Pollsters still fighting Australian election

18/December/2001

Recently Roy Morgan Research explained that the findings of its Bulletin-Morgan Poll a week before the election in November had been falsified by the actual result because of a genuine shift in voter opinion.

It added that its telephone polls had shown the Liberal-National Party Coalition losing ground to Labour right up until the election, while its face-to-face polls had shown the Coalition behind Labour until the weekend before the election but gaining significant ground in the last few days.

According to Newspoll, "the 2001 election proved again that telephone interviewing is the most accurate way of conducting opinion polls in Australia.

"Newspoll's final survey, conducted during the final week of the campaign, showed the Coalition in a comfortable position. Polling in the 40 most marginal seats, however, showed a much closer contest. This suggested that the 2001 outcome was likely to be similar to the 1998 result, with relatively few seats changing hands.

"This turned out to be right on the mark, with the Coalition being returned to government with a similar majority to that obtained in 1998."

Newspoll further declares that "there hasn't been a single election in Australia in the last 15 years or more where a final face-to-face poll has been more accurate than a telephone poll." The advantages of telephone surveys are, says Newspoll, as follows.

1. A better sample in the rural areas.
2. A more random sample, which produces a better cross-section of voters than the clustered sample of a face-to-face survey.
3. A more anonymous interviewing medium to which people are more likely to give genuine opinions.
4. The facility to more easily make repeat callbacks on different days to include harder-to-reach voters.
5. Faster turnaround with the ability to survey closer to the election and hence provide more timely results.

Newspoll was established in 1985 as joint venture between News Ltd and Yann Campbell Hoare Wheeler, now Millward Brown Australia. Newspoll Managing Director Sol Lebovic is the current President of AMRO, Australia's Association of Market Research Organisations.

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