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”.
Fess then we vote them out.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Morrison is a pest.
A Thought Experiment
Imagine yourself locked in a Cabinet room full of Morrison for an afternoon.
Now tell me how long this can last.
Another 3 years?
I think not.
It’s not humanly possible.
Running against someone’s faith is more of a vote loser than vote winning. but it depends on the electorate and issues being campaigned on, say someone ran a policy taking sides in the middle east would run the risk of losing either the Jewish or Islamic community.
@Millennial
The more right wing part of the LNP voter base has been getting radicalized in recent years, that would explain the shift from LNP to ONP and UAP.
Do you the Adani convoy might have played a role in the shift of those who voted for the ALP at the state to the LNP at the federal election?
Although I am entertaining the possibility that the disinformation campaign by the LNP and Clive Palmer was a joint operation. It wasn’t aimed at getting Clive Palmer elected to the Senate or any other UAP candidate as such. Rather to secure the re-election of a government who would be friendly to his interests.
how-phonies-and-self-promoters-came-to-rule-the-world
https://www.theage.com.au/business/banking-and-finance/how-phonies-and-self-promoters-came-to-rule-the-world-20190521-p51pm4.html
Davidwh @ #2003 Sunday, May 26th, 2019 – 6:17 pm
Yes, which requires making a judgement about their religious beliefs, hopefully a judgement which can be based upon said MP’s record in the parliament.
I’m all for politicians having faith. I draw the line when they start either using their faith for electoral gain and/or to influence or direct policy.
@Confessions
Speaking as somebody who once was a Conservative Evangelical Christian, political activism was encouraged by my pastors and elders. Particularly on issues such as Abortion, Same Sex Marriage, Safe Schools, School Chaplaincy and Scripture classes (which are seen as evangelism) in public schools.
I have no doubt Scott Morrison and other Conservative Christians in his government will try to push these issues as much as possible. Plus they can be used as a wedge between Labor and religiously conservative (Muslims are an exception) migrant voters in the Eastern Suburbs of Melbourne and Western Suburbs of Sydney.
Tristo:
And if you were an elected representative, you’d deserve to be judged on it.
@Confessions
I agree, but the media is increasingly sycophantic (even the ABC) to the Coalition, they won’t do that unless it causes the kind of public outrage that Tony Abbott caused with his political Catholicism.
I argue Scott Morrison is more of a religious fanatic than Abbott ever was and that is saying something. Pentecostal Christians like him often believe in the following; speaking in tongues, faith healing, demon possession, young earth creationism and the prosperity gospel.
Pentecostal religion includes the belief that it is a woman’s role to be a support for her husband and activities outside the home need a husbands approval. They are anti abortion, anti homosexuality.
But we shouldn’t raise someone’s religion until it influences what they do. With a government heavily leaning to religion and having a majority in the house with an easier senate I do worry that by the time the public is allowed to talk about these issues the damage to women’s rights will be done.
Tristo @ #2005 Sunday, May 26th, 2019 – 8:20 pm
Maybe?
I know that Adani was sold, via the Morning Bulletin (a News Ltd. Paper, btw) as bringing “economic growth” to Rockhampton, and that a couple of times during the campaign when a Labor volunteer was photographed with a Greens volunteer the LNP would denounce it as an unholy Labor-Greens alliance against coal (a thing which meant the Labor candidate, a coal miner, would often respond with how much he loves coal), and I definitely read a few letters to the editor calling climate change a hoax.
I don’t remember anything specifically against the convoy, but considering how willing the LNP was to jump on any chance to say Labor was anti-coal and in bed with Bob Brown; I imagine that convoy probably didn’t help.
Christianity has always been about proselytising and conversions, and judgement and condemnation. It is self serving imo, not necessarily in the interests of the convert, although so disguised.
@Assantdj
I don’t believe the Centre Alliance and Jackie Lambie would support the government when it comes to any legislation agenda which would benefit Conservative Christians. Corey Bernardi and maybe One Nation would.
Scott Morrison is a religious fanatic, however he is no Tony Abbott (thankfully).
I should also say that if you’re going to have a climate change election, it would be best to have it in November rather than May because the public is fickle like that.
