How seriously to take this Fairfax/Nielsen online poll? It should be made clear from the outset that this is not one of your Sky News/NineMSN type jobs – its sample of 1425 was “selected from Nielsen’s ‘Your Voice’ database” to represent “a broad cross-section of the nation”. As the dedicated YourVoice website explains, this database consists of 90,000 people who have volunteered to provide market research data in exchange for prizes and, if they can put up with it long enough, gifts. The result of the poll is a 58-42 two-party lead for Labor, who also lead 50 per cent to 37 per cent on the primary vote. As the table accompanying the report makes clear, these results are remarkably similar to those of ACNielsen’s most recent phone poll, conducted from September 6-8.
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ACNielsen online poll: 58-42
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96 Comments
Primary vote should read 50-37 methinks, not 50-42.
all within the usual range/moe…
….
i also have the view that labor will keep on out-campaigning the libs, notwithstanding occasional glitches, so expect to see bouyancy in the labor numbers. i for one am not buying into the ’soft’ labor vote story until i see some real evidence of it.
i also think pro-labor sentiment is more visible in this election: maybe this will reflect in higher measured numbers…but its just a maybe…no empirical support for this surmise.
Of course Meng, thank you.
William Bowe
http://www.pollbludger.com
William, what are you still doing up? Get some sleep.
Re: the poll. I just noticed this item up on the SMH site, before flicking back to Pollbludger to find you already had a new stream going.
You would have to treat this with a bit of scepticism, I would’ve thought. The methodology is novel, with nothing to compare it to, and there could be a bias built into the 90,000 population from which the sample is taken. There is no evidence to say that this 90,000 represents the voting population. Nevertheless, a nice headline for Labor fans.
Yes Blindoptimist it does look that Labor has a concrete 54-55% tpp vote and I also think that the Morgan soft vote theory is not reflective of those voters who think that the country is heading in the right direction since Rudd became leader and are going to vote Labor.
This is an interesting way to poll and it gets those voters who may not have a land line but are active online.
I’m just about polled out, smeared out, and feared out. I hope he calls the election soon.
all samples have some bias. the pollster’s skill is in weighting the samples to correct for bias. 1425 respondents is a goodly number. if the demographic and geographic weightings are done properly, it can be as valid a result as any other…or am i wrong?
Willy
There are two claims of accuracy.
1) The 1425 is selected from the 90,000 to represent the full population (which is believable as they take quite a few details of each registrant, so they can match groups to known demographics)
and
2) it has been reported that such a poll on election eve 2004 got within 1% of the actual election result.
aj,
the polls have been so consistent, and match up with reports of enormous swings measured in some unlikely places – like grey and parts of sydney. like you, i think lots of people wish the election was already over. every day howard postpones frustrates people and reminds them he is running scared. he should go without delay, but of course, he is hesitant…
Blindoptimist: but the poll is not sampling the whole voting poulation, it is sampling a population of 90,000 peopole who have signed on to this online marketing tool. I think it is risky to project any finding from this population on to the population of voters as being representative, no matter what weighting or massaging is done.
Dr Good, what was the previous poll you refered to?
and galaxy was .7 off the final 2004 result.
It’s the primary vote, yet again, that remains so decisive.
I think I’ve only said this about six million times, but looking at a nation-wide 2PP vote doesn’t tell us anything, not least because it comes up with this “coalition” vote thing, which is wholly artificial. Most electorates around the country do not have a three-horse race involving the Nats, the Libs and Labor, and it means even less in the cities where there is no National Party.
If this poll tells us anything it is that Labor is light years ahead on primaries–an effect that is only going to be magnified in the major capital cities.
Coalition demolition in suburbia.
The only poll that counts is the election poll.
willy,
i can see your point, but since we don’t really know the composition of the 90,000 or the respondents to the survey, we can’t say how represntative the result is. but we can say the pollsters know about this stuff. they must allow for it in some way….or is it just a crude tally of the numbers?
nielson mostly survey all kinds of other things, so you’d expect their 90,000 would be a nicely tuned cross-section. i don’t think the brewers, carmakers, banks etc would pay nielson for lousy data…not for long anyway.
If it’s done accurately it’s as valid as any other polling method and it’s seems to have worked well overseas. Of coarse government supporters will say Nationals and Liberals don’t go online as much as Labor people but I think that’s a load of bull.
