I’m putting up the ‘Inside Newspoll’ piece again. I ask the Newspoll CEO, Martin O’Shannessy, to contradict it. If he does not, I will take it as an admission of the unstatistical practices he is persisting with. It is hard to see how they are not crimes. I address, with a sigh, this evidence to the Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus, evidence of a fraud not unlike Enron, where false figures were plucked out of the air, or drugs in sport, where ill-gotten victories were predicted, and achieved, and millions won or lost by those betting on the outcome.
Here is the piece. I will add to it when I know more.
I’ve just had a conversation with an employee of Newspoll. He was put on the phone by a friend of mine and he did not tell me his name.
The average respondent, he said, was sixty-five years of age, or older. The best time to ring was on Saturday after lunch. The calls lasted eleven minutes or so, and dealt not just with voting intention but with products and issues other than politics.
Ninety percent of the calls were unsuccessful. Eleven thousand aborted calls would be made, and twelve hundred successful ones. ‘A good score,’ he said, ‘is two successful calls in an hour.’
They were specific to a region, which meant they could be biased towards a demographic, Wahroonga, say, rather than Woy Woy. They were asked to ring ‘every house in the street’.
He was paid twenty dollars an hour. He hoped to get that up to twenty-four dollars an hour when he was ‘promoted’.
The figures were ‘adjusted’, that is, changed, to reflect – or imagine – the younger demographic. The younger demographic, however, was based on the few young people they actually talked to, the ones that had a landline, or were using their parents’ landline. Which pointed to a more conservative demographic.
The conclusions from this are, of course, explosive. It means Newspoll has been underestimating the Labor vote, and the Labor preferred vote, for years now, from when mobiles started taking over the market. And Newspoll could have been underestimating it, if required by its owner Murdoch, even more; as it did last year when it had Romney always ahead, or competitive.
And all the panic in the Labor backroom for two years has been unfounded.
And so it goes.
Name:
Abbott says he is going to release his costings a few hours before polling day. What contempt Liberals have for this country and people. They expect to get in so they can then run the place like slave holding overlords. Putrid filth.
… if the country and its people are held in contempt by Liberals, then my advice for the people is to get angry, take up to their arms, their voting forms, show their anger about this Liberal contempt by NOT voting for them..
In 2007 and 2010, Labor released their costings policy the night before the election. So Rudd is in no position to lecture anyone and I think the Australian public are well and truly over being lectured by him. I am so frustrated by this man. The definition of madness is to keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.
Rosemary,
If not Rudd, then who?
If you do happen to support Abbott then allow me an equal say in reply, similar to the access that you have already gained to me, about Rudd.
no gossip
No Liberal supporter yet has had the courage to address my long asked question of Tony Abbott.
This question goes to the core of human character itself. I wish to hear him directly address the issue of sending pregnant woman asylum seekers back to their country of origin.
If you value human rights you have to ask this question of this man.
No Liberal will debate this. They go to bed with it, this is true madness.
cheers
“Rosemarie,” sorry for that.
You cant live in the past forever Rosemarie.
New times, new politics and like me newer voters.
This did/didn’t crap is so last century is not in our thinking.
Pissing about doesn’t wash anymore.
It is incredibly stupid for an independent-minded elector to accept the “they did it too” argument.
Abbs has had plenty of time to release his figures; he knoww them himself already, clearly. (If not, he is really running a seat-of-the-pants campaign)
So, if he has them in his hands, why can’t he show them to us?
This is not a minor issue, when economic management is just about the key Lib argument for voting for them; it is not a minor issue when independent observers claim there is a very big shortfall in their figures;it is not a minor issue when the world is still going through a huge financial crisis, in which China is now involved, so we are in for tough times most probably
especially when, by every possible international comparison, summed up by the AAA credit rating (rare nowadays), but visible in almost any economic indicator you look at, Labor is running the economy well - so it becomes especially important to know what the alternative government actually plans to do to meet its promises
JS, I think everyone knows this, but no one talks about it, not even Labor politicians, who should keep repeating it ad nauseam…of course Murdoch press ignores it, so does ABC.
This should be our biggest selling point.
Rosebud:-the difference is Labor did not rant on daily for three years about fiscal rectitude and the economy. Anybody who does this,like Abbott, would have his costings up front months before the election to prove they are (wait form it) “Fairdinkum”.
