The Brisbane Sunday Mail today carries a Galaxy poll of 800 respondents, which disappointingly for the conservatives shows no improvement following last weekend’s merger. Indeed, Labor has slightly increased its two-party lead to 53-47 from 52-48 in the outfit’s last such survey in June. Labor’s primary vote is up one point to 44 per cent while the LNP is on 40 per cent, down two points from the combined Nationals and Liberal vote last time.
The unreliability and/or Coalition bias of Galaxy is apparently taken for granted by most commenters on this site, so perhaps an overview of its track record is in order. The following list shows its primary vote findings in the final poll before each election it has covered, followed by the actual result in brackets (with Labor shown first each time).
Federal 2007: 42.5-42.5 (43-42)
NSW 2007: 40-38 (39-37)
Victoria 2006: 42-39 (43-40)
Queensland 2006: 48-38 (47-38)
Federal 2004: 39-46 (38-47)
lol @ bias! Please. This is within the error margin. There has been no movement. If anything, the bias could be called from a Labor leaning poll.
oh, and 44 to 40 with no Greens support looming. This is being very good to Bligh.
Thanks for adopting my name for the first two comments, much appreciated, saves me the trouble of having to think for myself.
“This time last week, the Queensland Coalition’s 51-49 lead in a Courier-Mail/Galaxy Research poll contributed to a frisson of excitement about its prospects at the election which, it was correctly anticipated, would be called three days later. A second Galaxy poll published today shows just how much has changed since then. Labor now leads 53-47 on two-party preferred with a primary vote up 3 per cent to 45 per cent, while the Coalition is down from 43 per cent to 40 per cent. ”
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/369
This shows how wrong Galaxy can get things in the run up to an election, they get it right on the night but are often spectacularly wrong beforehand. 🙁
Saw Springboard on Meet the press. Is it just me or does the deep voiced redneck get to other people. What is that, another annoying syptom of the Redneck is repeated us of the term, ‘listen to the people’. “I think that when you listen to the people they are telling us that they want a united party”. How do you know that Mr Springboard? This poll show the opposite. Bang goes the merger.
He suggested that Brenda wants a united party Nationally as well, I’m sure thats just what he feels like at the moment another divisive issue that is bound to cause heated and divisive debate.
Poor Haratio is such a sad sight at the moment that I am genuinely feeling sympathy at the moment. Now I know that that is a big call but really its getting to the painful stages.
The next big challenge for the Borg this week is to find a new Shadow Ministry. Just how he will manage that with the list of candidates available is unclear. It will be interesting to see how many former Liberals he locks into senior economic Shadow Portfolios. My guess would be very few after the battle for the Presidency, the Leader himself being a former National and a take no prisoners approach.
“This shows how wrong Galaxy can get things in the run up to an election, they get it right on the night but are often spectacularly wrong beforehand.” And that is exactly why I don’t trust them.
Will the Borg determine the number of former Liberals in the Shadow Cabinet on the proportion of Party members, the proportion of former Nat to Lib politicians or just name a former Nats cabinet with a couple of token ex Libs thrown in down the batting order?
Sorry steve. Long time reader and 2nd time comment. Forgot there was another. Follow the Preferences, I am not a fan. But I have begun to think Bligh is just bad enough to get done. We’ll see.
Much ado about nothing, within the margin of error. Now, back to business as usual.
This poll has to be on the mark because it shows Labor ahead.
All the pollsters are reputable firms, Galaxy included.
Nielsen, Morgan, Newspoll and Galaxy, are in the business of providing quality market research information to clients who pay for their services. Any whiff of impropriety and their businesses would be in the toilet.
In the case of political polls, it is paid for by Media outlets – News Ltd (Galaxy), Fairfax (Nielsen), The Australian (Newspoll). Morgan carries out their own polling without it being for any media outlet, although last year they conducted some polls for Crikey.
Galaxy it should be noted, also did work for Get Up, in last years election campaign.
Whilst David Briggs of Galaxy may come across to some as wanting to be a bit of a celebrity, that does not diminish the quality of his firm’s work, as William’s figures above show.
The more pollsters the better, in my view.
GB @ 7,
Do you trust the other pollsters more than Galaxy? If so, why?
“In the case of political polls, it is paid for by Media outlets – News Ltd (Galaxy), Fairfax (Nielsen), The Australian (Newspoll). Morgan carries out their own polling without it being for any media outlet, although last year they conducted some polls for Crikey.”
I was of the understanding that the market research companies did the polling for free or next to free for the newspapers, after all if you were to name 5 market research companies we would all come up with 5 pollsters.. Not many ways you can get you company name on the front page of the paper/first news story on tv every fortnight (for a good thing atleast..).
I trust the pollsters, but not necessarily the respondents. How many of them actually give the poll question more than a couple of seconds’ thought -not wanting to appear indecisive? There are too many human variables involved in sampling opinions, which may be changed during the next news item or ad break.
Given the smashing The Borg got in the lead up to the Meger I think a primary of 40% is excellent, I was expecting them to crash. Amazing the paper spins it Labors way. Go the Borg!
Spot on, Aristotle.
