Pollytics

Politics, elections and piffle plinking

First big polling on Asylum Seeker issue

November 2, 2009 – 3:23 pm, by Possum Comitatus

This weeks Essential Report has the primaries running 49 (down 1) / 35 (down 1) to Labor, washing out into a two party preferred of 59/41 the same way – steady since last week. The Greens are on 8 (steady), while the broad “Others” are up 1 to 8. The missing point is due to rounding. This comes from a two week rolling sample of 2007, giving us an MoE that maxes out around the 2.2% mark.

Additional questions this week are on the asylum seeker issue and one on climate change. These come from a sample of 1122 for an MoE that maxes out around the 2.9% mark.

This is the long awaited polling on public perceptions of the asylum seeker issue and it’s politics – what is really worth noting is how the set of responses collectively paint a far more sophisticated picture of the country than a simple pro/anti asylum seeker stance leading into a pro/anti government policy stance and any consequent  pro/anti Labor/Coalition position.  Yet again, the public shows itself to be a little more complicated than some of our punditry muppets would have us believe. I’ve reordered the questions from as they appear in the actual report to start with the wider issues, before narrowing to the politics and finishing off with the ultimate political question on the issue.

The Federal Government is currently working with the Indonesian government to stop asylum seekers entering Australian waters. For each of the below statements that have been made about current incident of asylum seekers, please indicate your level of agreement.

asylum1

The cross-tabs tell us: Read More »

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NSW State Polling

November 2, 2009 – 9:44 am, by Possum Comitatus

Newspoll over the weekend via The Oz released another rather hideous poll for the NSW government showing the primaries running 42 (up 1) / 30 (down 2) to the Coalition, washing out into a two party preferred of 55/45 the same way – a 1 point increase to the Opposition over the last 2 months. The Greens are on 12 (down 2), while the broad “Others” are on 16 (up 3). This comes from a sample of 1271, giving us an MoE that maxes out around the 2.8% mark.

Along with the voting intentions, this poll also had all the metrics running against the Rees government with his satisfaction down, dissatisfaction up and preferred premier dipping a point as well. On the other hand, Opposition leader Barry O’Farrell had a mixed bag with his satisfaction and dissatisfaction both up (at the expense of his undecideds), while his preferred premier metric bounced up 3 points to 36 – giving him a 5 point lead over Rees.

With the ALP primary vote so low and optional preferential voting running in NSW, the two party preferred continues to understate the size of the electoral flogging Labor would get were an election held and these primary vote figures repeated. It’s interesting that the O’Farrell just can’t  seem to pull his net satisfaction rate up very high considering the rather tragic nature of the NSW government.

The usual charts come in like this:

Read More »

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Victoria State Polling

November 2, 2009 – 9:22 am, by Possum Comitatus

The Newspoll site (and presumably somewhere at The Oz) has a new Victorian State poll out with the primaries running 43 (steady) /35 (down 2) to Labor, washing out into a two party preferred of 57/43 the same way – a 1 point gain to the Labor party over the last two monts. The Greens are on 15 (up 3) while the broad “Others” are on 6 (down 2). This comes from a sample of 1151, giving is an MoE around the 2.9% mark.

In the usual charts below, you’ll notice that Ted Baillieu has a bit of a kick upward in his satisfaction rating, his dissatisfaction rating went down and his preferred premier level lifted – yet the Liberal Party vote contracted by 3 points over the period. Sometimes you can’t take a trick.

Not much to say about this except that it’s the sort of business as usual poll in Victoria we’ve been seeing for the last 6 months. The charts come in as:

Read More »

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Net Access – More Than Just Smut and Piracy

October 29, 2009 – 10:15 am, by Possum Comitatus

With the debate about the National Broadband Network well underway, some of the dismissals of why a population would need higher broadband speeds (or as Kevin Rudd so quaintly called it at the Tasmanian Community Cabinet meeting, “Bandspeed”) – often bounce around somewhere between the ridiculous and the incredulous. It’s not only the economic and social value of bringing higher speeds to market at a decent price point that gets the sceptical treatment by those essentially not across the policy brief, but also scepticism aimed at the rhetoric the government has been deploying over the NBN that it is has the importance and consequences of a key essential service akin to roads, power and water, and should be treated as thus.