I saw Wong on Sky this morning and you would have thought it was Hockey trying on a hostile interrogation except the speaker was small female and almost intelligible. Wong handled herself very well and did not look like a pollie staring down the barrel
To those people who are hanging their hats on the published polls I say remember Kennett in 1999 and Howard in1998. Howard was even being written of AFTER the polls closed on the basis of election polls and s reportedly was asked by Robb to start on a concession speech.
I say again Turdoch has overcooked things and the blow back against Abbott could be fierce
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ag-mFowwGho#t=0
Here is why we should vote Liberal
Yes. Some people should definitely stay clear of You Tube - from both sides of the political divide.
Very funny though, Nick, you must admit.
Yep.
SMH has an article that Labor has had the smallest cost of living increase of any modern Australian government and add this to very low unemployment 5%, very low interest rates, a growing economy with rising wages, low debt (compared to US, Europe and Asia), major reforms in education, the environment, new technology and work place relations. Yet the stinking Liberal filth and the Murdoch media (and the rest of the cowards) have gotten away with “this is the worst government history’ “What a Labor mess”. What vile, putrid filth they are. If people believe this right wing propaganda (and all the vile Liberal bloggers spreading their cancerous disease) then their suffering will be self inflicted.
What baffles me is that if the Liberals are so confident about winning, why are they now all of the sudden flogging to a Labor blog, being all nasty and argumentative.
Why are they not happier if they are so confident about winning..
A good question.
They can only be here because they fear the influence the blog may have on voters as unlikely as that may seem.
If they disappear like fleas in the wind after the election as seems probable the question will remain.
Kukura,scary cats and bullies at the same time, I suppose they do go together…
PS. I hope you don’t mind me calling you Kukura, anyone can be Malcolm
Liberal people can’t be happy, Helvi. It’s not in their makeup… they pretend to be but they’re not. Too many serious issues to contend with; stopping abortions fixing the private sector unabominating gay sex getting down with big biz stopping the boats saying hello to Obama fixing the economy stopping the gays from marrying massaging Julia’s image as the next FM hiding Chrissie’s gay sex dalliances from public attention demonising anything they don’t agree with polishing TA’s image as a cultured bogan and so on.
It’s a serious business being Liberal.
even grim, reading their faces.
they are looking down the throat of victory with taught, humourless expressions, barely a smile as they go about winning at all costs.
Hidden, they wait.
Victory will not flush them with gratitude, but instead make them even meaner, until all our faces wear that aweful look, fixated, inward gazing, self-loathing, messianic, crazy…
Vote for it? - umm, no thanks…
I wanna be an aussie OI OI OI!
Roll on global warming I say, for it’ll sort out the sleep from the gaze, the deep from the ways and the weep from the days.
I won’t be around, but I’d love to see the mantras for economic development and fiscal policies along with education, immigration, budget surpluses and so on getting their trot while unparalleled challenges lap at the doorsteps and half of Australia burns in the fires of a human-induced hell.
End days are the best ways to get back to the basics and shut down the cant and hypocrisy that seems to be Modern Politics 101.
“I wanna be an aussie OI OI OI!”
Me too, chris, that’s a reply for Cyril as well…
Canguro, your last sentence says it all; so true but also sad, it made laugh…
I have been good all my life, please god or is it Murdoch, do not give me Abbott ,Scott, Chris and Julie, I deserve better…
made me
Even if Labor go down, it’ll be an indictment on the lack of knowledge the general public have on our system of electing a local representative rather than directly electing a PM, if seats like Greenway don’t buck the supposed Liberal majority across the board.
I’ll weep for the future if people like Jaymes Diaz are allowed to sit in the House of Reps. The crooked preselection process of the Liberal party makes a mockery of Abbott “faceless men” mantra he aims at Labor.
I will take your reference to the Liberal party’s pre-selection system as tongue-in-cheek for obvious reasons which will be spelt out a little bit later in this post, but as for untalented idiots like Diaz, I have personally thought that even the parts of the NSW Lib machine which is trying (very poorly) to emulate the ALP ‘whatever it takes’ pre-selection corruption which leads to incompetent MP’s, that the time when they think they would have enough seats that they would do the leaking against Diaz themselves.