12 Dyno – I believe some polls are better than others. They all have their foibles and outliers but over time some stand out better than others. Galaxy seem to be able to pull out a “positive” poll for the conservatives at a time they need it the most. Then remarkably gain accuracy at the election. Westpoll is all over the place.
Just my observations and opinion. So far I haven’t been persuaded by others to believe otherwise.
Absolutely Aristotle.
It is not in the pollsters interests to manipulate their figures or carry out dodgy research.
However, there may be some differences in the quality of the research conducted between elections and that conducted during an election campaign. Most of the pollsters will pay more attention to their sampling and weighting for their pre-election polls – often increasing their sample sizes, doing more sophisticated weighting, having stricter quotas, making more call-backs.
Where they can sometimes be criticised is in how they interpret their own poll results – often seeking to create a story for their media outlets, getting carried away with their own perceived celebrity status or introducing their own political biases. Briggsy once worked for Gary Morgan so maybe he learned a few things there.
“Where they can sometimes be criticised is in how they interpret their own poll results – often seeking to create a story for their media outlets, getting carried away with their own perceived celebrity status or introducing their own political biases. Briggsy once worked for Gary Morgan so maybe he learned a few things there.”
You’re absolutely spot on Winston.
Joe, that’s true of all the pollsters except Newspoll. The Australian is uniquely willing to shell out big money on polling because it exists not to make money for Rupert Murdoch (which it hardly does), but to serve as his agenda-setting vehicle for the political and business elites. That’s why the paper is so extraordinarily touchy about having its interpretations questioned.
Joe @ 14
They don’t do their polls for free or even next to free. But they do discount their usual commercial rates because of the value of the publicity. Most of these polls are included in omnibus surveys (where most of the survey comprises questions for commercial clients) so the actual costs to the polling companies is minimised.
Gary, Westpoll (a.k.a. the perfectly reputable Patterson Market Research) is all over the place because of its small samples (400). If The West Australian paid them to double that, I’m sure they would be just as reliable as everybody else – i.e. not perfectly, but in the ballpark most of the time.
23 William – I understand the reason, it doesn’t change the result. Boy, there seems to be a determination by some not to offend the polling organisations this morning. Am I missing something?
Has anyone been spoken to about lawsuits or something?
Wlliam @ 21.
Not quite. Newspoll operates omnibus surveys little different from the other companies and their research for The Australian is only a small fraction of their work. However, you may be right that they are getting paid more for their polls than the other companies.
No Gary, I’m just expressing a view I’ve always held about this site’s pro-Labor majority: that it’s a little too conspiratorially minded.
Winston’s answer to Joe is more on the mark than my own. It’s probably only Roy Morgan whose MO is to do the polling for free essentially for publicity. ACNielsen would get paid by Fairfax and Galaxy by the News Ltd tabloids.
GB,
No lawsuits that I know of.
I just think Galaxy seems to have a pretty good track record, albeit relatively early days for them.
It is true that, in the case of the 2007 Fed, it was often more pro-Liberal than the others. However the final margin (52.7-47.3, wasn’t it?) was significantly narrower than the vast majority of polls all through 2007, so in my book that makes Galaxy the most accurate one for that election (or at least the most useful as it ultimately turned out). William’s figures above indicate they haven’t done too badly on other occasions, either.
Granted, they haven’t been around for as long as the competition, so they’ve had less chance to stuff up. But I’d still be curious to hear which pollster(s) you regard as better, and why.
You may well be right about that too, Winston. I don’t have any special insight into what Newspoll gets up to, but one hears about it in general market research contexts less often than Roy Morgan or ACNielsen (which is of course a major international concern). My understanding though is that it was set up in 1985 largely or entirely on News Limited’s initiative.
I see no evidence that a merger is better than a tight Colaition so the LNP is placing too much hope in the simple fact of its merger. Has labor one more victory left?
Just a few thoughts which may be of assistance.
As this site is named pollbludger, the focus of the discussion invariably is on polls and the results thereof. Which is fair enough. However, it is important to understand that polls are a form of market research and to correctly understand what they are saying it helps to understand what market research is. So here’s a brief summary.
Research is designed to find information (which is all it is – it is not an answer) to help solve a problem, usually a marketing problem. Research tries to understand what is going on by sampling a group from an entire population, that’s all, a sample.
There are several techniques which can help provide this information and they fall into two categories; qualitative and quantitative research.
Qualitative research, of which focus groups is only one form, is useful for providing detailed information but only from small numbers of people. You need very experienced and skilled operators to do this well otherwise you’ll get all sorts of garbage.
Quantitative research (mass surveys) is useful in providing information from large numbers of people but is limited in the range of information it can research. Two problems will arise though, sampling error and non-sampling error. Sampling error or statistical error of estimate is the error margin you have to accept because you are researching a sample not the entire population. Non-sampling error is the mistakes that researchers can make in collecting, tabulating and analysing the data, and believe me they occur.
There is much more involved, but that’s the basic introduction. Used together and correctly, they can provide much valuable information which will help a business (political party) make an informed decision.
How media and others, choose to interpret the results is another matter entirely.
Yes William.
