Oz Politics Blog

Thank you everyone for testing the Australian Politics Test. I have progressively shaped the questions in response to the suggestions and issues you raised.

One issue particularly intrigued me. Matthew Hill made the following observation.

My reading of your [individual] results seems to show a lot of people with very high scores for the Greens. Assuming that your readership is not completely skewed, doesn’t that indicate that the test is slightly inaccurate?

It was a good question. So I added to the Australian Politics Test a page to analyse the results to date. I was expecting a left wing bias. The ANU 2004 Federal Election Online Poll exhibited a left wing bias among Internet users in the order of 5.6 per cent. But the extent of bias in the cumulative results surprised me. Of the first 2146 completed tests, 75% percent of the respondents prefer the Greens, Democrats or Labor. 66% describe their politics as far-left, left or centre-left.

Preferred party of respondents (self perception)

Political inclination of respondents (self perception)

Compared to the self-perceptions, only the economic dimension exhibits a similar distribution. The other test results are skewed to the left. The more difficult question is to determine whether the test or the self-perceptions are to blame for this left-wing bias. I will need to think about this some more.

Preferred party of respondents (test results)

Political inclination of respondents (test results)

Economic policy inclination of respondents (test results)

Social policy inclination of respondents (test results)

Traditional values inclination of respondents (test results)

A problem with classifying party preferences is handling the broad-church parties (Labor and Liberal). In order to win government, the Labor and Liberal parties seek to accommodate voters with a wide diversity of opinion. Some of their voters have views that are highly aligned with the space occupied by the Greens, the Australian Democrats or Family First. It is difficult finding questions that tell whether people prefer the minor parties or the majors. I will think about this one some more.

The graphical analysis also reveals some interesting facts. First, the next three graphs show a strong correlation between the social policy and economic economic dimensions.

Self identified Greens voters - Social by Economic

Self identified Labor Party voters - Social by Economic

Self identified Liberal Party voters - Social by Economic

Update: Opps. I ran of memory producing the graphs, so they have been dropped.

The second interesting fact is that the same correlation does not hold with traditional values. For Green voters, opposition to traditional values is strong. However, traditional values are (surprisingly) irrelevant to Liberal voters. Rather than the graphical analysis I will use a couple of tables (the graphs are available on the cumulative results page).

Traditional values inclination of 566 self reported Greens voters

Traditional values inclination of 415 self reported Liberal Party voters

Morgan has released its latest polling results of 1772 voters for the weekends of 8-9 and 15-16 October 2005. The headline prediction is that the national two party result would be 47 per cent for the Coalition and 53 per cent for Labor. Had a Federal Election been held in mid-October, the ALP would have won, the latest Morgan Poll found.

Support for the Coalition Government fell 2.5 per cent to 39.5 per cent. Support for the ALP rose 3 per cent to 41.5 per cent. Among the minor parties, support for the Greens was 9 per cent (unchanged), Australian Democrats 2 per cent (down 0.5 per cent), Family First 2 per cent (unchanged), One Nation 1.5 per cent (unchanged) and other parties and independent candidates 4.5 per cent (unchanged).

The graphs are here.

I have re-written my politics test in PHP and put it on the blog. The new test will identify which of the major Australian political parties most aligns with your views. It will also tell you where your views lie on the left-right political spectrum.

I am looking for people to take the test and then post comments here on whether they agree or disagree with the findings. You may want to post your comments anonymously, especially if you are concerned about making a public statement about your political position.

If you feel courageous enough, you can also post the permalink to your results (which can be found at the bottom of the results page). Pasting the link from the top of your browser will not work. You must copy and paste the permalink from the bottom of the results page.

The most recent results can be viewed here.

Cumulative results and accuracy analyses are here

Update 23 October 2005 — I have further tweaked the questions to address the perceived left wing bias in the results.

This morning, the Oz reported the latest Newspoll. The headline result from last weekend’s poll was a predicted national two-party preferred vote of 51 to 49 per cent in the Coalition’s favour.

The Coalition’s predicted primary vote was 43 per cent (down one). Labor’s predicted primary vote was 37 per cent (up three).

While the voting intention polling saw some improvement for Beazley, the attitudinal polling went in the other direction. His dissatisfaction rating was 50 per cent (up one) and his satisfaction rating was 32 per cent (down one).

Howard’s preferred prime minister rating was 57 per cent (up four) compared with Beazley’s 23 per cent (a record low since the election — down three).

The graphs I could update from today’s report are here. The remaining graphs should get updated in the next 24 hours.

The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters (JSCEM) has today reported on its Inquiry into the Conduct of the 2004 Federal Election and Matters Related Thereto.

There are 56 recommendations, so space prevents me from listing them all. Some of the more sensible and contentious follow (I will let you decide which are which).

• proof of identity for enrolment and re-enrolment
• close of electoral rolls to be 8.00pm on the day of the writs
• tightened registration and naming requirements for political parties, and the de-registration and re-registration of all parties not represented in Parliament to ensure they comply with the new rules
• those wishing to cast a provisional vote to produce photographic identification
• four-year terms for the House of Representatives
• voluntary and compulsory voting be the subject of a future inquiry by the JSCEM
• compulsory preferential voting above the line be introduced for Senate elections, while retaining the option of compulsory preferential voting below the line — the practice of allowing for the lodgement of Group Voting Tickets (only number one above the line) be abolished
• compulsory preferential voting for the House of Representatives be retained
• trial remote electronic voting for overseas Australian Defence Force and Australian Federal Police personnel, and for Australians living in the Antarctic

Fellow bloggers John Quiggin and William Bowe (aka The Poll Bludger) get quoted extensively on pages 275-283, and appear to have had a positive influence on the JSCEM — particularly given the horror stories circulating of wholesale reform of the Electoral Act as it applies to the internet. (Remember this article by Misha Schubert in the The Age on 16 March 2005).

Notwithstanding the acknowledged difficulties, the report discusses some changes to the regulation of the internet that could affect blog-based commentary on elections, and more particularly the political satire web sites.

Recommendation 44

12.29 The Committee recommends that the AEC review section 328 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act to devise authorisation requirements for electoral advertisements, as distinct from general commentary, on the internet.

12.30 In drafting these amendments, the AEC should ensure that the definition of published electoral matter specifies that the authorisation requirements are also to apply to material republished on the internet. In this instance, the AEC should determine a cut off point for disclosure of authorisations, such as whether disclosure of the original sponsor, as well as of the immediate re-publisher of the material, will be sufficient.

12.31 The Committee also considers there may be merit in a broader review of authorisation requirements within s328 of the Electoral Act, to ensure greater transparency of financial disclosures or party political affiliations.

12.32 The AEC may consider, for example, the feasibility of setting requirements for registration of the names of web domains commenting on political matters. This could also include consideration of requirements for identification of political party sponsorship on any websites making political commentary

Recommendation 45

12.33 The Committee recommends that the AEC review section 328 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act to enhance the accountability and transparency of the electoral process.

William Bowe should be particularly pleased with the recommendation to remove section 350 from the Electoral Act (recommendation 46). That section provides criminal actions and penalties for defamation against electoral candidates. A candidate dissatisfied with William’s (most excellent) electorate guide initiated a private prosecution against William for an alleged breach of section 350.