Of particular interest to this point is the idea that I’ve heard floated around on broadband subsidies for low income households being a possibility further down the track, and how that would fit into the wider policy mix that seems to be falling under the broad banner of the Education Revolution.

Yesterday the ABS released an interesting set of data on sporting, cultural and technological activity undertaken by 5 to 14 year olds over the past 12 months, broken down into a number of demographic cross-tabs.

Within this ABS release is some pretty interesting data on internet use by kids that’s worth looking at and keeping in one’s thought orbit when it comes to some of the issues surrounding the NBN.

First up, the basics – the proportion of 5-14 year olds that accessed the internet in the last 12 months, and broken down by urban geography.

Figures 1 & 2.

ageaccess geographyaccess

The big jump in net access for kids comes between the ages of 9 and 11. Also interesting is that total net access for the 5-14 year cohort starts falling off the further away you get from a capital city.

On the question of where it is that kids access the internet from, the results show some interesting trends across age. Read More »

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Could the polls actually be undercooked for Labor?

October 27, 2009 – 11:38 am, by Possum Comitatus

Something interesting has been popping up in the polling with the two party preferred vote – there is a statistically significant difference between the two party preferred estimate when poll respondents get to allocate preferences compared to the two party preferred estimate when preferences are allocated on the same basis that they were at the 2007 election.

We have two pollsters that publish these two different ways of allocating preferences to get a two party preferred estimate – Morgan and Nielsen – and in both cases the same phenomenon occurs. There’s been 72 Morgan polls and 13 Nielsen polls since Rudd was elected, so we have a decent set of data to work with – certainly enough to imply that the polls might actually be a little better for Labor than the published headline results suggest.

UPDATE: Nielsen’s headline numbers use respondent preferences even though they measure both , while Morgan and Newspoll use 2007 election preference distributions.

First up, if we run the ALP two party preferred results of each pollster using the two metrics, we get:

roymorgan2 nielsen2

In both cases, the ALP two party vote is consistently higher when respondents get to allocate preferences than when we use the preference distribution of the 2007 election. It’s worth pointing out that the ‘headline number’ used when reporting polls is based on the 2007 preference distribution for Morgan and Newspoll, but not for Nielsen.

If we take the difference between the ALP two party results based on how voters say they will allocate preferences and the ALP two party vote based on the 2007 preference distribution for each pollster, it tells the basic story.

roymorgan3 nielsen3

If we now transform those raw results into the percentage of time that the voter allocated result is higher than the 2007 preference distribution result, and by how much we get: Read More »

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Essential Report – Best to Manage Edition

October 27, 2009 – 6:16 am, by Possum Comitatus

This week’s Essential Report has the primaries running 50 (up 1) / 36 (down 1) to Labor, washing out into a two party preferred of 59/41 the same way – a 1 point gain to the ALP since the last Essential Report. The Greens are on 8 (up 1) while the broad others are steady on 7. This comes from a rolling two week sample of 1967, giving us an MoE that maxes out around the 2.2% mark.

Additional questions this week go to who is best perceived to measure various issues of national importance, as well as some questions on the CPRS. These additional questions come from a sample of 1097, giving us an MoE that maxes out around the 3% mark.

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How important are the following issues in deciding how you would vote at a Federal election?

importance1

It’s worth noting how the importance of issues changes as those issues dominate the media cycle. Consider the issues that have been dominating the media cycle lately – things like border security, post-stimulus economic issues and the CPRS – and the categories they could broadly fit into have all lifted, with Security/War on Terrorism and Climate change lifting by large margins compared to public perception back in March of this year.

Leadership also had an interesting drop down the list over the period.

