It seems Galaxy has settled into a three-week polling pattern, compared with Newspoll’s fortnightly, ACNielsen’s monthly and Roy Morgan’s weekly (usually – they seem to have taken last week off) UPDATE: Sorry, it’s actually been four weeks since the last Galaxy – the previous three were three weeks apart. Today’s Galaxy survey has Labor leading 55-45 – still narrower than other recent polls, but a slight correction from its quirky 53-47 of three weeks ago. Despite the flak Galaxy copped last time, respondents were again asked a question about Labor’s union connections. They were also asked if the Prime Minister was “addressing problems in Aboriginal communities because of the upcoming federal election or because he really cares about the problem”. All revealed here.
Actually, it looks as if Galaxy will be out on the first Monday of every month. Nielson does do its polls Thurs-Sat, while both Galaxy and Newspoll do theirs Fri-Sun; this is not what the editor implies for Galaxy. Perhaps Galaxy has less info, or their software is better than Newspoll’s. The climate change LiveEarth concerts on Sat 7 July could have an impact on the next Newspoll.
I don’t know what can be read into this, but if you add a newspoll result to the preious one and divide by 2 you get a fairly stable result for the last few months
Lib (a+b)/2 Lab (a+b)/2
Newspoll 2-4 February 2007 44 56
Newspoll 16-18 February 2007 46 45 54 55
Newspoll 2-4 March 2007 43 44.5 57 55.5
Newspoll 16-18 March 2007 39 41 61 59
Newspoll 30 Mar-1 Apr 2007 43 41 57 59
Newspoll 13-15 April 2007 41 42 59 58
Newspoll 27-29 April 2007 43 42 57 58
Newspoll 11-13 May 2007 41 42 59 58
Newspoll 18-20 May 2007 43 42 57 58
Newspoll 21-24 May 2007 45 44 55 56
Newspoll 25-27 May 2007 40 42.5 60 57.5
wspoll 15-17 June 2007 44 42 56 58
“Supernova Says:
July 3rd, 2007 at 12:33 pm
One thing about the Right is that they spend most of their time living states of denial. Truth is their ultimate enemy.”
What an odd thing to say, considering it came in the midst of a group of comments from left-wingers which proposed the most ridiculous and quite illogical conspiracy theory to explain the non-appearance of the expected Newspoll, apparently mostly based on a a failure to appreciate Matt Price’s sense of humour. One of the left-wing truth-tellers posted that he absolutely knew that the poll had been taken, based on information from ‘spies’ who worked for the organisation and ‘others’ who had been polled. Yes, the left-wing love for truth is a wondrous thing to behold.
As a Right-winger I must also be completely stupid, because I just don’t get how suppression of a bad opinion poll result would really help the Howard government. What, if people aren’t told that an opinion poll said they would mostly vote for Labor, they might thus then vote for Howard, in the actual election which is probably still four months away?
And, Supernova, you must be really proud to have on your side, that left wing way of truth and light, those who post comments like this:
“envy Says:
July 3rd, 2007 at 11:31 am
The history of the Howard Reich is littered with suspicious events.
Be ready for a 9/11 event, it’s possibly the only thing that ‘might’ save the Liberals now.”
netvegetable Says:
July 3rd, 2007 at 11:35 am
Maybe it showed Harold Holt making a comeback. Na, I reckon he bought a fish shop in Torquay and dyed his hair. Bloody funny Veg. Thank you.
Cubic what ? Quadratic what ? No way Im going to a Uni library again to try and understand concepts like that. Put it in plain english for us ‘also rans’ , please (smiles).
Whose going to do a poll when the ‘priority one’ single mothers on Sole Parent Pension (*unemployed, children over 7 years of age and not connected with any education stream)get kicked off SPP and transferred to Newstart Allowance and treated like any other ‘jobseeker’ have been processed through Centrelink offices by the end of the month ? Indications are theres a few marginal Coalition seats with a strong sole parent family presence – I hope one of them picks this up and polls those electorates. Wishful thinking I suppose.
