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Deconstructing Newspoll

By Bob Ellis - posted Friday, 27 March 2009


"I now predict Bligh will lose eight seats", I texted Graeme Wedderburn, Chief of Staff of Nathan Rees, over breakfast on Queensland's election day, getting it right as I sometimes do, channelling the voters' telepathy or whatever the process is.

My basic figuring actually came, in fact, from all the confident Newspoll and Galaxy headlines asserting Springborg would win or come close with, respectively, 51, 51, 51, 51 and 50.1 per cent of the vote and "a 2.7 per cent margin of error".

This, despite the conservative coalition never getting more than 50 per cent of the vote (the vote, that is, two-party preferred) since December 1974 and Springborg being derided, or sometimes derided, as a yokel in Brisbane and the Gold Coast.

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Another Murdoch hope of conservative resurrection dashed, it seems, despite all those chest-thumping headlines. It's hard to imagine Newspoll didn't strive to give him those rainbow bursts of hope (he does like conservative victories and he is very old) with predictions that got no less than 53,000 voters' intentions wrong.

How did all that occur, I wonder?

Well, I have my theories; the Murdoch pollsters have to earn a living, I guess, like everybody else. I wrote the following on Thursday, 12th March, 2009:

We're told by Newspoll that 53 per cent of all Australians want Peter Costello to lead the Liberal Party and only 40 per cent of all Australians want Malcolm Turnbull in that position. This means, I guess, that Costello would get more votes if he was Leader in a general election.

Well, no it doesn't mean that, actually. Because 56 per cent of the voters polled said they wanted Labor to win. This then means, or it might well mean, you could say it means, that half of those who were polled want Costello as Liberal Leader because he's more likely to lose. And it might well mean five million Labor-voting Australians fear Turnbull's amiable brilliance more than Costello's acerbic nastiness, and so want Turnbull out of the picture, quick smart.

So Newspoll, not for the first time, seems (or seems to me) to be implying the opposite of what it should know to be true. Had it asked only Liberal voters, or only Coalition voters, or only Undecided voters what Liberal leader they wanted it would have got a true, uncynical result, probably favouring Turnbull, or Joe Hockey. As it is, it's revealed, yes, that Labor voters would like not Turnbull but Costello to oppose them. And so would I. Put me down for Costello. Every time.

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There are many ways a poll, if manipulated, can get you a false, convenient result. You can take the poll on a holiday weekend when many younger, and therefore Labor-leaning voters, or Green-leaning voters, aren't at home. You can take the poll in early January when (as always) the Labor vote and the Green vote will go dramatically down for this reason, when many, many voters are in a caravan park or a holiday motel, or overseas. You can ring up on Friday night when only the old, the ill, the poor, the loveless and the mad are at home, these being more likely Liberal voters or National voters or One Nation voters or Independents. You can ring on Saturday morning when the prosperous are out shopping. You get more Liberal voters at home that way, saying Lawrence Springborg for me.

This is the way, I suggest, that Newspoll gives its principal client Rupert Murdoch what he wants and why Newspoll is widely known as "the Bill O'Reilly of statistics".

Newspoll is very careful to go where the ambiguity is, and show no one its raw figures. Why otherwise its raw figures should be secret is hard to say. These figures are "adjusted", we are told, "to reflect population distribution". I'll bet they are.

Newspoll, moreover, rings no mobile phones, just those people who happen to be home on Friday nights and not, say, at the pub. Just those people who possess home phones (many young people don't any more) and don't mind giving up half an hour of their evening when they might be cooking dinner. Those who do mind are listed as "refused". Only those who speak English, and speak English well, are persisted with, I am told; otherwise, I am told, Newspoll hangs up, and lists them as "refused".

If this is not so I ask any former employees of Newspoll to deny it.

A greater proportion of non-English-speaking migrants vote Labor, I am told. Of course they do. And leaving them out of the sample, if this occurs, puts the Liberal vote up. Of course it does.

And it's by these methods Newspoll came to the conclusion that Bligh Labor was losing in Queensland, and Bligh herself lost round 96,000 voters between Friday 6th and Sunday 8th of March. Have you met any of these people? Anyone who said "I've really gone off Anna Bligh" on Saturday 7th March? You should, if it's true.

We live in a world where numbers are manipulated (by Enron, by Lehman Brothers, by Bernard Madoff, by Robert Mugabe) so commonly, so routinely, that economic meltdowns result from their manipulation.

Yet it's thought that pollsters do not manipulate numbers, even when their clients would like them to. Clients who, for instance, need headlines.

It's usually thought they don't manipulate numbers because it's not wise of them to do so, that a wrong prediction of an election result would do them eventual harm. But this rule applies to only one poll, the one that comes out on election day. Before that they can print whatever they like and so confect headlines - Labor In Crisis, Shock Swing To Coalition - that influence early voting patterns (and early voters) and cause panic in the Caucus, destabilise Kim Beazley, undermine Malcolm Turnbull, influence Labor to support the imprisonment of boat people, and wavering Liberals to support the Iraq war, and so on.

They can put out 75 false counts of the figures in three years, and only one true count, and still keep their reputation. They have to be right, or close, only once.

All this is only my opinion, a hypothesis raised in the public interest that no doubt those more informed can shoot down by releasing raw figures or the rules of engagement explaining why they won't release them, although they used to; why they won't release them any more. Or reminiscing about their happy years at Newspoll, and what, in those days, the ground rules were. And why they changed, if they did.

And explaining why Newspoll has a CEO.

What is there for him to decide?

Just asking.

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First published in ABC's Unleashed on March 23, 2009.



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About the Author

Bob Ellis has had a long and close involvement with politics, covering as a journalist twenty-four campaigns in Australia, the UK and the USA, and writing speeches or slogans for Kim Beazley, Bob Carr, Mike Rann and others. Ellis's work for film and stage has won numerous nominations and awards for writing and direction. His most recent book is Night Thoughts in Time of War.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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