The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age – or the Herald/Age, to adopt what is evidently Nine Newspapers’ own preferred shorthand for its Sydney and Melbourne papers – have revealed their opinion polling will be put on ice for an indefinite period. They usually do that post-election at the best of times, but evidently things are more serious now, such that we shouldn’t anticipate a resumption of its Ipsos series (which the organisation was no doubt struggling to fund in any case).
This is a shame, because Ipsos pollster Jessica Elgood has been admirably forthright in addressing what went wrong – and, importantly, in identifying the need for pollsters to observe greater transparency, a quality that has been notably lacking from the polling scene in Australia. In particular, Elgood has called for the establishment of a national polling standards body along the lines of the British Polling Council, members of which are required to publish details of their survey and weighting methods. This was echoed in a column in the Financial Review by Labor pollster John Utting, who suggests such a body might be chaired by Professor Ian McAllister of the Australian National University, who oversees the in-depth post-election Australian Election Study survey.
On that point, I may note that I had the following to say in Crikey early last year:
The very reason the British polling industry has felt compelled to observe higher standards of transparency is that it would invite ridicule if it sought to claim, as Galaxy did yesterday, that its “track record speaks for itself”. If ever the sorts of failures seen in Britain at the 2015 general election and 2016 Brexit referendum are replicated here, a day of reckoning may arrive that will shine light on the dark corners of Australian opinion polling.
Strange as it may seem though, not everyone is convinced that Australian polling really put on all that bad a show last weekend. Indeed, no less an authority than Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight has just weighed in with the following:
Polls showed the conservative-led coalition trailing the Australian Labor Party approximately 51-49 in the two-party preferred vote. Instead, the conservatives won 51-49. That’s a relatively small miss: The conservatives trailed by 2 points in the polls, and instead they won by 2, making for a 4-point error. The miss was right in line with the average error from past Australian elections, which has averaged about 5 points. Given that track record, the conservatives had somewhere around a 1 in 3 chance of winning.
So the Australian media took this in stride, right? Of course not. Instead, the election was characterized as a “massive polling failure” and a “shock result”.
When journalists say stuff like that in an election after polls were so close, they’re telling on themselves. They’re revealing, like their American counterparts after 2016, that they aren’t particularly numerate and didn’t really understand what the polls said in the first place.
I’m not quite sure whether to take greater umbrage at Silver’s implication that Antony Green and Kevin Bonham “aren’t particularly numerate”, or that the are – huck, spit – “journalists”. The always prescient Dr Bonham managed a pre-emptive response:
While overseas observers like Nate Silver pour scorn on our little polling failure as a modest example of the genre and blast our media for failing to anticipate it, they do so apparently unfamiliar with just how good our national polling has been compared to polling overseas.
And therein lies the rub – we in Australia have been rather spoiled by the consistently strong performance of Newspoll’s pre-election polls especially, which have encouraged unrealistic expectations. On Saturday though, we saw the polls behaving no better, yet also no worse, than polling does generally.
Indeed, this would appear to be true even in the specifically Australian context, so long as we take a long view. Another stateside observer, Harry Enten, has somehow managed to compare Saturday’s performance with Australian polling going all the way back to 1943 (“I don’t know much about Australian politics”, Enten notes, “but I do know something about downloading spreadsheets of past poll data and calculating error rates”). Enten’s conclusion is that “the average error in the final week of polling between the top two parties in the first round” – which I take to mean the primary vote, applying the terminology of run-off voting of the non-instant variety – “has been about five points”.
nath @ #543 Friday, May 24th, 2019 – 5:53 pm
There’s only one thing that you’re feeling at the moment, and it’s not my anger.
Mainly because I’m not even remotely angry.
Lars Von Trier
says:
Friday, May 24, 2019 at 5:55 pm
I feel adrian is more your Igor type personality looking for a dark master to administer discipline and rare mercies.
_________________________
He’s certainly a glutton for punishment coming yet again at me. I’ve already whipped him good and proper several times.
Lars Von Trier @ #548 Friday, May 24th, 2019 – 5:55 pm
Just Trier harder old chap.
I ain’t no statistical psephologist, but isn’t the answer to polling vagaries to report probabilities along with the actual poll results.
Do journalists actually understand that when a pollster reports that a party is at 51%, that there is an associated probability figure?
