On failure

A look at efforts to get to the bottom of last year’s federal election pollster failure and the Electoral Commission of Queensland’s recent election night meltdown.

The Association of Market and Social Research Organisations has published a discussion paper for its review into last year’s federal election polling failure. It notes that existing standards set by the Australian Press Council are too lax and readily ignored in any case, and suggests a familiar retinue of suggested new standards including full disclosure of weightings used and detail of how preference flows were determined. While the inquiry’s committee and advisory group are impressively credentialled, it should be noted that most actual pollsters aren’t members of the AMSRO. The recent announcement that YouGov, Essential Research and uComms would establish an Australian Polling Council occurred independently of its process, and is likely to be the more consequential development.

Meanwhile, a parliamentary inquiry has been putting the blowtorch to the Electoral Commission of Queensland over the failure of its results reporting facilities at the local government elections and state by-elections on March 28. Excuses include disruption arising from COVID-19, which extended to “coding resources” being locked down in Wuhan, and the complication of combining elections for two state parliament seats with the statewide council elections. It also appears an American firm contracted to provide a new election management system, Konnech, has found itself bamboozled by what the electoral commissioner described as “the complexity of Queensland electoral law”, which “far exceeded that of any other Konnech customer” (a conclusion it would no doubt have reached in any Australian jurisdiction).

The new results website went belly-up on testing a week out from election day, prompting the ECQ to hurriedly concoct the unfamiliar-looking results website that appeared on the night. Polling booth officials were required to submit results through a shareable spreadsheet application, which threw up formating inconsistencies upon transfer to the ECQ system. The ECQ’s technical staff spent the night dealing with the results website issues, leaving corresponding issues with a horrifyingly complex XML results feed to one side. Consequently, the ABC’s results displays remained stuck on a tiny share of the count all night, and updates remained infrequent beyond election night. It is to be hoped that this will all be sorted out before a state election that will be held on October 31.

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.

1,379 comments on “On failure”

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  1. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s senior aide Dominic Cummings is set to make a public statement on Monday afternoon local time, the BBC and other media outlets reported, amid mounting pressure on Cummings to resign.

    Johnson had on Sunday publicly backed his senior aide, who has been accused of breaking the government’s own coronavirus rules.

    Johnson’s support drew widespread criticism, including from the left-wing Guardian newspaper, which framed his reluctance to push Cummings aside as evidence of the prime ministers’s “contempt for the public.”

    Likely more stinging for Downing Street was the headline on the Monday front page of the right-wing Daily Mail tabloid: “What planet are they on?” the paper asked, showing photos of Johnson and Cummings. The Daily Mail has usually been considered supportive of the government.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/25/coronavirus-update-us/#link-OC53ZDRLQFA23BPYRYAA3HNKWY

  2. nath says:
    Monday, May 25, 2020 at 10:35 pm

    ______________________
    Alas Grimace! I always thought he was a bit of a March violet! No doubt he has returned to his first Liberal love!

  4. Fess

    Boris Johnson and the rest of cabinet should resign along with Cummings. They have royally stuffed up the handling of the pandemic.

  5. So many mysteries surround Donald Trump: the contents of his tax returns, the apparent miracle of his graduation from college. Some of them are merely curiosities; others are of national importance, such as whether he understood the nuclear-weapons briefing given to every president. I prefer not to dwell on this question.

    But since his first day as a presidential candidate, I have been baffled by one mystery in particular: Why do working-class white men—the most reliable component of Donald Trump’s base—support someone who is, by their own standards, the least masculine man ever to hold the modern presidency? The question is not whether Trump fails to meet some archaic or idealized version of masculinity. The president’s inability to measure up to Marcus Aurelius or Omar Bradley is not the issue. Rather, the question is why so many of Trump’s working-class white male voters refuse to hold Trump to their own standards of masculinity—why they support a man who behaves more like a little boy.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/donald-trump-the-most-unmanly-president/612031/

    Whiny men are a thing these days, it’s not just Trump. Victimhood abounds.

  6. Are those others Labor? there is only one government worthy of the name , no one party and that is the Andrews Victorian Labor Government. The others are nothing more than pale shadows of what Labor could and should be.

  7. Vic:

    Boris got his wish on Brexit, trouble is the way things are going Britain will be matched only by America as a no-way, no-how, no-go zone for tourists because of coronavirus.

