(This piece was first published in the website Independent Australia yesterday. It was an expansion of a shorter piece I put up in these columns on Friday. It makes a prediction of what Newspoll will show tonight, and explains how it was probably arrived at, and the fraudulence — in my view — of that process. The prediction may be entirely wrong, but I put it up anyway, just in case, because if it is accurate it will change world history.)
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, and so it will go, on Tuesday next when Labor, 42, down from 45, and Abbott, 34, up from 30, and beating Gillard 41 to 37, will in the Newspoll contradict the current feeling that Craig’s oration, the Swan Budget, the defiant hooker, the economic figures, the employment figures, the nanny allowance and the Pyne-Abbott dash for the door has done the Tories harm.
The figures will be arrived at by, well, a kind of 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, the friendless and the mad and they, as always, will favour the Liberals, the Nationals, Family First, the DLP and the LNP.
And the effect on Labor this time will be devastating. Gillard’s last shred of hope will go and Rudd will be asked to challenge and out of the wash, out of the cradle endlessly rocking, in a week or two, or four, a new leader will emerge. Crean, perhaps, who will lose; not Carr or Shorten, who could win. Or Plibersek or Combet or Roxon who could run Abbott close.
But in fact the poll will be wrong. It will be no more than an indication of the absence this weekend from their 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.
Martin O’Shannessy will know this, and print the bent figures anyway. Rupert will like that. He lives, and rules, by bent figures. By forged Hitler diaries and bent figures.
How do I know all this? Well, I noticed one year how the Labor vote plummeted just before Christmas, and came back again, resurrected, vigorous and confident, after Australia Day.
And I checked it the following year, when it happened again, and the year after, when it happened again.
And I worked out that schoolteachers who always vote or prefer Labor, were almost by definition out of town, away from their fixed line phones, on those Christmas-holiday weeks. And they were the biggest profession, with a quarter of a million votes, and their absence would actually alter the total vote.
And it happened year after year for seven years (and you can look it up), so it was clear that not only was this happening, but O’Shannessy and his predecessors at Newspoll were doing nothing to correct it.
And this meant in turn that it would happen again on the Easter, Queen’s Birthday and Labor Day weekends. And O’Shannessy would not correct those findings also.
And he will not this Tuesday likewise. Wait and see.
Is this crooked? Well, it’s what you might call benign neglect. It’s like saying some schoolchildren buy cigarettes illegally through an intermediary, but cigarettes are a legal product for adults, and there’s nothing much we can do about that, and the cigarettes they buy will eventually kill them, but, hey, that’s the law, they’re a legal product, what can we do?
O’Shannessy knows a lot of his Newspolls are wrong because of weather events (the Queensland floods, for instance) or sporting events (like football finals, or the Bathurst 500), or cultural difficulties (his pollsters, I’m told, hang up on impenetrable foreign accents); and he can’t legally ring mobile phones though he knows this diminishes year by year the Labor vote, or it probably does. But, hey, what can he do? Start doorknocking again? That’s too expensive.
Better to print the untruth. The anti-Labor untruth.
Rupert, his chief customer, likes it that way.
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Very impressed with Julia on tonight’s Q&A…if Abbott can improve on that, I’ll promise to vote for him
There were some grumpy looking older Aussie males in the audience…maybe they were all from Queensland with old-fashioned ideas about female leaders…
That grumpy looking older male in the top right corner of this blog wanted her de-selected. A New South Welshman I believe.
Julia did reasonably well on Q&A this evening, with a fairly sympathetic audience for the most part. Let’s start a conspiracy theory to whit, she was aware of Rupert’s machinations and decided to go on the telly to counteract them.
She’s almost made it past the Carbon Tax event horizon. Everyone’s waiting to see what will happen when it does kick in. I suspect her potential usurpers are a bunch of fence sitters who’ll probably bite their tongues for a few weeks yet.
The one thing that I think is going to work in Labor’s favour might be the short term panacea of the nice big tax break that comes with the Carbon Tax. Even when they’re potentially a little worse off by year’s end people still like disposable income, and if Abbott wants to get rid of the “great big new tax” (on mining and coal fired power stations), then after July 1st he has to find a way to take back some of the cold hard folding stuff from the very people he most needs to vote for him.
That’s why he’s been so very desperate to get Thomson, Slipper et al. Anything to force an early election because he knows darned well how much easier to win it is when he’s selling fear of a “great big new tax” than when the reality looks like more disposable income!
