There was another big winner on Saturday night other than Kate Carnell _ and that was the opinion pollster Datacol which produced the The Canberra Times polls during the campaign. Last Thursday Datacol had the Liberals ahead of Labor overall and ahead is each of the three seats, which proved correct, despite some widespread scepticism. Datacol was hamstrung by the large number of undecided vote in the week before the election. That undecided vote was peculiar to the ACT election because a concurrent poll using the same respondents on the upcoming Federal by-election in the seat of Canberra had 10 percentage points (SUBS: correct 10 per centage points NOT 10 per cent) fewer undecided. Datacol still correctly picked the Liberals pipping Labor and rising and the Greens coming from nowhere last election to being in third place. Datacol correctly picked Paul Osborne ahead of the Greens, Democrats and Moore Independents in Brindabella; Moore being behind the Greens and ahead of the Democrats in Molonglo and eventhe 1 per cent vote for the Smokers Are Voters group. The trouble was that last week no-one believed the Liberals were ahead and there was some widespread private scepticism of the poll result.
Datacol principal Malcolm Mearnes was pleased his polling was borne out, but was not surprised. Datacol, like most pollsters, also asks demographic questions like age group, sex, employment. These details are known through Bureau of Statistics figures. The poll sample has to reasonably match the known demographic data if the poll is to be relied upon for the political data.