Friday 23 August 2013

Australian Federal Election 2013: Robopollster opens door for survey fraud?


A number of Lonergan polls have been conducted during the 2013 Australian Federal Election campaign.


These polls seem to indicate that the Coalition is set to take a number of high profile seats, including the seats of Forde and Griffith in Queensland and Lindsay in New South Wales.

The Guardian Australia 16 August 2013:

A Guardian Lonergan poll taken in the seat Thursday night shows the Liberal sitting member Bert van Manen’s support soaring from the 44% he polled in 2010 to 56% in 2013. Beattie’s primary vote was a dismal 34%, three percentage points lower than the 37% achieved by Labor’s candidate Brett Raguse in 2010.

The Guardian Australia 16 August 2013:

Today Guardian Australia reports on an exclusive poll in the marginal seat of Lindsay, in Sydney's western suburbs. The startling results: the Liberal candidate, Fiona Scott, polled 60% of first preferences, a 17-point improvement over her 43.4% performance in 2010. The Labor incumbent (David Bradbury, the Assistant Treasurer) is looking at a 13-point decline on first preferences: 44.6% in 2010 to the poll's 32%.

The Guardian Australia 22 August 2013:

Kevin Rudd is trailing Liberal rival Bill Glasson in his apparently safe Brisbane seat of Griffith, in alarming news for Labor from the latest Guardian Lonergan poll.
Glasson, who is running an intensive local grassroots campaign, leads Rudd on a two-party preferred basis by 52% to 48%. The poll's margin of error is 4%, but its findings raise the possibility that without a big effort on his home turf, Rudd could become the third prime minister in Australian history to lose his seat, behind John Howard in 2007 and Stanley Bruce in 1929.

However, the polling has an allegedly exploitable flaw – the ability for any individual survey respondent to double dip.










UPDATE

Guardian Australia responds later that day:

Contrary to some comments on Twitter, we keep only one interview per household. We conduct an interview with whoever answers the phone. This methodology alone results in an oversampling of older respondents relative to younger respondents, as older respondents are more likely to answer the phone.
To correct this, at the end of the survey, we ask if there are any younger voters in the household. If there are, we conduct the survey with the younger respondent and discard the response from the older respondent.
This response merely confirms that any individual survey respondent can in the second round deliberately misrepresent their age in an effort to be counted twice in the survey (eg. at the press of a telephone button a sixty year-old man turns into a twenty-three year old woman) and while this may not be successful with regard to a household being counted twice, it would lead to some responses included in final data not actually belonging to the gender/age cohorts to which they are assigned - thus still skewing results. 

UPDATE 2


Federal Election 2013: NSW Far North and Mid North Coast registered voter numbers and candidates by electorate



Number of registered voters on the NSW Far and Mid North Coast

Electorate      30 November 2010            31 July 2013           12 August 2013















Note: The New England electorate takes in part of the North Coast region


House of Representatives 7 September 2013 candidates by electorate.

This is what Tony Abbott thinks of Aboriginal women?


SBS World News 16 August 2013:

What was largely missed, however, was Mr Abbott’s description of Indigenous women when addressing the Garma Festival last weekend. Indigenous women were “cowering in their houses or their huts”, unempowered and fearful, and unable to participate in the decision-making processes that affected themselves, their families and communities. This foul potpourri of racism, paternalism and sexism has been completely ignored by the mainstream media, with the notable exception on Louise Taylor in The Guardian.

Tony Abbott's plan for Indigenous Australians is fatally flawed by Louise Taylor, 13 August 2013

Thursday 22 August 2013

Looking back on the day Tony Abbott became the first federal minister to be ejected from the Australian Parliament in 40 years




Mr ABBOTT—I am confident that the Job Network member in this case has acted quite properly, as has Centrelink. I agreed with the member for Dickson to keep the job seeker’s name and address confidential, and I have done so.
Mr Beazley—Sit him down.
Mr SPEAKER—Leader of the Opposition!
Mr ABBOTT—I have done exactly what I promised. You are a sanctimonious windbag.
Mr SPEAKER—The minister will resume his seat.
Mr ABBOTT—You are—
Mr SPEAKER—Minister!....
-the Minister for Employment Services will excuse himself from the House.
Mr Abbott—I was just going to join my friend.
Mr SPEAKER—Minister!
The member for Warringah then withdrew from the chamber.
Mr Albanese interjecting—
Mr SPEAKER—I beg your pardon, the member for Grayndler! The member for Grayndler will apologise.
Mr Albanese—I apologise, Mr Speaker.
Mr Latham—On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Just for clarification, have you suspended the minister under a standing order in your ruling?
Mr SPEAKER—I have indeed.
Mr Latham—Thank you.

Jack the Insider The Australian 25 June 2013:

Abbott did not excuse himself from the House directly. Enraged, the former Oxford boxing blue veered ominously towards the Opposition benches.
For a man who has been involved in the odd stink, albeit on the fields of sporting contest, it did look awful or at least potentially so. But Abbott didn’t get far. He presumably thought better of engaging in a physical confrontation with his political opponents and left the chamber under escort.
Tony Abbott had become the first Minister to be punted from the parliament in forty years.


Alan Ramsey The Sydney Morning Herald 24 June 2000:



Mr ALBANESE (Grayndler—Leader of the House and Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) (15:10): We are not going to take lectures about parliamentary behaviour from this Leader of the Opposition, who is the only member of parliament to ever be thrown out of parliament for physically confronting a Vietnam vet with no legs, for marching across the chamber when he was out of control, to Graham Edwards. The Leader of the Opposition is not able to control his temper. He does not have the temperament to be the Prime Minister of this nation. He does not have the character to be Prime Minister of this nation.