ACT voters not so different after all...

And I am sure we will all have been given so much……to think about after last night’s seriously underwhelming performances from Messrs Rudd and Abbott – don’t you worry about that, it’ll all be OK, trust us, nothing to see here.

Gungahlin Al said :

I was attending a panel discussion of 7 world leading science communicators and interviewing one of them (Phil Plait).

Phil Plait? Cool!

Masquara said :

Care to respond, and either defend your post or address the concerns? Gungahlin Al?

SO sorry that I didn’t get back to you instantly on Friday with a response Masquara. I was attending a panel discussion of 7 world leading science communicators and interviewing one of them (Phil Plait).
And again, sorry I didn’t even get back to you all weekend. It was I realise inexcusable that Bungonia gorge had almost no signal, not even in the caves I was in. And those scouts I was teaching astronomy to really could have waited…

But even now frankly, I would rather be working than bothering with your blatant selective bias.

Antony Green went on to highlight the deficiencies in the Compass system for the Australian electoral landscape.

Then the onus is on you to show where he said this. You seem to be claiming he thinks it’s dangerously-flawed rubbish, but all I ever see him doing is carefully explaining what it is and how it works. Here he is again, on The World Today:

Well, the first thing to say is this isn’t a standard opinion poll, it’s not a random sample. And what we do is those voters who go through the whole thing and fill in their demographics, we use their demographics afterwards to weight the data, to look like the Australian electorate. So these sorts of online polls seem to favour the tech savy, the educated, the younger urban dwellers, so there’s a bit of a bias in there. But what you do with this sort of data, when you’ve got this many numbers and about a quarter of a million people have filled in all the demographic questions, you can weight the data to try and make it look like the Australian electorate and once you’ve done that, the important issues which is what we got in this first report are the sorts of issues you would expect to see as important for Australian voters.

But why take my word for it? Which dangerously unqualified muppets are rolling this *gasp* Canadian technology out in Australia in the first place? (Because regression analysis works differently in the southern hemisphere.) Surely they can’t be as qualified as you. They must be utterly out of touch with Australian politics. Let’s have a look at the Steering Committee:

Dr Aaron Martin was educated at the ANU, the Institute of Political Studies (Paris), Stanford University and the University of Melbourne. He returned to Melbourne University as Lecturer in Political Science Research Methods in 2010. Aaron’s research focuses on young people and politics, public opinion and policy agendas. He is currently writing a book on young people and politics. He has recently been awarded an ARC grant with Keith Dowding (ANU) for a project entitled ‘Policy Agendas in the Australian Commonwealth.’ Aaron also sits on the Australian Electoral Commissioner’s Advisory Board on Electoral Research. A government puppet, obviously.

Dr Anika Gauja, B Economics (Social Sciences) (Hons), LLB (Hons) Syd, PhD Cantab, Senior Lecturer, University of Sydney. Wrote minor tracts like, let’s see, Political Parties and Elections: Legislating for Representative Democracy and Powerscape: Contemporary Australian politics – 2nd Edition. Australia: Allen and Unwin. Clearly, this woman has no idea what she’s talking about.

Dr Ariadne Vrome, BSocSc (UNSW), MA (Syd) PhD (UNSW), currently at U. Syd. You can tell she’s not very good because she’s only an Associate Professor. With current research projects like The Civic Network: A Comparative study of the use of social media for enhancing young people’s political engagement; Civic networking in comparative perspective: young people, civic engagement and social media in Australia and the USA; and Innovative Democracy? Changing Approaches to Citizen Engagement in Australia, the UK and Denmark, it’s apparent to all she has no business drawing together politics and the Internet like this.

Dr Rodney Smith. Another ‘Associate Professor’. BA, MA University of Queensland, PhD University of Sydney. Those are only Group of Eight unis, not real institutions like UC. His current research interests are Australian political parties and elections, political ethics and corruption, and religion and politics in liberal democracies. Nothing to do with anything we’re talking about.

Feel free to plonk your creds on the table any time, Masquara. I’m sure they’re just as substantial.

