Polls
Do we have too many polls. Good question. We do have too many people who do not understand basic stats. When I was younger it was a given by both parties people did not get 'involved in elections until just before the election.
Okay it used to be thought polling this far out from the election would be said to be more like a by-election. I will concede however it might be different this time.
Gambling
I said before Albo is weak on this. He is because he is PM. they want to win elections and thus not get people or 'influential' lobbies offside. In other worse he wants both the NRL and AFL onside. I am surprised by the Opposition on this topic. Lets hope it continues. Gambling is an evil. If you could make money from it there would not be any gambling companies. Everyone should do the introductory statistics tutorial I did when they examined the probability of winning money from all forms of gambling!
Tim Wilson
I confess I have never had time for him. He usually lacks basic understanding of the topic he is talking about. Making him shadow treasurer was a 'courageous' decision. He has been lucky a lot of his mistakes have been missed.Let us examine three he has talked about recently. He criticises the level of government spending. yet he has criticised attempts to bring the NDIS under control.
He has also alleged corruption on the part of the government yet has been very vague about what the sd corruption is.
He has also said he would cut a lot of tax levels and this would involve a lot of money yet he refuses to nominate where he would cut this large amount of spending.
Data Centres
One interesting thing I found over the weekend was Mark Zandi saying data centres are contributing to inflationary pressures. Why anyone would want data centres to be powered by gas or coal instead of renewables when they are far more costly!!
Gambling: Labor tried under Gillard and the Clubs Australia campaign killed it. Whether that actually cost votes in 2013 is arguable, but it is the lesson every politician since has drawn. Hence the more nuanced stance this time.
ReplyDeleteData centres and US inflation: It can be estimated and it looks trivial: about 0.05 percentage points on PCE inflation this year, rising to 0.13 by 2030. The real story is regional rather than national. Retail electricity is up 26% in Virginia over the year, which is why it has become a political problem well before it is a monetary one.
Polls: There are a lot of polls because the rise of One Nation is both interesting and somewhat inexplicable. The problem is not polling volume, it is that some over-interpret week to week movements that are well inside the margin of error. More polls actually help with that, since one poll moving two points is noise and five moving together is a signal.