- My book: Bayesian Analysis for the Social Sciences (Wiley; Amazon).
- 111th U.S. Senate ideal point estimates:
- 111th U.S. House ideal point estimates:
- Next Australian election, Centrebet prob. of ALP win: 0.78 (2010-02-10, time-series)
Journalists write to deadline, to sell papers, and do it every day. Political scientists, well we’re under different sorts of pressures. The “science” part of the job title means we take sample sizes, bias, trends etc seriously, and while we want to be relevant to matters of public importance, we’re not paid to sell papers every day. Conflict can ensue, as I think we’re about to see (Mumble looks like he is about to clobbered by The Australian).
Most of the time, this week’s poll will look just like last week’s poll. Thats the way it has to be when you are in the field with sample sizes of 1,400 or so. So what is a journalist to do. To use a lovely quote from Murray Goot on this score:
The problem in the reporting of the polls does not arise, fundamentally, from the fact that journalists are ill-trained to deal with such data — though that to some extent is true. Fundamentally, the press plays up differences which are otherwise insignificant because it has to. Its only alternative is to say that what a poll found today is not significantly different from what it found yesterday; and under most (though not all) circumstances, that sort of news is no news at all. (Goot 2000, 46).
I dropped those lines verbatim into in the opening of my article on polling in the run-up to the 2004 election, which appeared in the AusJPS. I followed them up with some choice words from Peter Brent (Mumble):
[q]uantitiative opinion polls aren’t that precise. But the process that pays for them pretends they are. They [polls] cost a bundle and so are given pride of place. Once they’re there, everyone involved goes along with the charade. (Brent 2004).
So when this week’s Newspoll reports the same 2PP number as the last Newspoll, don’t be surprised that the journalist tasked with writing it up focuses on the “newsworthy” aspect of the poll; in this case, the bump in the preferred PM numbers. The Australian’s headline on Tuesday and front page photo “led” with this aspect of the poll. A few sentences into the story I read that the 2PP number was unchanged. I felt suckered (and a mouse click later I saw that Mumble had ripped into the way the poll was reported), but Goot’s quote quickly came to mind: the journalist was doing his job (selling papers). Indeed, as the journalist in question put it:
My job is simply to tell people what the most interesting aspect of the latest Newspoll figures are and to put them into the perspective of reporting on those surveys for the last 15 years or so.
For a start, there’s no interest in saying the latest polls haven’t changed – the interest, politically and journalistically, is where has the change occurred. After all, if there were no changes at all in any category there’d be no point in reporting the latest poll.
As for the change referred to, I really don’t know what to read into the preferred PM numbers, maybe it is real, maybe it isn’t (43-42-15, Rudd-Howard-uncommitted, down from, say 46s to 49s for Rudd in Feb to June Newspolls, some more polls/data would be nice), maybe it will translate into an improvement in Coalition vote share, maybe it won’t. We’ll see soon enough (spoken like a true academic…?). I doubt that there is much to be gleaned from going back over previous cycles in seeing if a change in preferred PM leads or lags changes in 2PP. I tend to think the signal to noise (size of the changes relative to sampling error) ratio in such an analysis wouldn’t help us get a clear answer on this: we’re talking about small changes either leading or lagging other small changes, each measured with reasonable amounts of error. Even finding the “turning points” in the respective series might not be straightforward. Some statistical analysis from Possum is here. I wonder if this is the kind of thing that might be more precisely done with the methodology I sketched in the AusJPS article, pooling the polls (pooling the 2PP or 1st preferences results from multiple polls, as well as pooling the preferred PM results, since Newspoll isn’t the only public source of data on either).
I think two things are clear at this stage (and Mumble picked up on both of these): (1) Labor’s primary and 2PP numbers remain high by historical standards, and higher than at any equivalent point in the last couple of cycles; (2) no one believes that this election will be decided by a margin like the 56-44 type of numbers we’ve been seeing for the last 6 months or so.
I hope Mumble doesn’t get too badly roughed up in today’s Australian. We’ll see. For one thing, Peter is my co-author. He already copped a bit of a serve here, which perhaps only goes to show the growing power of non-traditional media like blogs and Crikey. Frankly, I’m surprised that the mainstream media are paying that much attention. Its all good, in the medium-term, long-term. In addition to learning a lot of statistics and political science, I also learned in graduate school that “opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making…” (Milton, Areopagitica).
Follow-up: the editorial of The Australian this morning is a long defence of Newspoll and the Australian’s reporting of Newspoll, clearly in response to Mumble/Crikey under the subtitle “Online prejudice no substitute for real work” and Peter cops a direct serve in the end paragraphs.
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Spot the real news: Shanahan says “there’s no interest in saying the latest polls haven’t changed” but then he concedes that “if the latest Newspoll survey showed no improvement for either the Coalition or Howard there would be real rumblings about the Prime Minister”.
Today’s editorial is basically just a rewrite of Shanahan’s own column yesterday. Hacks one and all.
Comment by gandhi — Wednesday July 11, 2007 @ 3:30 pm
PS: Surprise, surprise – there are rumblings about the PM!
Comment by gandhi — Wednesday July 11, 2007 @ 3:33 pm
Simon – could you provide a reference for the Goot quote? It would be most useful – thanks.
Comment by EuRo — Wednesday July 11, 2007 @ 4:01 pm
EuRo: the cite is
Goot, Murray. 2000. ‘‘The Performance of the Polls.’’ In Howard’s agenda, ed. Marian Simms and John Warhurst. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. pp. 37-47.
and Brent cite is
Brent, Peter. 2004. ‘‘For whom the polls tell.’’ Walkley Magazine 30:17.