Arbie Jay,
Thanks for your interesting comments on “Ongoing poll bonanzaâ€. I am replying here because that thread has passed beyond the front page. I am not surprised that many Democrats did not want to amalgamate with the Greens. I think the opportunity to do so has passed. The Democrats came from three groups – Don Chipp Liberals, the Liberal Movement and the Australia Party, which came out of Gordon Barton’s opposition to Australia’s participation in the Vietnam War. That suggests to me that the Democrats were more Liberal-leaning than Labor-leaning, though I do not see the current liberal party as particularly congenial to them. When the DLP closed down in 1978, the overwhelming majority of DLP workers simply stopped. Some fought on as the new DLP, some went back to the ALP, and some even joined the Liberals, but most were glad that they had been given permission to stop what had been years and years of dedicated effort. I expect most Democrats have already given up active partisan politics and that most of the rest will do so by the end of this year.
Bill,
Their vote for the GST vote did cause hostility to the Democrats, but as they went into the election promising to support the GST, I have no idea why people became hostile at the fact that they did what they promised to do, albeit with some compromises with the Liberals. It would have been better if the GST had not been distorted by the Democrats’ exemptions because the states would now have even more money to put into health and education.
Dario, I love it how you have me pegged as a Howard supporter just because I float the possibity of Howard actually having a hope of winning this election. I also ask you to note that I only believe that the vote will get down to 53-47 or close to before the call of the election. As such any hope that Howard as of winning this election lies in him winning the election campaign. I don’t think this is certain, even likely, but it does pay to not call election 4 months out from them.
For the record, if I had to vote I would vote for the Greens.
Lastly, the only reason I believe that any bounce from the Aboriginal annoucement would come next poll was because I thought this poll was taken before the announcement. I now realize I was wrong, which throw out half my original post.
Possum said: There’s a number of possible reasons for that, cubic time trends (like quadratic ones) have a lot of uses in explaining behaviour.
They EXPLAIN nothing, they are merely empirical fits to data. All psephology is essentially phenomenological. Cubic best fits the 1996-2007 data, moving to quartic and higher makes no improvement. So, what does a cubic actually “model” that thw others don’t?
An R-sq of 50% is not much really. If you start with a model of the way things are and develop an equation for the model and then get a data fit to that equation with an R-sq of about 90%, THEN you’re on your way to “explaining” something.
I think psephology needs a big bucket of cold water thrown over it after today’s frenzy.
Here’s the call of the night:
The electorate will not buy a word of Howard’s Aboriginal ‘solution’- too late
APEC will be a disaster for Howard – business is about to give him a clip over the ear for creating such an inconvenience for NO gain (other than a few nice TV shots in the third world where punters can’t even afford one Australian dollar, let alone the 5,000 needed for a decent holiday here)
The Liberal Party in NSW will let Howard down – voters and donors see the machine as being nothing more than a disfunctional institution.
Queensland will embrace Rudd.
With some leakage in the smaller States Howard will loose by two. Rudd will be a one term PM.
The commentariate will say “Why didn’t he retire hurt at 10?”
Very funny Nick–if your being ‘tongue in cheek’ with your prediction of Howard losing by 2 and Rudd lasting one innings on the lawns of Kirribilli. Trouble with all that if your serious is the ‘experts’ around the place like the in-house Adam Carr poo poo ‘close’ election predictions (for 2007 at least, if not generally) for a range of reasons. Maybe take it up with them and see how far your predictions travel. Kudos for putting it out there though. Cheers.
That is, when Adam, William and other pedants get over my failure to use you’re [if your serious]. Four bloody uni degrees and I still can not spell, sheet !
AKP, I think my point still stands
William, if you have done with the whiskey and pistol for the week, may I borrow the pistol- I refuse to do a spell check on blogging-too much time spent ‘polishing’ papers for too too long. Laughs. Back to Psephology.
My “two seat” prediction is because I think 18 or so seats will change hands. It may well be more given the money Labor will throw at the marginals. My “one term” prediction is based on the fact that Rudd will have a hostile Senate and we all know what that does to Labor leaders!
Wouldn’t mind comparing notes on what 18 seats you think are going to change hands Nick (eg are you thinking Cowan and/or Swan are going to be lost ?; Any prospect of gains for Labor in Victoria ?). The hostile senate and DD notion is popular – takes be back to Fraser/Whitlam days, eww !!!
….and we all know what happened to Gough after that mess; Labor in the wilderness till the closest thing we have had to the Messiah (R.Hawke) came along.
Name the last one term federal government.
The ALP back in the depression era I think…
Scullin?