I don’t hold out much confidence of that now unfortunately and the fact that a carbon copy of the incompetent stooges that the factional systems throw up with NSW Labor is being repeated in an area of Sydney that I know well and once lived in, is seemingly stuck with no choice at all between gross incompetents, Diaz and Rowland.
You would have thought that to sabotage Diaz would at least allow the to pick someone with competence next time. The poor old working class suffers again!
Ryutin, while Diaz might not be up to the standards required to be an MP, as far as I’m concerned, there is no way that Rowland is incompetent. She’s easily the best MP that Greenway has ever had, and that list includes Louise Markus, Frank Mossfield and Russ Gorman.
All three of those MP’s were completely undistinguished during their time as the MP for Greenway, and in Markus’ case, she is double-dipping in mediocrity as the MP for Macquarie.
Rowland has shown more fortitude and ability than any Federal MP from any side of politics in the Blacktown area for a long time, with the exception of Ed Husic. If it was down to ability alone in Greenway, Diaz would not stand a chance.
It’s good to see a local voice demolish the subtle propaganda of Ryutin’s generalities.
Thank you Damien.
Roy Morgan not looking good.
http://www.roymorgan.com/
They changed their methodology this week - this week’s result is a mix of phone (landline) and online polling. Normally, it’s a mix of landlines, mobiles and face-to-face.
These results should be compared to the Newspolls and ReachTELs, not to the other Morgans and to Essential.
yes indeed Gary Morgan usually points this out
You’re doing great work here Bob. Just looking forward to the pollsters losing big on polling day.
I find your psychotic obsession with polling quite indicitive of your personality as a whole. Will you issue an apology to newspoll on Sep 8 once Labor get the thrashing they so much deserve?
No.
Only if Rudd, Swan and Bowen lose their seats.
Banned for life.
gus and Josh go to your Local to celebrate your pre-election win, much nicer to be among friends, maybe not quite friends,but maybe just people at your uncouth level..
Helvi what the hell are you talking about? Clearly Josh and I are of diametrically opposed positions.
Sorry gus, I’m so shitty with all these trolls, (or maybe it is just the same old in-house troll), who are spreading their ugliness here lately, that I don’t read ‘proper’…
My apologies to you ,but not to Josh
Read: people who do not agree with Helvi.
Helvi likes to call people rude and disgusting while not recognising such in herself.
Democracy means we don’t all have to agree!! It’s amazing.
…like the banned troll below…she jumped at the ín-house-troll…
Actually Helvi, Bob’s blog has been mentioned a few times over at Bolt and Blair’s. I might suggest that is where the extra traffic is coming from.
You even rated a mention in one of the comments a while back. Alas, it was not me. I read occasionally, but rarely comment.
I thought you were one of the Catallaxy and Bolt bloggrs, you fill the time between The Drum /Opinion and Ellis Tabletalk and few others…it fills your day and night…
Please don’t explain so much. Has Bob forgotten that you are banned …
I don’t read Catallaxy, I have heard of it though. I don’t frequent the Drum either.
Sorry to burst your bubble Helvi, but I don’t have that kind of time on my hands, unlike you.
Cthulhu, busy getting banned from everywhere…
Do you even know what you are talking about at this point? You seem to have created your own reality.
You have completely lost me.
Yawn.
unloveableCRAFT wannabe - occasionally?!? You clog this site with your equivocal bromides, waddaboutisms and general obfuscation.
As opposed to those who are on here all day, every day??
I’m off. Things to do.
I’m sure the ‘regulars’ won’t be on here today talking in circles and getting themselves worked up into a lather!!!
Keep sucking yourself off…
Ok honey.
The ABC is referring to the “latest” polling of marginal seats (in The Australian today), but I noticed in the footnotes in the table that polling for Dobell & Robertson was done between the 12th and 14th of August, and polling for the Western Sydney seats (and some others) was done over five days, but commenced a little while ago - on 23 August. A few seats were polled on the 28th & 29th, and these didn’t seem to have as big a negative swing.
In fact the latest Newspoll for Adelaide showed no swing. How debauched are these numbers?
Murdoch has never been one to let the facts get in the way of a good story.
The Australian and other NewsCorpse publications are rapidly turning into News of the World Australia.
http://www.themercury.com.au/news/breaking-news/poll-says-labor-to-hold-adelaide/story-fnj6ehgr-1226707715204