For instance, maybe it should have been stated on the last day of the election that Labor had a probability of 50% of being between 50% and 51%. Instead we got “Labor ahead by 2%”.
nath says:
Friday, May 24, 2019 at 5:56 pm
Lars Von Trier
says:
Friday, May 24, 2019 at 5:55 pm
I feel adrian is more your Igor type personality looking for a dark master to administer discipline and rare mercies.
_________________________
He’s certainly a glutton for punishment coming yet again at me. I’ve already whipped him good and proper several times.
_________________________
There is a little bit of biatch there! Still if he wants the stick he should have the stick!
William had a cross word for Adrian last year. He took off and sulked for a few months before turning up again. He’s a lightweight.
Thanks for that thoughtful gift to Australia, Queensland. You shouldn’t have. Really – you shouldn’t have.
Bill should just go take up knitting.
After 30 years the Greens have the grand total of 1 seat in the House.
Another 30 years and maybe 2 seats in the House.
And a dead Great Barrier Reef.
You know it makes sense.
Ch 10 5pm news had extended video of Morrison in Cloncurry. He certainly is still campaigning, with a beer in hand most of the time. Apparently he received a “rock star welcome” from the grateful citizens of the area.
As someone else observed, ‘One man band’ Morrison will probably want to keep campaigning in this manner. His super sized ego has been inflated to gigantic size and he probably truly believes that God has chosen him personally to save Australia from those evil Laborites.
What LNP ministers and ordinary MPs think of Morrison is anyone’s guess.
Grammartards, where would a blog be without them?
Maybe the Institute of Polling (Australia) should be established.
adrian
Perhaps Josh’s empty bookcase shelves and large TV screen are supposed to indicate how up-to-date he is. He certainly has a talent for creating Labor policies out of thin air.
Boerwar says:
Friday, May 24, 2019 at 5:30 pm
It’s good to be the King!
I’m thinking that when the workers refused to shake hands with Bill, it indicated a BIG problem.
You can always expect one person refuse to shake, but when two refuse and they are together, you can bet they were discussing what to do beforehand. They felt empowered to be ‘rude’ which makes me think their family and friends in the area also that thought Bill had betrayed them.
Tristo
‘If she ever becomes leader of the Australian Greens, Labor should be very worried. I have followed Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi for a while and she a sort of quality that leaders such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt had.’
The Greens Self-Delusion continues without pause.
All Faruqui will ever achieve is to help the Liberals retain power. She will do this by damaging Labor.
Boerwar @ #560 Friday, May 24th, 2019 – 6:09 pm
‘Barney in Saigon says:
Friday, May 24, 2019 at 6:11 pm
Boerwar says:
Friday, May 24, 2019 at 5:30 pm
I do hope that Morrison looked over his shoulder while he as molesting the calf: barely a blade of grass to the horizon.
It’s good to be the King!’
At least Knut had the good sense to realize that he could not stop the tide. Morrison is clueless when it comes to climate change.
Creating internment camps?
Bloke on SBS’s Mastermind asked who served from 2007 to 2013 as treasurer under both Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd.
He said, Scott Morrison.
There’s the level of engagement of the average punter right there.
Rex, we all know the Greens want the LNP to be in power so they can continue to f#ck over the environment.
What the Greens don’t want is for people to find out.
One good thing that Bandt has done since the election he has outed himself by thuggishly threatening Labor with a ‘brutal fight’.
Hey Bandt, you bloody idiot, you just helped Morrison to three more years of climate carnage, and you choose to thuggishly bluster at Labor! How about sparing a thought for the Coalition, you dill!
But hey, mate. No worries, eh? You, like Di Natale, will rake in around $500,000 over the next three years as you enjoy your leafy inner city life style.
Not like the poor who will be bastardized by Morrison as a direct consequences of your misbegotten undermining of Labor.
citizen @ #560 Friday, May 24th, 2019 – 6:09 pm
Well, Labor handed him the position and he knows it. I’d be smiling too.
Well done Labor!!
Should Labor take the budget repair policies in some guise to the next election as has been discussed upthread then every. single. info grab about them needs to make it very clear, very simply and very quickly, just who it is that is NOT affected at all and only then working through the increasingly targeted demographics. People have to be able to cross it off their personal list, but that said Labor is potentially still vulnerable to a scare campaign of extrapolation and net-widening.
adrian says:
Friday, May 24, 2019 at 5:54 pm
I’m sure he’d have a copy of Jack and the Beanstalk, tucked away somewhere, as an explanation of how markets and trade works.
