Anthony's Blog

You could have knocked me over with a feather when I picked up the phone yesterday to be get a phone call from a nice young man at Gallup to ask my opinions on the upcoming 2008 Melbourne City Council election.
 


Opinion Polls are expensive things to run.

To get statistical accuracy, you need to question a reasonable number of people:

A poll of 400 people gives you a 95% chance that you've got the result within 5%. A poll of 1000 people gives you a 95% chance that you've got the result within 3%. So for practical purposes, you usually need to go for 1000 people. Those numbers apply regardless of whether you're surveying the entire country, a single state or a single seat.

Because of that, the polls of Australia are done about once a fortnight with the full 1000 people, often combined with questions on other topics to justify the expense. Polls of States are rarer: and sometimes done with the smaller sample of 400. And polls of single seats (like John Howard's seat in the 2007 election) are very rare.

Gallup asked for my top two choices. And they were prepared to ask my specific opinion on all the candidates, which took a while. The questions weren't lumped in with my opinions on other topics (like Credit Cards or Television programs), like many other polls.


Gallup isn't The Age's polling company.

It isn't the Herald Sun's polling company.



So who is prepared to spend quite a bit of money on a Council election?

Surely no candidate could afford it?

The Victorian Electoral Commission lists the Candidates for 2008 here. There are eleven teams running. The last one on their list is MORGAN CLARKE - OUR CITY - YOUR COUNCIL (Gary Morgan for Mayor, Michele Anderson for Deputy Mayor)

Ah hah! I can't be completely certain that they were funding the poll. But:

"The Morgan Poll is conducted by the ONLY Australian and New Zealand member of the Gallup International Association."
http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2006/4032/


So I think it's likely that they were funding it. To be clear: it looks like Gary Morgan might be using Roy Morgan Research under the name of Gallup to get a feel for voting intentions in the Mayoral election.


The shame was, I hadn't yet done my usual close analysis of the candidates. This meant that I was only able to give rough feedback on my opinions of candidates, rather than the precise evaluation of policies that I'll manage by the time of the election. So I might change my mind and upset their figures.