Media Fail Again Over MRP Reporting

Redbridge/Accent MRP model projects Coalition would be likely to have the most seats if the federal election was held now.  

It does not say Coalition would be likely to have a majority.

It does not predict the result of the election.

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I thought an article was in order to unpack some of what is going on with the recent Redbridge/Accent MRP model and the woeful reporting of it by pretty much every outlet that has so far mentioned it.

MRP models (stands for Multilevel Regression with Poststratification) are not the easiest to explain to lay readers at the best of times, but what we have seen from several media sources reporting on this one goes beyond understandable confusion and into the realms of reckless innumerate false reporting.

What a MRP model does is to build a picture of how certain types of seats are likely to vote based on small samples of all 150 electorates.  Although each seat's sample is uselessly tiny by itself, by assuming that seats that resemble each other in ways that affect voting intention will vote similarly, one can smooth out a lot of the rough edges in the sampling, and samples of a few dozen voters per electorate can build a model that's about as good on a seat-by-seat basis as if those samples were actually a few hundred.  That still isn't very good on a seat-by-seat basis, but on a nationwide basis, the model could capture some general trends about the kinds of seats where each party is likely to be doing well or badly, and about how a party might be going in converting vote share to expected seats.  

Tasmania 2024: Yet Another Mystery Poll

This article is part of my 2024 Tasmanian state election coverage.  Click here for link to main page with links to effective voting advice and seat guides.

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UPDATE 22/3: The Mercury has revealed that this poll was by high-quality pollster Freshwater Strategy and taken about a fortnight ago, and the Fontcast has announced it was THA-commissioned,  New details are also that the Greens are on 13 and Independents 11 in Lyons, the Greens are on 10 in Bass (apparently leaving about 13.7 for independents and others), independents are on 10 in Braddon (leaving about 13.8 for Greens and others) and 28 in Clark (Greens on 20), and in Franklin the Greens are on 13 and independents on 17.  

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Original article

After a reasonably polling-rich start to the 2024 Tasmanian campaign, little polling has been seen recently, with the youngest public poll 16 days out of the field as I write.  This creates a fair amount of uncertainty regarding whether anything has happened with voting intention in what has been a noisy and bumpy campaign.  In particular, has the fact that the Liberals are ahead and are the only party that any poll has had within, say, 5% of a plausible majority result, caused any late bandwagon effect to their side?  (I should note that bandwagons to a party capable of forming majority government don't always happen.  The two elections where conspicuous bandwagons did occur were 2006 and 2018 but for both these elections other factors could be cited.)

Today Sky News has released some figures from a poll by an unnamed pollster and source and have said they have been asked not to name.  As is too often the case Sky have failed to report on the polling dates.  What we have is a purported seat breakdown probably by someone with not much of a clue about how Hare-Clark works (14-9-4-4-4) and primary votes for the majors and JLN only.

The primary votes reported are:

Bass Lib 40.28 ALP 25.87 JLN 10.2 (leaving 23.68)

Braddon Lib 49.24 ALP 14.65 JLN 12.28 (leaving 23.83)

Clark Lib 25.35 ALP 21.37 (leaving an enormous 53.28)

Franklin Lib 33.23 ALP 27.4 JLN 8 (leaving 31.39)

Lyons Lib 38.46 ALP 23.26 JLN 11.2 (leaving 27.18)

White Goes First, Right Goes Beatup: The ABC Did Not Attempt To Cancel Chess

In recent days I've been involved in a media and social media flurry sparked by the ABC's decision to explore the subject of whether White moving first in a game of chess was in any way connected to race issues.  This claim was once most commonly seen as a spoof of anti-racism campaigns, but these days, a small number of people seem to be actually fearing chess might be symbolically racist.

I appeared on ABC radio and gave an interview that outlined that there is no evidence this is the case.  The host did not try to argue that there was, just mentioned that people on social media have held concerns about the issue.  The mere existence of that interview has triggered a massive backlash from right-wing culture warriors, which had already started before the interview aired.  The thing is, it is unclear that the enemy they're tilting at exists!  The ABC may be guilty of filling up its programs with offbeat fluff on the slender pretext of a few tweets, but that does not mean it was trying to have chess cancelled.