The Australian today offers another editorial on the subject of opinion poll commentary which, despite its querulous tone, is somewhat less absurd than its notorious dummy spit of July 12. The paper nonetheless contrives to exempt itself from its critique of the polling analysis glut, placing the blame on “the rise of the Galaxy Poll and Fairfax newspapers’ attempt to become competitive against Newspoll with its AC Neilson (sic) survey” (to say nothing of the efforts of “a number of internet blogs”). So when its reporter Tony Barrass observes a surprisingly weak Newspoll result for the Western Australian state government and finds federal implications galore, you can rest assured that this is not merely “the reporting of politics as if it were a sporting match”, such as you might get from Michelle Grattan. We should instead consider ourselves privileged spectators to the exercise of The Australian’s mystical power to unlock the hidden secrets behind the only opinion poll that matters.
Reflections on the Miracle of Democracy at Work in the Greatest Nation on Earth
The Australian versus everything
Copyright © 2008 Private Media Pty Ltd, Publishers of Crikey.com.au. All Rights Reserved.
Independent news, blogs and commentary on politics, media and business.
Editor: Jonathan Green.
Publishers: Eric Beecher, Diana Gribble.
Level 7, 22 William St, Melbourne, 3000. Ph: 1800 985 502 Fax: (03) 8623 9975
407 Comments
Pages: « 1 [2] 3 4 5 … 9 » Show All
Arbie Jay @21.
Yes, according to the poll 7% of Labor voters in 2004 were swinging to Liberal this year, and 9% of Liberal voters in 2004 are swinging to Labor this year.
However from the polling, there is a huge swag of Labor voters who are now swinging away from Celebrity Nicole to the Democrats & Greens.
Matthew Sykes @23 is right, Nikki needed to be polling at 35%+ on the Primary vote to have any possible chance of winning.
BV I can’t recall the Australian ever being a serious publication of record, at least in my eyes.
Kina @ 45
Rumour has it that the Labor party asked her husband (and many other people) first…and old Graham told them that there was no chance… So they targeted the stepford wife instead.
Here’s an interesting one: I just played with Antony Green’s excellent swing calculator http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2007/
If you go the the state by state setting, and set all the states which the coalition won in 2004 to a very modest 50-50 2PP , it shows just how tough this election will be for Team Rodent.
Once NSW, VIC, SA, QLD and WA are set to a dead level outcome, you only have to add the two lib held TAS seats to the ALP column and there’s a hung parliament.
It’s not necessarily too late to replace her – after all, they dumped their candidate in Cowper on the weekend.
At any rate, Kevin Foley should never be allowed near a pre-selection committee again.
The Australian may actually lose a bunch of Hong Kong Chinese readers in Darwin [and there were lots of them]. I have a ‘politics’ discussion with them every Saturday morning at a language school that teaches Mandarin to kids, my wife teaches.
They were surprised to find out that some ‘real’ facts were different from their [impressions] facts and, their facts [impressions] came from the GG.
That they were not happy is an understatment.
These people are familiar with govt interference into Newspapers and have been observing the mainland Chinese media for years. Democracy is the big buzz [hopeless] movement in HK at the moment – so they are sensitive to being manipulated by misleading news. So I don’t doubt the news will spread among the Chinese community to not trust the GG. A guys at the school I dont think will bother buying it again.
But I don’t really think murdoch would care that much about cirulation at the moment – as long as he gets his man back in.
“But I don’t really think murdoch would care that much about cirulation at the moment – as long as he gets his man back in.”
===
This is surely part of the point though – if the GG are going to back Howard to the hilt and he loses, they will take a whack in relation to both credibility (the crazed rants of Shanahan Christopher Pearson on poll movements) AND influence. That would have to hit the publication where it hurts (circulation, advertising revenue and hence $$$).
Circulation has never been important to Murdoch with The Australian. After all, it ran at a loss for the first 20 years. All he cares about is that it’s the newspaper that the political insiders read.
