Slicing and dicing

Hope at last that some good might come out of the Australian polling industry’s chastening experience at the May federal election.

Hopes that the Australian polling industry might again have something to offer soon have been been raised by YouGov’s announcement on Thursday that it is overhauling its polling methodology, and pursuing the establishment of a local industry body along the lines of the British Polling Council.

On the first point, the pollster says it will “transition to the standard YouGov methodology for national and statewide polling”. This means an end to the mix of online and automated phone polling associated with Galaxy Research, the established local outfit that has been conducting Newspoll since 2015, and which YouGov bought out at the end of 2017. In line with its modus operandi internationally, YouGov will move entirely to online polling, enabling it to adopt a more detailed scheme of demographic weightings that will encompass variables “such as education and more sophisticated regional segments”.

We may already have received a taste of this with the recent YouGov Galaxy poll from Queensland, which was conducted entirely online and supplemented the traditional weighting model of “age interlocked with gender and region” with variables for education and voting at the previous election. This looks much like the pollster’s approach with its British polling, but with education taking the place of a “social grade” variable that holds those with managerial or supervisory jobs distinct from the rest of the workforce.

The notion of an Australian Polling Council offers the exciting prospect of industry standards that will require the publication of sample weightings and full demographic and regional breakdowns from each poll, such as can be seen in this recent YouGov poll of voting intention in Britain. The YouGov announcement says that “several other companies have agreed in principle to establish this council and an announcement will be made in due course”.

Also of note recently:

• The first batch of submissions to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters inquiry into the recent federal election has been published. This does not include the Labor submission, but The Guardian reports it calls for the committee to investigate the impact on election campaigning of social media platforms, its specific concern being with the widespread circulation of claims through Facebook that it had “secret plans to introduce a death tax”.

The Australian reports the Nationals federal council has endorsed a proposal floated a fortnight ago to all but purge the Senate of minor parties by breaking each state into six provinces that would each return a single Senator at a normal half-Seante election.

• The challenges to the election results in the Melbourne seats of Chisholm and Kooyong have been referred for trial in the Federal Court, which will likely take about three months to reach a determination.

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.

2,017 comments on “Slicing and dicing”

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  1. Andrew_Earlwood @ #1949 Wednesday, September 25th, 2019 – 9:33 pm

    D & M. I’m actually trying to engage here. In my own rambunctious way admittedly. But I see no attempt by the labor critics to move past cheap shots and entrenched positions.

    ‘Being strong’ (according to the Greens, or Greta or even David) is NOT going to bring those lost voters back – either to Labor, the Greens or nath-Rex’s dreams of some new replacement progressive party. Any more than ‘being weak’ led “Labor into this decline in the first place.

    Yelling ‘science’, ‘Greta’ and ‘David’ at these voters isn’t going to work either. Anymore than being smug about refugees or any other identity politics issue that the lost voters give zero fucks about.

    You insist on seeing what is happening only in political terms. This means you are likely to be completely blindsided by what is actually occurring.

  2. Well glory be..

    The NSW upper house has finally passed a bill to decriminalise abortion following a lengthy debate.

    The bill passed 26 votes to 14 on Wednesday night after MPs earlier in the day resolved to sit as long as it took for debate to finish.

    The upper house has agreed to amendments, meaning the private member’s bill will return to the lower house before it becomes law.

    The bill will remove abortion from the Crimes Act and will regulate it as a medical procedure.

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/sep/25/abortion-decriminalisation-bill-passes-nsw-upper-house

  3. Anymore than being smug about refugees or any other identity politics issue that the lost voters give zero fucks about.

    I’ve been in a branch for a long time, must be almost 20 years ago I saw Labor members get up on early one nation votes. I personally didn’t get it until the Trump / Brexit outcomes put it in bold lights on intelligent person could miss.

    I, like most Labor people, did kinda understand the Shorten low courage, low commitment approach, he was ahead in the polls why would he stick his neck out, just because they were things he should believe in without thought. I saw him in one of his town halls, and forgave his MSM appearances based on the passion he leaked in them.

    I’m not a Labor critic. I’m a member. But as a member I’m entitled to an opinion.

    One example I’ll use. Today John Quigley, AG of WA, realised, only 200 years behind the curve, that jailing fines defaulters was almost always a really stupid idea.

    This weeks story was an aboriginal woman who’d been attacked and assaulted, not even domestic violence, although that shouldn’t make any difference. Her ribs had been broken. She turned to the police for help. She was lucky they didn’t gun her down immediately. But of course they arrested her, for fine defaults, they strip searched her. Have you tried stripping with broken ribs?

