Not that it actually stopped to begin with, we have this months Nielsen today in Fairfax (demographic tables here) coming in with the primaries running 45 (down 1)/ 38 (up 1) to Labor, washing out into a two party preferred of 56/44 the same way – a one point increase to the Coalition since the last Nielsen poll in October. The Greens are on 9 (down 1) while the broad “Others” are sitting on 7 (steady). This comes from a sample of 1400, giving us an MoE that maxes out around the 2.6% mark.
Normality resumes.
Rudd has taken a slight clip in the approval ratings and preferred PM which you can see in the charts below, but it’s just more ebbs and flows of they type he’s experienced over the last 6 months. There was some additional questions measuring public perceptions on asylum seeker policy, but we’ll get to them later today where we’ll compare the Nielsen results and last week’s Essential Report results with a set of questions asked over the weekend and published in today’s Oz – although strangely they havent published the voting intention estimates…. perhaps tomorrow.
Meanwhile, the usual charts come in like this:
14 Comments
“We have normality; I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can’t cope with is therefore your own problem.”
-Douglas Adams
“Houston, we do not have a problem”.
how about “Huston we don’t have a problem’
I loved John Stirton’s (sp?) explanation on NewsRadio of the difference between the response to the asylum seeker questions Newspoll and Nielsen got. Stirton pointed out that Nielsen asked about Rudd’s handling of the problem whereas Newspoll asked about the Government’s handling of the problem and people are fond of Rudd so they cut him more slack than the Government.
All those poor Coalition pollies hoping that today would be a ground-hog day of the right kind for a change. Is there a crime “unnecessary cruelty to coalition politicians” on the statue books anywhere?
She loves me … She loves me not … She loves me … She loves me not … SHE LOVES ME!
Meanwhile today, over in that alternate universe (and ever shrinking one) called the Oz:
The Newspoll findings follow a seven-percentage-point slide in primary support for the Rudd government in the most recent survey of voting intentions, amid increasing political tension surrounding a surge in asylum-seeker arrivals.
Last week, Newspoll found Labor had drawn level with the Coalition with 41 per cent of the primary vote, although the government maintained a lead of 52 per cent to 48 per cent in two-party-preferred terms.
…so I guess that means that any crap poll, as long as it’s Newspoll and utterly off the dial, is OK to keep quoting despite clear evidence it was wrong?
These hacks aren’t allowed to actually think for themselves, are they? Perhaps the poor things can’t?
“…so I guess that means that any crap poll, as long as it’s Newspoll and utterly off the dial, is OK to keep quoting despite clear evidence it was wrong?”
The headline on the ABC news site was that Rudd’s numbers continue to slide despite the actual story being about the Nielsen poll showing only a 1% dip. Outlier or not that poll is now part of the storyline the media is running with. To be fair I concede it is much more interesting story for them than “Australians still do not like asylum seekers but do not want to change their vote”.
G’day Possum,
Just a quick question – I’ve always been a bit curious about the potential for the polls to influence each other via their influence on the punters POV. With the latest roguey Newspoll getting some pretty decent coverage, would it be unreasonable to expect that some of that (possibly) bodgy result may leak into future polling – by Newspoll or others?
Do you think there is a significant potential for serial correlation within and between polls?
(Apologies upfront if this is territory you’ve already traipsed through!)
All the same Rabitoh, a crooked pollster would have to be very clever because with only the two major parties you get the situation:- what one party loses the other main party picks up. Which is why the charts depict each main party as being a mirror image of the other one. If one party showed chart-lines which were not mirrored by the other Party it would be suspicious, especially as Poss keeps the Greens, the others, the undecided, etc quite separate.
Sorry Poss, I got carried away, Rabitoh was talking to you, not me.
I’d love see a polly trend that included the primary vote and the ‘greens’ and ‘others’.
Hullo Venise,
Actually, I was less concerned about conscious deception on the part of the pollsters, and more about the possibility of movement in one poll having a subtle but perhaps measurable influence on the next poll. In this case, I was wondering whether media coverage of this pretty radical 14 point turnaround in Newspoll may itself result in flow-on effects in future polls. I had read on PB that Newspoll were out in the field this weekend just gone at the same time as many media outlets are still mentioning last week’s Newspoll (Neilsen must have been as well). Hypothetically, there may a number of people in the sampled thousand or so, who while not particularly engaged in issues hear the words “Rudd drops 14 points in the latest Newspoll” and think to themselves “Well that must have happened for a reason”, and formulated their response to the latest poll with that in mind.
I’m not, by the way, saying that I think it happens. But was curious whether it MIGHT happen from poll to poll, and if so, whether uber-pseph Possum might be able to measure it.
rabittoh – I think you are right – there is the herd mentality… how large an effect there is though is something I wouldn’t have a clue about.
I was amused to see that my 56/44 hunch is spot on with this Nielsen
@Cuppa
No it should go… she loves me, she loves me, she loves me, she loves me, she loves me, she loves me, she loves me, she loves me, she loves me, she loves me not, she loves me