So, what can we do about it? Seriously, the Australian has gotten so bad now that there are few people who fail to recognise the bias – and of those, most are on six figure salaries at News limited itself (or have an IQ of six…..or both). I’m not sure if many people here are familiar with U.S groups Media Matters for America (MMFA) or FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) – they’re net-based media monitors that have broken a number of stories of bias and misinformation in the U.S mainstream media. Sites like these aren’t the be all and end all, but they do a great deal to highlight some of the worst offenders in the vast media lansdscape of the U.S. Perhaps it’s time for an Australian version – goodness knows that Media Watch has gotten very tame in recent times and given the make-up of the ABC board, I can’t see that changing any time soon – we’ve seen how bloggers can do a far better job of reporting than the so-called journos at rags like the Oz – perhaps it’s time to turn those sharp eyes toward just how these clowns operate.
I know that this may sound a bit naive or romantic, but people need to be reminded that the role of a journalist in a democracy is a sacred responsibility. A democracy cannot function if the people are uninformed, illinformed or simply misled. Given how sacred that role is, those who perform it need to be held to the highest standards – the question is, what can be done to ensure that the journalists of the future act in accordance with the solemn nature of their democratic tresponsibilities? Is it any wonder that journalists are held in such low esteem in our society? Part of the solution may lie in shaming these people in the way they deserve. For example, given what i have just written about the sacred responsibility of real journalists, I don’t consider people like Dennis Shanahan to be any better than a nursing home employee who abuses and robs a helpless elderly patient – the responsibility is a sacred one, which when abused, rightly draws condemnation from the wider community and sees the perpetrator publicly shamed and punished under the law. We need to figure out how to do more to shame these charlatans; to point out the fact that they are cheap whores who are willing to mortgage whatever integrity they ever had in return for a few dollars more or a title (national political editor, editor at large, senior executive editorial manager and so on) or the respect of people vastly more stupid than they are. Can you imagine the career prospects for someone in big-business who acts as disingenuously in their field as Shanahan does in his? Perhaps its best summed up by saying that Shanahan is about as forthright with his readers as Rodney Adler was with his shareholders – difference is, Shanahan continues to peddle his form of crap.
No it won’t BV. Their readership probably won’t care one bit and will keep reading. People like reading what they agree with, if the Australian was all of a sudden to change to ‘balanced’ journalism they’d probably lose more readers than they’d gain.
People’s perception of ‘balanced’ is coloured by their own political persuasions.
Look, let them be a Tory flagship, who cares. Its the GGs complete disconnection from reality that’s been fascinating me this year.
They really are on board the HMAS Denial, along with several senior frontbenchers.
A paper should have a longer term interest in its own credibility, if nothing else. I think 07 may be prove to be crisis year at the Gazeditorial bunker.
William, I hope that you don’t mind me advertising here.
I hear many pollbludgers complaining about the relentless pro-Liberal advertising that we are paying to subject ourselves to.
Here is a good chance for these friends to pay a small sum to help to expose a very large number of other Australians to some more balanced information presented humorously.
https://www.getup.org.au/campaign/ClimateCleverer&id=126
It also fills a TV advertising slot which would otherwise probably be tax-funded Liberal propaganda.
Advertiser polls are usually around the mark, though clearly the published two-party vote of 54-24 for Boothby is wrong. If it’s 54-46, with 9 percent undecided and a margin of error of about 4 percent, then it’s not quite curtains for Nicole Cornes but she has the job in front of her.
She shot herself in the foot at her first press conference, giving ammunition to her critics who have painted her as a bimbo instead of the intelligent, attractive, hard-working candidate she is. Labor polling had her doing well. But now it seems that women are reluctant to vote for her. Labor is often accused of choosing hacks as candidates. When it does something refreshingly different, it boomerangs. Catch 22.
I wonder if the murdoch press will run a correction to the Reins story. If they don’t then we will know the smear was deliberately fabricated by them.
The new Nationals slogan on billboards and bumper stickers is:
‘Don’t Risk Rudd’.
A nice positive campaign by them.
Howard and Trust?
Don’t Risk Howard
Don’t Keep Howard
Howard Hates Humans
Howard Has Had It
Old Leadership Old World
Howard Belongs To History
Howard Is The Past
Howard – Non-Core Truth
There was a US study recently which concluded that in general, conservative bias in newspapers had no effect and liberal bias had only a very small effect. I am looking for the link but not finding it at the moment.
This study suggests that the audience of a newspaper drives its editorial content far more strongly than its ownership. This correlates with Murdoch’s long history of “backing winners”, which often confuses cause and effect (i.e. Murdoch is good at picking the winner, but he does not determine the outcome). However I struggle to accept that the GG’s audience is as rabidly anti-Labor as its editors.