Read More »

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2010 Pendulum

October 24, 2009 – 8:35 am, by Possum Comitatus

Antony has the new pendulum for 2010 over on his site. What I thought was interesting about it was the chunkiness of the swings for seats for each party around the center of the pendulum – say, a 6% uniform swing each way. If we take Labor first and chart the seats they would gain with a given uniform swing (and note the seat number this would be for them in a new parliament) we get:

alppendulum

The 99th ALP seat would become Hinkler from a uniform swing to Labor of 1.5%. But to get the 100th seat – Boothby – the uniform swing required is 2.9%, nearly twice the swing of the 99th seat. That’s a lot of uniform swing for no action between 1.5 and 2.9.

For the Coalition we have: Read More »

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Greens choose moralising crypto-communist for Higgins

October 23, 2009 – 9:45 am, by Possum Comitatus

The Greens have chosen a pro-net censorship, hysterical purveyor of moral panics and all round crypto-communist to stand in the Liberal heartland seat of Higgins.

A seat where the ALP isn’t running, where the Greens actually stood a chance to take the seat with a really good candidate – but where, instead of showing some political smarts and pre-selecting a blue-Green, have opted to alienate half the electorate straight way and chosen a red-Green in the form of Clive Hamilton .

Absolutely baffling.

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Howard vs. Rudd at 23 months

October 22, 2009 – 7:33 am, by Possum Comitatus

Just a quicky with 3 charts using Newspoll monthly averages -  a  look at Howard vs. Rudd on net satisfaction, preferred PM and the two party preferred over comparative time periods. Rudd is in red, Howard in blue along with their respective axis.

howardryddnetsat howardruddppm

howardrudtpp

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Media, Leadership and the Structural Change of Australian Politics

October 21, 2009 – 9:26 am, by Possum Comitatus

This post could also be called “How to explain nearly everything about big P politics in 4 simple charts”.

Australian politics, or rather the dynamics of the relationship between the public and the party in government, has been undergoing a significant transformation over the last 25 odd years. In many respects, that is to be expected – the speed of the news cycle has changed, the quantity of media has increased dramatically and as a result, political parties, particularly those in government, have adapted to their new environment by changing the tactical and strategic approaches to the way they engage with the public.

We now get governments spending 18 hours a day trying to bump, shift and prod the news cycle in ways that lead to politically beneficial results. We have much more presidential style campaigns and nearly everything about government these days is first pushed through a sort of public relations meat grinder before it gets deemed fit for human consumption.

This change in the way that political parties relate to and engage with the public has significantly changed the way the public perceive the party in government – which in turn probably creates a bit of a feedback loop, further changing the way the Prime Minister goes about that part of his business dedicated to staying in government.

To show it’s how all been working, we’ll take three Newspoll metrics; the Primary Vote of the government, the Prime Ministers Satisfaction Rating and the PM’s Preferred Prime Minister rating – and rather than use each Newspoll separately, we’ll take monthly averages of these ratings to knock out some volatility (so each month will be the average of 2 or 3 separate Newspolls).

To start with, if we take a look at the Howard Government from April 1996 (the month after it was elected) through to the Ryan by-election of May 2001 – what we find is that these three metrics all tracked each other very closely over the period, and at roughly the same level.

howardmk1

The dynamics of the government/public relationship was such that the Prime Minister neither lifted nor depressed the party vote very much. Satisfaction levels and Preferred PM levels generally matched the primary vote level of the government over any given arbitrary period. This was – in terms of political behaviour –the first Howard government… Howard Mk I if you will.

It was ultimately unsustainable. Howard was on a hiding to nothing by the time of the Ryan by-election, where Labor grabbed Brisbane’s heartland Liberal Party seat when John Moore retired. In response to what then looked like an impending smashing at the 2001 election, Howard dramatically changed his behaviour – becoming a much more populist style leader and becoming much more aggressive in the way he managed the media.

If we now move on to the Howard Mk 2 era, from June 2001 through to October 2007, we can see the dramatic difference this had on the dynamics of the government/public relationship. Read More »

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