Janet Collins
Billy MThe Trend in Political Polling
June 30th 2008 09:43
Polling on political preferences has been with us for ever and a day. The trend however seems to have reached mammoth proportions. Our headline news broadcasts publish new polling figures every day or every other day. But can we rely on them?
Some time ago, the rating of our governments and our politicians was something that was intermittent. When issues most of the population would relate to blew up, out would come a poll with all the regular ratings such as how the population felt about the issue, how the politicians or the government of the day were handling the issue, which political party would handle the issue best or who was the preferred leader – whether this be the Prime Minister or Opposition Leader at Federal Level, or Premier or Opposition Leader at a State level.
Now we are inundated with this information all the time. However, it is not only the tabloids that seem to be obsessed with these “polls”. It is our broadsheets and respected news journalists who have come on board too.
The one question I have is this “Who is watching the pollsters and how they collect this information?” An example of such a poll is
While promoting the survey as “Last Days for Iemma” (Premier in NSW), the survey itself presented something more vague. In fact, on the question of leadership 50 per cent replied that he should remain. On preference for voting however, his party, Labor got the thumbs down as did they on performance and electricity privatisation.
What is in much finer and smaller print however is that this survey was from The Taverner Research telephone poll of 602 people. Considering NSW has an estimated population of 6.9 million, even though the voting population is much smaller, it is difficult to understand how such a small and flimsy survey can form the basis for a whole news story.
It is not the content of the story that I am disputing. I could probably have polled this many people myself and arrived at the same result. It is more to do with the growing army of “political pollsters” who do tiny surveys and sell them to our newspapers who then write pretty large stories about them. These surveys then get a life of their own and meanwhile the real issues out in the community are ignored.
Some time ago, the rating of our governments and our politicians was something that was intermittent. When issues most of the population would relate to blew up, out would come a poll with all the regular ratings such as how the population felt about the issue, how the politicians or the government of the day were handling the issue, which political party would handle the issue best or who was the preferred leader – whether this be the Prime Minister or Opposition Leader at Federal Level, or Premier or Opposition Leader at a State level.
Now we are inundated with this information all the time. However, it is not only the tabloids that seem to be obsessed with these “polls”. It is our broadsheets and respected news journalists who have come on board too.
The one question I have is this “Who is watching the pollsters and how they collect this information?” An example of such a poll is
The Sun Herald’s
poll on the performance of the NSW Government in Sunday’s edition. The newspaper dedicated two pages to this survey. While promoting the survey as “Last Days for Iemma” (Premier in NSW), the survey itself presented something more vague. In fact, on the question of leadership 50 per cent replied that he should remain. On preference for voting however, his party, Labor got the thumbs down as did they on performance and electricity privatisation.
What is in much finer and smaller print however is that this survey was from The Taverner Research telephone poll of 602 people. Considering NSW has an estimated population of 6.9 million, even though the voting population is much smaller, it is difficult to understand how such a small and flimsy survey can form the basis for a whole news story.
It is not the content of the story that I am disputing. I could probably have polled this many people myself and arrived at the same result. It is more to do with the growing army of “political pollsters” who do tiny surveys and sell them to our newspapers who then write pretty large stories about them. These surveys then get a life of their own and meanwhile the real issues out in the community are ignored.
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