Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Channel 9's idea of an "uncommitted" voter?

Andrew Bolt:

I thought Kevin Rudd won yesterday’s debate. Reader John finds many of the polls say I’m wrong:

Sky News - Abbott 68% Rudd 32%
Australian – Abbott 52% Rudd 41% Draw 7%
The Age – Abbott 36% Rudd 64%
Daily Telegraph – Abbott 57% Rudd 38% Draw 5%
Courier Mail – Abbott 61% Rudd 34% Draw 5%
ABC - Abbott – 26% Rudd 63% Unimpressed 11%
Seems like Abbott might do OK when he actually has a policy to compare against Rudd’s. And some people on the ABC Drum still say that the ABC and their followers are right biased!

What those polls actually suggest is that the debate tended to confirm the biases of each audience.
UPDATE
Reader John reports on one of the “uncommitted” voters who drove Channel 9’s worm:

A few minutes ago (8.55am) on 3AW radio in Melbourne a man rang up on the Mictchell claiming he was a ‘worm button presser’ for ch9.

The guy seemed like an older chap with a slight Maltese accent. He said he was chosen at random and asked his political leanings before goin on. When asked about Rudd, he said ...."oh he came across as a man I can look up to and respect, someone to run the country!” (repeated this 2-3 times).

Neil Mitchell asked him about Abbott.."that guy’s an idiot, there is no way I would look up to him, ah..ugh” (repeated this 2-3 times)

Mitchell then asked “so I take it you were a Rudd supporter?”
“Oh no, I was uncommitted!”

UPDATE 2
A friend writes:

I was at Channel 9 yesterday, sitting next to Tracey Grimshaw with son XXX. I can tell you this:
9’s surveying company was desperate for volunteers and was scraping them together, worried that they’d fall short of the 100 needed. Consequently, they quickly cobbled them together from nearby university campuses, obvious hotbeds of Labor support and an easy source of people who can turn up in the middle of the day at 11am when everyone else is working.

The audience was clearly far from a balanced sample, with the vast majority dressed in old threadbare bluejeans and ragged T shirts (two terminal symptoms of Laborites), and rapt to get their $50 payment. For the first few minutes, I could see the worm on a studio monitor, and the worm jumped to the top even BEFORE Rudd began speaking! So
much for “fair and balanced”. Virtually every time Abbott started speaking, there would be groans and snickers.

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/your_guy_won_yesterday/

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