Friday’s Page 1 headline, “”Carnell will hold her job: poll” drew a few mutterings in the newsroom. “”Very courageous” (in the Humphrian sense), was the most common.
Opinion polling can be a risky business, especially at election time.
Elections are one time when pollsters put their neck on the line. They predict community opinion and have the prediction verified or denied a few days later.
If they do badly, no-one is going to give them other work. If they do well, other work (where there is no verification later) comes in because people can be confident it will be reasonably accurate.
The Canberra Times has used an ACT company, Datacol, for all four ACT elections, each time with very satisfactory results. It has given us the base to report community opinion at election time and to make some educated guesses as to the make-up of the Legislative Assembly.
This time Datacol was chillingly accurate. The tables tell the story in detail.
It was the fourth time in four elections that Datacol had got it right.
It was the third time that the polling told us things that instinct would have told us was not believable. In the 1989 election the pollster predicted the 23 per cent for Labor and the 14 per cent for the Liberals. It defied rational explanation at the time. In 1995, the poll had the Liberal party ahead, something unthinkable in this Labor town. And in 1998, with the embers of the Howard slash-and-burn all around us, he said the Liberals were substantially ahead of Labor. The poll got the overall trend right and got the order of the first five parties or individuals right in every electorate (except the maverick Michael Moore in Molonglo).
It enabled us to say on the Friday before the poll: “”On this poll, the most likely result is: Liberal 7, Labor 6, Osborne 2, Green 1, Democrat 1. However, in previous elections the Democrat vote has fallen away and the vote for the independents increased as the election approaches, and this poll is picking that trend.”
We also said of the last seat in Molonglo it would be “”going to the Democrats or perhaps Michael Moore”.
In Ginninderra we could say it would “”split Liberal 2, Labor 2 and the last going to Dave Rugendyke of the Osborne Group or a Green or Democrat, depending on how the preferences flow . . . . This last seat in Ginninderra will determine whether Mrs Carnell needs to rely on someone outside the Osborne group to gain and keep government.”
Precisely.
Of course, it prompted Paul Osborne (or at least those who look after him) in to action. Osborne told the TV cameras that he was not in the bag for Carnell. He could easily support Labor, provided it had a different leader. Ho-hum.
The last seat in Ginninderra is the crux of this election. If Rugendyke gets it, Carnell has to rely only on the Osborne Group and not Michael Moore and/or the Greens to get her way on the floor of the Assembly for legislation, procedural matters or matters disciplining the executive.
It is a crucial difference. In the past three years Carnell has managed to socially soften her Liberal colleagues, saying we need Moore to stay in government and he won’t wear X, Y or Z.
With a purely Osborne coalition, those colleagues will not be so easily subdued on the social issues, particularly police powers. The cops may not quite get tactical nuclear weapons, but I bet they get move-on powers, new guns, security cameras in Civic and more. Also, watch X-rated videos.
If the Green wins the seat instead, the nature of government will be different because Carnell will have to rely on Moore on the floor of the Assembly.
Anyway, back to the poll.
On the issues, Datacol discovered economic management and leadership were the critical issues in voters’ minds.
The principal of Datacol, Malcolm Mearns, said, “”The big issue was perceived economic management and its potential for job creation, with the management of the health and education systems also important.
“”These are traditional issues and the government hadn’t put an identifiable foot wrong on them and they exploited a weak leader on the other side.”
Alarmingly Mearns estimates that between 15 and 20 per cent of people walked into the polling booth undecided.
“”Only when the paper was in front of them, did they have to decide,” he said.
The undecided vote favours independents because the ballot paper has the independents named on it to remind them of the possibility of voting for them, whereas a pollster can only ask a general question of voting intention. This perhaps explains the late swing to Moore.
Some say the publication of poll results affects the outcome of the election. In isolated cases this may be so directly. It is certainly the case indirectly.
Indirectly, it causes parties or candidates to react, sometimes increasing their efforts, sometimes recasting themselves as the underdog.
This election, I think the publication of the poll on individual Liberal candidates in Brindabella had a direct effect on people’s voting intention.
The poll had Brendan Smyth way ahead on 51 per cent of the Liberal vote, Trevor Kaine on 18 and Louise Littlewood on 11. I think that influenced some women Liberal voters to change their vote to Littlewood. Given the poll’s overall accuracy, it is surprising that the actual vote put Littlewood ahead of Kaine on the primary vote and Smyth’s vote dropped a tad in her favour, unless the poll is seen as a self-denying prophesy.
As it happens, Kaine is likely to win the seat on preferences owing to the capricious nature of the Robson rotation which was described yesterday and in more detail below by Miko Kirschbaum.
A spokeswoman for Labor Leader Wayne Berry argued that the Hare Clark system favour men and that only an above-the-line party vote, like the Senate would give more female representation. The theory being that the Labor Party would preselect women under its gender equity rules and they would get seats. Ho hum. More likely, the incidental effect this time of having fewer women in the Assembly was seen as a chance to bag Hare Clark and to return to a system where the party controls pre-selection and preference flow rather than the voters.
Hare-Clark, indeed, should give women a better chance. Under Hare Clark voters can vote for women across party lines, voting, say, for all the Labor women, followed by all the Liberal women, followed by all the minor and independent women, and not voting for any men at all. Indeed, scrutineers say there are quite a few votes like that in this election. They tend to begin with Green women candidates.
Sadly, such votes might be counter-productive for women because in Ginninderra it might stop a male Green being elected with an Osborne independent being elected instead, because the Green male needs every preference he can get to win the seat.
Hare Clark should not work against women. As the associate professor of politics at the University of Canberra Marian Sawer points out the Tasmanian House of Assembly, the home of Hare-Clark, has the highest proportion (34.3 per cent) of women of any house of parliament in Australia.
A myth must not develop that Hare Clark is bad for women. It may be, of course, that ACT Labor’s refusal to accept Emily’s List money was bad for Labor women candidates in this election. Emily’s List (Early Money Is Like Yeast — it rises) money was refused by ACT Labor because under list rules it must go to individuals. That would not have been acceptable to a party that was giving whatever advantage it could to sitting (nearly all left) candidates.
Another point in favour of Hare Clark for the ACT is revealed by looking at the booth-by-booth results. The Liberals beat Labor in all booths except six or 38 in Molonglo, one of 22 in Brindabella and 3 of 22 in Ginninderra.
An exact translation is impossible, but on that result with single-member electorates, the Liberals would have got, say, 14 or 15 of the 17 seats, with perhaps Wayne Berry and Simon Corbell as constituting the total Opposition to the Carnell Liberals. Not a pretty prospect for democracy.