Bradism.com's coverage of the 2007 Australian Election continues today with a discussion of the Election Issues. The Australian yesterday published the results of the latest Newspoll which shows a Labor government liked by 56% on a two-party preferred system (or at 1.47 to the Libs 2.70 on Centrebet.com). But what is it that motivates this 8.8% swing in preferences since the 2004 election? Something has changed the answers of these 108.59 people, and it probably isn't just an attempt to create value before putting a multi on the Liberal Party to win majority plus Petter Dutton to win the seat of Dickson in South-East Queensland on Betfair.

People are voting about the issues they're concerned about. According to Newspoll the major issues in 2007 are Health & Medicare; Education; and - during summer particularly - Water Planning. Industrial Relations were only rated 'Very Important' by only 46% of those surveyed in June 2007. Given all the results, it has to be asked, who the fuck are Newspoll? And why are we worrying so much and putting so much trust in what they have to say?

Newspoll was established by News Corp in 1985 in a partnership with what is now Millard Brown, an international research company. Newspoll is primarily used by News Corp's The Australian for poll statistics. Keeping in mind this is the same News Corp owned by Robert Murdoch that also owns Fox News in the USA which controversially covered the Iraq invasion of 2003 without mentioning the opposition to the war at home nor possible lack of WMDs. However no one in News Corp seems to have anything to gain from rigging Newspoll election surveys as far as I can tell, or at least determine in the space of a journal entry. Unless they had a double header on Hindmarsh and Adelaide both swinging... Unlikely, Newspoll has been proven accurate in the past at least once. Though that could have been a fluke... But there's no need to worry a Newspoll online survey of just over a thousand participants found that 89% considered Newspoll 'Very trustworthy'. And hopefully at least half of them weren't Murdoch advocated MySpace bots...

Tomorrow Bradism.com's 2007 Australian Election coverage continues with another attempt to dig a hole and turn up something interesting or controversial somewhere in this prairie dogged political landscape.