Today’s Newspoll via The Oz comes in with the primaries tied at 41 a piece with the ALP down 7 and the Coalition up 7. This washes out into a two party preferred of 52/48 – a 7 point change from last Newspoll. The Greens are steady on 10 while the broad “Others” are unchanged on 8. This comes from a sample of 1149, giving us an MoE that maxes out around the 2.9% mark.
Is this an outlier?
Probably, and it comes from something Newspoll head honcho Martin O’Shannessy said to the Australian.
The majority of the change in the Labor primary vote is attributable to a fall in Labor’s primary among those aged over 50 under 50
The only issue over the last fortnight in media has been asylum seekers, and all the polling we’ve ever had on that issue suggests that it is the over 50’s that are the strongest supporters of tough border protection – and as yesterday’s Essential Report suggested, the over 50’s are also more likely to believe that the Coalition would do a better job at managing this issue..
If this wasn’t an outlier – we would expect the over 50’s to move strongest, so the composition of the poll is inconsistent with what we would expect to occur if the poll was, in fact, an accurate representation of the true state of public opinion.
There is also other evidence for it being an outlier. Firstly, we expect that, on average, 1 in 20 polls are out by an amount larger than the margin of error – which in Newspoll’s case is 3%. Further, we expect that, on average, 1 in 100 of all Newspoll’s will be about by a margin larger than 4%.
This is simply the probability statistics of random sampling in action.
Secondly, this issue has been in the field as a dominant news item for well over a month now. If people were changing their vote so dramatically over the asylum seeker issue, we would have expected to see the ALP vote start leeching away with the last Newspoll, the last 2 Essential Reports and the last Morgan – if not earlier.
Yet that didn’t occur.
Thirdly, all political polls in Australia over any given period of time “move together”. The various pollsters might all have their relative leans – some have a relatively higher vote estimate for Labor, some relatively lower – but they are generally consistent relative leans. Essential Report was in the field over the same period and didn’t pick up any movement at all.
Fourthly, as William Bowe at Pollbludger has pointed out, big moves in the primary vote like this are extremely rare – usually the preserve of polls taken directly after an election, or directly after a leadership change. There are a few exceptions like horror budgets and the occasional, inexplicable random poll (what we would expect), but they are rare.
Finally, this is just completely out of whack:
Only time will tell if public opinion has shifted, and by how much – but on the balance of probability, this is a dreaded outlier.
So kick back, grab some popcorn and enjoy the political show – it should be a doozy. The usual charts come in like this.
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With the discrepancy between the apparent excellent performance of the opposition as a party (it’s the narrowing!), and the still abysmal satisfaction levels and preferred pm ratings of Malcolm Turnbull as Opposition leader, this would seem to provide ammunition for those who would like to topple him and put Joe Hockey or Tony Abbott in his place.
There might be interesting times ahead in the opposition party room meetings.
And of course if this is an outlier we can look forward to the ‘Comeback’ headlines in two weeks.
UPDATE: I’ve fixed up Martin’s quote and slightly rejigged the post as a result.
During the 2007 election, Howard had a great poll over the Melbourne cup period – but no one was listening because the ponies were on. The following poll when Labor bounced back – it was after an interest rate rise and it became the “Howard’s interest rate backlash” narrative.
Even though nothing really happened at all.
Christ I hope it is an outlier, not because of what it means for Labor, more so what it would suggest about us as a nation.
Sure it’s an obvious outlier, but I bet it doesn’t stop the ‘Australia is racist’ narrative from popping up all over the blog-pool.
I’m looking for references to children-over-board, Peter Reith And The Undead Member for Berowra everywhere today (and SIEV X, of course).
According to abc, Rudd apparently went on a radio interview “blitz” last night, doing five interviews on top of an appearance 7.30.
Could this be panic, as a result of a tip off about the newspoll?
If that’s the case, AND this poll is an outlier (which seems probably IMV), then it’s interesting that Rudd puts so much stock in Newspoll.
