Opinion polls blasted for placing Labor as election frontrunner
Opinion polls have been slammed after putting Labor on a sure path to victory when the reality was far different. Consecutive polls, including an exit poll released before voting ended put Labor firmly in front.
NSW
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Opinion polls have been slammed after putting Labor on a sure path to victory when the reality was far different.
Consecutive polls, including an exit poll released just before the polls closed suggested Labor would win government by a small margin.
A Nine YouGov Galaxy poll on Saturday afternoon showed Labor ahead of the Coalition on a 52-48 two party preferred basis.
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It was an improvement on the final Newspoll on Friday that had Labor leading the Coalition 51.5 per cent to 48.5 per cent on a two party preferred basis.
Ipsos and Essential opinion polls — are many of which are all now done online rather than by phone — showed similar results.
But commentators were left questioning how the polls got it so wrong after the Coalition looked likely to retain power on Saturday night.
On the ABC election panel, political editor Andrew Probyn said the view across the political landscape was that Labor was going to win.
“This is a shambles when it comes to the opinion polling,” he said.
“Something’s obviously gone really crook with the sampling internally and externally.”
The discrepancies dominated panel debate with one punter asking the political heavyweights if anyone would trust a poll ever again.
Liberal Senator Arthur Sinodinos agreed the polls did not reflect “what we’ve seen so far”.
“Newspoll had ALP at 37 so four points off there,” he said.
“It had Coalition at 38, four points off. That’s a massive margin of error.”
As the results rolled in the Coalition’s favour, Labor MP Anthony Albanese said he also would’ve expected as other commentators did “that we would be doing better at this stage in the evening”.
“I have been saying for some time that this would be a tight election,” he told Channel 9.
“If you look at the Newspoll results they were really marginal.”
Originally published as Opinion polls blasted for placing Labor as election frontrunner
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