Mind you it took a the depression of all depressions to bring about that scenerio.
I don’t recall poo-pooing anyone’s close election scenarios. All scenarios are possible at present, except probably a Harold Holt comeback.
Curtin faced a hostile Senate during his first term and he did just fine in his first election as PM. (see also: Bracks, Steve)
Obviously Nick is referring to Whitlam. But – if he’s being serious – he is surely confusing cause and effect. The Coalition denied Whitlam the ability to govern because they knew he was unpopular with the electorate; not the other way around.
As for the apparent new polling timetable, I take it then that they’ll now be coming out on a weekly basis in a four-week cycke… Galaxy, Newspoll, Nielsen, Newspoll… a most satisfactory outcome.
On the Senate, if Rudd/Labor stay on the current track they’ll be looking to engineer a double dissolution ASAP.
On the subject of predictions, based on current poll trends and what’s known about regional & local factors:
Certain Labor gains:
Kingston Bonner Wakefield Makin Braddon Macquarie Bass Moreton Lindsay Eden Monaro (& retain Parramatta, possibly offset by losses in Cowan and Swan).
Probables:
Wentworth Dobell Deakin McMillan Corangamite Boothby Sturt Herbert Flynn Longman Petrie Bowman Blair
Landslide territory:
Bennelong Hughes Page Paterson Hasluck Stirling LaTrobe McEwen Hinkler.
If the swing’s concentrated in the upstairs/downstairs demographic (ie Labor state voters) that brings seats like McPherson Fairfax Fisher and Macarthur into the frame. Have it on good authority the Qld Nats are also worried about Hinkler and Dawson.
My best guess would be a 10 seat majority but it could be a lot more.
I think the above probables are a big big call. Maybe the Rodent will lose but the polls will only get better for him between now and the election.
I would be prepared to write off anything under 4% swing though.
Geoff:
Time trends like cubic time trends have a lot of uses *IN* explaining behaviour. They dont explain the underlying causes of the behaviour (they aren’t meant to) and they certaintly aren’t some immutable law of the universe which we all find ourselves enslaved to following, and behaving in ways purely to make sure that we don’t offend the time trend gods by doing anything that might be contrary to the deterministic path.
Why cubic trends are well used is simply because they contain a peak and a trough which can represent everything from a simple cross-section of a longer cycle through to cyclical and cumulative behavioural effects.
For voting analysis, voter support for political parties in the developed world (cant say about the developing world, haven’t looked) are characterised, nay DOMINATED by longer term, slow flowing trends – hills and valleys if you will with varying steepness, with the occasional structural break thrown in, but those structural breaks nearly always wash out of the system relatively quickly. There is a large amount of volatility around those longer term trends, the day to day political circus guarantees that from people changing political support over the latest policy initiative, the latest scandal, or the leaders latest haircut, but that volatility doesn’t dominate the general level of political support for a given party because that volatility operates AROUND those larger, longer term trends.
To answer your question of “what does a cubic actually “model†that the others don’t?â€
What it models in this case is the observable reality of the primary voting intention.
[For Strop, who needs explanations of what a cubic and quadratic trend are – how about a visual aid!]
http://possumcomitatus.wordpress.com/2007/06/26/time-trends-and-primary-votes/
A phenomenological approach undoubtedly has a contribution to make for explaining the hows and whys of that observable reality– but too often a simple phenomenological approach just seems to be an excuse for political naval gazing, devoid of observable reality and dressed up in a façade of Husserlian gravitas.
Paul Kelly comes to mind.
Elections are ostensibly about the spatial distributions of large aggregates of human behaviour as it relates to political preferences. Attempting to determine exactly why 10 million people individually will vote a certain way at an election is, I think, an exercise in futility. Individual reasons don’t really matter, collective changes in voting intentions matter and that’s where larger trends come into play.
Finally, on the R-sq. A mistake many people make is to assume that modelling is an exercise in R-sq fundamentalism – but its not, it simply cannot be! (and I’m not having a go at you or anyone else here by saying this) but it’s a particularly nasty habit that undergrads seem to pick up, and which needs to be beaten out of them at the earliest opportunity with the largest stick possible.
