With the election safely out of the way, we might have expected the heat to have gone out of the great blogosphere-versus-The Australian opinion poll wars. Turns out Dennis Shanahan has other ideas:
This week’s most eye-catching figures were Kevin Rudd’s 70per cent and Brendan Nelson’s 9per cent on the question of who would make the better prime minister, a Newspoll record high for a prime minister and a new low for an Opposition leader. After The Australian put the story, which I wrote, on the front page, it captured public attention and was reported, commented upon and retold in newspapers, radio, television and blogs. As Possum Comitatus said …: “While records are meant to be broken, this one was obviously meant to be smashed. Brendan Nelson has stormed into the worst preferred prime minister result in the history of Newspoll with an astonishing 9 per cent.” Peter Brent’s Mumble and William Bowe’s Poll Bludger, sites that panned the Newspoll reporting in the past, covered it without personal comment … Yet there was one key point missing from all the commentary that has previously cropped up in analysis of Newspolls: in Possum’s words, Nelson “stormed” to his rating by 2 percentage points. Rudd’s record on preferred PM was also reached by a rise of 2 percentage points. The margin of error for the Newspoll survey on a sample of 1140 is 3 percentage points. The leaders “stormed” to these records with movements of less than the margin of error. In the past, The Australian has been castigated for reporting movements of 2 per cent and placing stories on page one based on “record” lows … Statistical bloggers forever complain about reports of movements of less than 3 per cent and essentially want polls to be banished from newspapers and public debate except during an election. On this occasion, as on previous occasions, the simple news judgment was made in writing the story and placing the story, that a record, however it is attained, is newsworthy. The bloggers thought so, as they trawled the records to find Crean’s lowest reading in Newspoll and talked about the importance of the preferred prime minister figure for leaders. If Nelson’s preferred prime minister rating drops one point to a record low of 8 per cent, is that worthy of page one again? Or do we ignore that as being within the margin of error? Fat chance. Polls interest people, influence politicians and should be treated consistently.
For the record, I personally had very little to say last year about Shanahan’s Newspoll reporting. This was partly because the subject was being done to death elsewhere (not least in my own comments threads), but also because I had more sympathy than some for the idea that Labor’s bloated lead would indeed feel the effects of gravity before polling day. My post on Tuesday’s Newspoll even managed a sarcastic dig at those who paint him as a Coalition stooge.
In other news, the AEC has commenced a redistribution for Tasmania, it having gone the maximum seven years without one. The AEC’s figures respectively put enrolment in Bass, Denison and Lyons at 1.2 per cent, 1.6 per cent and 2.3 per cent below average, with Braddon and Franklin 1.5 per cent and 3.7 per cent above. So the redistribution will presumably involve a transfer of territory from Franklin to Lyons, which is unlikely to make much difference to anyone’s electoral prospects. Changes to the more sensitive Bass and Braddon are likely to be negligible. Uniquely, Tasmanian boundary changes have effect at both federal and state level.
UPDATE: Shanahan’s central contention, that Nelson’s drop from 11 per cent to 9 per cent was within the margin of error, is questioned by David Walsh and Unicorn in comments. The latter tells us that the sampling error depends on the uniformity of the population, so the 3 per cent figure assumes a 50-50 response like you roughly get from a two-party split. Whereas the question of Nelson’s approval or non-approval in fact splits about 10-90, producing a margin of 1.7 per cent.
223 Comments
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I did have some hope the right wing rag formerly the GG may actually reform into a balanced newspaper and regain its credibility. But it hasn’t taken long for them to fall back to their right wing carping. The usual suspects are unrepentent and nothing seems to be changing.
Just imagine if the opposition actually had a genuine leader – the ex-GG will turn them into JC, the redeemer, the saviour of everything, the only person with the right answers etc.
I notice too that the vast majority of news reports on the ABC website are presented in such a way as to be negative for the Rudd government, indicating the Howard appointed thought police are going into overdrive – the last striking out of those dirty dying snakes.
No 51
Kina, The Australian is a perfectly balanced Newspaper. After all, most of the columnists to which you object are opinion writers. The substantive news articles are hardly the subject of some mysterious right wing agenda.
All the vitriol you all pile onto Albrechtsen and Shanahan is equally applicable to the left wing apologist Phillip Adams.
Kirribilli and Cannon,
Re the civil war sketch. I admit my memory of it, from decades ago, was limited to the essence. I took considerable licence (couldn’t remember actor, setting etc).
Apposite though, eh.
Black And White Rag. With apologies to Winifred Atwell and George Botsford.
53
bryce
Apposite?
Perfectly! LOL
Nice heading William. How long have you been waiting to use that one?
I hope that Dennis retains his job if only for the entertainment that comes in response to his column. Life would sure become boring without his ravings. I wish him luck in retaining his job at the Oz. Having said that he is a dick for sure
Generic Person Says:
February 21st, 2008 at 2:53 pm
No 51
This is a classic example of balance provided by Janet Albrechtson today.
