Murdoch likes to bring good news to the Liberals when they are down and depress the mood of Labor when they think they are winning. And so it will be on Tuesday when when Labor, 42, down from 45, and Abbott, 34, up from 30, and beating Gillard 41 to 37, will in Tuesday’s Newspoll contradict the current feeling that Craig’s oration, the Swan Budget, the defiant hooker, the economic figures and the Pyne-Abbott dash for the door has done the Tories harm.
The figures will be arrived at by cheating.
This is how it will be done.
Much of the Labor vote will be away on the long weekend and no mobile phones will be rung. Those still home will be the old, the ill, the childless, friendless and mad and they, as always, will favour the Liberals, the Nationals, Family First and the LNP.
And the effect on Labor will be devastating. Gillard’s last shred of hope will go and Rudd be asked to challenge and out of the wash, in a week or two, a new leader will emerge. Crean, perhaps, who will lose; not Carr or Shorten, who could win.
But in fact the poll will be wrong. It will just be the absence from the landline phones of those in caravans, on boats, at Darling Harbour, in 3D movies, in restaurants, at the Film Festival, bushwalking with their children or visiting their mothers in country towns.
O’Shannessy will kmow this, and print the bent figures anyway. Rupert will like that. He lives, and rules, by bent figures.
And what can O’Shannessy do? It’s the figures that will come in. It’s the way of the world. He’s not being dishonest. It’s the way the available vote went that weekend.
And so it goes.
Name:
They’ll probably just ring WA and Qld.
Totally representative, all above board.
Complete balance.
I think you are right on this one Bob. It’s freezing cold in Qld this weekend so no bushwalking. I will be at home sitting next to my landline waiting for Rupert to call. I always tell them I’m a Greens supporter who will be now voting for Tony Abbott. That really confounds and thrills them…The Morgan poll pays you for your opinions on say banking or insurance issues. Once you are on their database they call and email you regularly for your opinions and pay you with vouchers and gift cards. Should be no difference with politicians.
How long is your weekend?
Is my calendar wrong about it not being a holiday Monday in QLD?
I don’t like News Limited and its biased reporting either, and I loathe Tories (especially the Australian version) but I DO like your fourth last paragraph. I hope there’s a challenge and Gillard goes as early as this month, and if Rupert Murdoch contributes to a good outcome for once in his life, so what? [I think you're wrong about Newspoll though. Strangely, it has been showing relatively good results for Labor and Julia Gillard lately(compared to Morgan, for example). I think this means Rupert really wants Julia to stay, as this would ensure an Abbott victory.]
Eighteen million years.
I admire your tenacity Tiny Dancer.
Keep it up man.
I do not understand.
I accept that pollsters ringing at night or on weekends – Newspoll, Essential or whoever – will never get a totally accurate poll of voting intentions because first, it is not election day and secondly, election day is in the daytime on a specific Saturday and voting is compulsory.
But that applies to every poll on voting intentions and it is my understanding that there has always been some allowance for this made by pollsters.
As I have said before on this blog, certainly the practice of not calling mobile numbers will, as time goes on, increasingly distort all polls (not just political polls) as people flee from land lines.
All that said, where is your evidence that there is a disproportion of Coalition voters among the “old, the ill, the childless, friendless”. Convince me.
As to the mad, some of the postings on contributors to this blog strongly suggest that the Coalition does not have a monopoly here.
The evidence, Bob?
Please answer.
Well, the old vote Liberal by 60 or 65 percent. This is known. It is measured and it is known. Liberal voters do not read books much. This is known. Those who do not read books make less money than those who do. This is measurable, and known. And the insane include the yellow-peril-sink-the-boat-people seven percent who always vote Liberal or One Nation or Shooters.
The critical figure is prosperous young parents with children who vote Labor mostly and are not in the house on holiday weekends.
These make the two percent difference that matters on holiday weekends or Christmas holidays.
Or am I wrong?
Well, in the absence of any scientific measurement of these things, I cannot accept your statements alone as conclusive proof.
If these things are so well known, eg Liberal voters do not read books much, where can I locate statistics that bear out your statements.
Sorry, Bob, you continually ask posters to your blog to prove things and you should apply those same standards to yourself. With respect.
Jesus Christ, look it up. Any analysis of any election.
Antony Green. Look it up.
“Jesus Christ, look it up. Any analysis of any election.”
Unless there’s someone running around recording the identity of each voter and the relevant demographic data, I can’t see how any election analyis would provide this information.
And if I were to share with you the pertinent facts of my life, there’s no way you’d peg me as a current Liberal voter purely by applying your assumptions Bob.
And?
So, are you telling me that if I look up Antony Green’s or other election pages, I will find statistics that identify people who are ill, childless, friendless and/or insane and that that same page or blog will show that these people favor the Liberal Party?
Are you telling me that social or electoral pollsters interview people, asking them their electoral preference and than ask them to place themselves in one of the following categories – a) old (possibly), b)childless (possibly), c) friendless (I do not think so) or d) mad (even less likely).
Should I post on Antony’s election blog and ask him these questions?
Would it just not be easier for you to direct me to a web page, any web page, that will confirm this for me?
Bob, you quite rightly ask posters to your blog to produce evidence to back up what they say. Please comply with your own standards on this one.
Perhaps some subtlety is preferable in asking those questions, dawsonb; I’m you can think of a reasonable way to explore each category!
