Where’s our news, where are the investigative journalists, where’s our ABC and who the fudgestone are YouGov?
The ABC busted: our most trusted and public broadcaster drops the YouGov bombshell, except they hide the real bomb in the national closet where they hope it won’t be found. Either that or they are too bloody stupid to smell the rat!
YouGov sounds like a legitimate government institution but it is a British owned private company for profit co-founded by Stephan Shakespeare, a German born British entrepreneur and former owner of ‘ConservativeHome‘ (a politically conservative news website and events company) and Nadhim Zahawi, an Iraqi born British politician who served in various Ministerial positions for the Conservative government under Theresa May, Boris Johnston, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and most recently as UK Conservative Party chairman, and subsequently sacked for failing to adhere to the Ministerial Code, i.e. “to maintain high standards of behaviour and to behave in a way that upholds the highest standards of propriety” – hmmm sounding all too familiar!
Stephan Shakespeare is not his real name either, he was born as Stephan Kukowski in 1957 in Mönchengladbach, Germany and exchanged his surname for that of his wife. One has to wonder why he’d conceal his true name and identity. Yes there’s more, he was a failed candidate for Lord Mayor of London (shades of Boris, the Johnston kind) and failed one time Parliamentary candidate for Colchester even with the personal support of Margaret Thatcher – what a stunning life, history and performance he has led! Oh and he has spent time in Los Angeles, USA where he met his wife, worked as a teacher and Headmaster (heaven knows what), so he probably knows Trump I suspect, given both their form and interests in national elections, both domestic and abroad.
So YouGov have set up business doing national polls marketing research around the world including Australia, second question; why? Other than for profit and the speculation of election interference (data misused by third parties) I can’t answer that. Thirdly, they have apparently conducted a large-scale interview of the Australian public, 40,000 or so which is a drop in the ocean of the population eligible to vote (consider the merit and significance of their market research), but more importantly for what purpose would you spend so much time, money and analysis prior to a general election in a foreign country? Who is paying for and sponsoring this endeavour, who invited him here? Who and why?
Well then, who is the apparent beneficiary? Ah yes, Dutton of course, they’ve made no bones about that, and they have caveated this endeavour claiming to be the most thorough, sophisticated and cannily accurate predictor of election outcomes of any agency on the planet – TALL CLAIM huh! And the ABC wash all this down repeating this claim in their broadcast without the slightest hesitation of revealing all the dodgy-dodgy didgery-didgery dooby-doo stuff, and I thought we now had foreign interference laws… spooky?
So might Dutton have engineered this or perhaps it has been paid for by one of his billionaire mining oligarchs or the ultra Australian conservative think tank, IPA (Institute of Public Affairs) with all its remarkable ultra conservative donors and oligarchs, or some other darker person or agency hiding in the shadows here or overseas (I’m thinking Britain, USA and yes why not Israel and Russia), after all they too have their fingers in everyone else’s pies, particularly Israel soul defender of the faith, a little genocide on the side and LNP Dutton party faithful for sure (shout antisemitism and yes it worked for Trump and it seems to be working very well here too – just ask Chris Minns and Anthony Albanese)? Take a breath I will with a heavy sinking question mark and now I have forgotten the question – Just love it, that’s what it’s all about. And by the way Nadhim Zahawi was one-time chief strategy officer for ‘Gulf Keystone Petroleum’, yes another fossil fuel exploration and mining company chiefly operating in Kurdistan listed on the London Stock Exchange (not ASX mind). Are you still with me, getting the picture, joining all the dots, because sure as hell the ABC and ABC News aren’t, don’t and haven’t!
So should we be surprised at the result or even the sudden appearance of this bombshell of an organisation (or should that be organism) most of us have never heard of before? …Well yes we should! It is called electoral manipulation and buying up the result or even the election itself, selling out on democracy. Perhaps a little different in approach to the Trump and Elon Musk campaign, polls not trolls, lotto not bribery or raffle; you’d want to be more subtle and digger over here, and I bet we haven’t heard the last of it or biggest lie yet. I’m pretty damn sure Dutton, the IPA and the Australian oligarchs have a few other poisonous dirty snakes up their sleeves, more to come as their campaign gathers lightning thunder and speed, exchange truth for lies and fiction, steal all our oxygen (best in the world they say, well if you include Tasmania), and we’ll all die of news poisoning, blood boiling or the unrelenting crusades of shit attacks, monotony, lunacy and boredom gasping for breath.
Now if the ABC had any investigative, moral-ethical sense, integrity (disclosure) or responsibility as our key national public broadcaster, shouldn’t they have informed Australians of at least some of this? Instead, they report just the poll results favouring Dutton as the next Prime Minister on ABC NEWS – So just how is this news and where is the exposé (forgive my French) of YouGov’s research methodology – don’t mind if I do, Guv? Clearly it’s neither, it is ‘market research’ not science (don’t confuse that with ‘real’ research of the empirical kind); and it is manufactured news, tainted news, false news, in fact pure bloody fiction and the real news behind this bombshell has been kept hidden from us. But up it pops just before we go to general election – how bloody convenient, what a coincidence. And of course, who better to carry this dodgy manipulative fictional bombshell to soften up the Australian electorate prior to an election, other than our most trusted, balanced news provider, our national public broadcaster, the ABC. Gosh now they really are setting the standard, playing the lead role, heading the free to air gutter TV, News Corp and Sky News pack of yapping wolves!
