Unreasonable expectations ...By BARRY BRANNANNumerous commentators are saying that the Green vote is a disappointment. The vote fell below expectations but were those expectations reasonable? And thus is the disappointment reasonable? It seems like people expected the Greens to score a national average of around 10% in the House of Representatives and something higher in the Senate but, as we know, the actual result was less. The primary driver of expectations must surely be the polls. If the Greens performed as the polls predicted then there would be no debate.
Roy Morgan has published a summary of major polls conducted in the lead
up to the election. In the House of Representatives, Roy Morgan's polling had the Greens in the range 9-10.5% over a number of polls. Newspoll ranged 6-8%. ACNielsen ranged 7-9%. Galaxy 7-8%. The actual result was around 7%. In the Senate, Roy Morgan's polls were 12-12.5% and ACNielsen 12%. The actual result was around 7.5%. Optimistic choosing of Roy Morgan's House of Representatives poll combined with the 12% Senate polls could quite easily have led to overly high expectations and thus disappointment in the end.
Roy Morgan acknowledges that his polling over-estimated the Green vote.
He reviews the accuracy of his and other polls in another article. Whilst Roy Morgan suggests something could have happened between their polling and the election day, I believe all the pollsters need to take a serious look at their poll design. Without the burden of unreasonable expectations, the Greens have every reason to be happy with the result given that there was a 2% nationwide increase in House of Representatives votes and 2.6% increase in Senate votes.
RAPID RESPONSE EMAIL: What do you think? Thursday, October 21, 2004 |