One from the left field, Bob. Did your team lose? Are you saying Labor’s analysts can’t also put the polls into perspective? Do you have a hotline to make sure they do? Anyway, hypotheticals… Rudd? Labor simply can’t now, end of story. Shorten. Intelligent. Good speaker but News Ltd and Opposition would go to town on backstabbing bullshit…Carr? Improve the NSW vote? We don’t care where they come from in Vic, the thinking person’s state. Queensland? WA? Crean, the compromise? One of the few who came out unscathed from Latham’s Diaries, but the unfortunate sneer, the public didn’t warm to him when leader, why now? Unlike the coalition, Labor has depth. So, next?
Jason Clare. Plibersek. Combet. Roxon.
Or, after a brief phone call and a swap with McLelland, Beazley.
Or Beattie.
Can we have a Beazley/Combet ticket ? Both are modest and smart and have interests outside politics which is the essential qualification.
Jason Clare. Who’s that, and that is his big problem. You need to be seen by the public to have earned your stripes.
Plibersek. Imagine replacing a woman with a woman in this misogynistic environment. Besides she looks too young, and not convinced either how tough or smart is Tanya.
Combet. Is smart. Might be tough, too. But looks uncomfortable in front of cameras, like he always needs to swallow. Doesn’t reassure the public at this stage.
Roxon. Ditto, replacing a woman with a woman
Beazley. Huff and puffs but always looks uncertain. The public don’t listen, the media aren’t interested, so basically I think that means boring.
Beattie. Looks the real deal in wide brimbed hat and shorts but seems to have lost the fire needed.
Pity Labor hadn’t recruited Bob Brown instead of Garrett. Statesmanly; looks like a Labor PM [from the past], talks in quiet clear terms. If only…
So, Bob, Like I said good depth, but next.
Who’s that is what people first said of Putin. People soon get to know them, as they did Carr, Keating, Dunstan, Beattie, Obama.
It’s not what you did before, it’s what you do after.
Beazley was so unimpressive he won nineteen seats off Howard thirty months after Howard won twenty-two off Keating.
Too true about Beazley’s gains but probably as much about Howard introducing the GST he said he wouldn’t. And he made a fight of the next one, even if he botched Tampa. And I guess nothing wrong with a boring PM. Howard both personified and exploited it. All right. Back to the hypothetical. Gillard is replaced by Beazley, Clare, Shorten, or Carr. I would go for Carr of the four of them. Already looking impressive in Foreign Affairs. How long are you giving them the caretaker’s job before an election “so that people will soon get to know them?”
No, he brought in the GST after that election. Get it right.
Whoever wins will be PM till September or October 2013.
True about the timing of the GST, but he did propose it before the election, it was on the table, and after the election he said he had the mandate to introduce it. Remeber it well. So who is your first choice to lead the party?
He had no mandate, Beazley got four hundred thousand more votes than he. Get it right.
Carr.
Well the only real mandategained from an election is the right to govern.The people own the mandatebecause theoretically they are above the govt. A mandate can be aquired through a referendum. Nevertheless governments, like Howard’s, link it to the parliamentary majority for convenience sake. Like you said, Beazley nearly got 2% more of the vote. Put him in a strong position. So why didn’t he win the next election?
So if your opponent gets more votes YOU have mandate? Really? Who told you that?
So if your opponent gets more votes YOU have mandate? “Really? Who told you that?”
You need to re-read what I said
Doug Cameron.
Jesus, I hope you are joking…I reckon he loses 1000 votes each time he appears on TV.
No, not joking.
Tells it like it is.
Gets him lots of respect from us lowly types.
If your accusations mean anything, you will back off and apologize to O’Shaughnessy if Labor gets up in the new Newspoll and stop accusing the firm that has had the right 2PP winner since Bracks with fraud?
So someone banned for life just banned me? Look, essential to political discussion is political strategy. If you can’t figure out how to get something done than your beliefs and policies are useless.
No, Bob has taken over the comment. Bananas is the one banned, not you! (I think)
No, clearly O’Shaughnessy deserves no credit for providing what you consider a nearly correct poll. He is still a leper and a cheat? Why do you attack an inexact science, when the problems become clear.
The polls won’t change overnight, but if by August Labor draw level – which they should – Abbott will be removed.
Sic transit gloria.
Abbott persists in the Big Lie. It won’t wash past August, and he is Dead Man Walking.
Along with Pyne and everyone’s deputy.
Banned for life.
Fuck you.
Fair enough. But before I go,answer my question.
Have you talked to anyone who knows about this stuff about your conclusions?
There seems to be a discontinuity in the Space/Time continuum around this comment, Bob.
Call in Dr Who.
Bob, have you ever wondered why no one else has remarked on the inaccurate way these polls are done? Not the ALP, not the political commentators, not the academics who study public opinion and polling? Have you ever discussed the issue with any of these people? There is a fair bit of science involved in sampling and in the methodology of polling and I am sure that some of those who have made a career out of studying it would be happy to talk to you.
Who is that bloke at Crikey who analyses this stuff?
And does it bother you that all the polls are pretty close? Surely Murdoch does not control them all?
They all say that the ALP is in serious trouble.
Are they all wrong?
Or and I making a fool of myself by not getting the joke? Perhaps I am, sometimes I am accused of taking things too seriously.
If you are joking, please send us a sign.
Just joking.
Tell me what in my analysis sounds wrong to you.
Have you been talking to Mungo McCallum, Bob? Labor will bounce, and Abbott will totter, and totter on until August.
Dead Man Walking.
Labor has only to hold its nerve.