  9. Vic:

    Given we have a reactionary govt I’m so glad we didn’t go down the same pathway as the Brits and the Yanks.

  11. Confessions @ #1355 Monday, May 25th, 2020 – 10:46 pm

    So many mysteries surround Donald Trump: the contents of his tax returns, the apparent miracle of his graduation from college. Some of them are merely curiosities; others are of national importance, such as whether he understood the nuclear-weapons briefing given to every president. I prefer not to dwell on this question.

    But since his first day as a presidential candidate, I have been baffled by one mystery in particular: Why do working-class white men—the most reliable component of Donald Trump’s base—support someone who is, by their own standards, the least masculine man ever to hold the modern presidency? The question is not whether Trump fails to meet some archaic or idealized version of masculinity. The president’s inability to measure up to Marcus Aurelius or Omar Bradley is not the issue. Rather, the question is why so many of Trump’s working-class white male voters refuse to hold Trump to their own standards of masculinity—why they support a man who behaves more like a little boy.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/donald-trump-the-most-unmanly-president/612031/

    Whiny men are a thing these days, it’s not just Trump. Victimhood abounds.

    It’s because Donald Trump has pulled the hot chicks all his life. That’s the measure of a man to those guys. Simple as that, really.

  13. Jeez, even the Daily Mail is demanding that Dominic Cummings must resign! This is what some other European and American papers are saying:

    The New York Times said Johnson had now “latched himself” to his chief adviser, underlining “his deep reliance on Cummings, the architect of his election victory last year and the driving force behind his ambitious post-Brexit agenda. But it is unlikely to defuse the uproar over Cummings’s actions, which critics say send a signal that Britain’s leaders can ignore the rules they impose on others.”

    Yes, Libération declared categorically, “the answer is yes. There really is one rule for Dominic Cummings, prime minister Boris Johnson’s special adviser, and another, quite different rule for the rest of the British public.”

    Yes indeed, France’s left-leaning daily repeated, “Cummings may disregard, without consequence, the lockdown imposed on the rest of the country. And yes, the real boss at No 10 is this unelected adviser, and not its current tenant, Boris Johnson.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/may/25/cummings-is-the-real-boss-world-press-pours-scorn-on-boris-johnson

  14. Boris looks the type of kid that would be wearing the dunces hat and standing in the corner of the classroom everyday.

  15. The whole lot of the Conservative party should go let alone Cummings. They just think they are privileged to do what they like and always have.

  17. Scott Morrison touts a new era of state unity for economic recovery (Headline Oz)

    Lets see how this so called state of unity lasts for.

  18. Victoria’s testing now beats NSW in absolute numbers – 431,878 to Victoria versus 422,703.

    In terms of testing per head of population – 6.51% to Victoria versus 5.21% to NSW
    In terms of testing per head in the last week – 1.3% to Victoria versus 0.63% to NSW

    The question still stands. What is peculiar about Victorians or what is Victoria’s government doing better?

  20. https://reneweconomy.com.au/big-spinning-machines-arrive-in-south-australia-to-hasten-demise-of-gas-generation-64767/

    Gas is on the way out, and AEMO’s assessment makes the gas lobby’s talking points look absurd. As proof, the owners of the main “base-load” and intermediate gas plants in the state are already planning their closure in coming years. The only generators to remain will be “fast start” machines that will be sparingly used.

  27. Thanks for that Renew Economy link about “spinning machines” (synchronous condensers ) Cud.
    I looked them up – they were in use during the 1950s. They look like great big electric motors, except the shaft has no load on it; purpose is to stabilize the grid.
    So one of the big reasons for retaining gas or coal-fired turbines -to provide electrical stability – can be taken over by synchronous condensers.
    SA will do this, and retire its gas turbines.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_condenser

  29. food for thought . . .

    Now we have fewer cases of COVID-19, and restrictions are lifting, many of us are thinking of rejuvenating our social lives by heading to our local cafe or favourite restaurant.

    What can we do to reduce the risk of infection? And what should managers be doing to keep us safe?

    by : Lisa Bricknell
    Senior Lecturer in Environmental Health, CQUniversity Australia
    https://theconversation.com/how-to-stay-safe-in-restaurants-and-cafes-139117

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