There are two races at the moment being heavily polled: Australia and Canada. Canada votes this Monday, Australia in a couple of weeks.
Canada is more interesting, if for no other reason than the incumbents were losing by so far it wasn’t funny, but are now leading.
The PM quit and the new bloke, Carney —who once ran the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England— is now chasing the top job.
On the surface, that change of leadership might have played a part in voters' minds – Trudeau was past his used-by date in a Jacinda Ardern “loved then hated” kind of way. More likely, south of the border, Trump got elected, tariffs became an issue, and Carney looks like the person who can better stand up to America.
Polling out yesterday says the Conservatives are closing as people refocus on local issues like housing and cost of living, but the gap is still 12 points. Which is an amazing swing given the gap was 20 points the other way until tariffs stole the headlines.
Meantime, in Australia it’s gone from a race where the incumbent would be lucky to survive, far less thrive. Where a hung parliament was probable, requiring any number of accommodations with Greens and Teals and Independents, given a minority was the best Albanese could hope for, to what increasingly looks like an easy romp home with a majority.
Marginal seat polling out yesterday shows Labor with a 3.5% swing in the past week. Another poll had 45% of voters saying they didn’t like Dutton’s personality, therefore wouldn’t vote for him.
Competence, cost of living, that apparently doesn’t count. You look at him, you don’t like him, he’s toast.
It hardly seems a sophisticated way to decide the future of your nation, but then that’s democracy, isn’t it?
One argument says Albo should win —first term governments don’t lose— haven’t since the 30s.
But Canada, if the polls are right, that would be a victory from the ashes. What happens in another country is so profound: the party that was getting thrashed has their fortunes completely reversed. That’s one for the history books.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.
The PM quit and the new bloke, Carney —who once ran the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England— is now chasing the top job.
On the surface, that change of leadership might have played a part in voters' minds – Trudeau was past his used-by date in a Jacinda Ardern “loved then hated” kind of way. More likely, south of the border, Trump got elected, tariffs became an issue, and Carney looks like the person who can better stand up to America.
Polling out yesterday says the Conservatives are closing as people refocus on local issues like housing and cost of living, but the gap is still 12 points. Which is an amazing swing given the gap was 20 points the other way until tariffs stole the headlines.
Meantime, in Australia it’s gone from a race where the incumbent would be lucky to survive, far less thrive. Where a hung parliament was probable, requiring any number of accommodations with Greens and Teals and Independents, given a minority was the best Albanese could hope for, to what increasingly looks like an easy romp home with a majority.
Marginal seat polling out yesterday shows Labor with a 3.5% swing in the past week. Another poll had 45% of voters saying they didn’t like Dutton’s personality, therefore wouldn’t vote for him.
Competence, cost of living, that apparently doesn’t count. You look at him, you don’t like him, he’s toast.
It hardly seems a sophisticated way to decide the future of your nation, but then that’s democracy, isn’t it?
One argument says Albo should win —first term governments don’t lose— haven’t since the 30s.
But Canada, if the polls are right, that would be a victory from the ashes. What happens in another country is so profound: the party that was getting thrashed has their fortunes completely reversed. That’s one for the history books.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.
4 comments:
As Stalin may have said, it doesn’t matter how many vote. It’s who counts the votes.
Yes, polls can be wrong and also right. Why is that?
Here’s a theory.
They can be right when they represent a consistent nation-wide view - eg. when they provided “the writing on the wall” on which Jacinda Ardern based her decision to resign ahead of an election she was sure to lose.
They can be wrong when a poll’s nationwide view does not represent the views of electors in key marginal seats.
That’s where things get interesting.
Election outcomes are usually not determined by all electors equally, much that we might want them to be.
Rather it is electors in marginal seats — or even just say 250 electors in a seat held by a 500-vote margin (multiplied by say six such marginal seats) — who determine the outcome.
The problem in polling such electorates is a poll’s margin of error. A 1000-respondent poll has a margin of ±3.5%. The voters representing a typical 500-vote majority in a marginal electorate of 35,000 electors is 1.4% — in other words a poll of 1000 would produce a result which is not statistically significant.
Conducting a marginal electorate poll of sufficient size to produce a statistically-significant result would be impractical.
And nothing will change in either country if the conservatives win. When will voters realise that voting in the same parties who are so similiar and agree on 95% of the issues has no tangible effect? All of the big issues are systemic in nature, and each of the established parties advance and sustain that system, which is why there's never any real noticeable difference between ostensibly (but not actually) divergent administrations. They all agree with each other on all the core socio-economic-political tenets of what may broadly be denoted modernity, so it's just musical chairs every few years with performative voting being thought of as "democracy."
“It isn’t over till the fat lady sings”.
My guess is that the result in Australia will be a lot closer than the polls are predicting.
Peter Dutton needs to just keep focussing on the cost of living that has exploded under this government and shows signs of getting even worse.
Tony Abbott thinks the polls are wrong and his opinion is backed up with one poll that isn’t included in the MSM coverage but says things were even on a 2 party preferred basis which is the number that matters .
By all accounts a majority of voters have yet to make up their minds
We’ll see.
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