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Speaker 1: Good morning everybody, and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Monday,

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Speaker 1: the ninth of May, and we are heading into another

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Speaker 1: week of the campaign. Sam. Last night was the second

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Speaker 1: of the debates between Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Opposition

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Speaker 1: Leader Anthony Albernezi. And we'll get to a bit about

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Speaker 1: what the polling is actually telling us about later in

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Speaker 1: today's episode, but first Sam, take us through what people

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Speaker 1: might have missed.

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Speaker 2: Over the weekend. So over the weekend, Prime Minister Scott

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Speaker 2: Morrison indicated he would reintroduce a religious discrimination bill if

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Speaker 2: the Coalition was reelected at the federal election on the

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Speaker 2: twenty first of May. On the weekend, Morrison said, our

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Speaker 2: commitment was to go forward with the DA the Religious

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Speaker 2: Discrimination Bill, and we will go forward with the RDA

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Speaker 2: in its own right and I look forward to getting

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Speaker 2: that support in the Parliament.

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Speaker 1: A search is underway for missing victims of a blast

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Speaker 1: in a hotel in Havana on Friday. At least twenty

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Speaker 1: seven people were killed after an apparent gas leak caused

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Speaker 1: an explosion at the Hotel Saratoga. At least eighty one

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Speaker 1: peter or were injured in the blast.

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Speaker 2: The Taliban has introduced new rules across Afghanistan mandating women

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Speaker 2: to where an Islamic face fail when in public, meaning

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Speaker 2: they will be fully covered head to toe. If a

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Speaker 2: woman does not comply with the restrictions, her mail guardian,

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Speaker 2: usually a father, brother, or husband, would be visited by

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Speaker 2: Taliban officials. The man would potentially face a prison term

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Speaker 2: or a firing from state work if he works for

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Speaker 2: the Taliban.

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Speaker 1: Some good news in the democracy world. Early voting for

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Speaker 1: the upcoming federal election opens today, So if you're unable

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Speaker 1: to vote on election day, you can search for the

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Speaker 1: closest early voting booth near you and actually go and

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Speaker 1: cast your ballot from today. All right, So, political polling

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Speaker 1: can give us useful insights, but it can also be

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Speaker 1: misleading if it's presented without a grain of salt. And

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Speaker 1: that's what we learned after twenty nineteen, and indeed after

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Speaker 1: the twenty sixteen US election. There's two parts of getting

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Speaker 1: up to scratch in the world of political polling. Understanding

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Speaker 1: what it all means and understanding whether the polls are

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Speaker 1: accurate enough for us to listen to. So before we

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Speaker 1: get into what the polls actually mean and why we

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Speaker 1: should and shouldn't trust them. Why don't we go through

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Speaker 1: what the polls are saying right now about May twenty

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Speaker 1: first and the federal election.

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Speaker 2: So the last poll on the first of May from

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Speaker 2: prominent polling company News Poll, which is commissioned by News Corps,

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Speaker 2: had Labor at fifty three percent and the Coalition at

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Speaker 2: forty seven percent. Most recent polls have something in this ballpark,

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Speaker 2: a small but still significant lead to Labor. The Guardian's

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Speaker 2: Essential poll from the third of May has Labor leading

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Speaker 2: forty nine forty five, and they actually include an undecided number.

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Speaker 2: That undecided number is six percent. The Resolved Strategic poll

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Speaker 2: from nine newspapers has Labour up fifty four to forty six.

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Speaker 2: So all in all, if you had to push me

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Speaker 2: for a prediction, and I know that's not something you

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Speaker 2: and I liked to Douzara for what would happen if

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Speaker 2: an election was held today according to the polls, I

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Speaker 2: would say the Labor Party would probably win. So this

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Speaker 2: is kind of the best way to take a snapshot

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Speaker 2: of what the polls are saying right now. The two

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Speaker 2: party preferred indicator, it gives you two percentages adding up

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Speaker 2: to one hundred, which tells us who people prefer out

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Speaker 2: of Labor and the Coalition. But last election, infamously this

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Speaker 2: figure was wrong. Many polls had Labor leading around fifty

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Speaker 2: two to forty eight, but the actual result was about

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Speaker 2: fifty two to forty eight the other way to the Coalition.

