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| Got my right hand high, with the thumb down ... |
I'm writing a long washup piece re the Tasmanian election and its outcomes but my attention has been diverted by clueless Twitter praise of a YouTube video by The West Report, called "Who really is the preferred PM?" Strangely the video doesn't actually talk that much about preferred PM scores or say who the preferred PM actually is, but it says a lot of other things that are just not accurate. It's possibly the worst thing I've seen about polls on a vaguely prominent platform since Bob Ellis.
The video claims at 0:31 that the questions in the polls aren't public while highlighting a statement from Resolve Political Monitor that says "All questions are designed to be fair, balanced and accurate, e.g. voting questions emulate the actual presentation and ranked preferences of ballot papers as closely as possible". The words from the second "questions" on are highlighted. But in Resolve's case, what appears to include at least some of the questions is published. It's also perhaps a bit early to judge Resolve on its transparency approach since it has so far done one national poll. The Newspoll standard questions, however, are not only regularly published verbatim in The Australian but have existed in stable form for just over 35 years. I can vouch that the questions as published by Newspoll are their questions, exactly, as I have been polled by them a few times going back to the early 1990s. Granted, it would be beneficial for pollsters to openly publish exact details of the ballot forms they offer voters (including being clear about Resolve's exact voting intentions question), but in Newspoll's case and for some questions for Resolve, we do see what they are asking. Ditto for Essential, by the way, although Essential unfortunately doesn't usually release the order (if there was one) in which options for issue questions were asked.
