Comments on: Site Updates – electoral projections, demographics and new metrics.

By: cud chewer

cud chewer — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 15:49:57 +0000

Hey Poss.. whatever happened to that roller coaster generator? The latest upswing in Pollytrend looks just the thing for the self-abusive

Oh, btw.. I think it was the Sunripened Warm Tomato party. But my favourite remains the Party! Party! Party! party

By: It's Time

It's Time — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 03:04:45 +0000

Possum

Graphically, time is always plotted left to right on the X axis. If you we to also include a column for Election 04 percentages, would you be comfortable for that column to be on the right to give:

Current Election 07 Election 04?

Furthermore, when giving a change in a variable, it usually means change from the first column figure to the second column figure. I find the current arrangement counterintuitive.

If you want to emphasize the latest figures because they are most pertinent, why not bold the figures in that column and leave your total rows underlined?

BTW, would someone who reads normally from right to left (Arabic?) have different conventions?

By: zoomster

zoomster — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 21:38:35 +0000

And now we’ve got the capital city/non capital city splits up —

anyone care to speculate why the rise in the non capital city vote for Labor is their highest (apart from SA)? On 3.7 for primaries and 5% for 2PP, this trumps any other swings on the table – certainly far greater than the movements towards the Greens, which has chewed up far more commentary.

Poss, any potential for an analysis here? Or are the figures still too small? (although, as I’ve pointed out, you’ve done a couple on the Greens, with far smaller numbers).

By: Possum Comitatus

Possum Comitatus — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 13:34:17 +0000

It’s Time,

That’s an interesting quandary! Should information follow left to right chronologically from Election-> Current Result -> Change

Should it go by pertinence, where the current value is first (from left to right) because that’s the most important metric, followed by the Election result (the baseline), then the change value?

I agree with you that there is a widespread temporal orthodoxy as far as these things tend to go – information is usually conveyed according to time. I wonder if our brain likes the orthodox way of doing these things because it conveys info in the easiest way for us to absorb, or if we just like it because that’s what we’re used to?

It’s a bit of an obscure question – but heh!

By: Possum Comitatus

Possum Comitatus — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 06:14:31 +0000

William – the broad “Others”. Family First, Independents, Sun Dried Tomato Party etc. Together, they usually poll around 8 to 10%.

By: William Conroy

William Conroy — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 06:11:56 +0000

with all those minus figs for the Coalition and the ALP, the greens do not appear to have taken up the slack where have they gone or am I missing something obvious

By: It's Time

It's Time — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:32:10 +0000

Possum

I think the convention would be for the “Election 07″ column to be to the left of the “Current” column in the Pollytics Demographics tables.

By: Aristotle

Aristotle — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 07:48:44 +0000

That’s great. Nice, clean and easy to read.

I agree with Ad Astra, a link in the sidebar would be sufficient.

By: zoomster

zoomster — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 07:21:49 +0000

That’ll do.

I’ll just nip out and put the apple on the table for you…

By: Possum Comitatus

Possum Comitatus — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 07:14:28 +0000

Zoomster,

The best we can do is Capital City/Non-Capital city splits – and for some reason, I put them in for TPP terms and for the Greens, but not for the primary votes of the ALP and LNP.

Ooops!

I most certainly will add them in for the major party primaries.