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Speaker 1: It's hard to forget what that was like, given that

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Speaker 1: the whole country had braced for what they thought the

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Speaker 1: result would be. I mean, even Scott Morrison called it

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Speaker 1: a miracle. So what do people say was the general

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Speaker 1: problem with two party preferred polling?

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Speaker 2: Look, I guess it's not really about whether the numbers

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Speaker 2: were wrong in the poll. It's kind of more about

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Speaker 2: whether it's the wrong number to be concentrating on In

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Speaker 2: the first place. We have to remember Australian elections are

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Speaker 2: not decided by how many people vote for each party. Overall.

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Speaker 2: There are one hundred and fifty one separate races for

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Speaker 2: House of Rep seats all over the country, and each

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Speaker 2: one is to elect one person. These are the races

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Speaker 2: that determine who wins government. In reality, the major parties

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Speaker 2: are the main contender in most races. Seventy five percent

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Speaker 2: of people voted for a major party in twenty nineteen

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Speaker 2: and because of our preferential voting system, it means even

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Speaker 2: if you don't vote for one of the top two candidates,

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Speaker 2: your vote will likely end up counting for whichever one

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Speaker 2: you put above the other. So yes, the national two

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Speaker 2: party preferred number does tell us something. It's probably as

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Speaker 2: useful as a single snapshot quick hit number can be. However,

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Speaker 2: if we want to make some more thorough predictions about

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Speaker 2: who will win the election, we need to go a

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Speaker 2: little bit deeper into the polling and that's where we

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Speaker 2: start to bring in some of the other indicators.

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Speaker 1: Okay, and what are some of the insights that we

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Speaker 1: actually can glean from the polls? So we know what

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Speaker 1: the shortcomings out, but what can we glean from it?

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Speaker 2: I always like to look at the state state two

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Speaker 2: party preferred number. These are often quite different and reflect

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Speaker 2: different political moods in different parts of the country, so

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Speaker 2: breaking down the same number by state can give us

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Speaker 2: a clearer picture of where the fragilities for each party lies.

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Speaker 2: For example, the latest polls have Labour up fifty five

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Speaker 2: to forty five in Victoria and South Australia, but up

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Speaker 2: in Queensland it's fifty to fifty. Now the other important

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Speaker 2: polling number is primary votes. Primary votes tell us which

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Speaker 2: party people intend to put as number one on the

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Speaker 2: voting ballot, and this can include minor parties and independence,

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Speaker 2: and that changes things a little from the two party

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Speaker 2: preferred basis, which is just the two major parties. So

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Speaker 2: according to this indicator, the latest News poll has Labor

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Speaker 2: on thirty eight percent, the Coalition on thirty six percent.

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Speaker 2: Then we've got the Greens on eleven percent, one Nation

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Speaker 2: on five percent, and then ten percent is spread out

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Speaker 2: around Independence and others. Then another interesting way to look

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Speaker 2: at the polls is preferred prime minister. Now, remember we

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Speaker 2: don't vote directly for the prime minister, but the approval

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Speaker 2: ratings of Scott Morrison and Anthony Alberesi can give us

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Speaker 2: a bit of an insight into how people are feeling

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Speaker 2: about the political parties. On that measure, Scott Morrison leads

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Speaker 2: Anthony Albanesi forty five to thirty nine in the latest

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Speaker 2: News poll.

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Speaker 1: All right, to Sam, is there a type of polling

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Speaker 1: that experts say is the most accurate?