The political parties get informed of Newspoll the afternoon before it’s published – so he would have known.
If one were to put their political conspiracy hat on for a second, Labor probably picked up a couple of points of drop in the vote with their own polling last week – perhaps concentrated in some demographic like outer metropolitan males aged 35-50.
Knowing that, they would have realised that Newspoll was probably going to pick a bit of a drop up as well (although not this big!). So maybe they organised for MYEFO to be released on Monday (which combined with the Melbourne Cup, would crowd out the Newspoll result in the news cycle on Tuesday), while on Wednesday the Cup result and interest rates will dominate.
MYEFO was first mentioned as being released on Monday (as far as I can find) on Sunday in Swans Economic Note that day. So one inclined to conspiracy might conclude that MYEFO was released deliberately when it was to push good news out in the window before the Newspoll hit the headlines. If so, expect to see the government do something on Thursday or Friday to grab the news cycle again after the Cup results and rate rises dominate today and tomorrow.
But that’s just if one was of a conspiring disposition.
Thanks Poss – it will be interesting to see just what has changed the U50 vote tho. If it is asylum seekers then Keith is right in asking the question and the answer is probably that we haven’t moved on since 2001.
Possum,
You referred to the elction 2007 Cup eve poll above. Are there any other examples where Polls taken before public Holidays throw up strange results?
Sadly I doubt we have moved on from 2001, and there are no votes for Labor in being compassionate to boat people. Like it or not, this issue always plays well for the Liberals. Rudd has no other choice but to get tough with these Sri Lankans, even if it means the left wingers in his caucus revolt.
As per the scientific method, a result has to be duplicated for it to be valid.
Considering this is at variance with the other polls, and should it also be at variance with the next newspoll, then that would invalidate it completely.
If it is replicated in other polls and the next newspoll – then my disgust with the Australian public will be immeasurable.
While I don’t like Rudd (especially on the issue that seems to be the catalyst for this poll result, but for exactly the opposite reasons of those that have apparently crossed over into The Twilight Zone), to contemplate giving a first preference to that pack of scumsucking vermin in the Liberal Party is incomprehensible.
Wake Up Australia! Stop answering to the dogwhistles from that vile nest of vipers masquerading as an opposition.
Onya Poss,
It’s a farce that Newspoll “head honcho Martin O’Shannessy” is pushing the line that the 2PP numbers are so important and not Rudd’s lead over Turnbull.
During the last election, poll after poll, he would spruik with faux gravitas to his fellow Murdoch Minions on Skynews that only Howard’s conistently solid personal approval numbers really mattered, not Labor’s ephemeral lead in the 2PP.
Actually Hemmingway, Martin was one of the very few people that consistently stated the view that Rudd was likely to win the election considering the polling. Others used his words in some pretty dodgy ways, but apart from one piece in The Oz that accidentally started the poll wars, Martin pretty much stated the obvious throughout 2007.
Possum, my basic statistics may fail me, please correct me if I am wrong – I get the std error here as 1.5%…. if we test the hypothesis that the ALP 2PP is AT LEAST 56 % – there is less than 1% chance of this result coming from such a population? Is that right?
drowner – use the Poll Cruncher
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/thepollcruncher/
I GOT IT RIGHT! I GOT IT RIGHT!
Has The Oz ever underplayed a Newspoll that is good for the Libs as they have in today’s paper? “Coalition pulls back Labor”???
They might as well have written “We Don’t Believe it Either”
Poss,
Did you see most of Martin’s Skynews interviews? I saw them all and wrote detailed reports in PollBludger. Martin spent the lion’s share of his time trying to give heart to Skynews’ majority audience, who in the channel’s “instant polls” invariably indicated over 60% support for the Coalition.
It’s certainly a plausible assumption that Howard’s solid approval ratings helped the Coalition during the campaign to overcome the interest rate hike, Rudd’s winning the debates, Costello’s succession distraction and the debacle in Penrith. In the event, the final ‘07 election Newspoll oversestimated the narrowing by a predicting a 52 to 48 2PP result.