You can model nearly anything and end up with a high coefficient of determination by simply throwing more variables at it.An infinite order polynomial can just about model anything – but every time you add a variable, it changes the degrees of freedom and adds uncertaintly.If you are dealing with anything that has essentially random behaviour in it, you can get a model with a high 0.90’s coefficient of determination by throwing enough variables at it– it might be highly explanatory, but it will also be completely meaningless.
A model with an R-sq of 0.5 can have more to say about the data generating process than a model with an R-sq of 0.9, especially if the R-sq 50% model explains the underlying movement through time and a large part of the other 50% acts like volatility with a large random component around the mean equation. If your model with an R-sq of 90% achieves that score through simply piling on the variables, particularly autoregressive variables – then it’s traded off meaning (as uncertainty has been increased) for explanatory power and delivered a pretty equation but nothing much else.
If you are modelling any type of mildly complex human behaviour and your model ends up with R-sq scores of 90 or more, its probably a good idea to screw it up, throw it in the bin and start again.
Just on the QLD seats – I think that the ALP will pick up Blair, Bonner, Bowman, Moreton, Petrie (by a mile) and win Ryan by more than many think.
Dickson, Forde, Herbert, Leichardt and Longman will be close with Fisher being one to watch.
There’s a lot of anecdotal demographic movement happening in QLD which is almost impossible to pick up because groups of people in some seats are being replaced by other groups with almost identical demographic profiles.
Some of those Qld seats north of Brisbane are a case in point.Lots of young people are leaving them to move interstate and into Brisbane for career opportunities, but likewise, they’re being replaced by lots of other young people moving north from Brisbane and the Southern states for different career and lifestyle opportunities.
Likewise there seems to be, anecdotally (I’m a Qld’er) a fair number of middle income families moving out of Brisbane into those northern seats, but likewise a number of middle income families from those northern seats moving into Brisbane.
Housing turnover rates would be an excellent stat for some of this stuff – does anyone know of the new census data contains anything on that?
Just thinking about the excuse for not publishing the Newspoll this week – wont the results be out of date next week?
It doesnt wash as the media cycle (aside from daily) is usually weekly. If the results were published today or even Friday they would be ‘interesting’ but next week I dont think they could be called news worthy.
May as well throw them out by then and commission new ones (as expensive as they are).
Just a thought…
Possum,
The Liberals will not loose ryan, or dickson or forde and blair is line ball at best.
Bowman would require a massive swing.
If you think forde is gone then youd probably think fadden hinkler are up for grabs too
and if fisher is one to watch then so is fairfax and wide bay.
the Liberals in worst case scenario will lose Bonner, Moreton Longman Petrie, Hebert and Blair.
I have limited knowledge on Queensland, but I think Howard is likely to loose Dobell, Macquarie, Lindsay, Eden Monaro, not win Parramatta and maybe at risk in Robertson. No way will the Libs loose Wentworth. These marginals are at risk because the locals on the ground are known to be more interested in factional warfare than winning and the Libs will need to divert resources to holding Bennelong, Wentworth, North Sydney – and don’t forget if Peter McDonald wants to take on Abbott he is going to be somewhat distracted during the campaign.
….and rumour has it that Cadman left Hawke with a campaign chest of less than $500 – expect the margin in Mitchell to take a pounding if a high profile local government independent runs.
Wentworth will go because Labor have a decent candidate and Howard’s done Turnbull no favours with the inner city types by making him the climate change fall guy. Labor won’t win Robertson with this candidate and I won’t concede Dobell yet because long term demographics are working for the Libs on the Central Coast. Just look at 2007 state results.
Re Qld, Possum’s right about big population shifts. SEQ in particular has always been prone to big swings. In 1975 Bill Hayden was last man standing in Oxley and even that went in 1996. It can work the other way as well – as Beatty has shown. I don’t think there’s a single Lib up there feeling secure right now and it’s a bit of a lottery trying to pick who’ll hang on. Local factors and personal profiles usually haven’t counted for much when the swing is on but it can be quite variable. Mal Brough’s certainly doing his best but I’d doubt its helping him around Caboolture – which is now solid Labor at state level.
Being a fellow Queenslander and hoping they will beat the Blues tonight for a 3-0 series win. If Kevin Rudd Labor support holds at 55% 2PP on election day, I agree with Possum Comitatus that Brisbane seats such as Bonner, Moreton, Bowman, Petrie and Blair will fall. I also agree that if current support for Labor is maintained on election day, Ryan could be the bolter seat to fall thanks to above average support to the Greens, anger over construction of Goodna Bypass Road and incumbent Michael Johnson’s poor image amongst local media and residents.