Woody Mann-Caruso said :

Masquara said :

Care to respond, and either defend your post or address the concerns? Gungahlin Al?

Here, I’ll have a go:

Gee Gungahlin Al, your analytical skills are wanting. Antony Green himself has admitted that the bias compensation possibilities are very limited.

Was that the same Antony Green who said “…analysis relies on weighting the data to reflect the characteristics of the Australian population. Around half of all respondents have provided the demographic and electorate data required to weight the data, creating a huge sample size for analysis.“

I’ll now sit here and click refresh repeatedly and occasionally nag that you haven’t replied to defend yourself quickly enough for my liking. Except I won’t, because I have a life, and I already know I’m right. You, on the other hand, are wrong, because your ‘arguments’ are bullsh*t and I laugh at them.

Selective quote there. Antony Green went on to highlight the deficiencies in the Compass system for the Australian electoral landscape.

Diggety said :

It’s interesting that so many Green supporters state climate change as a main issue, where the same party is against one of the best tools to deal with it: nuclear power.

If one were to use their brain, one would realise that nuclear power has been one of the best solutions to climate change.

It is indeed a great solution to climate change.

Mind you, swapping one catastrophe for another doesn’t sound like such a good deal.

Masquara said :

Care to respond, and either defend your post or address the concerns? Gungahlin Al?

Here, I’ll have a go:

Gee Gungahlin Al, your analytical skills are wanting. Antony Green himself has admitted that the bias compensation possibilities are very limited.

Was that the same Antony Green who said “…analysis relies on weighting the data to reflect the characteristics of the Australian population. Around half of all respondents have provided the demographic and electorate data required to weight the data, creating a huge sample size for analysis.“

I’ll now sit here and click refresh repeatedly and occasionally nag that you haven’t replied to defend yourself quickly enough for my liking. Except I won’t, because I have a life, and I already know I’m right. You, on the other hand, are wrong, because your ‘arguments’ are bullsh*t and I laugh at them.

It’s interesting that so many Green supporters state climate change as a main issue, where the same party is against one of the best tools to deal with it: nuclear power.

If one were to use their brain, one would realise that nuclear power has been one of the best solutions to climate change.

I searched Google for “accuracy of opinion polls” and found a few gushing articles. They seemed to be written by pollsters – when a poll is wrong, it is because the voters changed their minds. When a poll is right they take the credit.

It’s probably not hard to get it right the day before an election – you ask someone if they are going to vote, and they tell you, and it’s true. Probably not too many people left undecided either.

But if the pollsters were serious about it, they’d make their metholodogy more available, you know, the way proper researchers have to – peer review and all that.

In some countries opinion polls are regulated, not allowed in the lead up to the election and so on.

IP

IrishPete said :

rosscoact said :

Of course it’s flawed, every poll is flawed because you cannot ask everyone totally open questions. That’s why polls are not completely accurate when tested against vote outcomes.

Always was and always will be.

What is interesting though, is to see the bias of the respondents here and elsewhere.

I’ve said before, and I’ll repeat here, that political opinion polls are also flawed. Do they phone landlines only? Does that include VOIP numbers? Unlisted (silent) numbers? What do they do about people who decline to take part? How to they estimate which people actually will vote, or will vote Informal? How do they deal with the “Undecided” respondents?

Random Digit Dialing addresses some of the sampling issues, but only if they are including mobile numbers.

The polls are commercial products, and I have been unable to find this information publicly available. You can statistically adjust for some things, but it doesn’t always work.

IP

The decent polls (Newspoll, Neilsen, etc) have a cross sectional demographic quota and fill it. It’s a pretty good methodology actually. They also tend to be very accurate when comparing poll trends to election outcomes.

That’s why they are taken seriously by all and sundry.

rosscoact said :

Of course it’s flawed, every poll is flawed because you cannot ask everyone totally open questions. That’s why polls are not completely accurate when tested against vote outcomes.

Always was and always will be.

What is interesting though, is to see the bias of the respondents here and elsewhere.