I assume most visitors to the Possum’s site come over from Pollbludger, but if the Visiting Venn Diagrams don’t completely overlap, this might be of interest:
“Opinion says it’s the Himalayas, but the facts show it’s the Nullarbor”
http://www.ozforums.com.au/viewtopic.php?id=6583
Ari – they don’t actually! Strangely enough, we only have a relatively smallish cross-through of traffic.
Thanks for letting me know that, Poss. I’ll be sure to always post links here when appropriate.
Whatever the poll trend, its time Rudd stopped trying to please all the people all the time, get off his high horse and take a definite position. The influx of Sri Lankan asylum seekers is not going to dry up in a hurry, thousands are being released from detention camps daily to go where/ Into dire poverty, a hopeless future, or take their chances heading for Oz? It is obvious Rudd has been less than honest in his dealings with the Indonesians and as this poll indicates, the electorate is not impressed with his slack no firm action in any direction attitude.
Interestingly Poss while the 2pp is agin the Govt, Rudds personal satisfaction is still riding high. How do the two contrasting results stack up?
It’s weird that there’s only a smallish cross over of traffic from Pollbludger to Pollytics, Possum. I also appreciate Aristotle’s contributions very much.
Snapper,
A large number of readers only read the comments but don’t post, and plenty don’t even read the comments threads at all – the majority of my audience certainly, and probably a significant chunk of William’s to boot. So the names we see in each others comments threads gives the impression that it’s the same audience all the time, but the ‘regulars’ we all talk to every day are actually just a relatively small chunk of overall readership.
I’ll have days where 800 people or more will walk through the front door before anyone leaves a comment for instance (which is a good thing mind you, I try and discourage long rambling comments threads here) – so we sort of run very different style blogs these days, and often deal with fairly different material. I do more economics, statistics and social demography while William does a hell of a lot of on the ground psephology and election news.
Possum, whatever else about this poll, you’d have to say that Malcolm Turnbull has been very unlucky to have it come on Cup Day!!! Otherwise he could have been all over the media tonight, with the poll results and the almost-certain rate rise in his pockets!!
It’s bad luck alright!
If anyone has a spare 10 minutes and wants to piss themselves laughing, yesterdays Alan Jones interview with Turnbull is one of the funniest things you’ll ever hear!
http://www.2gb.com/index.php?option=com_podcasting&task=view&id=2&Itemid=41
It’s the “Malcolm Turnbull in the studio” link.
The problem here is that there is no center ground. Your attitude is either grounded in fear – you believe that “going soft on boat people” equates with being “flooded”, or you have the common sense approach that short of a climate catastrophe there simply won’t be enough people willing to come here by boat to have any real consequence. This issue has been argued thoroughly elsewhere. What I want to point out here is that there is no real compromise.
Rudd’s strategy was fundamentally a short term one. He knew the Parliamentary Neanderthals would bring it up sooner or later, so he was well prepared. Focus groups. Rehearsed rhetoric and all. But he also knew that there is no center and it was important that when the issue came up, that it be hosed down and gotten out of the media quickly.
Now, enter the OV. The perfect answer to what is wrong both with Rudd’s media strategy and his actual policy. It both stretched things out in the media and it highlighted the absurdity of the situation. It would have been a neat trick to convince the Indonesians to rent us a few hotels and process these people there. As someone pointed out recently, one of the oddities about the polling is that people seem to be more against “boat arrivals” than the refugees themselves. Rudd had figured this out too.
But there are a lot of people sensible enough to realise that this is just sleight of hand the same way the pacific solution was. And expensive too.
Now what I think has happened is that the OV incident has forced a lot of people to think it through and now we have an even more polarised community. And its sad that Rudd, by adopting a “play to both camps” approach has actually hardened small minds.
OH and back to the topic. I’d like to think that if there is some air being let out of Labor’s lead its because of the cohort of younger, more moderate people who are screaming out for Rudd to become a leader and tell it like it is.
