You Don't Say...

The Media Reflects Upon Its Performance

In a mirror-gazing move that resembles how models prepare for the catwalk, the media is giving itself bit of scrutiny based on the fact they got the elections results more than a little wrong.

Margaret Simons, Director of the Centre for Advancing Journalism at University of Melbourne, says: "I was struck by how everyone was so wise after the event and so all-knowing.
"It's easy to write in retrospect where everything went wrong but I didn't see many people pointing it out as the campaign was happening."
Simons offers the example of the eight-week long election double dissolution election campaign itself. Originally hailed as a political masterstroke, it was only after Saturday that many commentators started questioning how wise the decision was.
"Journalists," Simons concludes, "were too quick to become part of Malcolm's fan club."
In preparing this piece, I asked readers on Twitter and on Facebook for their views of the coverage.
Some dominant criticisms emerged:

• An insistence the Coalition was on track to win (despite the polls predicting a tight result) and a consistent under-estimation of Shorten's performance;
• Overly "insular" coverage dominated by conversations with political insiders and other journalists rather than voters
• Coverage that was too "presidential", with an intense focus on daily movements of both leaders;
• Too much focus on the colour and movement of campaigning rather than the policy offerings of the two main parties;
• A lack of co-ordination by journalists, especially in the travelling media pack, to demand answers from the leaders;
• More focus on campaigning techniques by third-party groups such as GetUp!

Journalists may quibble with some points. If the campaign is light on policy, blame the politicians' and not us. Others might argue that, despite what readers say they want to read, many more will click on a story about a "fake" tradie than a plan to save the Murray Darling Basin.

Hmmm.

It's hard to read the tea leaves of polling even when you're close to what's going on. The distinct impression I got from the media through out the campaign was that the Coalition would win narrowly, and that it would have  at least a handful of seats as a buffer. It didn't exactly stack with the 50-50 51-49 polls that were coming in week after week, and really, people were too keen to point to these very same polls to suggest the Coalition would win. In the last 30 years we've seen more than a few elections were incumbent governments lost the popular vote but still won the election because of the way the votes were distributed. At the same time, the polls for those elections weren't a static 50-50 for as long as this election went. 

A more recent quibble I'd have with the media is that a good portion of them are already biased in favour of the Coalition. A good chunk of the media is Murdoch-owned, and we all know the Murdoch media leans the way of the conservatives at all times (the Telegraph) and at all costs (The Australian). The commercial TV network ownership is distinctly in the camp of the Coalition, and when it gets down to it you can count on the Fairfax papers join in and write their inept editorials in favour of the Coalition. They did this in 2013 and 2010. As such, you simply have to take what they write with a truckload of salt. A more accurate description is that the media cant hide their bias so they simply try to pass on their bias as received wisdom when in fact there is no wisdom to be found. 

I don't know if the media did as bad a job as they think they did. You'd have to settle bar high to come to that conclusion. If you set it as low as I do, it looks more like par for the course. All this self reflection is just an extended narcissism on the part of media people. The truth is, when it gets down to the brass tacks of voting, the opinions of the media doesn't amount to a hill of beans. 

Whither The Withering Middling Demographic?

Just who are the swinging voters? How many of them are there? It's a question worth asking because 27% allegedly went into the poll undecided. So, back of the envelope calculation goes like this:

• Greens are 10%, siting on the far left. Sometimes as high as 12, but for now, 10%
• National Party is also 10%, sitting on the far right. 1 in 10 Australians are at 2 Standard Deviations down from the middle of the bell curve.
• ALP diehards are around 27%. This is based on Julia Gillard's lowest poll figure.
• Liberal diehards are 24%. This is based on Tony Abbott's lowest poll. 
• 4% voted for One Nation, the rabid loony far right. 1 in 20 Australians are 3 Standard Deviations down from the middle of the bell curve. Presumably this bunch never vote for the left. 

That puts about 37% on the left and 38% on the right = 75%

So the remaining 25% is roughly the swinging vote who determine elections, and that figure actually dovetails very closely with the 27% figure of people who said they were undecided. Given that the voting ended as close to 50-50 two party preferred, 13% went to the left and 12% went to the right. If it's an equal 12.5% each way, it pretty much paints the picture of the slight edge the Coalition got. People were really split on what to do, just as they were in 2010.

There are also anomalous seats: Bob Katter's continued 'success' in Kennedy; the Greens cobbling together a seat in Melbourne where Regressive Leftists rule supreme; the seat of Indi where Sophie Miserabella contested against an incumbent independent who was liked and lost big; a possible seat to NXT; and Andrew Wilkie retaining Dennison. Out of 150 seats, that's 3.3% which is about what you'd expect for anomalies in human interactions. So if the media had used their brains, it's not exactly hard to see how we've end up exactly where we've ended up.