This paper on the other hand argues that newspaper bias (in the UK) does measurably influence voting patterns, but that that influence is diluted in that country by the availability of biased papers in both directions. In Australia, of course, we are cursed with only one national newspaper.
The real power of the media, though, is in ‘agenda setting’ – what they report versus what they choose to ignore is going to have far, far more impact than the blatantly biased rantings of Albrechtsen and friends. Just look at the leadup to the Iraq war, for instance. If the media had broken ranks and chosen to report on reality instead of the wild claims of Blair, Powell and friends about ‘WMDs’ it would have been extremely difficult for the relevant governments to win enough support to go to war. This was a significant factor in Vietnam, too – once the press chose to actually report what was happening on the ground support for the war disintegrated.
In this election, I see the choices before the press as this: do they report on every scurrilous rumour about Rudd? Do they focus on ‘bad’ unions? Do they critically examine the spending patterns of the current government? Do they continue to focus on the leadership tensions in the Liberal Party?
The choices made with respect to reporting (in ordinary news/analysis parts of the papers) on those issues will have more influence than any editorial.
No, Phil. It isn’t that they didn’t select a hack – it’s that instead they went for a gossip columnist. Labor has looked outside the square with some great success in this election – Maxine McKew, Mike Kelly, Peter Tinley and Melissa Parke are the obvious examples. Nicole Cornes is a miss, however. Apart from the fact that she has a quasi-familiar name and looks great, it’s hard to see what made Foley think she’d have anything to contribute to the parliamentary Labor Party. Nothing against her and I certainly don’t think she’s a ‘bimbo’ – but what has she actually done to suggest that she’d make a decent MP?
The GG has a small percentage of the readership market. I would say even less read the editorial.
I have donated to ‘Getup’ in the past and have just done so again. They want to put their Climate Change ad outing the Govt on during the AFL grand final and are looking for extra cash. $27k so far.
Thanks Dr Good for the info.
Optomist @ 34:
I tend to agree, I have run across some of the ‘independent’ on-line community Newspaper/blogs in the USA which I think are becoming more and more a reference point for people looking for he truth behind the MSM news.
I can see it eventually going that way here, abandoning the MSM newspapers because of their continual bias. But if I am not mistaken a great many more Americans are politically ‘aware’ than here.
Wonder where the Shananananahans and Milnes will get a job then?
The Nationals’ slogan is “Don’t Risk Rudd”. We’ll be seeing stickers, billboards etc. I think Labor needs a punchier sticker than Kevin 07.
Charlie, I reckon a girl from the wrong side of the sticks who has the determination to put herself through uni and earn a law degree while raising a couple of young kids is a worthy candidate. But it looks like the celeb stuff is a turn-off.
For those who like playing with my calculator on the ABC site, there is a new option. All you need to do is set the sliders to the swing and vote settings you want, then hit the ‘Link to this outcome’ option. It will give you a URL link which you can post into blogs such as this one.
So for instance, I have entered the best poll the government has received all year, the Galaxy in which Labor’s vote was only 53%. The calculator generates this link
http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2007/calculator/?swing=national&national=5.7&nsw=0&vic=0&qld=0&wa=0&sa=0&tas=0&act=0&nt=0&retiringfactor=1
That’s as may be, but the reporting is dodgy. Despite claims of a “possible humiliating federal election loss” they don’t bother reporting the 2PP figures.
We have:
Primaries:
Lib 44
ALP 29
Green 9
Dem Other Undecided 18
plus the information that in a straight Lib/ALP swap there has been a 2% swing to the ALP.
With that information alone it is pretty hard to work out what the actual situation is.
Was there any other info or a graphic with the print version?
With the calculator, give Labor swings of 5% in NSW, Vic, Qld and SA and look at the odd results!
What can be assumed is that if Boothby is not recording a weak Labor vote in SA but other polls are suggesting SA overall is very strong for Labor then an unexpected coalition seat may fall instead. That strong vote is coming from somewhere.
Let me try again with that first part of that sentence. “What can be assumed is that if Boothby IS recording a weak Labor vote in SA…..”
24 is the percent of female voters reported to be giving their first preference to the ALP in the poll.
The linked article does not mention a 2PP figure or anywhere contain the number 54.
