It’s as easy as APC

A new polling industry standards council takes shape; and the coronavirus polling glut keeps piling higher.

A promised initiative to restore confidence in opinion polling has came to fruition with the establishment of the Australian Polling Council, a joint endeavour of YouGov, Essential Research and uComms. Following the example of the British Polling Council and the National Council for Published Polls in the United States, the body promises to “ensure standards of disclosure”, “encourage the highest professional standards in public opinion polling” and “inform media and the public about best practice in the conduct and reporting of polls”.

The most important of these points relates to disclosure, particularly of how demographic weightings were used to turn raw figures into a published result. The British Polling Council requires that its members publish “computer tables showing the exact questions asked in the order they were asked, all response codes and the weighted and unweighted bases for all demographics and other data that has been published”. We’ll see if its Australian counterpart to sees things the same way when it releases its requirements for disclosures, which is promised “before July 2020”.

Elsewhere:

• The West Australian has had two further local polls on coronavirus from Painted Dog Research, one from last week and one from this week ($). The McGowan government announced its decision to reopen schools next week in between the two polls, which had the support of 22.7% in the earlier poll and 49% this week, with opposition down from 43.3% to 27%, and the undecided down from 34% to 24%. The earlier poll found remarkably strong results for the McGowan government’s handling of the crisis, with 90.0% agreeing it had been doing a good job (including 54.2% strongly agreeing) and only 2.9% disagreeing (1.2% strongly), with 7.1% neither agreeing or disagreeing. No field work dates provided, but the latest poll has a sample of 831.

• The University of Melbourne’s Melbourne Institute conducted a 1200-sample survey on coronavirus from April 6 to 11, and while the published release isn’t giving too much away, we told that “about 60% of Australians report being moderately to very satisfied with government economic policies to support jobs and keep people at work”, and that “more than 80% expect the impact of the coronavirus pandemic to last for more than 6 months“.

• The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage political science blog examines local government elections held in France on March 15, two days before the country went into lockdown: turnout fell from 63% to 45%, but the result was not radically different from the last such elections in 2016. Traditional conservative and socialist parties holding up well and the greens making gains, Emmanuel Macron’s presidential vehicle La République En Marche failing to achieve much cross-over success, and Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National losing ground compared with a strong result in 2014.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

2,180 comments on “It’s as easy as APC”

Comments Page 41 of 44
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  2. “Derryn Hinch is saying that we should all download the app because the lockdown will then end sooner.”

    Yeah well, what happens if the app doesn’t go anywhere near 40 percent takeup?
    Do we wait till it does? That may be a fortuitous delay..

  3. I predict that somewhere along the line, Scomo will walk away from the app.
    The question is whether he’ll also walk away from having “industrial scale” testing…

  5. dave @ #1988 Sunday, April 26th, 2020 – 4:38 pm

    A comment from a user on the Google Play page for this app –

    “I had problems with registration so emailed support with this reply,

    “Hi Allan Thank you for your report. While the COVIDSafe app is available for download, we have currently disabled the registration process. At this stage we recommend that you uninstall the app until the registration process is brought back online. We expect this to be later today, so we recommend you reinstall the app this evening. Thank you for your patience.

    Regards, The COVIDSafe support team”

    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.gov.health.covidsafe

    The double dolt strikes again 😆

  8. https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/coronavirus-australia-scott-morrison-reveals-three-things-needed-before-covid-restrictions-ease-c-980428

    I may have that wrong. Scomo may have been referring to the app and tracing, rather than testing…

    ““We need to lift (tracing) to an industrial capability using technology and we need to do that as soon as we possibly can,” he said.

    “If we can get that in place get the tracing capability up from where it is that will give us more options and Australians more freedoms.””

  14. I can’t speak for those in other States but the effort by us in SA has been outstanding. We have only had 9 cases over the past 16 days. We haven’t had the 2 person rule, we have had 10 person rule. People are going to the beach but not hanging in groups, social distancing has been accepted.

    I would expect, provided we continue as we have then come the middle of May we will see further relaxation of the restrictions.

  17. Justin Warren @jpwarren

    It appears the app will upload *all* the Bluetooth contacts it’s had, along with the signal strength. This is so the contact tracers can do some assessment about risk (how close for how long).

    This is a lot more than a “was within X of person for more than Y seconds” threshold baked into the app. That’s every phone running the app that yours managed to ping successfully over the past 21 days.

    I understand the logic here (a tracer can tune the sensitivity of duration/closeness later when working with the master database) but this is collecting a lot of info.

  18. lizzie true

    Albeit to push testing further means testing more people who have no symptoms at all. And Scomo and his lapdog haven’t yet spoken about how to get people motivated to do that.

  19. @hardenuppete
    ·
    35m
    For early adopters of #covidsafe here’s the keyword you might want to consider before installing it today.

    It ‘will’ be a criminal offence to use any app data in any other way. Will meaning at some time in the future when the legislation is passed.