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/janetalbrechtsen/index.php/theaustralian/comments/the_opposition_has_lost_the_emotional_plot/
Wonderful piece of advice directed towards the Coalition. The main problem with it is that she is a week too late and there is absolutely no guarantee that they would have taken any notice anyhow, such is the strange and disjointed manner in which the Opposition are dealing with the unfortunate situation they now find themselves in. Irrelevancy is not a comfortable place to suddenly find oneself.
I should clarify that I read the Shemoham reference in a post written by Paul Burns in LP, who has since corrected his error.
“Anyone for Dennis?”
No thanks.
Frank Calabrese Says: @ 59,
February 21st, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Today, Frank. Apparently the lunch engagement took all day.
Dolly Downer didn’t deem it worth his while to even turn up for Parliament today. Courtesy of ABC News.
Some chums and I refer to Brisbane’s Courier-Mail as “The Liberal Party Newsletter”. Probably appropriate for The Oz some days now, too.
Dolly was there at question time. They showed him looking totally uninterested while Julia was getting stuck into parties and people who were “out to lunch.”
No 603
Yes, but when Mr Rudd was so insolent so as to ignore the Parliament whilst in Opposition, that was okay. Oh, the irony.
Thankfully, she can be entertaining.
No one can accuse Downer of being of touch. At least not in person, anywhere near his place of employment.
After reading Shamaham’s article and seeing Dolly’s doorstop interview at Parliament i can only assume there was a sidebet who could make the biggest knob of themself this week.
Edit: out.
Downer should do the honourable thing and resign now.
Can’t be bothered turning up for parliament and when he does can’t be bothered answereing questions.
Downer’s no show and the other libs no shows of the apology, Mirabella, Randall et al raises an interesting questions re allowances.
These fearless liberal representatives get paid an allowance for every day parliament is sitting (as do other parliamentarians), regardless I presume of whether or not they are in the house as long as they are in the city?
Surely if they had principles they would stay away from the city itself and thus not claim this allowance otherwise it looks totally cynical behaviour on their part.
If lord downer cannot be bothered i’d be happy to take his bankbencher job…..not that i’m a liberal supporter, i have zero political experience (beside watching q time on tv)……..but surely i could do a better job for Australia then someone who cannot even b bothered turning up…..i might even come up with some policy ideas……or think of ways of improving nelsons approval rating
Simple solution, for every day Downer fails to turn up to work, dock his pay.
If he misses more then 5 days without a good reason, sack him.
Better yet, put him on an AWA whilst they still exist. No fairness test, as he doesn’t believe it was necessary.
So today we have Telstra announcing it has exceeded its profit expectations making $1.9 billion for the last 6 months of 2007.
Then Qantas announces it has more than doubled its profit in spite of soaring fuel costs.
And as company after company announces unrestrained profit…employees are repeatedly being told to exercise wage restraint.
FG – it all seems so 1908. Are we moving in 100 year cycles? Here’s hoping McCain doesn’t have control of a military in the middle of the next decade.
William
If i may add about the Tasmania redistribution. The TEC has already completed its initial proposal for the upper house redistribution. Happened a month or so ago and the link has a pretty picture showing the new proposed boundries.
http://www.electoral.tas.gov.au/pages/LegislativeRedistribution.html
As i do not wish to futher interupt the Dennis Shanahan baswhing, maybe a seperate thread is in order?
As you were ladies and gents!
Look this is a bit crude and wordy but the best and most accurate new title for “The Austrlaian” is “Great Big Heap of Shit News Staffed by Overratted Lazy Fascist Journos” and I must say the Poison Dwarf is getting off lightly in blog land.
70
asanque – attending Question Time is not comparatively speaking necessary in fulfilling your requirements as an MP Backbencher, had Downer not turned up for a Committee that would be far more serious. I cant blame Downer for not wanting to hear Gillard’s shrill voice talk about Workchoices for hours on end i doubt even the Laborites would want to hear that.
asanque if you feel like punishing somebody how about docking Gillard’s pay for wasting the Parliaments time with parroting on about Workchoices and flouting standing orders for continually using props in answering her dorothy dixers!
75 – Downer is just proving himself to be a petulant git. Not that he cares as he is leaving as soon as he finds some company dumb enough to take him.
If we were to dock Gillard’s pay for that, we should dock Howard and his front bench for the last 11 years for their incompetency, lack of policies and dorothy dixers everywhere.
I also disagree that the Tasmanian redistribution will not change any electoral chances. The most likley booths to go to Lyons are probably labor’s best larger booths in Franklin. Bridgewater, Gagebrook and maybe even Risdon Vale if moved to Lyons would significantly shrink the margin in Franklin. In turn this would make Lyons much safer. this may result in a pre selection in Lyons as Dick Adams personal vote is no longer needed to win that seat.
I don’t blame Dolly for missing question time. Having to listen to Gillard’s winy voice needs a lot of motivation. I am sure if she had an afro style hair cut, Gillard could pass as the sister of Kath from Kath & Kim.
After having 11 years of the perks of government Dolly is finding it a hard boring slog on the backbench , he should do everyone a favour and resign now and take his other disinterested dinosaurs backbenchers with him.