Tristan. 20.40
I think it’s the very fact Morrison isn’t Abbott that worries me I think he is more rat cunning than Abbott and while he won’t eat onions and return knighthoods he is selling daggy dad whilst being shyster financier.
Much of what’s happened since he turfed Turnbull has been carefully crafted and perfectly implemented.
He is IMO ten times as dangerous
@Millennial
Interesting stuff, I have been researching into the influence of News Corporation on politics in Australia, America and Britain. News Corporation for example in Britain supports Brexit and Trump in America.
Do you have much of an idea how News Corporation owning essentially every newspaper in Queensland has had on state and federal politics there?
The ignorance here of the tenets of Christianity are humorous to say the least.
It like you are bouncing back and forth looking for points of dislike. Misery loves company.
Heck, you could do the same for a persons personality.
I would be more disturbed by the analysis of Shorten’s personality than that of Morrison.
@Assantdj
I agree Scott Morrison is very dangerous, my American friends say he is a lot like Donald Trump.
It’s going to take someone exceptional from Labor to shut down Morrison and his ilk. Albanese is a lightweight, Marles too easily rattled.
I really don’t feel particularly confident.
I remember vividly a dinner party at a friends place in Western Sydney with some Pentecostals back in early 2000’s. I was chatting to one of the wives, one conversation led to another and it was quite clear their relationship was one of leader/follower…. Boss/servant. She was quite open about it. And completely content; ‘much better when one person is in charge and makes all the decisions’. SHE seemed to pity ME. I wanted to say that if I was after that sort of devotion I would get a dog but even back then I had poise enough to bite my tongue.
Tristo @ #2017 Sunday, May 26th, 2019 – 8:48 pm
Well, it definitely could be worse. 🙂
But the Morning Bulletin (and to a much lesser extent, the Courier Mail) have a degree of independence from a certain set of talking points; and the availability of newspapers declining I wonder just how many Rockhamptonites actually read the damn thing.
(I myself, only read it when I’m waiting for my food at Maccas because I really don’t see any reason to actually buy it when I get my news primarily through Google News articles nowadays.)
God, the drivel just gets worse and worse.
You all sound like a bunch of jilted children looking for things to blame, falling to the level of triviality and also straw-man invention so you can have something else to express your dislike for. The hand wringing is bizarre.
If this is indicative of Labor as a whole, you have absolutely zero chance of winning anything. Juvenile hardly describes this nonsense.
I guess when you are done with the grieving process some higher level discussion may take place. I think you are in the blame phase right now.
Every spokesperson from the ALP I’ve seen or heard in the past couple of days has come across as timid and underconfident, and including Albanese.
It really doesn’t auger well for the coming three years. I think Scrotty has the entire Labor operation on the back foot.
ItzaDream says:
Sunday, May 26, 2019 at 8:36 pm
“Christianity has always been about proselytising and conversions, and judgement and condemnation.”
Judging from what I’ve read over the years, I’d say that there are quite a few non-Christians on Pollbludger who have absolutely no problem with “judgement and condemnation.”
And perhaps if Labor had spent more time on proselytising and converting amongst what should have been its natural support base, it might have won the election…
“Another 3 years?
I think not.
It’s not humanly possible.”….
The current generation of Liberal leaders have on average about a 2-years lifespan. So, unless ScuMo makes the Queenslander LNP very, very happy, he will have to face Dutton towards the end of 2020.
Abbott was a Trump. Burn brightly and flame out fast.
Scomo is much more dangerous: he reminds me of Howard.
Any opinion poll yet?….
Okay, okay, just kidding….. 🙂
Alpo
WOW!!!
Mundo says:
Sunday, May 26, 2019 at 9:03 pm
Every spokesperson from the ALP I’ve seen or heard in the past couple of days has come across as timid and underconfident, and including Albanese.
It really doesn’t auger well for the coming three years. I think Scrotty has the entire Labor operation on the back foot.
Losing an election does that.
I suppose your one of the Greens that helped pull the cart down; and now want Labor to prevent what you have helped enable.
And I’m happy to be one of them. How many atheists are in our parliament who put themselves out there like religious folk do? None.