Pant pant..just run over to Antony Green’s election thingy and put these numbers in. The scale only went to 57.3%, but this would give Labor 106 seats to Liberal 42. Not that I think that Labor would get this sort of outcome, but I do think that (like you said Blindoptimist) some unexpected seats will go Labor’s way.
Anyone know of the tops of the heads which of the government front bench would maybe, kinda, loose their seats if this result was performed on the election day??
Re 15
You only have to look at the vastly disproportionate representation of ALP supporters on online forums and threads such as these to work out that there are less Liberals online. It’s common sense.
i reckon the numbers show how voters respond to the campaigns of the contenders. labor/rudd are just miles ahead of the libs/howard. it is howard that looks out of his depth these days. try as they might to slur, undermine or club rudd, he is still regarded as smart, capable, determined. if anything, the attacks on him only tend to make him look resolute, human and impassioned: not bad qualities in a leader.
these nielson numbers – or something similar – are what you would expect to see recorded by the front-runner, not least because howard’s negatives are more or less engraved in the public psyche.
I’m not trying to say that the methodology of this poll is necessarily flawed. But it would be nice to see a few more polls in a series to compare with the other polling methods. I don’t think you can meaningfully compare this result with the last telephone poll the way the SMH graphic does.
So why doesn’t Howard call the damn thing and put us all out of our misery? Could it be because Howard knows the polls are correct?
a better way to look at these numbers is to ask: what is the best kind of number howard could realistically expect to achieve. considering that about 45% of the public can’t stand howard any more and 15% are indifferent, the best primary number he can hope for is about 40%. you can add 5% to estimate the 2PP when the undecideds are shared around. this is the best he can get because nearly half the electorate have completely had their fill of him.
it follows, in a 2-horse race, that if horse A is only going to get at most 45%, horse B has to get 55% or more.
hence the results. the longer people ask the same questions, the more they will get the same answers.
the real question about the polls is: will people vote the way they say they will.
the pollsters should be drilling down to test the depth of people’s intentions.
Hmm. It will be fascinating post election to learn if this poll was any closer to the final outcome than others. Especially given certain past and present pollsters publishing in msm seem to question their own results.
Not much common sense in this comment. The reason ALP supporters are better represented is because their views are more commonsensical. The Tory line is indefensible. I work in market research – there are a HIGHER proportion of coalition voters online than ALP voters.
blindoptimist 21 makes good points. Why are the obvious questions not asked.
Back to this poll, despite the selection as described, smacks of ‘guess the right answer’ given it is incentive driven. Built in mutant factor.
Disappointees may find themselves voting other than.
On the subject of new polling techniques. are the phone polls conducted only on land lines? or are mobiles included (I know VOIP’s arnt as they are seldom listed). Surely this would skew the findings by limiting the sample communities available the poor and young are increasingly only using the mobile due to line rentals.
Im loving the way the polls are quickly crushing the desperate attempts by Lib staffers (and the few dodgy media apologists still onside) to spin some momentum.
Id put Textor’s internal poll leaks in the same class as Howard’s recent call on how close Eden-Monaro was.
File under p for ‘pffft’.
I’m sorry, but I have a problem with a poll that relies on a certain demographic actually participating, rather than one selected at random. Sure, there are going to be people that refuse to participate in a phone-up poll, but it’s gotta be more accurate than relying on people to phone-in.
Sure, the numbers are the same, but that could just as easily be coincidence.
Using the Oz Politics calculator ( http://tinyurl.com/yns3j2 ) it comes up with the following (to answer your question): [this calculator assumes uniform swing and you can put in any number]
Bennelong – Howard [6.61 to Labor]
Wentworth – Turnbull [8.23 to Labor]
Gippsland – McGauran [3.04 to Labor]
Longman – Brough [3.99 to Labor]
Higgins – Costello [1.98 to Labor]
North Sydney – Hockey [0.7 to Labor]
Menzies – Andrews [0.07 to Labor]
Everyone else in the Cabinet keeps their seats under this scenario. New margins:
Warringah – Abbot @ .55
Mayo – Downer @ 2.85
Berowra – Ruddock @ 3.08
Wide Bay – Truss @ 1.47
Lyne – Vaile @ 2.67
Curtin – Bishop @ 3.88
Bradfield – Nelson @ 6.81
Groom – MacFarlane @ 8.07
Largest remaining margin is Mallee in VIC @ 14.01
#17 rcandelori It’s a good thing to say if you are in denial.