Rudd looked decidedly uncomfortable last night. I’d like to think it wasn’t just the poll. I’d like to think that here is a guy realising that media advisers and focus groups sometimes get it horribly wrong. Sometimes you gotta stand up for what is right.
Poss @25 – interesting stuff. I would like to think that a lot of us simply don’t want to post unless we have something to say, being thoughtful types.
Back OT, would have to agree with cud that asylum seekers is a difficult policy area to project a centrist position on, although that was clearly the intention with the “tough but humane” line. What will be interesting in light of this recent newspoll is the next set of questions on asylum seekers from a major pollster. Given that it’s been the only thing in the news, if it’s not an outlier we’ll get proof there. When’s the next major poll due?
Thanks, Poss, and certainly appreciate what you, William and Aristotle do. Like Dan, would probably not say anything if there was nothing I could contribute, and I’ve been encouraged to ask further questions by the responses I’ve when I’ve stuck my hand up. Thanks.
the respones I’ve had, that is
Dear Poss please could you help me? I wrote a comment re the lastest Newspoll results.
It was reiterating why I thought Rudd was in trouble.
When I clicked on comment it just disappeared. Now I can’t find the comment you wrote, concerning the Newspoll data. Could it be JG who regards me as likely to cause offence, moderating me? If so, why wasn’t it returned? There was noting remotely politically incorrect about it. Could it be that I was imagining the whole thing?
Dear Poss, it’s not the comment I’m worried about, it’s me!
I don’t mean Rudd is in trouble. I mean the Newspoll showing the Gov has taken a dip. I’m seriously confused.
Venise – was that over on the article I did for the Crikey email today or here?
If it was over at the article in the email – I have no idea what might have happened. Your comment just now reminded me that I wrote something for the mail and that I’d better go and check the comments!
The only comments I’ve made today are a few here and at Pollbludger – and all of the ones on the blogs are still there.
It sounds like you were the victim of a technical gremlin.
@Venise Alstergren
I can see a comment from you over at the main Crikey site at 1:54 pm. Is this the one you mean?
Poss and Keith: Oh really???? I don’t think…Well I don’t know. I’ll rush over and have a look. Seeya….
Poss,
I just had the misfortune of listening to the Alan Jones interview of Malcolm Turnbull thanks to the URL in your earlier post. Maybe in future you should put a warning on such things pointing out that it is a blood sport and that some may find it disturbing.
In the end I was feeling sorry for Turnbull as he was molested by Jones. Most of the questions seem to be of “when did you stop beating your wife type” which left Turnbull nowhere to go. You have to admire Jones and his ability to phrase questions that take absolutely no notice of previous answers by the interviewee and then rephrase the question for the hapless interviewee to answer again and again.
Jones was also very skilled in presenting his witnesses (Monkton and the worlds greatest climatologist – claimed by Jones) into his assault on Turnbull. It would appear that Jones just believes that we (the listeners and Turnbull) must accept this for no other reason then he says so.
However, once one gets over feeling sorry for Turnbull (he did cop a frightful beating at Jones hand or should I say tongue) one realises the complete lack of skill he (that is Turnbull) displayed in handling such an aggressive and opinionated interviewer who was prepared to advance his own opinions at the expense of all else. I could not see Rudd being manhandled in such a manner and displaying such a lack of knowledge on the subjects being address nor could I see Rudd letting Jones get away with his bullying like Turnbull did.
The interesting question is why did Jones put so much effort and skills into showing Turnbull in such an unflattering light when he is one of his own. Whose barrow was Jones really pushing through he demolition of Turnbull?
Phew! Poss, you are so correct it is over at the other section. I was seriously worried. But thanks to you and Keith I am back on course.
