Another two bite the dust

Party deregistrations, issues polling, and locally relevant discussion of the performance of online pollsters in the US.

Some unrelated electoral news nuggets to keep things ticking over:

• The Australian Electoral Commission has announced the deregistration of two right-wing minor parties, the more newsworthy of which was Cory Bernardi’s decision to decommission Australian Conservatives. This party owed its party registration to Bernardi’s position in the Senate, rather than its having 500 members, so the matter was entirely in his hands. In a sense, this also means an end to Family First, which won Senate seats at the 2004, 2013 and 2016 elections and had a presence in the South Australian upper house from 2002 to 2017, when it merged with Bernardi’s newly formed outfit. However, Family First appeared to lose energy as evangelical Christians increasingly preferred to direct their organisational efforts towards the Liberal Party, and was dominated in its later years by deep-pocketed former Senator Bob Day. Even further afield, the Rise Up Australia party, associated with controversial pastor Danny Nalliah of Catch the Fire Ministries, has voluntarily deregistered.

• JWS Research has released the latest results in its occasional series on issue salience, recording only one particularly noteworthy movement over the past three surveys: defence, security and terrorism, which only 20% now rate in the top five issues most warranting the attention of the federal government, down from 23% in February and 29% in November. “Performance index” measures for the government across the various issue areas have recorded little change post-election, except that “vision, leadership and quality of government” is up from 35% to 42% (which is still the fifth lowest out of 20 designated issue areas). The survey was conducted from June 26-30 from a sample of 1000.

• In the New York Times’ Upshot blog, Nate Cohn casts a skeptical eye over the record of online polling in the United States. It notes a Pew Research finding that YouGov’s “synthetic sampling” method achieves the best results out of the online pollsters, by which it “selects individuals from its panel of respondents, one by one, to match the demographic profile of individual Americans”. Another survey that performed relatively well, VoteCast, did so by concurrently conducting a huge sample phone poll, results of which were used to calibrate the online component.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

1,381 comments on “Another two bite the dust”

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  2. You just have to wonder the damage Warner, Smith (anor) caused to Oz’s psyche, the Poms not in the least bothered to rub it in, unlike India.

  3. Rex Douglas says:
    Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 7:49 pm
    https://twitter.com/ABCthedrum/status/1149178206152302592

    Worth a listen.

    Nothing is worth listening to. Politics is a bad trip. It’s all over now. It was always all over. We are fucked. We always have been fucked. We more fucked than ever before. The past never was. The future is impossible. We live in Green Valley. Everything is wrong and always will be wrong. There is no escape from our conundrum.

    The French wrote about this in the 1950s. They were obsessed with the illogic of their situation. It did them no good. We could learn French. It would do us no good. We are demented now. We are lost. Lost in Green Valley.

    The seas are dying. The eternal seas are dying. The birds are dying. The free birds are dying. Their freedom has done them no good. They are dying in Green Valley. The politics of the death of the birds and the seas is a bad trip. Politics is dead now. There is nothing left to eat. Even the bones have been eaten. There is nothing but dried feathers left for us. The feathers of a dead freedom. We were never free. We were always fucked. We will subsist on the dried feathers of the dead free birds. We will suck on them, on the dried feathers of the dead. We have been tricked and are lost in Green Valley.

  5. The fact that Hanscomb’ technical deficiencies have never been addressed is a terrible indictment Australian cricket coaching.

    At least with Fibch you know that he’s a limited player who has no answer to certain types of good bowling.

  6. In Victoria both major parties reject pill testing – another unity ticket.

    https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/government-digs-in-on-opposition-to-pill-testing-trial-20190121-p50sqc.html.

    Victoria’s major parties have rejected growing calls to launch a pill testing trial to prevent fatal drug overdoses, citing police opposition to the controversial proposal.

    On Monday a group of cross-benchers united to lobby the Andrews government to establish a pill-testing trial, arguing it would save lives.
    :::
    The resistance to pill testing from the Andrews government and opposition is at odds with the Australian Medical Association, which wants a trial conducted under “close and particular scrutiny”.

