Today's Fairfax Ipsos poll shows the Abbott Government back on level pegging with Labor. Bob Ellis suggests the result was fraudulently achieved.
The numbers on both Ipsos and Newspoll were, by the look of it, crookedly achieved.
Both rang during Shorten’s speech respondents who were not watching it. Both rang only landlines and not mobiles, which younger voters favour. Both rang only those at home on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, mainly octogenarians. Newspoll ‘adjusted the sample to reflect population distribution’. You bet they did. Newspoll nonetheless showed Labor way ahead.
Ipsos showed a tie. To understand how they did this – give Labor 400,000 fewer votes than Newspoll – one must look at their fool methodology. As I understand it*, their machines rang 80,000 people, of whom 1,403 took the call. These were people prepared to talk to a machine – the old, the mad, the loveless, the paranoid, the paupered, the resentful, society’s grumps and invalids – on three nights, when half the adult population were out of the house, in cinemas and restaurants, their mobiles with them, unrung by by either pollster.
This poll can be disregarded. Its methodology predicted in 2013 that Swan, Rudd, Clare, Bowen, Burke and Dreyfus would lose their seats; for this reason alone they should be disqualified and investigated — and prosecutions be launched, probably, for criminal fraud.
.@latingle on #Budget2015: a winner for the base, old blokes http://t.co/OVNkmtGD6g pic.twitter.com/N8MBTAPEP4
— Edmund Tadros (@edmundtadros) May 17, 2015
Both surveys got Queensland wrong by two per cent. Both methodologies got the UK wrong by three per cent — that is, two million votes.
It is no longer acceptable to ring landlines only. It makes no sense whatever.
The most crooked element of the crooked Ipsos method was the ringing – and I ask them to deny it – of 10,000 respondents while Shorten was on his feet, or while his speech was being discussed by pundits in the hours afterward. This meant those not interested in what he had to say – that is, Liberal voters – or what others thought of it – that is, Liberal voters – were the ones who took the call and said they were voting Liberal. How many of these respondents were there: two hundred? Three hundred?
I accuse them of thus confecting – criminally – lies. And I ask Fairfax to sack them as their pollster.
Discuss.
* Editor's Note: Bob said he "understood" the Ipsos was a machine poll. In fact, it appears the Ipsos surveyors are human.
Me on Newspoll http://t.co/sVOtmfEYDx
— Peter Brent (@mumbletwits) May 17, 2015
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
Fairfax-Ipsos: 50-50 Newspoll 53-47 to Labor Galaxy: 52-48 to Labor ReachTEL: 53-47 to Labor Only one poll that counts tomorrow: Ipsos.
— Captain Chaos Of Oz (@geeksrulz) May 17, 2015
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The Ipsos 50 50 getting more coverage than Newspoll 53 47. Media does like a "budget bounce".
— Peter Brent (@mumbletwits) May 17, 2015
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