“Oh I didn’t see an iceberg, I was standing on deck and I didn’t see an iceberg”
Ahahahahahahahha!!!! Oh god, that’s Priceless
I wonder which Lib Clarke was impersonating when he said that
If Downer resigns soon he has provided with some ammunition for getting rid of him. Sitting in a restaurant at taxpayers expense is not a good look.
Another father-son hand me down who has never worked hard in his life.
marky mind you words mate, he is the longest serving Foreign Minister in Australian history and you reckon he never worked hard in his life…bah!
GP 51
The Australian is a perfectly balanced Newspaper. After all, most of the columnists to which you object are opinion writers. The substantive news articles are hardly the subject of some mysterious right wing agenda.
So it’s only opinion pieces that convey opinion? What tripe. ‘Substantive’ news articles are riddled with opinion. Then there’s the selection of what counts as news and what is given prominence. (Like the Brian Burke nonsense, which has disappeared from sight but has been getting front-page billing in the Australian).
80
Mr Squiggle
I heard Daw mention Downer and the other prop was Carbuncle Joe!
Downer crucially delivered SA support for Howard from day one (club SA). This was clear when Howard was elected. It continued until late last year.
Downer was inept as Foreign minister when appointed and was inept and embarrassing, monumentally, for year after year – and this is the explanation for his “longevity”. Hardly his ability!
If Costello had become PM, Downer wouldn’t have even been on the front bench.
David Walsh (#3) is spot on.
The sampling error depends on the degree of uniformity of the population. The sampling error is maximum when the population attributes are split 50-50 and decreases as the proportions move away from 50-50. When Dennis says that the margin of error for a sample size of 1140 is 3% he is referring to the maximum error. However, if a population attribute is around 10% then the margin of error is only 1.7%.
So it would seem that Dr Nelson’s popularity drop of 2% is not inside the margin of error after all.
Unicorn, I’m sure that makes sense to a number of people on this site, but I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about when you’re talking about population attribute and that being assigned at some particular percentage rate. Please indulge someone who struggles with this stuff. Would appreciate some explanation in lay terms.
Harry, Sorry, I’m better with numbers than with words.
If we are sampling for the two party preferred vote then each person sampled be recorded as either ALP or LNP. This is what I mean by attribute. They are either one or the other. In this case since the true proportions are generally around 50-50 it is correct to say that the margin of error is 3%.
In the case of Dr Nelson’s popularity the attribute we are sampling for is the proportion of people who prefer Dr Nelson as PM. In this case each person being sampled is classified as either (a) preferring Dr Nelson or (b) not preferring Dr Nelson. What I am saying is that since the proportion in category (a) is only about 10% the margin of error is a lot less than it would be if the proportion was around 50%.
Dennis Shanahan is another news-bore if you ask me. Were it not for the alertness of bludgers here, I could pass from one year to the next and never bother to read his irrelevancies.
Why is it, i ask myself out loud, that some people seem to think they have so much to say, when in fact they have nothing much to add to anything. It must be a way to make a living, i spose, being pompous, verbose, inaccurate, self-serving and annoying all at the same time…
Harry, it seems that Nelson is the closest person to achieving a consensus yet.
Imagine if he was universally rejected with no sampling error.
http://nhts.ornl.gov/1995/courseware/Useable_Nav3_18_27.html
What is interesting about the excerpt above, of course, is the spreading fame of possum, william and the bludgers. This could mean blogdom is the home of the new intelligentsia: what a harrowing thought.
Very good work, Unicorn. I’ve added an update to the post noting your observation (props also to David Walsh).
Thanks, William.
The other thing I could have added is this occurs because the formula for the margin of error includes the term p(1-p) where p is the population proportion of the attribute being sampled. The value of p that maximizes this expression is 0.5
eg p = 0.5 p(1-p) = 0.25
p=0.4 or 0.6 p(1-p) = 0.24
…..
p=0.1 or p=0.9 p(1-p) = 0.09
Calling it “The 9% Narative” should last till after the next two elections
Well Unicorn, glad I was here to see that explanation, I am impressed.
Greg Hunt on Lateline, twisting language and what his party believes in- actually i have no idea what his believes in regard to climate change are.
Labor is already through spin trying to state that it is all to hard to act now so we will do it very slowly. Put simply if you have children their future is bleak.
well Steve , horatio has issued a press release challenging unicorn’s credibility
as he feels the MOE has been miscalculated by him. Malcolm did the sums
Mr Bowe, Chris Mitchell on the line for you…
I would have thought most labor people having seen the Polls show 50 consecutive big margins for Rudd & then face the famous ‘narrowing’ in the last 48 hours were far from impressed.
The pollsters claims of oh well previous Polls generally had a 3% MOE may be regarded by many a bull
Ron,
That last minute narrowing was a bit spooky, wasn’t it? But I actually think it was real – ie there really were 2-3% of the population who liked Rudd and thought Howard was past it, but who at the last minute just didn’t/couldn’t vote Howard out.
I think that is more likely than the alternative explanation – which is that the polls were wrong all along, exaggerating the ALP vote (2PP) by roughly 3% (on average).
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