#17 rcandelori Further why are you in here following the polls, if what you say is correct?
The two very accurate polls, Galaxy and AC Neilson have the ALP between 12% and 16% ahead.
#17 rcandelori I suggest the online community represents the current feeling of the population, thats why the Liberals have to pay people to do leafleting. Are you suggesting in you post that Liberals are living in the past ?
If you have a database of 90,000 people. You could select from swinging seats and types of professions. Thereby getting a more accurate result. This would be how they get better results for their customers.
How many over 60s vote in these online polls?
The right are always underrepresented where literacy is a requirement.
Greg,
Me, for one.
aj and Julie, instead of just using my calculator on the front page, click on the ‘Go to full calculator’ link, and it shifts the seats around as you alter the swings.
It’s another good polling result for the ALP, but I just wish the campaign would start already so we can start getting more leaks on individual seat polls.
The question seems to be not whether the 90,000 whole is proportionate to the electorate, but whether it is possible to select ~1400 from the 90,000 who are, methinks.
Unless there is a significant demographic missing totally or massively under-represented, this poll could be more accurate, as you (in theory) know more about each person, and are able to weight the results better than you would otherwise be able to to match the total population.
Don’t think this poll methodology is too novel. In my work (not political) I have used AC Neilsen and found them very accurate. AC Neilsen, like all polling companies, are looking for ways to overcome the problems of traditional survey techniques. Typically it is very hard to get phone and interview surveys to include all demographic groups evenly, because some groups are consistently less likely to be home when the surveys are done. This may then lead to bias in the results. This is especially true of young adults, who are often one of the big unknowns in voting patterns. So don’t think this is automatically less reliable than Newspoll etc. In fact, it may be more accurate. The difficulty is that they are hard to directly compare. So don’t compare this to Galaxy; compare to previous results.
Any technique will have biases, unless every age group used all forms of technology equally, and was at home equal proportions of the time. I have thought for some time that Galaxy tends to be slightly pro-ALP, Newspoll slightly pro-Liberal, and AC Neilsen the most reliable. Their past record on picking things liike the swing to Pauline Hansen etc, is very good.
“Random selection” is also misleading. Surveyers try to get representative samples in each age group. This often requires asking particular people in households to answer, and declining to survey others. Newspoll rang my household two weks ago, and declined to survey me but asked to survey my wife, because she was in the required age group and I wasn’t. The surveyer explicitely commented that they had trouble getting a sample in her age bracket (we fell either side of a dividing line).
All of this is to say that all of the survey groups try to get it right, but short of holding the actual election now, it is a difficult thing to predict. This poll is as good a method as any other. If you are sitting in a seat with a lot of over 50s, it may be less reliable. If you are sitting in a seat with a lot of Generation X and Y, it is probably the most accurate.
I am a little sceptical about these online polls, however I do recall a few weeks ago talk about a British company that was bringing this type of polling to Oz in October.
Their experience in the UK claimed to have a 1% accuracy.
One more thing – the use of this sort of technology also varies with income and education level. For example the North Sydney area is older than average but also wealthy and very highly educated. It has a well above average level of internet use, even amoung over 60 yr olds. There is no reason to believe this result doesn’t apply to Bennelong.
The Flat Earth Society is also under represented, as well as the creationalists. The university types are over represented. (subversives). But don’t tell my two sons I said that.
It would be very easy to set up a computer program, to select exactly the right type of people to be surveyed. The more accurate the results, the more business they acquire.
As someone else said, this poll at the last election was accurate to withing 1%. The proof is in the pudding.
In regard to surveys missing out on mobile phones, this aspect was continually raised in the last US election by Democrat supporters. The results showed that it had no effect. What did not show up was the religious vote. That will not have an effect in the next US election.
The Age must be getting desperate to continue Rudd’s honeymoon if they can’t even publish a poll conducted using the standard method.
