Newspoll predicted the Katter Party would get four percent five weeks ago, then nine percent on election day, when it got twelve. Twelve is more than the Greens mostly get and more than the National Party, federally, ever gets, these days.
And in the Newspoll this morning it is not mentioned. There is a figure of 6.6 for ‘Others’ — which includes, presumably, the combined votes for Wilkie, Windsor, Oakeshott, Katter, Crook, the DLP, Family First, One Nation, the Democrats, the Shooters, the Christian Democrats and the Katter Party.
Bullshit it does. The Katter Party got twelve percent on its own in Queensland, and has a presence already in New South Wales and Western Australia. Why is it not listed on its own? Why is the LNP not listed on its own? Why not the National Party? Does the ‘Coalition’ total include Crook? It shouldn’t; which would bring their ‘base’ vote down to 46.
Even thus on the morning of the revelation of his part in the present ‘Bribes For Cameron’ scandal in Britain does Rupert Murdoch again play funny buggers with our democracy. He got the Katter Party’s numbers wrong by one hundred and fifty thousand five weeks ago; and now he is concealing its very existence. He is doing this because this new party’s protectionist and rural-socialist policies will race like wildfire through the regions and get it, if he does not stop it, into coalition government federally next year; with Labor, perhaps, and that would never do.
I ask the fawning jellyback O’Shannessy why he got the figures so wrong, and why he is concealing them now.
And why he got the outcome, two party preferred, wrong by one hundred and eighty-five thousand votes.
Or, as he might more gently express it, six percent.
Six percent.
Something wrong with his methodology, is there?
Like I said?
Name:
Dear Bob,
Just wondering what your thoughts are about the dissolution of the great Australian institution Jet?
M
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/25/cruddas-tories-privilege-arrogance?intcmp=239
Bob, why wouldn’t you have anything to say about the utter deception of conducting a federal poll on the date of a state election?
This Newspoll was conducted over the weekend. Queensland voters would make up some 20-30% of the poll’s metric.
On the very day, or just after the fact, or on the morning after these voters delivered a record routing to their state’s Labor Party, in their right mind, do they tell the polling outfit on the phone they will be voting for federal Labor in 18 months? Of course not.
If polled even today or tomorrow, those selfsame voters would have registered an unemotional response, not registering a statistical blip, and things would appear as they are – hovering around 47, just a gaffe away from an election winning position, just an Andrew Robb press conference from victory.
Hadn’t thought of it. You’re absolutely right.
This makes Labor’s actual vote, today, say, about 49.
Nielsen state breakdowns today have Labor in Queensland on a ridiculous 22 per cent primary, for a 35-65 2PP. I think that’s a 10 point primary drop.
This is what happens to politics for the month that follows the defeat of a Government – people falling over themselves to tell strangers they backed the winner.
I yawned when I read Nielsen today. Without the Queensland metric the numbers would be status quo, but pollsters know how to fiddle and make the figures dance.
John Crown! A masterstroke!
Some of us still punch drunk,
and others thinking 4 steps ahead!
My thoughts on the weekends news?
String Palmer up by his heels for his fucking arrogant, vainglorious, CIA/Greens red herring!
Mongrel!
Well Bob, with respect, you were fairly far off with your estimates of how the Queensland election would go.
As was I.
Yes, I was as far off as Newspoll on the Labor Party.
But not on the Katter Party, where I was spot on.
I didn’t think the result was in doubt, but no-one – no-one – picked the margin.
The band-wagon effect was one thing, and the way Anna Bligh effectively conceded before the election was even held won no friends.
Kristina Keneally pointed out that she fought the good fight right to the end. I am sure she knew as I did and I suspect Bob did, that disaster was inevitable, probably soon after becoming Premier. But she showed true courage in fighting it out.
This is slightly off-topic, but what kind of democracy gives a party with 50% of the vote 90% of the seats? We need to use new technologies and new ideas to improve this situation. It is not representative.
Clearly you’re unfamiliar with how the westminster electoral system works. Yes they only got about 50-60% of the vote, but that’s all you need in each electorate to win.
There are some good arguments for changing the whole system to proportional representation, like the senate, but don’t bitch and moan and pretend the result was in any way corrupt or illegitimate just because you don’t like the LNP.