    Six of 11 minor party MPs on Victoria’s upper house crossbench on Monday urged the Andrews government to embrace a trial of pill testing at festivals, arguing the technology is proven and would save young lives.

    The intervention on pill testing is the first time since the state election that members of Victoria’s eclectic cross-bench have sought to use their combined numbers to pressure the Andrews government.

    I speculate as the next state election draws nigh, Andrews will flip on this as he has form in this regard.

  9. If I got hit in the head by a guy bowling 145 km an hour I don’t think I have the presence of mind to catch my helmet

  10. George Monbiot:

    https://www.monbiot.com/2019/07/08/owned/

    All billionaires want the same thing – a world that works for them. For most, this means a world in which they are scarcely taxed and scarcely regulated, where labour is cheap and the planet can be used as a dustbin, where they can flit between tax havens and secrecy regimes, using the earth’s surface as a speculative gaming board, extracting profits and dumping costs. The world that works for them works against us.

    So how, in nominal democracies, do they get it? They fund political parties and lobby groups, set up astroturf (fake grassroots) campaigns and finance social media ads. But above all, they buy newspapers and television stations. The widespread hope and expectation, a few years ago, was that news controlled by billionaires would be replaced by news controlled by the people: social media would break their grip. But social media is instead dominated by stories the billionaire press generates. As their crucial role in promoting Nigel Farage, Brexit and Boris Johnson suggests, the newspapers are as powerful as ever.

    They use this power not only to promote the billionaires’ favoured people and ideas, but also to shut down change before it happens. They deploy their attack dogs to take down anyone who challenges the programme.
    :::
    It is easy to see why political parties have become so cautious and why, as a result, the UK is stuck with outmoded institutions and policies, and succumbs to ever more extreme and regressive forms of taxation and control. Labour has so far held its nerve – and this makes its current leadership remarkable. It has not allowed itself to be bullied by the billionaire press.

    The old threat has not abated – it has intensified. If a newspaper is owned by a billionaire, be suspicious of every word you read in it. Check its sources, question its claims. Withhold your support from any party that allows itself to be bullied or – worse – guided by their agenda. Stand in solidarity with those who resist it.

  11. According to union buster tough guy Albanese Setka was gone on July 5. When that turned to shit Albanese doubled up and July 15 was eviction day. Not going to happen so it will be interesting to see what the next date is that Albanese pulls out of his arse.

    If his intervention is supposed to be a huge winner for Albanese I await with baited breath for his first failure.

  14. There is no need at all for long suffering and law-abiding taxpayers to pay for testing illegal pills.
    There IS a need for Greens youths to exercise some common sense and some self-control.

  15. shellbell:

    I doubt the great batsman of old were coached. It just came naturally, got on with it. It’s rather like critics: if they knew how to sing, compose, their names would’ve been etched – eg, Caruso, Beethoven. Who remembers a coach?

  20. Presumably if you’re tough enough growing up to put your head over the ball playing AFL, a smack on a helmeted head is more tolerable

  21. Boerwar @ #1153 Thursday, July 11th, 2019 – 8:20 pm

    There is no need at all for long suffering and law-abiding taxpayers to pay for testing illegal pills.

    Well there wouldn’t be, if recreational drugs were legal, regulated, and taxed.

    Let people choose for themselves what things they want to put into their bodies. Give them a reasonable expectation that they’ll actually get the substance they think they’re buying. And tax the purchases heavily so that the drug users who need help can get it without burdening everybody else.

    There IS a need for Greens youths to exercise some common sense and some self-control.

    Perhaps. But “self-control” and “blind acquiescence to authority’s arbitrary rules” are entirely different things.

  22. Henry:

    [‘Maybe we should have bowled first.’]

    Arguably yes: at least you know what you’re chasing, and can time your run rate.

  23. If you get a minute YouTube Viv versus Duncan Spencer, Aussie bowler who was blistering in his prime. Last season or so for Viv but Spencer really rattled his cage.

  24. doyley:

    You need to get over your fixation with Albaneses’s decision to call out Setka. Politically it was astute, insofar as the Tories can’t demur. You’ve been carrying on about this for some time; time to get over it.