    But yeah call it identity politics if you want us to put you in the same column as Scott Morrison but with an asterix to show you aren’t nearly as smart or successful.

  4. “In campaigning Greta Thunberg has way outdone anyone on this site.”

    What has been achieved by Greta so far? I wish her all the best. It would be terrific if there WAS a paradigm change, but I’ve been disappointed before. I thought the LNP jumped the shark a decade ago when it rolled Turnbull for Abbott. Alas.

  5. Andrew_Earlwood @ #1954 Wednesday, September 25th, 2019 – 9:47 pm

    “In campaigning Greta Thunberg has way outdone anyone on this site.”

    What has been achieved by Greta so far? I wish her all the best. It would be terrific if there WAS a paradigm change, but I’ve been disappointed before. I thought the LNP jumped the shark a decade ago when it rolled Turnbull for Abbott. Alas.

    Woodstock changed the world to a frenzy of peace love and happiness too.

  6. The bill passed 26 votes to 14 on Wednesday night after MPs earlier in the day resolved to sit as long as it took for debate to finish.

    26 – 14? I have to wonder what in blazes all that ruckus was about, including threats to the leadership of the Premier.

    Sounds more like an own goal sound and fury nothingburger than anything approaching the ‘silent majority’ the opponents claimed at the time.

  7. What has been achieved by Greta so far?

    She has shown the centrist, slow dance of centrist cowardly parties, is as bad as the evil of Abbott and Bolt.

    They seem quite upset that she has so easily shone a light on their cowardice.


  8. Player One says:
    Wednesday, September 25, 2019 at 9:42 pm
    …..
    You insist on seeing what is happening only in political terms. This means you are likely to be completely blindsided by what is actually occurring.

    Without the politics nothing will happen.

    Confessions says:
    Wednesday, September 25, 2019 at 9:51 pm

    What has been achieved by Greta so far?

    Asked all those living the last few weeks under a rock.

    If it isn’t successfully followed up with politics, that is action, not more Green stunts, the answer will be several days of publicity.


  9. “More than a dozen comments of Andrew Earlwood and Guytaur talking past each other seems rather a lot to me.”

    PB abhors a repetition vacuum.

    Somewhat tangentially,* here’s a maths problem for you all.

    There is an invisible rabbit standing on one of three fence posts. The three fence post are in a row.

    Your task is to shoot the invisible rabbit.**

    You cannot see it, but, you know that when you fire, the invisible rabbit jumps from the post it is on to a neighbouring one. So if it is on the left post, it jumps to the centre post; and if it is on the centre post, it will jump to one of the outside posts.

    If you aim straight, you won’t miss.

    What is the fewest shots do you need to shoot the invisible rabbit.

    * Ok, very tangentially. Can you have degrees of tangentiality? Maybe at non-differentialable points on a curve or surface? And is thar in any way related to verisimilitude? Because I hate verisimilitude: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=778IV492_Pw

    ** I am certainly not suggesting any poster is anything like an invisible rabbit. No, none, not at all.

  10. The protect by the school children was impressive.
    The protect against the IRAQ was impressive,, what happened, went to war in IRAQ.
    The Vietnam war protest where impressive, it took Whitlem getting into power to make it stop.

    Politics really , really matters.

  11. FredNK

    What you just described is all politics and I totally agree.
    Think about what you just said. Think Franklin Dam.

    That includes people protesting an existential crisis. Acting to prevent something.

  12. Dandy Murray @ #1882 Wednesday, September 25th, 2019 – 9:59 pm


    “More than a dozen comments of Andrew Earlwood and Guytaur talking past each other seems rather a lot to me.”

    PB abhors a repetition vacuum.

    Somewhat tangentially,* here’s a maths problem for you all.

    There is an invisible rabbit standing on one of three fence posts. The three fence post are in a row.

    Your task is to shoot the invisible rabbit.**

    You cannot see it, but, you know that when you fire, the invisible rabbit jumps from the post it is on to a neighbouring one. So if it is on the left post, it jumps to the centre post; and if it is on the centre post, it will jump to one of the outside posts.

    If you aim straight, you won’t miss.

    What is the fewest shots do you need to shoot the invisible rabbit.

    * Ok, very tangentially. Can you have degrees of tangentiality? Maybe at non-differentialable points on a curve or surface? And is thar in any way related to verisimilitude? Because I hate verisimilitude: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=778IV492_Pw

    ** I am certainly not suggesting any poster is anything like an invisible rabbit. No, none, not at all.

    I agree the Greens are easy to shoot if you aim your policy rifle straight up the middle.

  13. AE,

    & M. I’m actually trying to engage here. In my own rambunctious way admittedly. But I see no attempt by the labor critics to move past cheap shots and entrenched positions.