“Scomo is much more dangerous: he reminds me of Howard.”…
ScuMo’s team is not Howard’s team, and of course ScuMo is not Howard. Howard enjoyed the goodies of the Neoliberal madness, built on the back of massive private debt. Post-GFC, ScuMo can’t do the same. Moreover, he risks finding himself in the middle of a GFC-2, after giving massive tax cuts to the rich and famous and so holding a pretty squalid treasure coffer in his lap…
But he is dangerous in another sense: the link with religious fanatics and the easiness in which he makes deals with the Devil (Hanson and Palmer)…. However, he is still nothing compared with Dutton. Dutton, unlike Abbott, is still there, he is dangerous, nasty and at the helm of the powerful Queensland Army of the LNP…
Mundo is starting off early for this parliament which hasn’t even met yet.
Labor’s going down the gurgler, despite no leader appointed yet, no deputy yet, no shadow ministers yet, no formal post mortem yet, no new policy work yet, no policy announcements yet, no consideration of the successes or failures that will characterise the Morrison government yet.
God help PB if Mundo is to spend the next three years posting such pessimism.
There are only four possibilities as to what is behind it. First, he has a major anxiety problem, or second, he is happy to make judgements without any basis of fact, or three, his typing fingers just run amok independent of his brain, or four, he is trolling.
https://www.theage.com.au/federal-election-2019/queensland-nationals-mp-blasts-ignorant-inner-city-voters-20190525-p51r2g.html
One further point on faith, many of the views expressed by Christians that the left likes to criticise happen to be shared by other faiths such as Islam, so the ALP do need to be careful or they run the risk of sending a large conservative voting block to the LNP. If that were to occur than the ALP runs the risk of seeing what are currently safe seats in Melbourne’s outer north and Sydney’s west turn either marginal or LNP. That isn’t to say the ALP should go soft on rights issues but it needs to keep those issues separate from issues of faith which how they have been managed in the past.
Palmer’s activity may completely explain QLD polling failure
It’s likely that the main effect of Clive Palmer resulted from his buying up almost all the TV advertising in QLD, thereby preventing any other party from buying TV ad slots during the initial part of the campaign.
In the latter part of campaign the LNP was able to buy QLD slots, but the ALP apparently was not able to get many. The process that led to this is anyone’s guess.
Psephological implications: a situation in which:
– either of the major parties was substantially excluded from advertising on QLD TV, and;
– there was a substantial/overwhelming volume of advertising on QLD TV against the excluded party;
would have destroyed pollsters’ ability to make reasonable projections about the QLD undecided vote, which would in turn completely explain the QLD polling failure
Alpo @ #2025 Sunday, May 26th, 2019 – 9:06 pm
Agree. But it will be even harder for Scummo to keep the latte-sipping center-right happy (Frydenberg, etc etc). They lost votes at the last election and would expect to lose a lot more with scummo in charge. However, they are also totally useless and will let Dutton roll right over them.
Labor had a share of TV ads. They just weren’t inspiring. Palmer’s ads were just annoying. The Libs ads were pathetic. I can’t recall when we had so many ads that told us nothing about things that matter.
In the end all the ads were just good for nothing other than contributing to media revenues. A complete waste of time and money.
BSA Bob @ #1999 Sunday, May 26th, 2019 – 6:13 pm
I wouldn’t make an issue of that. Everyone, including the Libs, will be happy he broke that promise.
how’d you like romper stomper Dan?
The Melissa Price thing – yeah, no one will care about her not keeping her job, but is it too much to ask for Morrison to be quizzed over the fact that when he said she was going to be environment minister it was either a blatant lie or he was just making shit up?
Does it not matter at all that our PM is a blatant bullshitter?
Jackol
says:
Sunday, May 26, 2019 at 10:41 pm
The Melissa Price thing – yeah, no one will care about her not keeping her job, but is it too much to ask for Morrison to be quizzed over the fact that when he said she was going to be environment minister it was either a blatant lie or he was just making shit up?
________________________
Frank Underwood thought he was going to be Secretary of State. Shit Happens.
Different thing, nath Thing.