I personally know numerous lifelong Age readers who have cancelled their subscriptons and switched to the Oz as they have grown tired of the one-sided reporting and blind bias of the paper’s political reporting team.
So it would not surprise me that remaining Fairfax readers are more likely to vote Labor than the general population.
I suspect that Rudd’s latest blunders and the arrogance of the Labor team have dented his support, although maybe not enough for Howard to close the gap by the end of the year.
The Business Coalitions TV Blitz showing the village idiot mouthing off about Workchoices, and being corrected by the sensible guy, are almost as believable as the ads on Latham’s council record – and will have an impact in the usual places (outer suburbs of cities plus country towns).
With regards to the sample pool, couldn’t those signing up for ‘prizes’ and ‘gifts’ be labeled ‘aspirational’? This is not good John…
How many people have no internet access or telephones?
Looks pretty good to me and confirms Galaxy. I believe in trying to get representative samples, so this method is not truly biased.
Simonr 48
That is exactly why AC Neilsen are interested in this methodology. Amoung 18 to 35s the answer is well over 90%, and they are not all uni students. By contrast, there is probably now a larger proportion who no longer have land lines. Hence there is no longer one perfect answer. All methodologies have some inherent biases.
Wonder how specialist “Soft-Vote” soothsayer and ex Newspoll supremo, Sol Liebovic, would spin this ACN poll?
Even Shill “Newspoll,We Own It” Shanahan might be prevailed upon for a pearl or two of his psephological wisdom in interpreting these seemingly aberrant figures.
We humble bludgers of polldom, befitting our station in life, can do little but wait, eagerly and with much earnestness, upon the enlightenment of such sages regarding this remarkable ACN sampling. Perhaps first, Solly and Shill should take a squizz at the fate of Christopher Pearson for his Crimes Against Psephology in the Court of Judge Possum Comitatus, before shooting their mouths or keyboards off.
The lack of phones or having only a mobile phone, did not cause any problem for the polls at the last US election.
Lots of people brought it up as an issue before the election.
Julie, thanks very much for doing that.
Anthony, thanks, I did have a play around with the state calculator and put each state on 51 – 52% this gave coalition 71 seats to Labor 77 seats. It’s still alot of work for Labor to do to get the 17 seats, but with Labor primary on 49 – 50% at the moment, they might be able to improve on the 77 seats …hopefully.
I am a member of the your voice thing and many other online survey things (they’re fun). All of the surveys usually start with demographic questions, age, income, sex, family situation, education, post code etc. You can get excluded pretty easily – I often do. I didn’t do this questionnaire- I’m now cranky that I didn’t, then I could tell you all how it worked. I also used to work for Nielsen and they’re a pretty professional bunch (me excluded, I was a Data Entry hack), I would say they’ve got the sample thing pretty right.
To the people claiming a 1% MOE, that’s just wrong. Even if the 90,000 was a perfect sample of the voting population, the MOE on a 1400 sample is ~2.5%. The fact that a poll was within 1% of an election result doesn’t mean they are accurate to 1%… They might have just got lucky.
Regarding the ’self selection bias’ of the 90,000, and any errors on sample weights, this might increase the margin to say 4-5%. But that is true for all the phone polls and Morgan’s face to face. They report 2-3% MOE, but post-weight errors should be reported as 4-5%.
Are we on the same internet?
George Megalogenis has replaced the Mackerras pendulum with his “Matrix” as a prediction tool of seats to fall. Here is the link
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/meganomics/index.php/theaustralian/comments/old_sole_young_and_rich_will_rule/
Any thoughts? Personally I find the pendulum simpler to understand & use, but in all fairness to George I haven’t tried to study it in detail to get my head around it. I’m hoping for the more astute psephologists amongst us can put out a summary “The Megaogenis Matrix guide for dummies” lol
(PS Sorry about the link, I cut & pasted the URL but it doesn’t appear to have worked as a hyperlink.Can anyone tell me how to do this plse.)
Has anyone got to the bottom of where Howard got his alleged good news about Eden-Monaro from? He obviously didn’t get it from any reputable polling. Did he just make it up? Why has he not been pinged on this?
Well looks like I did the hyperlink correctly. Plse ignore the request.
I’ve got a few ideas where he got his Eden-Monaro news from Adam, but I don’t want to be impolite
It’s the same place that the rabbits live, Adam.
