ELECTORAL, POLLING AND POLITICAL ANALYSIS, COMMENT AND NEWS FROM THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CLARK.
Wednesday, September 11, 2024
Why I've Quit Doing Paid Election Coverage For The Mercury
Tuesday, September 10, 2024
Crying Wolf: More Embarrassingly Bad Tabloid Poll Reporting
"Anthony Albanese could be on track to being a one-term Prime Minister, with a new poll showing Labor's primary vote crashing in three major states. The federal government is in serious trouble in the eastern states - where most of the seats are - with Labor down to 24 per cent in Queensland, 28 in Victoria and 32 in NSW."
"Labor’s primary vote has crashed to just 24 per cent in Queensland, 28 per cent in Victoria and 32 per cent in New South Wales, the wolf + smith shows. But Labor is dominant in South Australia, where its primary vote is 41 per cent, and 60 per cent on a two-party-preferred basis. The poll – which measured both state and federal voting intention – suggests the government is in dire trouble in the eastern states, with just 43 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote in Queensland and 48 per cent in Victoria."
This is how the Daily Mail and the Murdoch tabloids (Courier Mail/Daily Telegraph etc) respectively wrote up a massive new poll by an initially mysterious outlet wolf + smith. But this was in fact another example of laughably incompetent poll reporting from these outlets, one that again happened to be in service of the narrative their right-wing readers would want to see. What the poll in fact found is very different. The state-level figures these outlets were commenting were state voting intention not federal. This was made so abundantly clear in the poll report that, among other subtle hints, the whole of page 10 of the poll report is devoted to making it clear that the rest of the report is state not federal.
Page ten looks like this:
This whole page is apparently, somehow, not large enough or clear enough to make it clear to journalists from the Dailys Mail and Telegraph that what follows (in sections helpfully also introduced as "nsw politics", "victorian politics" etc) is state voting intention. Abysmal! There are even more helpful pointers like " IF A NSW ELECTION WAS BEING HELD TODAY AND YOU WERE TO VOTE, WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING PARTIES WOULD RECEIVE YOUR FIRST PREFERENCE VOTE?" to indicate that this is state voting intention. The Murdoch tabloid article even manages to realise that the poll canvasses both state and federal intention and still somehow represents the state figures as federal. Unbelievable!
What the poll actually finds concerning federal voting is rather different. The poll finds primary votes of Labor 29% Coalition 36% Greens 13% One Nation 6% Independent 11% Others 4%. The two-party preferred is 51-49 to ALP by "past preference flows". As far as the poll report goes is "with Labor’s majority in danger." Majority in danger, it says (and fair enough), not government.
There aren't any specific state primary or 2PP breakdowns provided, but what the report does provide is state by state primary vote gaps between the major parties. I provide these with the 2022 results in brackets below.
Tas ALP +2 (-5.68)
WA ALP - 3 (+2.06)
Vic ALP -7 (-0.23)
NSW ALP -9 (-3.16)
Qld ALP -10 (-12.22)
Porcupine Fish Award For Ultra-Fishy Poll Reporting (credit) |
Monday, September 2, 2024
Poll Roundup: 50.5 Is The New 51
Aggregate has changed little since loss of about half a point in mid-July
Election "held now" would probably produce minority Labor government
I haven't done a federal poll roundup for a while and today is a randomly opportune time to do one following the second straight 50-50 Newspoll and mention some general themes in recent 2PP polling. In the last week we have had:
* Newspoll at 50-50 (ALP 32 L-NP 38 Green 12 ON 7 others 11)
* Redbridge at 50.5-49.5 to ALP (ALP 32 L-NP 38 and the rest not published yet, but I'm expecting Greens either 10 or 11)
* YouGov at 50-50 (ALP 32 L-NP 37 Green 13 ON 8 others 10) (Note: normally the 2PP for these primaries would be 51-49 to Labor, though it is possible to get 50 from these primaries sometimes because of rounding and perhaps also the makeup of others.).
* Essential at 48-46 to ALP, equivalent to 51.1-48.9 (raw primaries ALP 29 Coalition 33 Greens 13 ON 7 UAP 1 others 11 undecided 6 - meaning the major party primaries are effectively more like 31-35)
* Morgan at 50.5-49.5 to Coalition by respondent preferences (50-50 last election) (ALP 29.5 L-NP 39.5 Green 13 ON 4 IND 9 others 5 - Morgan has a standalone IND option on the ballot everywhere, which is likely to be overstated)