In my opinion, we’re polls apart
After catastrophic predictive failures over the Trump candidacy, the Brexit outcome and ScoMo’s election “miracle”’ I no longer have much faith in opinion polls.
I cannot avoid being a little sceptical about a state poll this week, on a quiet news day, that won headlines in all three Tasmanian dailies.
The poll found that 55 per cent of Tasmanians want Premier Peter Gutwein to consider reopening the state borders to interstate travel between COVID-safe destinations. In the survey, 43 per cent were opposed to an early opening and 2 per cent didn’t know.
Thrice bitten by the polls, with Donald Trump now the accidental President of the US, the United Kingdom having become offshore islands of Europe, and Bill Shorten not even leader of the opposition let alone leading Australia, I am having trouble believing this latest poll on our moated island.
Do you believe most Tasmanians really want to lower the drawbridge before December 1?
Is that really what you are thinking and hearing?
I was in the back blocks of the US early in Trump’s campaign.
Most working (or unemployed) Americans I met disliked Hillary Clinton and Trump slogans like “Drain the swamp” and “Bring home the jobs” and “Make America great again” resonated with them. But the polls told me Clinton had it by a mile and I disregarded what I was hearing first-hand on the ground and went with the professional opinion collectors. Wrong.
Likewise, in Britain in the year up to the Brexit vote, everyone I talked with wanted out of Europe, but I figured I was listening to a narrow vector and accepted the wider view of the pollsters who said most people wanted to remain. Wrong again.
And on the ground in Australia during the last federal election I met hardly anyone (other than rusted on Labor tragics) who wanted to see Shorten as the nation’s prime minister.
Yet the polls disagreed. Even the bookies were with the pollsters. Bill was a dead-cert winner. Little wonder, on the eve of the 2019 election, that Bill and Chloe were packing their bags to move into The Lodge.
I remember writing that Shorten looked like becoming the most unpopular prime minister ever elected by a landslide: “The PM everyone expects but nobody wants.”
Well, that was what every poll was telling me.
And so, I was wrong again.
Given my sustained inability to predict the accuracy of the polls, I have a good chance of being wrong again when I swing the other way and doubt the findings of this latest Tasmanian poll showing more than half of you want to lower the drawbridge now.
This goes against everything I hear on the ground. Successful restaurateurs whom I know, don’t want it. They fear a second lockdown. Builders, tradies and business people I know don’t want it for the same reasons.
Admittedly, I have spoken only with dozens. Polling companies have a much larger sampling size and over a wider spectrum.
Of course, it can all depend on the framing of the question: yet
“Do you want to open the border before we all go down the gurgler?”
Who wouldn’t say “Yes”. But a different wording might elicit a different reply.
“Do you want to open the border and let granny take her chances with COVID-19?”
In fact, EMRS asked 27 questions, none of them particularly leading but the one that sparked the news stories was this: “Considering the recent Tasmanian government announcement that borders would be closed until at least December 1, do you think there should be interstate travel prior to 1 December for those states and territories with no community transmission?”
That was question 27, the last in an exhausting, detailed interview nowhere as entertaining as a visit to the gypsy tent. These days, pollsters have elevated their oracular, soothsaying, tea-leaf-reading trade to something of a science.
Usually at that level of respectability, there are professional and regulatory bodies.
I’m not sure if there is a Prophesy Registration Board or whether you just hang up a shingle and start seeing.
Is there an Entrails Readers Society or a Crystal Ball Gazers Association? And can anyone join? And is there a code of ethics? Like in journalism (smiley emoji here).
Realistically, polling companies are not doing their stuff for mere public interest and social benefit. They are paid to conduct surveys for clients who seek to gain advantage from the findings.
Less and less are pollsters being commissioned by mainstream media for a headline or a lead story. Times are hard in media and the polling money is now in market research or in providing information to a wide variety of industries and interest groups that want to influence government policy through the weathervane of public opinion.
EMRS (Enterprise Marketing and Research Services) is a Moonah-based market researcher. This week’s finding that 55 per cent of Tasmanians wanted a qualified border reopening before Gutwein’s due date is in no way disprovable.
Only by commissioning another survey from another company could it be reasonably questioned.
And so on ad infinitum. The EMRS website adequately demonstrates their methodology and qualifications, which as far as I can see are pretty much in line with the top polling companies in Australia. They boast their own call centre with a team of trained interviewers as well as focus group facilities. It is good to see it being done here and not in Melbourne.
There is no reason to believe the Moonah staff aren’t technically up there with the world’s best polling companies: the same ones who got Trump, Brexit and Shorten so wrong.
As a journalist, I once had a budget (i.e. other people’s money to spend). I often commissioned an opinion poll to beef up a story I was working on. In retrospect, I cannot remember any instance where the result killed the story.
That is pretty much in line with the EMRS succinct mission statement on their website: “Determine what you don’t know, confirm what you think you know.”
EMRS’s client for this week’s headline-winning-poll was the Federal Group, which should have been very happy with the result.
They have more than a passing interest in filling hotels and casinos.
Many political analysts attribute the Liberal victory in the 2018 state election to the considerable financial support and influence of the Federal Group. The protection of their poker machine monopoly led to the “Love your Local” campaign that was a political masterstroke and in retrospect the only memorable policy from the last election.
There is now in place an entirely different Liberal Premier and we can only wonder how he feels about his until now apparently popular COVID-19 strategy being politically undermined by a poll commissioned by his party’s erstwhile most powerful ally.
As I suggested earlier, how about another opinion poll?
Or perhaps it is time for the only poll that matters.
Last July, I spoke with former Liberal premier Robin Gray about his recent autobiography. He intimated then, based on Gutwein’s high opinion poll ratings, that the present Premier would be wise to call an election in September.
“They won’t get any higher,” he said. “An early election would probably increase his majority and establish authority in his own right in difficult times. It would clear the decks for some tough decisions when he has to rebuild the economy.”
Isn’t that the best polling advice from the craftiest of political practitioners?
An election forces everyone to have an opinion and every opinion gets counted.
You mightn’t always like the result but if you like democracy, an election is the poll that really matters and is never wrong.
GIVEN MY SUSTAINED INABILITY TO PREDICT THE ACCURACY OF THE POLLS, I HAVE A GOOD CHANCE OF BEING WRONG AGAIN WHEN I SWING THE OTHER WAY AND DOUBT THE FINDINGS OF THIS LATEST TASMANIAN POLL SHOWING MORE THAN HALF OF YOU WANT TO LOWER THE DRAWBRIDGE NOW.’’