Posts by Bart Janssen
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I personally would probably drink less gin
Why would you want to do that?
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Hard News: Drugs and human rights, in reply to Tom Semmens,
the dark hatred of objectifying human beings
I know this is meant as an insult but it really is worth noting that in a neoliberal world, humans are just resources to be manipulated and spent to maximise profit.
They really do believe humans are objects
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Hard News: Drugs and human rights, in reply to Russell Brown,
English seeks to walk it all back on Morning Report.
As noted in the morning TV panel later on - "Even if she misspoke, if she said it, it's because she thought it"
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Hard News: Where are all the polls at?, in reply to simon g,
gave the Greens an extra point ... because I can!
Since The Greens have polled from 15 to 4% and back to 6% thus far giving them a random point here or there is as good a method as the polls for guessing what they'll have on election day.
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The Herald now has it's modelling up and running.
As they say by combining all the polls and data from previous elections to correct for poll vs vote inaccuracies they should be able to get a better prediction.
A nice feature is they actually talk about the limitations, however they fail to mention one of the biggest limitations of such a model which is that if public opinion actually does change significantly then their model will effectively minimise the the influence of such a change. Hence their model has Labour lower and National higher than recent polls predict, if those polls are real, a big if, then the model can't respond to them.
That said it's really nice to see real variability represented properly rather than the usual "margin of error" bollocks.
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Hard News: Where are all the polls at?, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
they really got creative defining 'Chch Central' electorate last time they tinkered,
Fortunately with MMP the effect of that is moot for the parliament as a whole, but it can still piss of locals who feel they aren't represented correctly at the electorate level.
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Hard News: Where are all the polls at?, in reply to linger,
encouraging voter abstention as through encouraging an actual switch in support.
My understanding of the data is that's the major effect. When voters perceive there is no point in voting because one party already has it won then voter turnout drops.
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Hard News: Where are all the polls at?, in reply to Russell Brown,
New Zealand sample sizes are not small by international standards.
The point was not that the sample size was small but rather that it is easy to sample a non-representative group.
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Hard News: Where are all the polls at?, in reply to Russell Brown,
I wouldn't call that "horribly inaccurate".
The polls are accurate for parties that poll close to 50%.
For smaller parties the polls are less accurate, hence the "surprising" results for NZ First etc.
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Hard News: Where are all the polls at?, in reply to Mr Mark,
Where did I read recently that NZ's population is far too small to make statistically robust Online polling viable ?
Polling is about getting the results from a small sample that represent the results from the entire population.
The problem with any online poll is it samples a particular portion of the population so there is every reason to believe it won't represent the entire population. Same problem exists for landline polling or streetcorner polling or doorknocking or just asking your mates at the pub.
All polls in NZ suffer from biases and small sample sizes. They are always reported with bogus margins of error. And worst of all they are horribly inaccurate.
That last is the worst of their faults. If your sample fails to represent the entire population every time then you'd be an idiot to keep taking the same sample.
The real problem though is we know the public are influenced by polls - or we think we know since that data is also based on polling - but at least it gives Paddy something to talk about and that has to be good ... right?