Comment by jackman — Wednesday July 11, 2007 @ 4:16 pm
News Ltd just spiked a critical blog post from Tim Dunlop (on their own site)!
Comment by gandhi — Wednesday July 11, 2007 @ 5:33 pm
You can make a reasonable argument that Howard will win due to the good economic times. When you say that ‘no one believes that this election will be decided by a margin like the 56-44 type of numbers we’ve been seeing for the last 6 months or so’, you are making a prediction not fundamentally different from that which The Oz makes (is 56% impossible, Tony Blair did better in 1997?). The problem with The Oz is: 1) they deny Labor’s poll strength to get Labor to change its IR policy; 2) they ignore the evidence against their theory. Social research is more than just putting up a possible argument, it is about considering the case for alternative hypothesis.
Comment by Geoff Robinson — Wednesday July 11, 2007 @ 5:45 pm
Fair point re Blair in 1997, but isn’t the comparison is a little weird given England’s three-party system, first-past-the-post system?
My point about 56% ALP 2PP being “too big” is simply based on the historical record; see this older blog post. The best ever 2PP in the post-WW2 era for Labor was 53.2 in 1983, Hawke-Fraser. Labor won just over 47% of the 2PP in 2004; 56% 2PP would not only be huge in terms of 2PP, but the 2PP swing of 9 percentage points would also be a record (1969 saw a 7.1 percentage point swing to Labor). Its hard for me to think those records will fall that spectacularly this go around.
Comment by jackman — Wednesday July 11, 2007 @ 6:01 pm
Trackback:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/07/11/government-gazette-fights-back/
Comment by Mark Bahnisch — Wednesday July 11, 2007 @ 6:06 pm
I am surprised that no change in a poll is considered unnewsworthy. That may be reasonable if the poll exists in a vacuum. Surely no change would indicate that whatever the incumbent (and perhaps opposition)had been doing since the previous poll was failing to have an electoral impact. Given the NT invasion et al, surely no movement in the polls is newsworthy as it would seem to suggest that nothing the Howard government is doing is making any difference to voters. There is a story to be told.
Comment by peterm — Wednesday July 11, 2007 @ 8:38 pm
Peterm: I think the Goot/Brent/Jackman observation that “no change is no news” is descriptive, not prescriptive.
But you are right, there is another interpretation of the polling data available, one that I think would sell less newspapers than the story/headline the Oz went with. Then again, look at today’s Daily Tele (“Sydney walks away from Howard”, etc).
Comment by jackman — Wednesday July 11, 2007 @ 9:55 pm
An argument in favour of a result of 56 to 44 is the state Labor wins over the last decade. All but one (WA) have been huge; many have been literally unprecedented.
An unprecendent federal result would have to top the 1943 result of about 61 ro 39.
But all those big state wins were by incumbents. If it weren’t for that fact then 56 to 44 would be a reasonable expectation.
But Blair is also a good point. I’ve seen estimates of his 1997 vote in 2pp terms (assuming LDP split 2:1 towards Labour or whatever) that have a 6 in front of them.
Comment by Peter Brent — Thursday July 12, 2007 @ 5:57 pm
Peter:
(1) Just curious, do you believe the 1943 estimate of the 2PP? Where do those pre-1949 estimates come from? Indeed, I wonder about the pre-1984 estimates sometimes too, having found lots of small errors in them (but nothing big enough to bugger anything up at the aggregate level I think).
(2) Do you think a 9 percentage point swing is on the cards (not that Labor needs anything like 9 percentage points to win, by the way, just to be clear). Have any of the “Labor from opposition” state-level swings been that big?
(3) re the state-level wins: while the politicians in question share the Liberal party label, should we compare Howard/Costello with their state level Liberal counterparts, say in terms of “electoral viability”?
Comment by jackman — Thursday July 12, 2007 @ 6:18 pm
Simon,
1. I got the 1943 from Adam Carr’s website http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/ but the 1943 page is not available currently. The primary data, eg at WA uni database, http://elections.uwa.edu.au/electionsearch.lasso has Labor on 50% primary vote. It does look difficult to get to 61% from there, unless you assume a large preference flow from independents. Maybe we should ask him. I think he’s the “Adam” who hangs around the pollbludger site.
As you know, the AEC data starts in 1983 and they (the AEC) estimated from 1980 back to 1949. At a glance, 1949 looks iffy; the 2pp should look more like a landslide.
2. I don’t think on paper required swings mean much. Well, I believe that if Beazley had been leader in 2004 Labor
would have won, so you could say I see that year’s result as artificial. But no, none of the state Labor swings from opposition were anything like 9%.
3. Yes, Howard and co are incumbents too. So they have that going for them. But all “good” things come to an end.
Comment by Peter Brent — Thursday July 12, 2007 @ 7:01 pm
Most of the Labor ‘victories’ from opposition were actually hung parliaments… Big Bob Katter for Speaker of the House!
Comment by Leopold — Thursday July 12, 2007 @ 8:51 pm
The 1943 estimate of 2PP is difficult. Many uncontested seats and a splintered left (Communists, Langites) and right vote but the left was a very long way ahead, so somewhere in the high 50s/low 60s for the Labor is the closest. Blair in 1997; if there had been preferential voting any reasonable guess on Lib Dem preferences gives a Labour vote in the high 50s.
Comment by Geoff Robinson — Tuesday July 17, 2007 @ 3:43 pm