"Abyss" Piece Is Another Shanashambles

 

There is something badly wrong with the op ed sector of the Australian media.  Many outlets continue to pay for articles that are factually shoddy and that reinforce the prejudices of partisan readers rather than helping their readers to actually understand politics.  It's perhaps a vicious cycle in which some outlets think there is no market for anything better than an echo chamber, and by offering a bad product ensure they'll never find out otherwise.

The latest hopeless offering by Dennis Shanahan (screenshot above) is an example.  To be clear, nobody should deny that the Albanese Government has been shedding public support rapidly in recent months. Anyone in Labor's support base who is not at least a little bit concerned about this is a fool. 

Old Rope: A New Low In The Australian's Newspoll Commentary

With a quietish day in the South Australian count so far, I just thought I'd take the time to call out an article about Newspoll that was published yesterday in The Weekend Australian.  

The article was entitled "PM wins back women's support" and appeared on page 6 of the Weekend Australian.  It commenced with the following claim:

"Scott Morrison has recovered lost ground with women voters in recent months and has built up a larger lead over Anthony Albanese on the question of preferred prime minister among women than men, despite an onslaught of criticism on various gender ­issues."

Other claims included in the article were:

"Although the Prime Minister lost his lead over the Labor leader in Monday’s fortnightly Newspoll, Mr Morrison consistently outranks the Opposition Leader on satisfaction ratings among women voters, an analysis of quarterly demographic breakdowns reveals."

From this I expected that the Australian was releasing a fresh quarterly breakdown for the January-March period.  But no cigar (there might yet be another poll to come this month and be included in the breakdown anyway).  Here's some more:

"But Newspoll surveys show that, at the end of last year, Mr Morrison had a lower dissatisfaction rate among women than men and the same net satisfaction rate – the difference between voters’ satisfaction and dissatisfaction – among men and women."

"But, on the question of who would be the better prime minister, Mr Morrison has had a bigger lead among women since late 2020 and has always had a better net satisfaction rating among females."

(I take it that the word "he" has been omitted before "has always"  Otherwise it makes no sense as a better net satisfaction rating is not relevant to who is the "better prime minister".)

Newspoll: Surprise 2PP Tie Takes Heat Off Albanese

The first Newspoll of this year had the potential to be a very significant one for Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese, but he has escaped it without major harm.  This was one of the more significant Newspolls lately because of the leadup, so I thought I'd briefly write about it and related themes.

Leadership speculation has been swirling around Albanese in recent weeks.  This started after forces within the CFMEU and closely linked to unionist John Setka spruiked polling claiming to show dire numbers for Labor in its Newcastle area seats of Shortland (4.5%) and Paterson (5.0%).  Setka was expelled from the ALP in 2019 at Albanese's insistence.  

The polling has not been published for scrutiny.  The polls were conducted by Chorus Consulting with Community Engagement.  No public polling for any election by Chorus is known to me, but their director is also a director of Redbridge, who have released other polls predicting similar doom for Labor in other seats including Dobell and Macquarie.  I have been told that Community Engagement did tracking polls for Labor at Victorian state elections, but as no results were published or given to me at the time there is no way to comment on their accuracy.  I am however aware of some polls by them that were published for the 2016 election and these were not that accurate overall (the worst a Higgins seat poll that had Liberal 42 Greens 25 Labor 20; the result was 52-25-15).