Economy
Rudd v Abbott: The Pollsters. The Debate
• A Field Guide To Australian Opinion Pollsters
There are a lot of polls about in Australia these days. But how do they all work, which ones have runs on the board and which ones can you trust the most?
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The gold standard for success for an opinion pollster is that its polls at election time get the result as close to right as possible. However, many of the new pollsters are little-tested against actual elections, and getting a specific election right is a combination of skill and luck. In elections where there is a swing on the last day or two of the campaign, a pollster that is actually not polling correctly may have its errors cancelled out by the swing, and hence record a lucky hit. There is more to being a good pollster than just getting it right at election time – a good pollster should also provide useful data between elections and do so using well-designed questions that are easy to interpret. And a pollster should also present their data in a way that makes sense and isn’t misleading.
Read more, comment here: http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/a-field-guide-to-australian-opinion.html
• Bob Ellis: Embarrassment To The Left
Bob Ellis is the Unskewed Polls of Australian politics.
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However, the sympathy I had for Ellis from that has been wiped away many times over by his recent series of comically bad attacks on mainstream opinion polling in Australia. Quite aside from his the defamatory and tinfoil-hat nature of much of his work, a big problem with Ellis’s comments is that what he writes about opinion polls is riddled with easily avoidable factual errors.
And yet, while the theme of this article is totally and painfully self-evident to most lefties who have heard of Ellis (to the point that a common response would be “Der!”), there are still some out there who fall for Ellis’s writing on polls without themselves being as cranky as he is. Rather, they like Ellis and believe him because he tells them what they want to hear – that if a poll gives Labor bad ratings it is probably at least incompetent, and quite likely a Murdoch plot.
Read more, comment here: http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/bob-ellis-embarrassment-to-left.html
• Dr Bonham is providing weekly updates on the polling picture and seat betting changes as the election approaches. Last week’s example: http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/poll-roundup-and-seat-betting-watch.html )
• And you can vote in the Not-A-Poll of how many Tasmanian seats Labor will win:
http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/new-not-poll-added-tas-seats-at-federal.html
If you have a question or comment for Dr Bonham you can post it on his site. You will need to have (or to create) a Google/Blogger account, LiveJournal profile, WordPress account, AIM profile, TypePad account or OpenID to comment.
• Rodney Croome: Both leaders take step forward on marriage equality
• 9News: Satisfaction with Rudd slipping: Newspoll, here
• Ed: While this item is open for comment, any readers wishing to comment on Dr Bonham’s analyses should comment on his website; comment related to his articles will not be published on TT
• Dr Richard Denniss: Mixed messages from Abbott on Tasmanian jobs
• Peter Madden, Family First: Rudd’s cynical resurrection of homosexual marriage
• Andrew Wilkie: Wilkie and NTEU unveil Denison TV ad campaign
• Family Voice Australia: Rudd does another about-face
• Rodney Croome: New US Ambassador to Australia marries his male partner, here
• ABC’s Vote Compass: Where do you stand?
• Anna Reynolds: Immediate action, not more talk, needed on child detainees
• Christine Milne: Stop faux GST argument and fix mining tax