The rabbits are on the other side of the Great Wall of China?
I’m not sure the matrix approach adds that much. There’s a whole pile of seats in the “mortgage belt” (more than the others combined, it looks like) which highlights the risks of another interest rate rise for the Coalition.
I think George’s matrix may be useful in hindsight, when we’ll be able to say ‘oh look, the mortgage belt seats swung hard to the ALP, except for the wealth belt ones where the interest rate rises don’t hurt so much’ and so on… But in the absence of polling data which breaks down into these categories he’s used, as a predictive tool it’s a bit confusing.
Unless there are breakdowns for that stuff… does the Newspoll quarterly data set try to do that? I haven’t been brave enough to dip my toe over there…
A poll totally sans credibility that it isn’t even worth deigning to comment upon.
In about a month the real election will be called and people will be scared to change from the team who have given them a golden age of security, peace, and prosperity.
#34 Greg I’d say it would be the same percentage as the population. Working from a database of 90,000 it would be easy to emulate the population.
Nostradamus, you should go back to writing in a more cryptic style, so at least you have deniability after the fact.
#58 Martin B. Good one. I was joking as you realised. But I just thought about it. Most of the creationalist’s aren’t allowed to use computers. For example the Exclusive Brethren.
#67 Nostradamus. I see your still well and truly in denial.
#67
A commentor totally sans credibility that it isn’t even worth deigning to comment upon.
I have come onto this demonic contraption to save souls from that anti-Christ Rudd.
People who have time to volunteer themselves for online surveys will more often than not be Labor voters anyway. Look who the majority of bloggers are……
37
Antony Green Says:
September 25th, 2007 at 8:42 am
aj and Julie, instead of just using my calculator on the front page, click on the ‘Go to full calculator’ link, and it shifts the seats around as you alter the swings…
………
Antony,
Would it be possible to add a feature to your calculator: when using the state-by-state calcs, to show the effect of varying state swings on the computed national swing? and national 2PP?
I notice that the 2PP varies a lot between states/territories. It is possible, for example, for Labor to achieve a high swing in WA or Qld, and yet have a relatively low 2PP becuae the starting base heavily favours the coalition.
This would add the final nuance to a great site!
Re Howard and Rabbits.
Perhaps he’s changing his middle name from Winston to Warren.
In the past 10 days I sense that Kevin Rudd has taken his foot off the pedal a little bit. His sound bytes on the television news are not quite as sharp as I have come to expect, he has made a few publicised errors (names, places and policy details) and he looks (albeit I concede appearances on television can be deceptive) as though he may have put on a bit of weight around the face and waist. This suggests to me that his discipline has lapsed recently but as to what degree and if so, whether it affects the voting intentions of the floaters, is a matter of opinion. Of course, on one view, it may not matter at all: most contributors on this and other threads think his position as Australia’s twenty-sixth prime minister-to-be is now unassailable given the consistently good opinion polling data and the prevailing but untested assumptions that he has the makings of a statesman, that he will perform better than his opponent during the official election campaign and (most importantly) that the favourable voting intentions for the Australian Labor Party are now “locked in” until polling day. To date, a matter (but not the only matter) I have regarded very positively about Mr. Rudd is his self-discipline and work ethic (a marked contrast to his amiable predecessor), so my perception over the past 10 days now occupies me. I trust Mr. Rudd does not believe, privately, that the race is won, the votes are “locked in” and that he is, in fact, the prime minister-in-waiting. I expect JWH to fight hard to 6pm on polling day and to do his best to highlight or accentuate for the wider electorate any appearance of hubris by his opponent. I anticipate that my perception will be dismissed, peremptorily, by many on this thread (I make no apology for that because this and other threads need diversity of opinion). I may not be alone in my perception. The Daily Telegraph editor, David Penberthy, has headlined today’s edition with “Labor Victory Dance” and editorialised: “Hatching chickens before they count”. I know that the less incisive contributors categorise Penberthy as a “right wing hack” but in my opinion, he is centrist in his political leanings as evidenced when he was the paper’s state political affairs correspondent.
David Charles, if Rudd believes the race is won he is a fool.
As to whether he’s put on weight recently I don’t know. I’ve switched off watching political news a long long time ago as it just annoys me with its hysteria.