Andrew,
There’s a couple of reasons I say that – over the last 20 years or so, Qld has developed a tendency for big political shifts delivering large majorities to State and Fed govs.
In the last Fed political shift in 96, 11 seats changed hands leaving the ALP with 2 (I think – I stand to be corrected).
The last shift at the State level was for the ALP minority incumbent, delivering them 66 out of 89 seats.
When there’s a political shift in QLD, it’s not done by halves, and I think there’s one on now.I think it’s already happened.
I don’t think the Coalition will necessarily lose Dickson and Forde, but they’ll be close.
I cant see Fadden changing, but Hinkler might if the demographic shifts have been large (i.e. the same demographic profile for profile swap) in Bundaberg and Hervey Bay particularly, that might get Rudd over the line.
Wide Bay is a strange seat – rapid change on the coast and three fifths of FA happening inland. That’d be hardcore One Nation country out there in the hills and unless Rudd is going to run a local platform of “hang’em from twenty foot poles†because ten foot poles just aren’t big enough, he’s got Buckleys.
Fairfax is one of those “poor, dumb or retired†seats to be brutally honest with plenty of rusted on party supporters. I cant see that changing either.
Forgive me if this is of little interest, although Possum will recognise 457 as a prime number!
But I just noticed that Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the first self-described socialist elected to the US Senate, voted against Bush’s immigration bill.
“At a time when the middle class is shrinking, poverty is increasing and millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages it makes no sense to me to have an immigration bill which, over a period of years, would bring millions of ‘guest workers’ into this country who are prepared to work for lower wages than American workers. We need to increase wages in this country, not lower them,†Sanders said after senators voted 53-to-46 to set aside the legislation.
 “We need an immigration policy which addresses the very serious problems of illegal immigration, continues our historic support of legal immigration, but protects the shrinking middle class.â€
Wow. I can’t believe so many people actually swallowed Matt Price’s ironic comments about Newspoll. That’s just…sad. Very sad.
The problem was that Newspoll and News Corp both supposedly involved in communicating to the public failed to do so Steven Kaye. That is what is sad, and caused the confusion. Many people asked for clarification during the day and the response was tardy, inconclusive and nonsensical.
Mark
the Qld seat of Oxley (my electorate) was redistributed in 1998 removing the Northern half of Ipswich. Another redistribution in 2006 removed even more of Ipswich. It is now a largely Brisbane-based seat. The heartland of One Nation is gone and it is a safe ALP seat with a margin of over 9% I think. As the link between Brisbane and Ipswich, the Ipswich Motorway, one of the worst in the country is probably the big local issue here. Howard waded in and threw a lot of money at it a few months back, but noone is impressed. Even the local libs (state) are against Howard’s Way 🙂
All Newspoll or the Australian had to do was let people know early yesterday mornjing or on Lateline the previous evening and this whole silly PR disaster would have been avoided.
It makes no sense to try and shame people who are the subject of a slooppy feeding of information for not understanding what could possibly be happening when the two possible sources of that information failed to tell them what was happening.
Steve, Steven Kaye is a stirrer and gets on here to get a reaction. I’ve fallen for it myself but realise now it is best to ignore him.
I think some of you guys are getting a little over-excited.
During the election campaign the public will be saturdated with ads featuring JWH sitting at a desk talking in a statesman-like manner. There will be graphs with bad numbers going down, good numbers going up. Scare campaigns about how “Labor will destroy the economy”.
Sure, Labor will have their own scare campaign, but opposition scare campaigns are never quite as effective because it’s easier for the voter to make a judgement about the level of scariness of the government, the opposition is an unknown quantity. Unknown = scarey.
There is no way the ALP will stay at 55-45 in that sort of environment. If you are trying to predict a winning Rudd 2PP you should try in the 51%-52% region.
The Speaker – I think you are underestimating the fear of IR (mark 1 and 2) and the extent to which the public have woken up to Howard. That large swing to Labor that took place earlier this year (when Rudd took over) wasn’t because they still love Howard.
“There is no way the ALP will stay at 55-45 in that sort of environment. If you are trying to predict a winning Rudd 2PP you should try in the 51%-52% region.”
