The big news in polling this week: the Australian election!
In our Netflix world, I’ve become a fan of Australian TV, but don’t recall anything from down under being big news in the U.S. since 2006, when “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin was allegedly killed by a stingray that stabbed him “hundreds of times.”
Just as improbably, the Australian Labor Party lost last weekend to the Liberal-National (LNP) Coalition, despite the fact that every single one of the 16 polls published since the election was called predicted the LNP Coalition losing with 48 percent or 49 percent of the two-party vote, while putting Labor ahead with 51 percent or 52 percent.
In fact, the results were reversed with LNP shocking the country by taking 51 percent to Labor’s 49 percent.
Some claimed there’s nothing to see here. After all, the polls were only off by two or three points on the vote for each party.
That perspective seriously understates the severity of the problem. CONT.
Mark Mellman (Mellman Group), The Hill