Is there some extra information, or something that I am missing?
Thanks again Antony. Keep up the excellent work.
Phil @ 67.
Such backgrounds are important in politics, but they aren’t enough in themselves. She seems to have no grounding in policy or even in politics – it’s one thing to have the life experiences, it’s another to be engaged enough to actually use them to achieve something worthwhile. Whatever she was 20 years ago, she’s now a gossip columnist with a celebrity family, designer clothes and what looks, from afar, to be a very typical upper-middle-class outlook on life.
Give me a Julia Gillard – who lives in a little weatherboard house in Altona and speaks with the voice and language of the people she represents – anyday.
The truth is this: Independent bloggers, like Poll Bludger and Possum Pollytics, offer a much more reasoned, rational, and realistic appraisal of polls than The Australian and much of the mainstream media. And the media KNOW it. The problem that The Australian has is twofold: 1) a pro-Howard agenda, and 2) the need to SELL a story.
This ultimately means that every infinitesimal movement in the polls is SPUN into something that fits these two agendas. The margin of error is often dismissed. And the averaging of polls across time periods is neglected. Their agenda compromises their capacity for proper statistical analysis and appraisal.
So, when The Australian tries to suggest that only they know what the polls are saying and everyone else can pretty much go and get stuffed, what they are really saying is that they don’t want to lose the capacity to spin poll results according to their agenda. With the rise of independent blogs, readers now have access to much more balanced reporting of polls. Their sense of influence over the populace is being threatened.
So, all power to the independent blogs and their bloggers. May it be that more blogs appear. And let’s hope that even more Australians start using them as major sources of news and analysis of Australian politics. It is one way of giving back some power to the average voter.
Martin B @ 73: They have “updated” the article and removed the 2PP figure (which was wonky anyway). Interesting…
The editors at the Australian are under absolutely no obligation to be balanced or impartial. If they think they’ve got a market then they’ll target that market.
If you don’t like it, just don’t read it. No need to whine.
The editors at the Australian ache to be taken as a serious and objective presenter of ideas and debate They cant achieve this because they are hamstrung by their history and their consistent anti-labor anti-union agenda. It is a sad reflection that we have one national newspaper and its the Oz and given its woeful circulation you’d think there might be room for a competitor.
Whats really contemptible about the OZ is the crocodile tears about balance and objectivity and the lame arguments it puts forwards to support that view.
Noocat @ 76
Whilst I agree with the political views of most on this Blog, I think you are stretching our view of the world that Poll Bludger blogs aren’t partisan.
We want Labor to win the next election. We don’t like the Coalition government and what they stand for.
Lets’s continue to put the boot into Howard but please don’t delude ourselves that we aren’t bias also.
Pluralism does not live here (or anywhere lese for that matter)
heres Nicole’s reply to the Advertiser poll.
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,22483082-5006301,00.html
By the way, if you were still unsure whether The Australian has a pro-Howard bias (although it is usually pretty obvious), this is the give-away line:
“We at The Australian have been innundated with complaints from Howard-haters when we have not splashed with every poll result showing a commanding lead to Labor.”
It has become increasingly common for Howard supporters to simply call anyone who disagrees with them a “Howard-hater”, especially when they have no rational argument to back up their own position.
This is, of course, very childish stuff, but it’s what we have come to expect from our only national newspaper.
“Whilst I agree with the political views of most on this Blog, I think you are stretching our view of the world that Poll Bludger blogs aren’t partisan.”
The commenters are partisan, but Poll Bludger (or William) does not make partisan commentary. I think that is a distinction that has to be made.
KT @81.
Totally agree. That is an important distinction. It is our threads (commentary) that have a bias not Poll Bludger. Thanks
KT: thanks. So it did actually once say 2PP = 54:24? whacky.
About all that we can say from the information that is currently available is that the ALP are probably behind, but by an uncertain amount, and that a large proportion of local ALP voters are looking to give their first preference to other candidates such as the Greens and Dems.
Noocat @ 76
I wholeheartedly agree. Blogs are great, and are a very important tool in the media landscape. Don’t be surprised if MSM outlets start attacking the blog movement though, labelling sites such as these as narrow silos of interest for like minded individuals with similar voting intentions.
“Whilst I agree with the political views of most on this Blog, I think you are stretching our view of the world that Poll Bludger blogs aren’t partisan.”
