Mr 18 Percent – Why Does He Bother?

Posted on March 15, 2006 by andrewleigh

…read the Bulletin’s front page in 1989. Their target then was John Howard. After also scoring an 18% approval rating in the polls yesterday, I suspect Kim Beazley will be subject to similar treatment.

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4 Responses to Mr 18 Percent – Why Does He Bother?

  1. Sacha Blumen says:
    March 15, 2006 at 12:34 pm

    I only briefly saw the commentariat’s reporting on the opinion polls. In a few weeks/months the polls could easily be the reverse (ALP 53%, Beazley on par with Howard as preferred PM) – we all know they polls jump around. Amazing how you can have one/two bad polls and you’re written off (as Mr Howard no doubt was repeatedly in the 80s).

  2. Sacha Blumen says:
    March 15, 2006 at 6:38 pm

    From the Herald:
    “The latest opinion poll ahead of Saturday’s election shows Labor has lifted its primary support from 40 per cent to 44 per cent.

    An EMRS poll of 1,000 voters shows Labor should easily retain 11 of its 14 current seats in Tasmania’s 25-seat lower house.”

    All the statisticians out there, what is the error margin in this poll of 1,000 voters, which averages out to 200 voters per electorate? There are 341,481 enrolled voters over all electorates.

  3. Andrew Leigh says:
    March 16, 2006 at 8:42 am

    Sacha, if they’ve got a random sample of the electorate (see this paper on why that’s unlikely), then the error margin is 3%. Good discussion of error margins here.

  4. Sacha Blumen says:
    March 16, 2006 at 9:44 am

    Thanks Andrew – this is something I want to read up on.

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