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A (confused) punter's guide to opinion polls

June 24, 2004

The trouble starts if you regard the polls as more than just a bit of harmless entertainment, writes Shaun Carney.

If you begin your day with a piece of toast, a cup of coffee and the news on the radio, you would have heard on Monday morning that the prospect of an early federal election had increased because of a new AgePoll. The poll, taken last weekend, showed Labor leading the Howard Government 52 to 48 per cent after preferences.

The following morning, the breakfast bulletins carried a further development: the early election that had looked more likely only the day before now looked less likely thanks to the latest Newspoll. That poll, also taken last weekend, showed Labor leading the Government 52 to 48 after preferences.

That's right. The two polls produced the same result but apparently meant entirely different things. Even on the primary vote, the differences were so small as to be non-existent. The AgePoll showed the Coalition on 43 and Labor on 42. Newspoll had both sides on 43.

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How can the same figures be subject to such wildly divergent interpretations? The simple explanation is that Newspoll was basically re-entering the earth's atmosphere, correcting itself from a previous poll that was just plain unbelievable.

That previous poll, taken in late May, suggested that the Government had increased its support by seven points in the space of a fortnight and would have won in a landslide.

The AgePoll, on the other hand, had been recording a very high Labor vote in its previous polls and the latest movement to a 52 to 48 spilt, which is more in the realm of possibility, gave the appearance of the ALP's support falling.

As the election fever gets higher, it will be worth remembering the experience of this week.

The fact - and it's admittedly speaking out of turn to say this in a newspaper - is that national opinion polls are at their very best indicative and at their worst a bit of harmless entertainment. They can give a flavour of the electorate's thinking but they never have been and never will be definitive.

When you hear, as you would have this week, that the significance of the AgePoll was that the Government was, for the first time in a long time, ahead of Labor 43 to 42 on the primary vote, remember also that there are margins of error in every poll. If you accord a two-point margin either way, then the primary vote might actually be 44 Labor, 41 Coalition, which kind of interferes with the "significance" of that particular result.

It pays to keep a sense of humour about it all. Volatility, for example, is the pollsters' best friend. When the findings jump all over the place from poll to poll, no pollster can afford to admit that there might have been a snafu in the sampling. After all, the only thing a pollster has going for him is his reputation for reliability. So if he intones in interviews about the "volatility" within the electorate it all sounds very convincing because, yes, we all like to think we have open minds and are weighing up the issues and the arguments.

Unfortunately, election after election shows us that there is very little volatility in the way Australians vote. Even the really big wins are carried on the back of relatively small margins. John Howard won in a parliamentary landslide in 1996 with a total vote of a bit more than 53 per cent; the two subsequent elections came down to a 51 to 49 split in the vote.

Without a major event, such as the storming of the Tampa or the September 11 terrorist attacks, voting intention rarely if ever shifts in large numbers in short spaces of time. And even with those two massive events, which unquestionably boosted the Government's support, the Coalition still only managed to get over the line at the 2001 election by a handful of seats.

It is pointless at this late stage to bemoan the increasing role that opinion polls play in the political debate, but it is worth acknowledging the ways in which they can sometimes affect that debate. After the rogue Newspoll in late May, the company's chief, Sol Lebovic, explained the apparent collapse in the ALP's vote as a consequence of Labor failing to roll out its big policy statements.

This led to increased calls from interviewers and political journalists for Mark Latham to produce more policies. Latham ignored the calls and - hey presto! - Labor has since recovered its lead over the Government.

So who was right, the pollster or the politician? A politician following his instincts and not the polls, to boot! A shocking thing.

Shaun Carney is an associate editor of The Age.