    ‘Being strong’ (according to the Greens, or Greta or even David) is NOT going to bring those lost voters back – either to Labor, the Greens or nath-Rex’s dreams of some new replacement progressive party. Any more than ‘being weak’ led “Labor into this decline in the first place.

    Yelling ‘science’, ‘Greta’ and ‘David’ at these voters isn’t going to work either. Anymore than being smug about refugees or any other identity politics issue that the lost voters give zero fucks about.

    Actually, I know that you are trying to engage, and I have done it myself a few times.

    I have come to the conclusion that the people we try and engage with are in an orthogonal universe. Hence the “talk past each other” comment.

    On climate science I can no longer join the discussion, as I am told that “I am not accepting the science” if I continue to think that the ALP would make a far superior Federal government on climate change that the current mob we have in Canberra. Apparently a PhD in physics counts for nothing.

    This is why I have come to the conclusion I am “talking past” the people who say “unless you agree with me you don’t get the science”.

    A bit like when I gave a public talk on popular science, and a woman came up to me and explained that I need not worry about whether aliens existed or not. She and her family came for a planet around a distant star, and ended up on a colony on a planet around Alpha Centauri, before coming as settlers to Earth.

    I was so tempted to ask her detailed questions about the colony around Alpha Centauri.

  14. She has shown the centrist, slow dance of centrist cowardly parties, is as bad as the evil of Abbott and Bolt.

    No. What she’s highlighted is that the reactionary far right parties in denialist governments the world over are doing nothing, and she and her peers are unhappy about that.

  15. Player One says:
    Wednesday, September 25, 2019 at 10:06 pm

    frednk @ #1965 Wednesday, September 25th, 2019 – 10:02 pm

    Politics really , really matters.

    If the problem is amenable to political solutions, politics matters.

    When the problem transcends politics, politics no longer matters.

    Stunts gets nothing done. Politics allocates resources, politics always matters.

  16. FredNK

    Calling a protest you don’t like is a time honoured way of discrediting a protest you don’t agree with.

    It’s still a citizens protest and part and parcel of politics

  17. frednk @ #1972 Wednesday, September 25th, 2019 – 10:10 pm

    Player One says:
    Wednesday, September 25, 2019 at 10:06 pm

    frednk @ #1965 Wednesday, September 25th, 2019 – 10:02 pm

    Politics really , really matters.

    If the problem is amenable to political solutions, politics matters.

    When the problem transcends politics, politics no longer matters.

    Stunts gets nothing done. Politics allocates resources, politics always matters.

    Did you people learn nothing from the last election?

    Politics matters to politicians. And to far fewer people outside politics than you would like to believe.


  18. guytaur says:
    Wednesday, September 25, 2019 at 10:06 pm

    FredNK

    What you just described is all politics and I totally agree.
    Think about what you just said. Think Franklin Dam.

    And if wasn’t for Bob Hawke, Bob Brown wouldn’t even have been a foot note in History. It was the allocation of the resources that got the result.

  19. P1
    The Liberals won the election, the Liberals now control the allocation of resources. That is what Politics is about. People like you are left to wave your fist.

  20. “You cannot be for the environment and for coal. ”

    I think the thing you are missing guytar is that you CAN be for the environment AND acknowledge that Coal, while well on the way out, is going to used for some time to come. That’s reality.

    The objective should be to get into a position politically to minimize the time that Coal generation or Coal mining is relevant. Get policy in place across the board, that maximizes the scale of renewables / storage, export of hydrogen based transport fuels. A bit like what the ALP, to their credit, took to the last election. 🙂

  21. Player One @ #1893 Wednesday, September 25th, 2019 – 10:13 pm

    frednk @ #1972 Wednesday, September 25th, 2019 – 10:10 pm

    Player One says:
    Wednesday, September 25, 2019 at 10:06 pm

    frednk @ #1965 Wednesday, September 25th, 2019 – 10:02 pm

    Politics really , really matters.

    If the problem is amenable to political solutions, politics matters.

    When the problem transcends politics, politics no longer matters.

    Stunts gets nothing done. Politics allocates resources, politics always matters.

    Did you people learn nothing from the last election?

    Politics matters to politicians. And to far fewer people outside politics than you would like to believe.

    Absolute nonsense. 90% of eligible voters vote in Elections in this country.

    It’s just their political interests are different to yours and are not front and centre in the media fol de rol that passes for political coverage. That doesn’t mean people are disinterested.

  22. FredNK

    Exactly. Unity wins. As the ACT is showing. Great result starting the road towards a Portugal style drug policy.

    Same with the cross party vote on abortion in NSW. It was an Independent who tabled the motion but Labor and the Greens worked well with him in getting LNP support.