This is what the Liberals want you to think. It is only what they are putting around. Like everything else they say take it with a grain of salt. The Liberals are very very desperate.
CTEP I understand why you have switched off watching political news. It can be annoying but I make sure I watch it because it is the medium which low involvement voters use. As a political observer, I am interested to see what are the impressions and perceptions which inform and guide those who ultimately determine election outcomes.
I can assure you that Labor are live in fear of being beaten at the last. There is no way Kevin and co will think they have won, maybe a few down the food chain are letting their fanatasys out.
Nostrils
” … a golden age … ”
No, not yet. Howard tells us he still has some things to do to Australia. Can’t wait. In his day, slavery was regarded as world’s best practice and I just hope it’s first on his list of Things To Do in my Dotage. He is a God among mortals.
Hurrumph!
David Charles:
I don’t think any of the points you have raised are due to a lack of discipline on Rudd’s part, but rather a side-effect of constant campaigning. Slip ups aren’t hard to make when you’re traveling all over the country day in, day out, and tiredness must be a factor. Also, busy people do tend to down a bit of Mackas or KFC on the road, could account for his itty bitty podge. I personally believe that Rudd wants this too badly to stuff it up now – I feel the ALP is in good hands. I’d be much more nervous if I was in the Libs camp. Those guys seem to be saying something different every 24 hours, not a good sign for them.
Diversity of opinions and observations is always encouraged.
Dissection of opinions and observations is always expected.
Exactly, David Charles @80
It’s a painful experience reading and watching commercial TV and tatty tabloids, but it gives an idea of what “low-involvement voters” (nice) are being fed. Drives my wife mad. I see no point in simply reading or watching one source of news. Better to monitor the crap because that’s what forms wider opinion. And they believe it!
A quick example. A few years ago the Herald Sun in Melbourne ran a gory story about tiger? fighting in Thailand … anyway, animals in a ring fighting to the death. A friend, an astute businesswoman, read it and said: ” Aren’t they cruel , the Thais …”
She condemned a whole nation on the basis of a tabloid beat up. When I said this was probably a small group of degenerates and did not represent the whole population, she went blank. Her mind was set. A disturbing experience.
Such is the power of the small-minded public prints.
The Elect Vessel another party hack.
Its amazing how the headlines want to make something out of nothing this one in the Herald Sun tries to make a point out of a 1% swing to the Liberals. http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22476123-662,00.html
But if you take out the +-3% as the Americans always do and we don’t there is no movement. The Americans always quote the percentage to allow for error as part of every poll. We rarely do.
Chris B says:(a long time ago)
” But I just thought about it. Most of the creationalist’s aren’t allowed to use computers. For example the Exclusive Brethren.”
let’s thank God that Exclusive Brethren aren’t allowed to vote.
Which just goes to show the sample is a little more representative of voters??
Hi David Charles at #77
Very interested in your comments.
I have also sensed something in the last 2 weeks in the way the Ruddster has had a little less gas-in-the-tank with the media than was previously the case.
However, my thought is that the media has now started to more critical of the KR/labor phenonoma.
#84 John Withheld
An interesting remark about your expectation that there be ‘dissection’ of opinions and observations. I think it is fair to say that it is an expectation which is more often than not honoured in the breach on these threads.
Dear David Charles,
Please excuse the question without notice, but are you the David Charles, the former member for Isaacs from 1980 to 1990?
I don’t think that the media were kin really ever, every time that ther has been an opportunity to say that the Honeymoon has ended they were onto it, the problem has been that nearly every time they say its evening out and JWH is gaining some ground one of the polls comes out with a 10%+ split.
If Rudd is looking a little run down its probably because he’s been out campaigning since the day he won the caucus ballot, JWH was waiting for the bubble to burst and has now joined the race.
David Charles @ 90, you don’t think opinions are regularly picked apart here? Are we reading the same pages?
#91 Sideline Eye
I am not the former member for Isaacs. I remember that David better as a director of television programmes not as a parliamentarian.
#93 John Withheld
Yes, we read the same pages. There are many repetitive comments on these threads but they are well worth a regular visit because there are a few very knowledgeable and incisive political observers who contribute excellent posts from time to time. I will monitor future threads with interest to see whether you are among those few.
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