I took a minute or ten off my turmoil to listen to the Alan Jones’ interview with Malcolm Turnbull. Like Ratsar, I too felt sorry for Malcolm, this quickly gave way to hostility. How dare Turnbull-desperate for votes of confidence-submit himself so tamely to Alan Jones? He will never win an election by boring the pants off his listeners with his mind-bending, comatose-inducing, meaningless words-I can’t remember one thing of importance that he said.
To win the respect of his audience he should have leaned over, snatched Jones’ headphones off, then clouted him.
Thanks once again for the help.
What a failure!
Good day to you Possum,
Just a long-time lurker here, blowing-in to thank you for your analysis of this initially dismaying turn of public opinion – your “out-of-whack” graph especially gives me some comfort. But I wanted just to query the logic of this bit:
“If this wasn’t an outlier – we would expect the over 50’s to move strongest, so the composition of the poll is inconsistent with what we would expect to occur if the poll was, in fact, an accurate representation of the true state of public opinion.”
If all the data does suggest that the 50+s are the strongest supporters of tough border protection laws (and have been all along) and are more likely to believe that the Coalition are going to handle the issue better, wouldn’t the voting intention already be structurally locked-in for this cohort and therefore much less likely to experience a swing if the issue is given a high profile during the polling cycle? That is to say, wouldn’t you expect a greater movement in those not already converted ie the <50s?
that reminds me of a funny story about a time when I was young and we had turkey for lunch – or walking bird as we used to call it… every Sunday we’d have walking bird with all the trimmings though I used to wear a feather in my hat, which was the style at the time. Anyway on this Sunday I was listening to Thomas Edison on the radio. Back then he just read out the alphabet… “A” came first, this was usually followed by “B”, and you have to remember I was wearing a feather in my hat – which was the style at the time.
Anyway…
I disagree with the others, I thought Turnbull handled Jones well. Jones hypervemtilated and screamed, while Turnbull kept is cool and made Jones sound like a mad uncle.
I listened to it yesterday when Bolt posted it on his blog saying Jones savaged him, but I don’t think he did anything of the sort. Not one point Jones made was a clincher, all he did was scream unreason. Had Turnbull screamed back all he would have done was lower himself to Jones’ level.
Stephen: You sound just like my departed mum! I’m not in favour of screaming back either. Just quietly leaning over, plucking the earphones of Jones’ ears and giving him a silent, but deadly clout.
“If all the data does suggest that the 50+s are the strongest supporters of tough border protection laws (and have been all along) and are more likely to believe that the Coalition are going to handle the issue better, wouldn’t the voting intention already be structurally locked-in for this cohort and therefore much less likely to experience a swing if the issue is given a high profile during the polling cycle? That is to say, wouldn’t you expect a greater movement in those not already converted ie the <50s?"
I was thinking the same thing. Just because the over-50s care about this issue more, doesn't mean they will swing more when the issue becomes prominent does it? The groups of over-50s that care may already be in the coalition camp. When an issue such as this rises to prominence it may be those that ordinarily don't pay much attention that are more heavily influenced by the media furore.
Possum, can we go back to any polling evidence around the time of Tampa to see which demographic groups' voting intentions were most sensitive to that issue? That is, whose voting intentions changed the most?
That said, the size of the change, and its timing do look suspect, so it makes sense to reserve judgement on whether the movements is "real" or not until other polls are released over the coming weeks.
(Apols LO, you were lounging around in the spam bin…Poss)
Just wondering: Why on earth would Newspoll not have asked about asylum seekers???
Hey would anyone say that it’s also a bit unusual that primary and 2PP has undergone such a big swing, with the other ratings (satisfaction, PPM) remain unchanged?
Grog, the polls are commissioned by The Australian, Newspoll only asks what The Oz commissions them to ask.
I tend to go further than “outlier”. Something’s up with Newspoll. The other polls are too homogenous for this one to stand serious scrutiny.
Yes I know that, my question was more, why on earth didn’t the Oz get them to ask the quesiotn.
This will be an excellent win for the Coalition. Russ has failed on immigration policy. Only the Labor stooges will confine it to a mere outlier to suit their own political agenda.
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