Welcome aboard HG!
Not one mention of Mr Rabbitt, did you notice – even when fed a line. It is hard to imagine where she might have improved, given that certain agenda items are set and not really negotiable.
A masterly performance.
I agree Helvi – she’s looking on top of her game. Her answers are crisp and she’s showing a humanity that Tony Abbott simply doesn’t have. Can she win an election from here? It all depends on the Carbon Tax. If it effects are overstated, like the GST was back when it was coming in, then she just might be okay. I hope so – I do believe she has depth.
A nervous start, then a masterful performance by Gillard on Q and A.
Her response on same-sex marriage surprised me somewhat; that she views marriage as unnecessary is no surprise, but that she does not want to disturb the Marriage Act seems rather odd. Still, I suppose she is entitled to her own view. A conscience vote may well see the issue get up in the near future, if not right away.
The government’s economic performance is hard to fault, and once the carbon price is implemented without the sky falling in, the polls should self-correct.
Not one mention of Abbott, by the way, even when the questioners begged the question.
Tony Jones’ biases were reasonably apparent in his sniping comments, which Julia ignored with great restraint. Imagine Hawke or Keating barbed and baited the way she was by Jones!
She did mention Abbott. Couldn’t help herself – called him “Tony”.
She’s on top of her game when whe given a free run. Like last night
A free run was it? An open forum with unscripted questions from a potentially hostile audience? And a Liberal supporter sniping at her from the moderators chair?
Free run? You must be joking!
The moderator’s name is “Tony” : Tony Jones.
Once again conspiracy, conspiracy, conspiracy. Despite Labor having great economic figures, and handing out plenty of cash they are not gaining traction. The insinuation that only ALP voters tend to travel over long weekends borders on ludicrous as an explanation for the poor figures. Perhaps, just perhaps, it is because the population has stopped listening. Perhaps they are fed up with Gillard’s fumbles and Labors inconsistencies (to give the PM credit she did put in a decent performance on Q&A last night – this however will only sway the muesli munchers anyway). Gillard will be gone by the end of September. Prove that I lie, and prove it sans conspiracy theories Bob.
Resorting to such measures only highlights the fact there is no credible explanation to the contrary, therefore proving it must be the truth.
If they have stopped listening why did half a million of them go back to Labor in the past month? And three quarters of a million go to Gillard and away from Abbott?
The lead the Coalition has in the two-party stakes (apparently according to conspiracy ridden polls you would have us believe) would lead to a crushing defeat of the ALP. Plain and simple. Do you disagree?
Surely you would expect more people to come flooding back after such great economic figures were smugly released by Swan last week and when the ‘Tax That Shall Not Be Named’ compensation hits the bank accounts of punters… only half a million though. Troublesome. Very much so. Surely they don’t have much more money to give out? The budget surplus is razor thin.
Or maybe, just maybe those not in the mining sector in QLD and WA are feeling the pinch more than the gov’t cares to admit. Maybe they don’t like being told to have a ‘spring in their step’ when they are struggling to afford increased everyday cost of living expenses. Maybe, just maybe, the bounce they got is a movement of voters away from the Greens back to the ALP (the sane ALP voters who have realised the folly of voting Green, and who now without Intergalactic Bob resemble a Soviet style party rather than an environmental one). As you’d know Bob the growth figures, once mining is removed, are dismal. One need to only have watched Q&A last night to realise that some people view the gov’ts attacks on Gina and co as rank hypocrisy when it is their businesses (amongst others) who are propping up the growth figures – the spring inducing ones. But the gov’t will no doubt continue to play both sides, and march merrily towards defeat (if the real Julia is out of the bag already, which Julia will be leading the party at defeat time?) And so it goes.
A crushing defeat, yes, but a month ago it was obliteration. What part of the word ‘improvement’ can’t you understand? Or the concept, three quarters of a million more votes for Gillard than on Anzac Day? And half a million less votes for Abbott?
If you think these figures bode well for Abbott, please say so.
Bode well is perhaps too strong a phrase. But as you know there have been unpopular leaders (on a personal) level who have gone on to tremendous victories. It is the blessing of the Westminster system that it is not a popularity contest, rather a contest of parties and ideals.
Don’t expect instant results now. After July sees the death of most of the scare campaigns, look for a genuine change in the tide.