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Speaker 2: Well, it kind of goes to that point I raised

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Speaker 2: earlier about how the fact that the election is one

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Speaker 2: hundred and fifty one individual races, So therefore the most

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Speaker 2: accurate polling is looking at individual seats and trying to

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Speaker 2: bring all of that data together. But there's another problem here,

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Speaker 2: and that problem is that getting enough people to participate

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Speaker 2: in results for individual seats is really hard. We do

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Speaker 2: see some seat by seat polling, but much of it

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Speaker 2: is conducted by political parties themselves to get a bit

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Speaker 2: of a performance review of where they need to concentrate

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Speaker 2: their efforts on more, and these are not really provided

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Speaker 2: to the media. That often, seat by seat polling can

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Speaker 2: be particularly useful for predicting unconventional races, like the ones

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Speaker 2: where we're seeing high profile independence challenging traditionally safe liberal seats.

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Speaker 1: This election, as I said a bit earlier, we all

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Speaker 1: know that the polls were wildly unreliable last time. What

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Speaker 1: do the experts say is the reason for that.

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Speaker 2: It's a super interesting discussion to have. So as I

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Speaker 2: said earlier, they predicted a fifty two to forty eight

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Speaker 2: win to Labor. In fact, it was fifty two to

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Speaker 2: forty eight to the Coalition. Interestingly, after the twenty nineteen election,

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Speaker 2: some of the big polling companies, some that I've mentioned

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Speaker 2: in this podcast decided to form a body called the

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Speaker 2: Australian Polling Council, and this was so they could share

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Speaker 2: basic information like how they wait their polling samples, because

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Speaker 2: in all honesty, everyone was pretty shocked with how wrong

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Speaker 2: everyone got it last time. It was an industry wide suffer.

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Speaker 2: If we zoom out a little bit, the polling industry

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Speaker 2: has been going through a rough time after getting a

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Speaker 2: number of huge calls totally wrong. They didn't predict that

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Speaker 2: Donald Trump would win the twenty sixteen US election, they

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Speaker 2: didn't predict that the UK would vote to leave the

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Speaker 2: European Union, and they failed to call a number of

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Speaker 2: key elections in Europe over the last three or four years. Now.

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Speaker 2: It's thought to be down to what analysts call the

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Speaker 2: non response bias, and this is the idea that so

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Speaker 2: many members of the public distrust the established media, including

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Speaker 2: the polls that established media run, so they didn't respond

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Speaker 2: to the polls. There's also a little bit of research

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Speaker 2: around shyness in polling. This is the idea that people

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Speaker 2: are increasingly likely to lie to political pulses because they

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Speaker 2: don't want to be judged. So I guess at the

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Speaker 2: end of the day, good political polling is really about

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Speaker 2: getting a good sample of the community to answer the

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Speaker 2: same question. Now, all credit to the polling companies, this

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Speaker 2: is a really tricky task. You have to think about age, income, geography, education,

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Speaker 2: status and a number of other factors. There has been

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Speaker 2: a huge amount of review into the polling from the

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Speaker 2: twenty nineteen election by the Australian Polling Council and a

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Speaker 2: number of other industry bodies and the political parties themselves

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Speaker 2: elves and they say the key fault with the polls

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Speaker 2: last time was that they were two weighted by people

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Speaker 2: who were more engaged with politics and more likely to

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Speaker 2: have a bachelor's degree or higher. Now both of these

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Speaker 2: factors are associated with stronger levels of support for the

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Speaker 2: Labor Party. Obviously, this time around, polling companies have tried

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Speaker 2: to incorporate the lessons from the last election to generate

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Speaker 2: more accurate results. But we'll have to wait and see

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Speaker 2: until election night to see if the polls are on

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Speaker 2: the money.

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Speaker 1: I think everyone is now approaching polls with a healthy

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Speaker 1: dose of skepticism after what happened in twenty nineteen, so

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Speaker 1: it'll be interesting to see if faith in the polling

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Speaker 1: industry is restored post May twenty one. Until then, we

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Speaker 1: have got a jam packed agenda of breaking down the

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Speaker 1: news and politics view every single day. If you want

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Speaker 1: to learn more about where the major parties stand on

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Speaker 1: different policies, follow us on Instagram at the Daily Oosits,

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Speaker 1: wherever three hundred and fifty thousand Aussies get their news

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Speaker 1: every day and we would love to have you over there.

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Speaker 1: Great Monday,