9 August 2013

ACT voters not so different after all...

| Gungahlin Al
Join the conversation
30

We get peppered constantly with the mantra that ACT voters are so different from the rest of the nation, that eventually we start to believe it ourselves.

But the first release of data from the ABC’s mammoth Vote Compass project seems to indicate otherwise. For all of the key topics, the ACT results are pretty much slap in the middle of all the other regions. Except Health and Hospitals that is, where the ACT is second only to Tasmania.

In the overall results, the economy was the stand-out issue, asylum seekers second, followed by climate change, health and hospitals, education and broaband bunched together. The variety in stances according to gender, age, income and political leaning are interesting but somewhat predictable.

More interesting are the issues that it seems are very low on most respondents’ radar: mining, transport, food security, manufacturing, defence, childcare, disability care. A wake-up call for the respective interest groups?

The results so far were drawn from the initial 250,000 responses, with weighting to compensate for a range of potential selection biases. The total participation jumped past 500,000 people last night.

So by the end of five weeks, it would seem this project may give an assessment of the nation’s political landscape that will walk all over the endless stream of media-based polls we’ve had for the last four years. Having been on the receiving end of some of those poll calls, they are hardly clear of result biases in the ways their questions are framed. There’s also the little issue of them only calling landlines, which more and more of us are ditching…

Join the conversation

30
All Comments
  • All Comments
  • Website Comments
LatestOldest
Woody Mann-Caruso7:57 pm 13 Aug 13

Masquara said :

No – not January; interview on RN last week.

Because you’re lazy, and more than a little disingenuous, I tracked it down. It’s here. The bit you’re talking about is a 24 second (3:52-4:16) by-the-by in a 7+ minute conversation in which Antony Green does nothing else but talk up Vote Compass.

The harshest thing he could say was that he “wasn’t sure” if as many Australian voters would fill this is as Canadian voters. Not “bias compensation possibilities are very limited”, or anything like that, or indeed anything certain at all – just that he “wasn’t sure”. He instantly moved back to talking about the results.

If you focus on this, but ignore the rest, then you’re ignoring that they have demographically-weighted data for 250,000 Australians, and you’re ignoring that, despite what you seem to think are fatal misgivings, Antony Green seems perfectly happy to keep talking about the results.

Seriously, that’s all you had? Not quite the same as your claim that “Antony Green himself has admitted that the bias compensation possibilities are very limited”, is it? Not even close.

Masquara said :

What accusation?

This one: “Selective quote there.”

Which was pretty f*cking rich coming from somebody who cherry-picked 24 seconds out of 450 then presented them as a non-existent ‘admission’.

I’m done. You’re just boring.

Gungahlin Al9:26 am 13 Aug 13

Masquara said :

Oh that’s OK Gungahlin Al. But you had enough signal to bookend the night and morning with tweets from the caves, so don’t blame a lack of signal, just perhaps nothing substantial to argue.

Such a sleuth. Hope you enjoyed reading my feed! It’s one thing to despatch a tweet or two (given several minutes waiting for signal to drift in and out). Another altogether to go browsing websites.

Diggety said :

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

Rubbish.

Nuclear power is completely uneconomical. And uninsurable.

Wind power is way better:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fe/EROI_-_Ratio_of_Energy_Returned_on_Energy_Invested_-_USA.svg/450px-EROI_-_Ratio_of_Energy_Returned_on_Energy_Invested_-_USA.svg.png

Wind is already way cheaper than Nuclear, and every year as Nuclear gets more expensive, wind gets even cheaper.

Nuke-spruikers just love the fact some people are gullible enouhg to swallow their rubbish.

Woody Mann-Caruso said :

Just to repeat that Antony Green expressed strong reservations about transplanting a “voluntary vote” model from Canada directly to Australia, where we have compulsory voting, without adjustments.

When and where? Surely you’re not confusing his views on the Green Paper circa January with his views about Vote Compass?

You accuse me of selective quoting and you don’t have a quote at all? Put up or f*ck off.

No – not January; interview on RN last week. What accusation?

Woody Mann-Caruso8:10 pm 12 Aug 13

Just to repeat that Antony Green expressed strong reservations about transplanting a “voluntary vote” model from Canada directly to Australia, where we have compulsory voting, without adjustments.

When and where? Surely you’re not confusing his views on the Green Paper circa January with his views about Vote Compass?

You accuse me of selective quoting and you don’t have a quote at all? Put up or f*ck off.

Woody Mann-Caruso said :

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

No need to plonk creds. Just to repeat that Antony Green expressed strong reservations about transplanting a “voluntary vote” model from Canada directly to Australia, where we have compulsory voting, without adjustments.

Gungahlin Al said :

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.

Oh that’s OK Gungahlin Al. But you had enough signal to bookend the night and morning with tweets from the caves, so don’t blame a lack of signal, just perhaps nothing substantial to argue.

Woody Mann-Caruso6:02 pm 12 Aug 13

Roundhead89 said :

The economy, jobs and immigration are the three top issues. Climate change doesn’t even make the list. Nice try Al but no cigar.

I missed the part where Al claimed climate change was anywhere near the top of Canberra’s list of election concerns. If you read a little more slowly (or if Al wrote in crayon) you’d have seen that Al was pointing out that we’re the same as the rest of Australia – that is, climate change is clustered way down the bottom with a bunch of other stuff.

It’s apparent that you see ‘climate change’ and your mind immediately turns to penises for some reason (and cigars, it seems, and you already had a thing for round heads), and that’s…well, it’s sad that you’re so conflicted about something. But I’m sure if you tried harder (sorry) you could keep up (sorry).

To bring this rather silly post into perspective, the ANU has conducted a serious, scientifically based poll about the election issues. The economy, jobs and immigration are the three top issues. Climate change doesn’t even make the list. Nice try Al but no cigar.

Gungahlin Al11:02 am 12 Aug 13

Here_and_Now said :

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!

🙂 Such a nice guy in person too.He started off just blogging, so he was cool with talking to me for my little blog. Got some editing work to do before I can post it.

HiddenDragon10:48 am 12 Aug 13

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.

Here_and_Now10:39 am 12 Aug 13

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!

Gungahlin Al9:46 am 12 Aug 13

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.

Woody Mann-Caruso9:03 am 12 Aug 13

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.

Woody Mann-Caruso8:53 am 11 Aug 13

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?

wildturkeycanoe7:41 am 10 Aug 13

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 …

Daily Digest

Want the best Canberra news delivered daily? Every day we package the most popular Riotact stories and send them straight to your inbox. Sign-up now for trusted local news that will never be behind a paywall.

By submitting your email address you are agreeing to Region Group's terms and conditions and privacy policy.