I’m not suggesting that individual bloggers are not unbiased. But COLLECTIVELY, a more thorough analysis of news can come through a politics blog because of the varying views (and biases) of the contributors. Nobody here is constrained by a particular agenda in the way that, for example, an editor of a newspaper would constrain the tone and direction of the articles from its journalists.
And going back to polls, the fact is that various contributors on this and other blogs know a LOT about polling and statistics, and there is a much more realistic appraisal of polls than in the mainstream media because they are not driven to create stories around them that need to sell papers.
Oh, but once you include the 2% election calling bounce, the 3% campaign win to Howard and the 10% shift in the last week you get this:
http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2007/calculator/?swing=national&national=-4.5&nsw=0&vic=0&qld=0&wa=0&sa=0&tas=0&act=0&nt=0&retiringfactor=1
If I could have anythin I wanted from the calculator I would probably ask for the ability to type figures directly into the “swing” or “2PP” boxes.
Here we go ‘round the mulberry bush…
This is going to upset a few people here, but a lot of people have surely been thinking it – just not out aloud:
“The Coalition may just be turning the cornerâ€. So says Bryan Palmer from Oz Politics.
http://www.ozpolitics.info/blog/
How many times over the past nine months have we heard that statement, or similar, from Mr Palmer?
Mr Palmer has ventured too many times around that giant roundabout in Canberra me thinks: he appears to be suffering from a bad case of corners on the mind.
If the Coalition have turned yet another corner, as Mr Palmer suggests, surely they’d have come full circle by now.
If the Australian is looking for a new pollster willing to sing from the Coalition hymn sheet, they need look no further than Bryan Palmer.
Bryan Palmer, like the vast majority of MSM journalists, fails to highlight the high, and remarkably consistent, ALP primary vote.
Delusion appears pandemic among conservative commentators at present; next Mr Palmer will be selling the merits of the highly contagious “soft ALP vote†virus.
Here we go ‘round the mulberry bush…
Yes boys I remember you don’t like female candidates from when she was pre-selected and yes you like to apply a whole different and new range of requirements and standards to ensure the gender imbalance is never addressed..
And yes if the poll is accurate she may not be elected.
But the double standards between her and some of the idiot males, including ones in Parliament and Cabinet for that matter is quite amazing.
That’s a bit unworthy, Jasmine. For a start, I expect a certain level of buffoonery from Coalition candidates – male or female. As for Labor – name one (particularly a ’star’ candidate) that has been as unimpressive as Nicole Cornes.
But of course, we’re all just misogynists rather than people who want Labor to have the best possible candidates not only for winning elections, but for doing something half-useful once they win them.
Adam posted a local report about Corne’s campaigning talents recently which was rather at odds with the (extremely sketchy) poll information and (I agree) rather biased commentary above.
Martin B – There was a heap of tabled data included in the print version that’s not in the Online version. I will try to scan it in and get it hosted somewhere today.
and Yes…. the Article has been updated to remove the 2PP figures. They printed 54-24 which is obviously wrong.
You may also care to note that of all the possible ideal Labor candidates that I could have picked from, I chose Julia Gillard.
Noocat @ 85
“Nobody here is constrained by a particular agenda in the way that, for example, an editor of a newspaper would constrain the tone and direction of the articles from its journalists.”
I agree with your perspective on blogs for the most part, however, there is something about the nature of the internet that makes many assume it is purely ‘democractic.’ User anonymity is a problem online, which makes establishing one’s intentions or agendas rather difficult. So while the traditional gatekeeper has been removed in one instance, it has become harder to identify who is posting what and why.
In saying this, this is the best blog I have come across on the net and people actually engage in informed debate rather than the slanging matches you read over at news.com.au
No one is stopping supporters of other parties from joining in and making their views felt and persumably if enough did then labor supporters would be in the minority.
The Australian offers no such opportunity, it pretends [or maybe it doesn't] to be a premier paper which you would think to mean intellectual, wide ranging and even handed. Of course in the hands of sycophnants it is quickly becoming an irrelevant and low quality.
I heard mention today that Rein’s company was in trouble again or so said a lady here – having not heard the ABC report that said the Unions had no trouble with her British business. Just a GG smear.
Pages: « 1 [2] 3 4 5 … 9 » Show All