Morrison PROMISED she would be minister, on national TV, after taunting Shorten about who would be Labor Home Affairs minister.
Morrison lied. It was a stupid lie, too.
This is starting to form a pattern of lying.
By the way, how’s your mum. On the job tonight, or is Sunday her night off?
Davidwh:
It was thought the Mr. Palmer was to spend about as much as the two majors combined ($70m vs $35m + $35m). Now it seems that it was $60m spent by Palmer vs about $15m by each of the majors. Also Mr. Palmer spent disproportionately in QLD. The money must’ve gone somewhere.
Negative ads (“negging”, ha ha) work somewhat in proportion to the annoyance they generate, in that whilst the logical response would be to be annoyed with the author of the ad, the carnal/emotional response tend to be annoyance with the person visually represented (i.e. the “target” of the negative ad) because the human visual cortex is deeply wired into the brain at rather a low level (it needs be so to enable people to respond to life threatening situations quickly enough to survive).
I reckon Mr. Palmer regards his $60m as money well spent rather than “a complete waste of time and money”, since he had a chance (and now has a good chance) to get it all back and more.
nath @ #2039 Sunday, May 26th, 2019 – 8:37 pm
Thank you for asking.
When I watch a movie I like to absorb myself in it. If something in the movie jars me out of that, it can ruin the whole movie for me. Seeing it again for the first time since then, I realised what it was that jarred me out of being engrossed with the movie. It was Jacqueline McKenzie’s character being an epileptic. At the time it didn’t seem to fit in. It seemed like she told the director/writer, “Hey, I can do a really good performance of someone having an epileptic fit”. The director/writer then said, “Hey great, we’ll write that into the film”. It just didn’t seem right – at the time.
Seeing it again, the reasoning behind that was introduced long before she became part of the gang, so this time it was more natural. It didn’t jar me out of my absorption.
So, with that out of the way, the movie was a lot better this time around. It all flowed logically. Crowe and McKenzie gave stellar performances, which is more than can be said for some of the minor characters. It’s no wonder that none of them have become household names since their appearances. Still, I guess you have to expect that from a low budget ($1.6 million), and a cast of mostly unknowns.
I’d give it somewhere between 3.5 and 4 stars. Given a bigger budget, some better dialogue, a seasoned director and better acting from the supports, it could have been a 5 star movie.
Still, it is what it is, and helped Crowe up the ladder to the big league, and as such it remains a fairly important part of Australian cinema history.
“The Melissa Price thing – ”
Melissa who?? Liar from the Shire lies, situation normal. No-one cares. Whoever is Coalition Environment Minister just sits and signs whatever is handed to them anyway. Surprising actually as it seemed the perfect portfolio for a no-body time server like Price. Still , she now is in the useless / useful Defence Industry spot.
Useless in that all decisions are made way over her head so she still just has to sign things, and Useful in that if there are “contract” problems they can throw a no-body under the bus easily enough.
Was reported that Melissa Price had asked to be moved.
If she did not ask, then she may well have remained as Environment minister.
Christ, it is going to be a long 3 years for many on here.
Yes they are great performances. Glad you liked it better this time around. Poor Daniel Pollock (Davey) killed himself before the movie came out. I thought he was very good too and he could have been anything.
Alpo @ #2027 Sunday, May 26th, 2019 – 9:15 pm
Yes, I am asking as many people as I can to spin the bottle. I am aiming to be as accurate as Newspoll…
No, that’s what Morrison said, which means nothing, because it’s the hand wavey nothing that looks like it explains away his own mendacity but really doesn’t. And the point was that he didn’t say about ministerial positions after the election “oh, we’ll sort that out after the election”, he said confidently that Price was going to be the minister. He either blatantly lied, or he had no reason to be confident and was just bullshitting.
Jackol @ #2049 Sunday, May 26th, 2019 – 11:13 pm
Plus, why would someone who has come from the Mining Industry and who had the power to approve mines, ask to be moved from that position?
No, the word is that Morrison is a bully behind the scenes and Melissa Price had to go because she was a bad look in the portfolio and a bad performer. Can’t have that, it’s all about the surface sheen with Scott Morrison.