I agree, but not for the reason that the government will decisively win the election campaign. I don’t think that the results of the past four elections bear that out. In 1996 and 2001 people had largely decided how they would vote before the campaign, and in 1998 the ALP opposition won the campaign.
I think your analysis is another version of “it’s 2004 all over again”.
Martin B: I agree, but not for the reason that the government will decisively win the election campaign.
Oh I didn’t say the government would win the campaign. I just think the government will do well enough to greatly narrow the margin from today’s figures of 55-45.
55 is the absolute top-top-top maximum of what the ALP could get.
There is still a fair chance of Howard winning.. somewhere from 20-40% by my amateur reckoning, however he needs to get the 2PP down to 53 before calling the election to have a chance.
You say you agree “but not for the reason..” you don’t give your reason ?
in 1998 the ALP opposition won the campaign.
I’ve always disagreed with this analysis. The 1998 2PP ‘win’ for Labor is largely an artifact of One Nation support in safe coalition seats eg Gwydir, Wide Bay etc.
However I’m too lazy to gather evidence to support my proposition and I’m guessing everyone will say it’s because of high labor votes in already safe labor seats.
To me the proof is in the pudding: Howard won the election in 98, therefore he won the campaign.
I can’t make an educated guess as to what the final result will be at the coming election, though I suspect it will be a reasonably comfortable win for Rudd. I can state however that I live in a safe ALP seat, next door to a classic swinging seat. Several (in the double figures) people who I know to be coalition voters have said to me recently, mostly adamantly that they would not vote for Howard “this time”. The reasons are universally Workchoices, honesty and “it’s time”.
I can’t see what campaign Howard can mount that would overcome their reasons for preparing to vote against him. Promising to be honest in future won’t cut it.
Reading the results of the Galaxy Poll this week, especially the question on Howards motives in the NT makes me think that their feelings are probably widespread through the nation.
“You say you agree “but not for the reason..†you don’t give your reason ?”
“To me the proof is in the pudding: Howard won the election in 98, therefore he won the campaign.”
Well obviously I have to disagree with the second sentence above to make a case on the first 🙂
I would love to be proved wrong but historical data suggests that 53-47 is about the best the ALP could hope for. I think that the current margin will mainly narrow before the election is called, and possibly narrow slightly during the campaign.
At 53-47 going into the campaign I think only a disaster for the ALP would see the government returned. But below that and it could get interesting.
If the campaign result = election result then either all of the speculating we are doing now is irrelevent or all of the tactics of the campaign period are irrelevant 🙂
It greatly helps when you are mounting a scare campaign if you have something that people are genuinely scared about. Howard’s scare campaign on Tampa worked because people were (and are) genuinely scared about Muslim immigration. (Shiekh Hillaly is Howard’s best friend). His scare campaign against Latham on interest rates and Latham being a loony worked, for the same reason. But his scare campaign on “union bosses” is not working because almost no-one is actually scared of them. On the other hand, Labor’s scare campaigns on the GST and on Costello becoming PM flopped, but its scare campaign on WorkChoices is working a treat, because large numbers of people, particularly in key demographics and in marginal urban seats, really are scared of WorkChoices, and so they should be. If Howard loses this election it will be because (a) he stayed on too long and (b) he won control of the Senate in 2004 and was able to pass WorkChoices.
In 2001 Labor clearly won the campaign; the Tampa and Sept 11 had both put the govt way in front, but Labor reduced it over the campaign period to a narrow 51-49 govt win. In 2004, Latham was simply not trusted as a potential PM; the more voters knew about him, the less they liked him. Rudd is doing much better than Latham was at this stage, and the govt loses its incumbency advantage during the campaign. Climate change and IR are the two big issues that will win it for Labor.
I’m not persuaded that climate change is shifting votes in the places where it matters. The rich and educated care about it, but they nearly all live in seats which are safe for one side or the other. (Ironically the one seat where it might prove decisive is Wentworth.) But the “Howard battlers” are much more concerned about IR and housing affordability for their kids, and they are the decisive class in the marginals.
Labor will win a poultice of seats but Robertson will not be one of them. They have succumbed, yet again, to the dubious candidacy of Mrs Della Bosca, the fragrant yet totally useless Belinda Neal. They never learn.