  25. Apologies to anyone offended by my post which was posted very much tongue in cheek. Happy to suffer any punishment William wants to impose.

    I may have exaggerated the 98% a little 🙂

  27. Cud,

    Well it is so far 4 days in a row so come Wednesday hopefully we will have 7 days in a row and if that occurs I believe those that are still to recover will be in single digits which would be an enormous achievement.

  29. Do their social distancing infractions make you guilty and lliable for a fine?

    The Guardian

    Hunt was also asked what would happen if people could be busted breaking social distancing laws through the app.

    Hunt is unequivocal on this:

    It cannot be used for any other purpose. It is prevented, by law, from being used for any other purpose and to use it for any other purpose is punishable with jail andI think that is a very important protection. May, in some ways, diminish what some might have wanted. But as a Cabinet we considered all of the possibilities and we said it was to have one job and one use, to protect Australians from the spread of coronavirus and it has no other purpose, nor is it legally able to be used for any other purpose.

  30. It’s worse than that. WB says “Everyone hates Mundo”

    This is not true.

    I’m an ALP supporter and hate no-one.

    Mundo’s just your garden variety fuckwit riffing off the attention he gets by being a fuckwit.

    I have no animosity towards him at all.

    I just block him and he doesn’t exist in my wheelhouse at all. This is because he is a fuckwit and offers nothing intelligent to the conversation.

  31. I can see journalists racing to download the app. This will save the AFP and border force a heap of time and effort in trying to work out who their sources are.

  32. Greensborough Growler @ #2028 Sunday, April 26th, 2020 – 5:24 pm

    It’s worse than that. WB says “Everyone hates Mundo”

    This is not true.

    I’m an ALP supporter and hate no-one.

    Mundo’s just your garden variety fuckwit riffing off the attention he gets by being a fuckwit.

    I have no animosity towards him at all.

    I just block him and he doesn’t exist in my wheelhouse at all. This is because he is a fuckwit and offers nothing intelligent to the conversation.

    What a bizarre post.

  33. Truck licensing shake-up looms after spike in crashes

    https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/truck-licensing-shake-up-looms-after-spike-in-crashes-20200425-p54n7h.html

    After a week of fatal collisions on Melbourne’s roads – and a spike in the number of truck crashes nationwide – The Sunday Age can reveal the state government is examining an industry-led push to improve what some describe as “dismal” training standards in Victoria.
    :::
    Figures from the federal department of transport show in the 12 months to December last year, 188 people died from 173 fatal crashes involving heavy vehicle trucks – an increase of more than 27 per cent from the year before.

  36. Corrupting even the perception of the political independence of ASD should be a no no.

    It is merely another small step in the erratic decline in the underpinnings of our democracy.

  37. “Only the Labor faithful hate Mundo ”

    No, i dont “hate” Mundo, or even Rex.

    Its just that they are so consistently, relentlessly, and often unreasonably and irrationally negative regardless of whatever position the ALP takes that they are simply not worth engaging with.

    Not toxic like the nath thing and its ilk though.

  38. imacca @ #2035 Sunday, April 26th, 2020 – 5:36 pm

    “Only the Labor faithful hate Mundo ”

    No, i dont “hate” Mundo, or even Rex.

    Its just that they are so consistently, relentlessly, and often unreasonably and irrationally negative regardless of whatever position the ALP takes that they are simply not worth engaging with.

    Not toxic like the nath thing and its ilk though.

    Sledging 3 posters in the one hit. Big effort.

  41. Peter Harden
    @hardenuppete
    ·
    17m
    I love how they are trying to reassure everyone by saying you can register with a fake name. Unless you are using a burner phone your mobile number provides your real ID. #covidsafe

  45. [As reinforced by the Chief Minister for the Northern Territory and Minister for Education, schools will be open on day 1, Term 2, 2020 and all students will be expected to attend.]

    Makes sense considering NT has 5 active cases and no new infections for close to 3 weeks.

  48. As this tracing app uses bluetooth, how will it detect that people are within 1.5ms of each other. GPS is inaccurate at this range.

    Blluetooth can go through walls. Will people be notified to isolate if they were closer than 1.5m but had a wall between them?

    I assume the app will be always on, would this be a drain on the phone battery (especially if it I bales GPS). If it works intermittently, say every 5 minutes, would it miss contacts?

    When setting up the app you need to enter name, age, phone number and postcode. Why? Would it just have to pick up the phone number through Bluetooth and send out a SMS or have someone call the contact

  49. Rex I am not confident until I see some feedback on the app. I won’t be registering until people have reviewed the legislation and app source code.

  50. @correzpond
    ·
    2h
    Greg Hunt just screened an advertisement during his presser that says the #CovidsafeApp is “privacy protected by law”. Which is apparently the first untruth because as @KKeneally advised on #insiders this morning ‘the law’ is still pending.

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