Newspoll was set up in 1985 – probably mainly at initiative of News Ltd – but it was owned 50/50 by News & an established research company, Yann Campbell Hoare Wheeler (now morphed into Millward Brown).
Not sure if ownership is sill the same.
Sol Lebovic was previously News Ltd’s Marketing Services Manager.
But they were always intended to be a commercial research company – they were the first to base most of their work on telephone interviewing.
28 Dyno – I believe I’ve answered your question. I should have mentioned Morgan. That is another pollster I don’t place a lot of faith in. Might I add he tends to favour Labor so it’s not a Labor/Liberal thing.
For me it’s easier to tell you the ones I’m not enamoured with. Those that remain have some degree of cred with me.
But Galaxy seems to have got most of the elections pretty close, GB?
This is a “bad” poll for the LNP?
Well, in the sense that they’re behind, it certainly is. But 53-47 is not an overwhelming gap. And this result tends to suggest that the previous 52-48, which was contrary to the conventional wisdom and I assumed was a rogue poll, might have been an accurate measure.
With a ten year old government I guess it’s inevitable people will be getting tired of it and looking at the alternative. Maybe with the LNP the Coalition will finally provide a contest, which for political junkies will hopefully make the next election alot more interesting than the last three. (Unless you’re a die-hard ALP member in which case the last three elections have been nothing but fun…..)
‘Follow the Preferences’ – Springborg is no Redneck. Or could you list a few of his ‘redneck’ policies or behaviours?
“But Galaxy seems to have got most of the elections pretty close, GB?” So has Morgan Dyno. Your point is? I think I covered that earlier.
Let me reiterate Dyno – “Galaxy seem to be able to pull out a “positive” poll for the conservatives at a time they need it the most. Then remarkably gain accuracy at the election. Westpoll is all over the place.” How close were they with a poll that suggested Labor would win 2 extra marginal seats in queensland last Federal election? You said it yourself they tend to favour the conservatives. Morgan tends to favour Labor.
I really don’t know what you are trying to achieve with this.
36
Graeme Says:
August 3rd, 2008 at 2:09 pm
‘Follow the Preferences’ – Springborg is no Redneck. Or could you list a few of his ‘redneck’ policies or behaviours?
He supported Workchoices to th hilt
Enough to make him for mine th worst of red necks
You might like to do some research into Springborg’s positions on immigration, law and order, climate change and stem cell research!
He’s certainly attempting to rebrand himself as some sort of urbane quasi-Liberal. But that’s not to say he’ll succeed.
Another couple of takes on the latest in the LNP saga:
Brian Costar –
http://www.apo.org.au/webboard/comment_results.chtml?filename_num=223189
And me –
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/08/03/queenslandism-ii/
Btw, I agree that there’s potentially a contest. But I also think it’s in Bligh’s best interests to wait rather than go early – Springborg now has to fill in his “we’ll fix the roads, hospitals, everything – details later” blanks, and if he fails to do so, that may take any amalgamation gloss the LNP has off, even if there aren’t further internal or external explosions.
While Springborg for the most part plays the conservative climate change denial line, I have read much about his quote that ‘çlimate change is caused by volcanoes’ but have never been able to track down where the quote was made or in what context.
Maybe he got that idea from the same source that inspired him to claim that recycled water would cause dangerous feminisation of blokes?
Here’s a link to a sample of the Borg’s sophisticated understanding of science:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/08/01/the-national-party-the-manly-party-for-really-tough-blokes/
“recycled water would cause dangerous feminisation of blokes?”
Might explain the libs tax concession on alcopops, safer and more manly to drink alcohol.
Though Springborg supported Work Choices it may not go so much against him with a federal labor govt now having control of industrial relations.
I think it will be a contest in Qld, but also agree with giving Springborg time to let the voters get to know him. He’s bound to come up with a Barnet canal type idea.
On the whole polling accuracy thing – the most accurate poll of the 2007 election campaign was actually Nines “Passion Pulse” online poll with an ALP TPP result of 53.2%
The accuracy of predicting an election result is a bit of a wank really isn’t it when we’ve got enough evidence to suggest narrowing right up until or even during the day?
Are they predicting a result, or publishing the result of the time of asking?
It sure is Oni,
The luck (or the lack of it) with the informal vote alone can give a % or so either way onto the final result. If you add in the 2% truly uncommitted swinging voters that refuse to answer polling questions and don’t make up their mind until they’re actually voting – well, polling predictions start becoming more luck than science to get even within 2%.
The LNP needs to win 20 seats to form Govt. in Qld, Bligh has had no real “scandals”. SE Qld (the seats that matter) is a construction site, with every digger, bulldozer or bobcat going bonkers.
Roads, bridges, hospitals, water grids all to be completed before the election.
Anna Bligh may lose a couple of seats at worst, but a LNP victory is fantasy. 😛
Yes there is nothing out there yet, though the election is still 6 months off and the LNP would be pretty silly to go on the attack to early.
There are wholes in the ALP offering in QLD and remember Bligh is untested as premier before the people that count the queenslanders. Are we really ready to elect a female premier, uptil now we haven’t been given that choice have we. It is 2008 but Bligh was forced on QLD not elected.