Last week’s Newspoll result – a 2PP of 52-48 – sent the media into a flurry of speculation about what caused the Narrowing [TM]. But it was a single, aberrant poll result – at the same time, Essential Research came out at 59-41 (unchanged from the previous week) and last Friday Morgan’s latest came out at 61-39. Taken as a whole, the most plausible conclusion from recent polling is that last week’s Newspoll is an outlier – as Possum noted here and here.
But that hasn’t stopped some in the media – as well as the pollies themselves – from attempting to explain what caused it. We now have a thread of so-called common wisdom that says Rudd has taken a hit in the polls, most likely over his handling of asylum seeker issues – although any other events that have happened in recent weeks (rising interest rates, the climate change and emissions trading debates, etc.) can always be folded in there as well. Now, the results of two new polls – including the next Newspoll – are expected in the next couple of days. Instead of waiting for those sage minds in the media to tell us what the results mean, why don’t we get a head start by making our own predictions?
As the 2009 US election day got underway (on Tuesday in the US and Wednesday over here), Andrew Bolt gave his take on the situation in New York’s 23rd Congressional district:
Stand firm – and for something
Here’s the story. There’s a by-election for a House seat in upstate New York, and the Republican machine chooses Dede Scozzafava, a kind of Turnbull-like politician who could just as easily have stood for the Democrats.
The grassroots Republicans get upset that their party has lurched to the Left, me-tooing what it should be fighting. Sarah Palin gets upset, too, and decides to endorse instead the candidate who most clearly stands for her party’s values – Doug Hoffmann, who is actually the candidate for the tiny Conservative Party
In New York’s 23rd Congressional District, Douglas L. Hoffman, a little known accountant running on the Conservative Party line, conceded after midnight to his Democratic rival, Bill Owens, after driving a moderate Republican from the race.
Let’s kick the weekend off a little early with a fresh open thread to discuss the weekend’s news and activities. Remember that the links to the current open threads are always available in the sidebar to the right of the page – except when the site breaks and the sidebar disappears.
We’ll update with details about TV programming for political tragics as they come to hand.
UPDATE: Sunday free-to-air line-ups courtesy of Your Sunday Morning TV – follow the link for Sky and more FTA schedules:
At 8 am, Meet the Press has Eleanor Hall and Glenn Milne interviewing Peter Garrett and the Sri Lankan High Commissioner, Senaka Walgampaya.
After 8:30 am, Today on Sunday has Laurie Oakes interviewing TBA.
At 9 am, Insiders has Barrie interviewing Wayne Swan, the panel is Karen Middleton, David Marr and Piers Akerman, and Inside Pictures has Fiona Katauskas talking to Jack the Insider.
MORE public housing units are being demolished than built under Kevin Rudd’s $42 billion economic stimulus package, designed to buoy the building industry.
As at two weeks ago, only 73 new houses had been completed under the $5.4bn spending package, announced in February, while hundreds of existing homes had been demolished to make way for new buildings.
Silly government – it should’ve known The Australian was expecting the buildings to be finished two weeks ago, regardless of when the government ever said they’d be finished. The program’s success can and should be judged on how many buildings are built before they’re scheduled to be built. The fact that at this particular arbitrarily-chosen point they’ve technically gone backwards just proves they’re not fit to govern. Why can’t they complete the new buildings BEFORE they demolish the ramshackle, unliveable ones currently occupying those sites? Eh? Eh? Read More »
Whoever turns out to be right on the subject of climate change (and, for what it’s worth, I hope against hope it’s the defiant “skeptics”), what’s with the gloating from people like tim Blair?
In the spirit of the Spring racing carnival, the team at Pure Poison would like to offer our readers the opportunity to show off their skills as punters. We’re not interested in your opinion on a bunch of gee gees piloted around an oval in front of drunken Melburnians, we’d like you to show us your chops as predictors of the punditocracy.
The existence of El Nino, which has usefully been used to claim that the world has been cooling since 2000, is about to become a thorn in some people’s sides in 2010.
Jason Wilson at New Matilda on columnists who write deliberately inflammatory, trolling drivel, knowing it’ll drive hits on their websites and advertising dollars for their bosses – or, as he calls them, “trollumnists“.
As the newspaper business model heads south, though, we’ve been subjected to the rise of what we might christen the “trollumnist” — the writer who simply “trolls” in a multichannel, multimedia environment. And the erstwhile self-identification of papers like the Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian as quality outlets matters little in the attention economy: on the internet, no one knows you’re a broadsheet. Whereas a true columnist might make controversial arguments or challenge common sense, trollumnists merely provoke outrage in order to sell papers, draw links and capture increasingly scarce reader attention. The beauty of it all is that it doesn’t take much training to do it, and as media content goes, it’s cheap as chips. Any fool can offend people given a reasonably prominent platform.
Here is the open thread for this week, feel free to use this as a place to carry on discussion that would be considered off topic elsewhere. This thread can be accessed from the sidebar.
As a starter, I missed Insiders yesterday morning so completely missed Annabel Crabb’s “University of East Bumcrack” jibe at Andrew Bolt’s expense, but it has been immortalised on a raglan T, with proceeds going to a charity nominated by Ms Crabb.
I’m going to start off this week at Pure Poison with a quick look at Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair’s recent highly amusing columns about the other side on the climate control debate CALLING THEM NAMES.
Immeasurably hurt
[Jill Singer's] abuse is representative – of a form of argument now typically unleashed in all our most value-loaded political debates. Some examples?
If you point out the world has in fact cooled since 2001, you are to be called a “denier”, which warming believer Prof Robert Manne admitted in September he meant as a slur to liken you to those who “claimed that the Holocaust was a fraud”.
“Intellectual dishonesty is pure poison…” — Edward Lazarus
We expose the intellectual dishonesty, the flimsy arguments and the distorted data wherever they appear in the mainstream media. We challenge the punditocracy, and provide an alternative forum for discussing the day’s events. We welcome debate about politics and society, but constructive debate needs to be based on reason and facts. We’re doing our bit to hold the opinion-makers to these standards.