  25. ar
    If Greens youths want to addle their pates by ingesting fake chemicals, so be it.
    I see no need to pander to their weak personalities.
    What I find most annoying is the incessant pathetic whinging of these drug addicted fools.

  27. Politics shmolotics.
    Let’s face it labor is fucked for three years.
    And no, albo has not inspired me since his ascension. .

  29. Boerwar says:
    Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 8:38 pm
    ar
    If Greens youths want to addle their pates by ingesting fake chemicals, so be it.
    I see no need to pander to their weak personalities.
    What I find most annoying is the incessant pathetic whinging of these drug addicted fools.
    _____________________
    What is bluey’s view on this important issue? Have you had a chance to discuss it with him in the bathtub tonight?

  30. George Monbiot is unfeathered now. He is a flightless coot of the Green Valley. He is perishable, like the sea and the free birds. He is like a cassowary, a darkened stranger in the humidity. Nothing George has said has made any difference. He has feathered our sadness, so we may nest in it. We should be thankful. There will be repose in our sorrow. In the Green Valley there will be regret with which to season futility.

  36. Mavis Davis says:
    Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 8:21 pm
    shellbell:

    I doubt the great batsman of old were coached. It just came naturally, got on with it. It’s rather like critics: if they knew how to sing, compose, their names would’ve been etched – eg, Caruso, Beethoven. Who remembers a coach?

    I’m pretty sure that Haydn….the Austrian composer, not the Queensland batsman….gave a few hints to Ludwig.

  37. ‘Henry says:
    Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 8:41 pm

    Politics shmolotics.
    Let’s face it labor is fucked for three years.
    And no, albo has not inspired me since his ascension. .’

    Albo’s skills at interview need some drastic work. Today he talked on and on and on about some topic or other. He finished this with ‘people don’t want to listen to politicians talking.’ FMD.

    Dodson, on the same topic was brief and to the point.

    Albo was fucked either way on the tax cut wedge much to the delight of Morrison and Di Natale.

    Setka is essentially an Albo own goal.

  40. I saw a news report this morning that people with disability are unhappy with the SA Govt’s plastic straw ban, arguing that many people with gross and fine motor skill impairment rely on straws being offered in cafes and restaurants so they can consume their drinks.

    The obvious reaction from me was that those cafes can purchase reusable straws and offer them on request for those who need them. Why pressure the govt to keep plastics in circulation when the disability sector should instead be pressuring individual retailers to offer accessible dining accoutrements for those customers who need them?

  41. Henry:

    Or Bill Lawry’s dulcet ‘Australia got off to a wobbly start, but looking solid here at {insert specific venue}’.

  43. Albo is a good bloke but he is not a leader as such. He mumbles, he bumbles and whilst his everyday, knockabout persona is affable, Scomo is just toying with him.

  45. Bernard Keane
    “But as the climate and energy debates have illustrated, even a small number of denialists within the Coalition can stymie action by threatening mayhem. Another lost decade on another crucial issue looms unless Wyatt, backed by his prime minister, can find a route around the denialists.”

    Regarding the last statement, I won’t be holding my breath.

    https://www.crikey.com.au/2019/07/11/coalition-voice-to-parliament/?utm_campaign=Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&ins=SmtHbEhRT3BvZjJ2a08wKzMwQU1Odz09 ($)

  46. briefly:

    [‘I’m pretty sure that Haydn….the Austrian composer, not the Queensland batsman….gave a few hints to Ludwig.’]

    Yes, you’re right, though nearly everything in life is derivative save for, say, Mozart.

  49. ‘Confessions says:
    Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 8:52 pm

    I saw a news report this morning that people with disability are unhappy with the SA Govt’s plastic straw ban, arguing that many people with gross and fine motor skill impairment rely on straws being offered in cafes and restaurants so they can consume their drinks.’

    More whingers. When I was a kid there were straws but none of them were plastic.

  50. ‘Diogenes says:
    Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 8:46 pm

    The kids dying from pills are from all walks of life. Referring to them as Greens is pretty sad.’

    Fair enough. I resile.

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