News Corp vows to ‘work with polling partners’ after election result backlash
News Corp Australia has said it will stand by its polling partner, Newspoll, and look to fix the polling system, rather than following its major competitor’s move to downgrade its relationship with its survey partner.
The comments come in response to The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age editor Tory Maguire announcing in a column today that the titles had ‘pressed pause’ on their relationship with pollster Ipsos.
In a statement to Mumbrella, group executive – corporate affairs, policy and government relations for News Corp Australia, Foxtel and Fox Sports, Campbell Reid, said the media business’ relationship with Newspoll was too strong to cast aside.
“News Corp Australia has a strong relationship with Newspoll which has been accurately taking the pulse of the Australian electorates for a long and unbroken period of time,” said Reid.
“One of the issues with Saturday’s election was a hardwired expectation across the country that a government that deposed two of its own prime ministers could not possibly win. In the face of that expectation polls were definitely showing the gap was closing in the Coalition’s favour and polling in individual seats was showing extremely close results.
“It is true the polls were still interpreted on election day predicting an ALP win, but to simply declare “the polls got it wrong” is simplistic. We would rather work with our polling partners to continue to improve rather than throw up our hands,” said Reid.
Newspoll was founded in 1985 as a joint venture between News Limited and Yann Campbell Hoare Wheeler. It was part owned by News Corp until 2015 and derives its research from YouGov, a British polling company that acquired Australian pollster Galaxy Research in 2017.
News Corp reports that until the 2019 election, Newspoll had accurately reported the winner of every Australian state and federal election since its inception in 1985. Prior to the election, from May 9-12, Newspoll was reporting a 51-49 Labor lead for the election.
Earlier this week, the Association of Market and Social Research Organisations (AMSRO) announced it would be conducting a review of political polling methods in Australia.
“As the election results started to roll in on Saturday night, a lot of Australians would have been asking the question ‘How could all of the polling companies call the Federal Election result incorrectly?’” said Craig Young, AMSRO president.
“Political polling has an important place in Australian society and the reality is that it is not going away. So it is important that polling companies take this opportunity to improve their collective accuracy, because nowadays accurate polling underpins the operation of a modern well-functioning democracy.
“It’s also important for the credibility of the polling companies, as well as the wider market research industry, that the public has confidence in the results of the major polls. The results are taken seriously by political parties and the general public, so as an industry we need to get it right,” said Young.
Ipsos is currently the only polling company that is a member of AMSRO. The pollster has said it is fully cooperating with the association’s review.
topics
Campbell reid
Federal Election 2019
Ipsos
News Corp
News Corp Australia
Newspoll
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polling
We need them to fix this. I hate news ltd but irrespective their and my interests align here. Bad polling helps nobody in the honest news business and underneath the new ltd editorial bias is honest news discoloured by dishonest opinion and editorialising.
I’m not on the production side, I consume opinions. If they’re ill informed so am I. I also think this problem is misguiding ad presentation and retention stats.
Why trust recall numbers if the pollsters can’t count?
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They were spectacular failures polling both the NSW State election & the Federal election. If the POLLS had actually gone off more independent polling rather than that commissioned by UComms, Get Up, & the Labor Party & unions, the result was completely different. The fact that Shorten knew nearly 6 wks before the election that the Labor Party were facing annihilation was also never taken into account & this info was widely available as well!!!! Even I predicted the ALP wasn’t going to win!! FAIRFAX, Galaxy, Reachtel, NEWSPOLL, Etc need to get away from stacked, delusional figures biased towards the ALP. Take a reality check. You’ve proven 2x that you were way off the scale in your predictions. Obviously incompetence was a big part of yours & Labor’s failures! The fact the Labor Party were so cocky in their expectations of winning spending, $$$$ to hold victory parties, only to see the party absolutely trashed was priceless. Good to see that the polls now hold as much irrelevance as does the now totally trashed left wing movement.
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Gee, wonder who you voted for..
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