Former Crikeyista Matthew Knott sat one seat in front of your correspondent during the latter’s (i.e. me, or rather, my … where were we? Shall I go out and come in again?) brief tenure on the Turnbull Express. Now he has written a piece expressing the conclusion that the media got it wrong, and asking folks to suggest reasons why. The answers were interesting — but to a degree, still caught in the bubble he described.
Speaking as someone who didn’t think we could know what would happen — I thought that the result of the shiny pzazz whoosh campaign of Turnbull versus the grinding realness of Shorten would tell us something we didn’t yet know about the current political reality, rather than being readable itself — I can offer a few suggestions.
1. Lack of social analysis. The press gallery still take the liberal view that the social mass is a cloud of decision-making individuals who listen to both sides, refer current arguments back to past arguments and then produce a result. That is, they think everyone thinks like a journalist-political analyst. Shifts based on sudden changes in self-interest, new sub-class divisions, the mythical character of politics — all of these need to be factored in. That’s especially so with these numbers — on the replacement of Abbott, the Coalition numbers went up above 50 from 47, then settled back to 50 and stayed there. The political ground shifts had occurred months ago, and the figures reflected that. Somewhere in the social stats will be a few numbers, state by state, which match the swings nearly exactly. The Mainstream media should publish more sociologists, fewer gimcrack political analysts. Uh oh.
2. Patternism. The past is only a guide to the future if you have evidence that the factors surrounding the process being analysed are stable. If you don’t know what you don’t know, then the past is not only no guide, but actively misleading. In this case, the UK 2015 election mismatch between Labour’s polling and performance hung over this election and determined that people would disregard the polls because Turnbull = Cameron and Shorten = Miliband in the charisma etc stakes. The bubble ensured that that became the story of all the media — but “patternism” was its specific content
3. No one talked to anyone. At campaign speeches in the US, the press, having heard Senator Hiram Q. Buttfuzz give his stump for the 29th time, immediately scatter and vox pop the audience. It’s a lot of effort to get little, because many people simply repeat TV media memes. But you usually get enough that other things emerge — whole seams of opinion not registered by the mainstream media, local issues that will determine the race in that seat, something everyone knows about the local candidate but can’t be published because it is too scurrilous, but it tells you why a supposed frontrunner is going to lose.
On the Australian press buses, I have rarely seen the press pack do this with any application. They’re simply concerned with following the candidate, getting down the announceable, and being there if she/he happens to get egged/pied/shot. Were their editors to give them space to report on how the candidates were actually received, and by what sort of people, a different story would emerge. This time around, it would have been much clearer by polling day how unimpressed people were with Turnbull personally — and how much they departed from the approved view of Shorten.
4. Pooling questions. The refusal to pool questions by the travelling pack is bizarre. At each stop, two dozen journos try to get a question in — the answer to which everyone else will have access to anyway. The prize is prestige in a tribalised situation. If groups of journos pooled an agreed-upon question sequence, the pollies would be unable to deflect them by giving new journos the call for the next question — which has the added advantage of making themselves look pluralist.
5. But, of course, this is all abstract. The reason the media gets it wrong is not because of the many journos doing honest reporting and analysis. It’s because the largest news organisation in the country is a propaganda outfit, run as one, using honest reportage to pack around a series of stories designed to have political effect. On every bus, News Corp has at least one operative looking for the worst angle from a Labor appearance, no matter how good, and the best angle from a Liberal appearance, no matter how bad. The reason it appears that the media didn’t get it this time — as opposed to last time — is because this time, that didn’t work.
Free the tongue Guy. Make me laugh again. There are plenty of journo’s who can bore me senseless.
Re (2) Patternism: we no longer have the bellwether seat of Eden -Monaro as a tried & true reference.
As for ‘the largest news organisation in the country’, it seems Murdoch is losing his grip. With thousands of words of biased reporting & front page headline slurs on the ALP during the campaign he barely managed to hand his favourites government. If the Coalition has a minority government it will prove even funnier.
To the extent that the me-jar sits on the bus with Newscorp dross in its ear from across the aisle and doesn’t get a handle on the sociology well yeah that is a big problem – which is why we read Crikey.
But just on the result – the problem is not that the scribes predict the result wrongly BEFORE polling day – who gives a rat’s anyway – but that they insist on predicting the result AFTER polling day. We the people are trying to speak, but the me-jar (and the pollies) keep on completing our sentences for us. The pre-poll consensus appeared to be 80 plus for the LNP and it might yet be 79. Just imagine it ends up there, but on election night it had looked like 86. (Plus 7 as opposed to the minus 7 it actually looked like. No reason why it shouldn’t have looked like that – they are just numbers arriving slowly.) Shorten would be gone by now, Turnbull hailed as a genius, and the caravan would have rolled on.
And if it does end up at 79, will Mr Knott write another beat-up beating himself up for having prematurely beaten himself up?
6. Journalists don’t understand simple numbers!
7. There is strong research going around showing that more detailed knowledge often leads to less accuracy in forecasting, and the deeper the minutiae the less the reader can discern what is important, and what isn’t, and journalists are deep in the minutiae.
I can’t agree that sociologists would help, apart form Hugh Mackay and his genius outfit.
In this case, the useful information was the published polls at national level, the useless information was any polling done seat by seat, especially in the marginals, and the least useful idea is, as you point out, thinking that people come to their decisions by rational analysis. In the vast majority of cases, and it could be reasonably argued for all swinging voters, that is a myth. The decision is made in the guts, or as kids would say, in the ‘feels’.
It’s a classic example of less information is more.
GR was right to avoid predicting the outcome and by sociology I took him as meaning stuff done in his own style – and I agree with that, i.e. that it has value.
As for predictions (whose use and significance is confined to those having a punt), it now seems the consensus might have had it right. The national polls stayed within the 49-51 range, either way, throughout – so 50-50. Most commentators predicted a coalition win on the basis of party seat by seat polling, “sophomore effects”, “gut feel” (which probably means they like Turnbull better than Shorten), who they sat next to on the bus, and whatever. By the final Friday the punters’ most favoured 5 seat band was 76-80.
http://insidestory.org.au/all-the-polls-are-in-so-whats-the-best-guess
On Thursday 7th, Tim Colebatch (insidestory) was inclined to think the coalition might make it to 75 on the basis that while postals favour the coalition the last counted categories (absent, pre-poll and provisional) favour Labour. But by the 8th (yesterday) he’d discovered that this last rule did not apply in Capricornia, Herbert, Flynn,and Cowan in 2013. So now he thinks they’ll get 78 or even 79.
So a prediction which said 50-50 polls, but something will get the LNP over the line in the marginals, which probably means that in the end they’ll have 50.5-50.1 – that prediction could still well prove spot on. But we still don’t and can’t know.
If Colebatch is right, then the me-jar, despite their entrapment in solipsistic glass buses, had it right. And if he’s wrong (as of Friday 8th)… who, in the end gives a rat’s arse – about his predictions or anybody else’s? They are designed to keep us occupied till we know the result. They influence nothing – or rather than can be accused of having an influence both ways (winner effect, underdog effect – take your pick).
Could someone let me know when grundle in released from the Tonguegate sin bin?
This verbiage from the random word generator under his by-line fools no-one, except the terminally gullible like the current meeja myrmidons.
It’s looming as GRundle’s finest hour ….not to mention press freedom. There’s a need for fearless independent media – well, isn’t there?
Presumably that’s why some of us are paying subs to Crikey – though there has been some trying of our trust, such as firing the Poison Pen wonkies for fear of Blot’s displeasure.