The Picture from Newspoll

There's a lot of controversy in the blogosphere this morning over the latest Newspoll results, and what they mean and alleged attempts by The National Rupert to monster one or two bloggers.

We can expect that part of the debate to get rather heated over the rest of the day, and well into the weekend and this will inevitably distract a lot of people from the poll results themselves and what they actually mean. Still it's possible that there are a few readers out there who are level-headed enough to be interested in taking a look at the actual poll results and the data analysis, before they weigh into the debate.

Figure 1: Newspoll data as presented to Newspoll's haruspicers (source: six-month old goat).

Figure 2: Data analysis. Key:

1. Kevin Rudd's approval rating. Consistent with past Newspoll findings - and the findings of other polling organisations - this appears to be above that of John Howard.


2. John Howard's approval rating. Note that a large portion of John Howard's approval rating is in fact obscured by Kevin Rudd's approval rating.


3. Bob Brown's approval rating. This is clearly much smaller than either John Howard's or Kevin Rudd's.


4. The ALP's current primary vote.


5. The coalition's primary vote. Once again, the ALP's primary vote appears to be above the coalition's primary vote, obscuring the actual size of the latter.


6. Stuff that will have to be dissected away when the next Newspoll is conducted to get a clearer picture of the real situation.

I don't think there's really any more that needs to be said on the subject - now that you've seen the pictures for yourself, the situation ought to be very clear to everyone.