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Pundits scramble to catch up with Real World
Saturday, 07 August 2010 14:39 | Written by Jo

The proliferation of pundits is one of the strangest features of this strange election campaign. Forget Twitter, Facebook and the chattering classes.

The full coverage on the Sky News public affairs channel (APAC) and additional windows devoted to Coalition and Labor campaigns together with the advent of the 24 hour ABC News Channel ensures that no statement and no event occurs without immediate comment by some self-styled expert, whether a professional journalist or an associate of one or another political party.

A few examples illustrate the point. Even as Labor members entered the caucus meeting on 24 June 2010 the pundits were absolutely confident of a contest and only differed in their estimates of how many votes Julia Gillard would get. In the event no vote occurred and Julia Gillard was the only nominee, apparently because Rudd had decided not to stand and neglected to tell his supporters.

The major opinion polls such as Nielsen, Galaxy and Newspoll have produced results over the past two weeks that have rattled the confidence of the pundits. But the evidence that support was moving towards the Coalition was quite evident in the daily poll Roy Morgan conducts on Yahoo and particularly in the instant poll linked to Sky News that almost always rejects the views asserted by Sky News commentators.
Today for example Laurie Oakes says the only Prime Ministerial figure in the campaign is Kevin Rudd. In contrast the Yahoo poll asks "Is Rudd's return good for Labor?" At 11.30am with nearly 17000 votes counted, 7996 respondents (47%) thought Rudd's return would be Good and 8870 (53%) said Bad.
Earlier Sky News poll asked "Does the Orgill Report vindicate the BER Program". While most news reports focused on BER waste, most commentators initially accepted the Gillard defence of not many complaints and a premium for speedy delivery. In contrast at 10am today 77.8% of Sky News respondents thought Orgill had not vindicated the program and only 22% thought he had. While such views must be subject to numerous caveats, they are just as valid as any expressed by the leak-magnate Laurie Oakes on Channel 9 or in the Daily Telegraph, Government apologists Phil Coorey and Peter Hartcher in the Sydney Morning Herald and the doyen Paul Kelly in The Australian.

The role these commentators play should provide topics for endless PhDs in psephology at least until the next election. Such studies should tell us not only about the obvious biases of most commentators but also how significantly their opinions differ from those measured in opinion polls and similar surveys of voter reactions. If anything, far from leading public opinion commentators more often are scrambling to catch up with the trends.

The major opinion polls such as Nielsen, Galaxy and Newspoll have produced results over the past two weeks that have rattled the confidence of the pundits. But the evidence that support was moving towards the Coalition was quite evident in the daily poll Roy Morgan conducts on Yahoo and particularly in the instant poll linked to Sky News that almost always rejects the views asserted by Sky News commentators.

Today for example Laurie Oakes says the only Prime Ministerial figure in the campaign is Kevin Rudd. In contrast the Yahoo poll asks "Is Rudd's return good for Labor?" At 11.30am with nearly 17000 votes counted, 7996 respondents (47%) thought Rudd's return would be Good and 8870 (53%) said Bad.

Earlier Sky News poll asked "Does the Orgill Report vindicate the BER Program". While most news reports focused on BER waste, most commentators initially accepted the Gillard defence of not many complaints and a premium for speedy delivery. In contrast at 10am today 77.8% of Sky News respondents thought Orgill had not vindicated the program and only 22% thought he had.

While such views must be subject to numerous caveats, they are just as valid as any expressed by the leak-magnate Laurie Oakes on Channel 9 or in the Daily Telegraph, Government apologists Phil Coorey and Peter Hartcher in the Sydney Morning Herald and the doyen Paul Kelly in The Australian.

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Comments   

 
0 #1 Concentrating on the leaders seems to di — Bush bunny 2010-08-08 14:00
Concentrating on the leaders seems to distract from policy.
Electorates will vote for the representatives they think will serve their area best. However, if they don't like the political parties policies, this could swing away from an sitting politician.

This next government will win or lose on marginal seats.
Therefore I give the coalition the leading edge.

I admit I have never liked Julia Gilliard or her presentation. Although it has improved since she became
the temporary PM. I rather like Tony Abbott, he seems to
present as a fair dinkum Aussie. And he has to me a better team that the Labor camp. But we'll wait and see?
 
 
0 #2 There are two classes of pundits that ra — Don Maclean 2010-08-08 18:33
There are two classes of pundits that raise passions, the first are those who indicate their bias by the way they make their comments (like Bush Bunny above) and hence act like cheerleaders at football for their own side. Most bloggers and some media professionals belong to this class and are of little help to the genuine undecided voter.

The second class pretend to be unbiassed but construct their comments in a way that attempts to move the undecided towards their favoured camp. This is seen most blatantly in the daily newspapers e.g. today's Brisbane Sunday Mail (8 August) which headlines on page 1 "Snouts in the Trough" revealing costs of taxpayers expenses (details on page 9 one show that Coalition MPs provide possibly the worst examples of extravagance), yet page 1 continues "these revelations come as Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the man the she deposed, Kevin Rudd, met for the first time since during the election campaign ...... etc.". This illogical linking of negative news with government identities is clearly an attempt to besmirch the Labor camp and sway the electorate. The Murdoch press and its pundits provide many examples of this including the recruitment of Mark Latham to harass the Government. I find this distressing!

I do not mind the cheerleaders, e.g. John Howard or Bob Hawke, who act mostly to fortify their own side and have relatively little impact on changing opinion (and I say this as I cheer on Hawke as a labor supporter). However I do despise those who seek to change opinion under cover of presenting news and events.

OK, let me now show more of my own bias, pundits supporting the opposition have been crowing loudly that the Julia we are seeing on daily TV is not the real Julia, but I think the opposite is really true, i.e. Abbott is so tightly controlled and scripted that we are certainly not seeing the real Tony during the campaign. Pity help us if the real Tony comes to rule us as PM by default, even though I find the man quite pleasant and personable, albeit erratic and inconsistent in his core beliefs and statements. Julia by contrast shows consistency and reason despite the barrage and is prepared to open up issues for debate.
 
 
0 #3 As Zibigniew Brezezinski recently said," — Arjay 2010-08-08 20:05
As Zibigniew Brezezinski recently said,"There is a new global political awakening." When the people finally realise that they been taken for a ride of deception which has stolen the very essence of their civilisation,th en the oligarchs and their media lackies will be in total dis-array.
 
 
0 #4 That's good that people can get the cred — Mckay29Araceli 2010-08-15 20:32
That's good that people can get the credit loans and that opens new possibilities.
 
 
0 #5 I would be very interested in political — Stewartinoz 2010-08-16 10:29
I would be very interested in political persuasion of the parties in terms of Fabian Socialism and the push towards the inevitability of One World Government.
Anything that would delay the process would be a plus.