by Mark] You can read about the additional questions asked about liberal leadership, Peter Costello, climate change and support for an emissions trading policy at Possum’s place.

Inside Kevin07

Published
by
Mark
1 month ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Elections, Federal Elections, Media, Politics and Polls
. 36 Comments

Hunter S. Thompson, who’s repeatedly if repetitiously quoted in Christine Jackman’s Inside Kevin07: The People. The Plan. The Prize., would be turning in his grave.

I’m unable to think of any good reasons for parting with $34.95 for Jackman’s book, which is touted as the ultimate insider account of the Labor Party’s campaign strategy in the lead up to last year’s federal election. As noted previously at this blog, any juicy tidbits have already been extracted in the News Limited papers, and the non-story of Peter Costello’s alleged popularity is still rumbling meaninglessly on as I write. (Incidentally, the fact that quite a bit of research mentioned in the book showing Costello as electoral poison wasn’t selected for “news” stories tells a bit of a tale in itself.)

The book’s importance - insofar as it has any - lies in what is in effect an auto-critique of the standard of political journalism in contemporary Australia, in what its publication says about the strategies of university presses and particularly MUP, and in whether it actually adds fuel to the fire of the “hollowmen” narrative of colourless political apparatchiks it tries to counter. Let’s take those in reverse order.

Continue reading ‘Inside Kevin07′

Peter Costello the saviour

Published
by
Mark
1 month, 1 week ago
in By-elections, Media and Polls
. 39 Comments

The raw ingredients of the right wing media narrative du jour have been stewing for all to see in a curious potage in the columns of The Australian over the last few days. That narrative? Take a pinch of “Rudd is symbolism and spin” (originally coined by one John Winston Howard), add a dollop of Nelsonian petrol populism, throw in Ute Man, and you’ve got a recipe for self-delusion - that Peter Costello will not ride into the sunset of international finance but rather rise again to lead the conservative forces back to their rightful place in the sun, their brief winter of Ruddian discontent dispell’d by glorious… something.

Former Labor Senator John Black, among whose exercises in psephological tea leaf reading was the prediction that Peter Beattie and Labor would crash and burn in the 2006 Queensland election, has redeemed his own subsequent prediction that Kevin Rudd and Labor would romp it home in Gippsland, by seizing on some leaked National Party polling reported by Glenn Milne. Ute Man has spoken.

So you can forget using the present national opinion polls of voting intention as a means of projecting the next by-election result.

Well, yeah, you can, because Labor isn’t running in Mayo, and probably won’t in Lyne. But, wait, there’s more: Continue reading ‘Peter Costello the saviour’

The Great Pretender

Published
by
Mark
1 month, 1 week ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Elections, Federal Elections, History, Howardia, Media and Polls
. 12 Comments

There were numerous examples of the “exciting excerpt from new book on politics” thing around in the weekend papers, a phenomenon noted earlier here with regard to Peter Van Onselen and Phillip Senior’s Howard’s End. The Courier-Mail ran some underwhelming excerpts from that tome - the thrust of which appeared to be that Kevin Rudd sometimes reacted badly to some of the bombs lobbed at him last year (as in the Burke “affair”). That doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t know at the time, and it’s probably unfair to judge the book as a whole on the basis of these excerpts. The marketing ploy seems to be to run a bit of copy which can be spun into something contemporary - another brick in the wall of the prevailing “media narrative”.

We also saw some similarly underwhelming excerpts in The Australian from Christine Jackman’s Inside Kevin07, which were then spun into news stories. Or rather, the bit about ALP polling on Peter Costello was. No one seemed to find it particularly stunning a revelation that ALP wonks were playing around with butchers paper when workshopping campaign themes.

The Costello story, of course, has played into current speculation about the Liberal leadership, and a campaign by certain commentators to tout his leadership credentials. But it actually highlights something very problematic both about the interpretation of polling by the media and the political class and these sorts of “first draft of history” journalistic books. Continue reading ‘The Great Pretender’

He’s from Queensland and he’s here to help cave in before the debate starts

Published
by
Mark
1 month, 2 weeks ago
in Climate change, Economics, Energy, Environment, Markets and Polls
. Closed

This was my response to the argument that Kevin Rudd’s Emissions Trading Scheme Green Paper was a fine piece of pragmatic politics: Continue reading ‘He’s from Queensland and he’s here to help cave in before the debate starts’