Farukqi = FDR?
Bwahahahaha
The Greens really are kooky.
FDR did things. Big, big things.
The Greens specialize in doing nothing except stopping things.
I don’t see how the coalition can get 4 senators in QLD .
https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/SenateStatePage-24310-QLD.htm
3 + 1 ONP though is likely.
‘Catprog says:
Friday, May 24, 2019 at 6:20 pm
I don’t see how the coalition can get 4 senators in QLD .’
The Greens’ Adani Convoy was a big boost to the Coalition in Queensland.
Did a Greens supporter steal Boerwar’s custard serving at the retirement community?
Dangerous level of obsessive behaviour in those Boerwar posts.
I’m sure a lot of you here got the email ‘from Bill’ this evening….
The last paragraph says it all….
I urge you to keep the faith, to unite behind our new leadership, to carry on the battle and to know, in your hearts, that as long as Labor stands for the future, our time will come.
In solidarity,
Bill Shorten
Yep, our time will come….squeeze yer buttcheeks together and pray like hell we don’t fck it up next time….
‘The Greens’ Adani Convoy was a big boost to the Coalition in Queensland.’
Perfect execution of their MO.
Great outcome too. Adani to go ahead. Bye Bye black throat finch.
Botswana to remove a five year ban on elephant hunting.
Someone should do a book one when the Greens’ attacks on Albo start.
lizzie @ #575 Friday, May 24th, 2019 – 6:19 pm
I think the Kouk is right; Labor lost, the LNP didn’t win.
‘lizzie says:
Friday, May 24, 2019 at 6:24 pm
Botswana to remove a five year ban on elephant hunting.’
Awful.
How touching of “bill” to send the email whilst on holidays in Japan, mundo.
Only 6 yrs until the return….
Someone should do a book one when the Greens’ attacks on Albo start.
I’ve heard the cut-and-pasters are going hard in the Greens HQ. Replacing Shorten with Albo on all their press releases.
Shan’t be long now.
Not Sure: “Is Green’s Senator Mehreen Faruqi a bit FDR-esque because she used the words “new deal” in a sentence, or do they share other qualities?”
Neither of them are ever going to become PM of Australia?
Barney in Saigon @ #564 Friday, May 24th, 2019 – 6:11 pm
… in a grass castle?
BTW, isn’t Mehreen Faruqi the lass who shafted Jeremy Buckingham under parliamentary privilege. Or am I mixing her up with someone else?
Lizzie, did they say why the ban was lifted?
Was it to reduce red (or green in this case) tape?
BTW, I don’t think it is wise to mention this sort of thing on this blog. There are Greens lurking, just waiting to find good ideas to f#ck over the environment.
meher baba @ #591 Friday, May 24th, 2019 – 6:30 pm
Yes you are. Kind of. Jenny Leong was the one who rose in the NSW parliament to speak against him but Mehreen Faruqi supported her.
It’s very sad. But you would have to conclude that the governments of these countries should have set up some sort of sustainable commercial farming arrangement to produce legit ivory, rhino horn, etc – plough the money earned back into protecting wild habitat.
Whether it can be done now, who knows.
… in a grass castle?
…in a grassless castle.
PeeBee @ #588 Friday, May 24th, 2019 – 6:28 pm
…until Pegasus reappears, eh? 🙂
Jackol
There is no solution to land hunger forced by ever-increasing subsistence farming populations.
meher baba says:
Friday, May 24, 2019 at 6:28 pm
…”Neither of them are ever going to become PM of Australia?”…
Ladbrokes might be willing to run a book on it.
Allowing elephant hunting is a crime against the environment. It is so sad how little the environment matters to a lot of people. Lets just destroy the earth and go extinct.
mundo: “Bloke on SBS’s Mastermind asked who served from 2007 to 2013 as treasurer under both Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd.
He said, Scott Morrison.
There’s the level of engagement of the average punter right there.”
Perhaps he was trying to be polite. After all those embarrassingly unfulfilled promises to deliver a surplus, I suspect even Wayne himself might like to forget the answer that question too.