    The reactionaries lost.
    Same with the Andrews government before he got his massive vote reward.


  23. guytaur says:

    I did not and do not disagree with any of the protests. I am just pointing out that without the politics a protect is a non event even if 100,000 people turn up.

  24. Export of hydrogen based transport fuels.

    Hey! You’re stealing my lines!

    Goodness me, next thing you’ll be suggesting the industry is set up in Nth Qld electorates as a way to transition employment away from mining.

  25. I like this from Albanese:

    https://theconversation.com/albanese-slams-morrison-for-using-a-loud-hailer-to-talk-to-china-from-us-124097

    Albanese should be doing more of this. He should go to China and establish some credibility there as a leader that wont talk to China through the U.S.A. It’s not only good foreign policy it’s also good politics as it might appeal to voters of Chinese descent here. I think Albanese should establish a Shadow minister exclusively dealing with China and Chinese diaspora issues. It’s about time we recognised the importance of China to us now and in the future.

  26. FredNK

    The complaint with Adani is clear enough. Labor doesn’t like the message. Labor wants to side with the LNP. Making the same same message reality.

    You can trot out as many what if we had won policies you like. My argument is with one policy because of what that meant for the campaign.
    This approval by Labor in my view lost Labor the election.

    I am not even arguing the right or wrong as far as messaging goes. I am just arguing consistency and being strong on a principle.

    As I stated earlier in the what if stakes I think Labor campaigning strongly for a carbon price would have been better. A strong simple consistent message.

    Adani might not have even been an issue. We will never know. All we do know is Adani became the symbol for don’t trust Labor. The LNP took full advantage and it was a don’t trust message built over years by Labor not working on its plan for coal workers with coal workers.

    Getting the union to do the retraining and trust that goes with that for transition. Telling the workers a start date. Ridiculously early but politically necessary thanks to the LNP and media. I hope Queensland Labor does this win (I hope) or lose the State election

  27. “Goodness me, next thing you’ll be suggesting the industry is set up in Nth Qld electorates as a way to transition employment away from mining.”

    WHAT!!!
    Thinketh me some kind of wadicle economic vandal!! Anyone who would think that would probably advocate a (dum dum dum dum…..) DEATH TAX!!

    🙂

  28. guytaur

    I will go away and think about the Andrews government. I do not disagree Andrews standing against the Liberal attempt to divide the community was part of it.

    I did a lot of door knocking for that election, why was there a swing 5% to a new member? That was what we got.


  29. guytaur
    The complaint with Adani is clear enough. Labor doesn’t like the message. Labor wants to side with the LNP. Making the same same message reality.
    ….

    I think we have both talked past each other enough also.

  30. fredNK

    Yes that’s why I repeated to try and make what I was saying clearer.
    Congratulations for your work in getting Andrews re-elected BTW.

    That was a great night watching the results come in.

  31. Dandy M,

    The solution is 1 shot, not 2.

    Since the posts are all in a line you simply need to move to a position where you can only see 1 post. Then shoot, and it doesn’t matter which post the bunny is on.

  32. Worth reading: https://theconversation.com/australia-is-the-runaway-global-leader-in-building-new-renewable-energy-123694


    Looking ahead to 2020, almost 6GW of large-scale projects are expected to be completed, comprising 2.5GW of solar farms and 3.5GW of wind. Around the end of 2020, this additional generation would deliver the old Renewable Energy Target of 41,000 gigawatt hours (GWh) per annum. That target was legislated in 2009 by the Rudd Labor government but reduced to 33,000GWh by the Abbott Coalition government in 2015.

  33. guytaur

    You are right that Adani was terrible.for Labor.

    Voters for whom opposing Adani was a deciding factor would’ve voted Green no matter what Labor did.

    Voters for whom supporting Adani was a deciding factor would’ve voted for the Liberals no matter what Labor did.

    The Liberals were able to do was use Bob Brown’s Audi convoy to spin a line that Labor would’ve been beholden to Green demands to shut down all mining everywhere. Or that Labor and the Greens were in cahoots in an inner city conspiracy against regional Queensland. And it was disastrously successful.

    It was Bob Brown and his vanity convoy that made this all possible. I hope ScoMo sent him a fruit basket.

  34. What is the fewest shots do you need to shoot the invisible rabbit.

    I think the fewest shots you would need to be sure of hitting the rabbit is two shots. Fire above the centre post twice. If the rabbit was on the centre post you hit the rabbit with the first shot and the second shot was superfluous. If the rabbit was on one of the outer posts then the first shot prompted the rabbit to jump to the centre post. Then the second shot hit the rabbit.

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