I’ve said before, and I’ll repeat here, that political opinion polls are also flawed. Do they phone landlines only? Does that include VOIP numbers? Unlisted (silent) numbers? What do they do about people who decline to take part? How to they estimate which people actually will vote, or will vote Informal? How do they deal with the “Undecided” respondents?

Random Digit Dialing addresses some of the sampling issues, but only if they are including mobile numbers.

The polls are commercial products, and I have been unable to find this information publicly available. You can statistically adjust for some things, but it doesn’t always work.

IP

Of course it’s flawed, every poll is flawed because you cannot ask everyone totally open questions. That’s why polls are not completely accurate when tested against vote outcomes.

Always was and always will be.

What is interesting though, is to see the bias of the respondents here and elsewhere.

Roundhead89 said :

So a survey conducted by the Gay BC found climate change to be the number three issue. Who would have thought it?

Whoda thunk that a topic like this would out a homophobe?

IP

Well the website took me through all the questions but then wouldn’t save the answer, so the responses of this Greens member weren’t included. I’m not going to bother trying again, as it was a significant waste of my time.

Yes, the sample is unrepresentative but it is an extremely large number of people. Like the Fairfax online poll last week which found 40+% of the 3000+ respondents favoured the Greens asylum seeker policies, it isn’t a guide to voting, but does tell you that there are a lot of people out there who don’t like the Tweedledum and Tweedledee racing to rally the rabid right vote. 7 September will be very interesting.

IP

Care to respond, and either defend your post or address the concerns? Gungahlin Al?

This poll is biased, because the people participating are all internet users [obviously],. I’d like to see how different the importance of issues such as NBN are between those polled and those who don’t even know about this project because they only use the net to pay bills and check emails. Don’t anyone dare go on about how the internet is readily available to everybody either. My sister has to rely on mobile broadband with one provider because nobody else has coverage, but can’t recharge it over the phone because the same company doesn’t have decent mobile phone coverage [Can’t call the recharge number from other network’s phones]. Figure that one out.
To me this compares with a poll, say based on number of ants traveling north, but conducting the poll from 12 midnight to 6 AM. Perhaps you could compare peoples’ opinions of roundabouts vs traffic lights by polling cyclists.

If you are by now stewing at my preposterous claims, read for yourself what even ABC’s Antony Green himself says “So these sorts of online polls seem to favour the tech savy, the educated, the younger urban dwellers, so there’s a bit of a bias in there. But what you do with this sort of data, when you’ve got this many numbers and about a quarter of a million people have filled in all the demographic questions, you can weight the data to try and make it look like the Australian electorate and once you’ve done that, the important issues which is what we got in this first report are the sorts of issues you would expect to see as important for Australian voters. ”
source – http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2013/s3821939.htm
Note the terms “seem to favor”, “bit of bias”,”weight the data” and “try and make it look like”. Doesn’t show any real attempt at a fair and unbiased poll at all.

So a survey conducted by the Gay BC found climate change to be the number three issue. Who would have thought it?

Yeah forgetting the self selection aspect, I found the questions far too simplistic. The simple options dont’t allow for the nuance that many of the issues require.

It’s a bit of fun but I wouldn’t take it seriously.

I can’t see a good representation of old age pensioners taking the survey, which may suggest that they are underrepresented in the survey. These are a good chunk of voters.

Gee Gungahlin Al, your analytical skills are wanting. Antony Green himself has admitted that the bias compensation possibilities are very limited.

Of course an Australia-wide poll restricted to ABC online users is going to be identical to the affluent, leftie ACT vote! Nooooooo joy for Gungahlin Al here, sorry!!!!

Looks like the Compass site might be right off track as far as reflecting any sort of mainstream voting intentions and attitudes.

Oh, and it was designed for a system where the voting is non-compulsory. Australia’s utterly non-motivated voting segment – which is considerable – means that all of Compass’s machinations would have needed a comprehensive re-setting. Something the people running that particular show have never mentioned in any of their interviews, even those which have gone into some detail about their processes …