So where’s that Commission of Inquiry or indeed where are the Australian Federal Police? Ah I get it, nowhere to be found, can’t monetise this without speeding or parking fines (a million of these) or racial aggravation of a police officer, nothing to see here folks…
… other than that ugly mug, guv, no mate of mine fudgestone from Dickson, shit, just kidding!
Check out, chuck out the rubbish (everyone is) just can’t miss it whoa… who’s Prime Minister of Australia now:
“ABC News Analysis”: Not that you could call it news or analysis, ABC NEWS, 16 February 2025.
“This is a big piece of research” yes it’s on YouTube too, comments turned off already: “YouGov poll shows Peter Dutton in position to be next PM” ABC NEWS, 16 February 2025, not on a bloody Sunday please I’d miss it.
Well why not watch this shitfest on iView, since everyone’s asking: You gotta know the title of it by now, guv.
“Peter Dutton most likely to be next prime minister”, and its qualified here “according to YouGov poll”: Qualified, but hardly makes it news or trustworthy now does it? Press article version and shit proud of it ABC NEWS, 16 February 2025.
Not sure about this, but looks like YouGov point scoring on popularity of ABC in the USA or maybe just plain arse licking: Doesn’t sound very scientific or newsy to me.
And no I’m not just kidding it’s on X, like where else would it be to make the news, but we don’t do it on X at The AIM Network, so I scratched the link, but there’s always FB and Instagram, it’s sure to be everywhere what a coup. Same for Sky News and the shitfest is apparently in every other little rat hole in the MSM news and media entertainment industry, not that any distinction is made between the two – oh yay!
Last round on level of general ignorance:
Why are people leaving the USA right now; and why the droves who want to don’t?
Incorrect answer: Deportations; and let’s MAGA on.
Correct answer: Trump; and because they are not refugees or illegal immigrants.
Will the same happen here in Australia; and who shall we hold responsible if it does?
Incorrect answer: No, yes… I mean, maybe; and ‘citizenship up for sale, deportation down’ Dickson Dutton.
Correct answer: Who the fudgestone really knows; and YouGuv (like we can’t really blame the ABC for first breaking the news that really wasn’t).
Follow up to this article: How Bloody Well Informed Are We? It Doesn’t Look Good! 18 February 2025
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Thank you, Jon, I Read all your fact based articles and I believe all the information and viewpoints you deliver on the AIM Network.
You will have a large following of the other equally credible writers appearing in this same Australian Independent Media News Network.
Stay Well, Mr Jon Chesterson.
John, thank you for highlighting this issue.
I think many of us who follow politics were quite stunned at this Yougov poll which showed essentially that the LNP were in a winning position in the upcoming election and Dutton was likely to a become prime minister. I thought at the time,’who paid for this puff ?’
I too am disturbed that the ABC have swallowed this polling as being persuasive and accurate.
According to this UK based company, the LNP are going from being a policy free zone with a negative parliamentary presence with a lazy and incompetent leader to a viable alternative government.
Take care Australia, we are being cynically manipulated !
Thankyou Jon
How does one share this information?
My first reaction to this alleged poll was..’this has to be bullshit’,the country has suddenly changed overnight.The coalition getting 72 seats?Fuck off, they’ll be lucky to not lose more.There will be a minority government, with Labor holding far more than the other frightful pack of incompetent liars.
The dirty campaign is off and running.As for the muckstream media, including ‘their ABC'(which is now more infotainment shit), we can expect more of the same shallow,vapid coverage, like the superficial non reporting of genocide, taking place on our screens , and in our faces, every fucking day.
Judith, at the very bottom of the article under ‘Post Views’ you’ll find a ‘Share this’ section. Simply click on the social media sites to share the article on your platform of choice.
Why doesn’t someone investigate that of the RBA donating to a LNP think tank.
You rent what you want from suppliers, palaces, polls, pussy, politicians, products…
Great research & comment.
The Great Dumbing-Down is progressing nicely with no prizes for guessing who the real winners are.
There’s no doubt YouGov is good at what it does.
However, the question to be asked is the extent which its results tap into (and are used to amplify) the emotions of voters. In other words they become part and parcel of communication tactics that detract from facts and exploit emotions. These are difficult and complex issues, but everyone needs to be on their guard.
The normalisation of treating elections as a battle for the hearts of people while detracting from unpleasant truths and facts concerning the conduct of politics is a huge part of the problem.
https://www.aec.gov.au/media/communication-tactics.htm
I was in a state of shock for the best part of the weekend thanks to the YouGov poll reports…. thank you Jon, I can breath again.
Yougov say that this poll was a sampling of forty thousand eligible voters in Australia : sounds impressive but I smell a rat!
Anybody know how the sampling was done ? Was it random calls to mobile phones ? Was it calls to landlines, if the latter it would have an inbuilt bias (older folk in regional areas).
Anybody know ?
Terry, a polling company should have all that info available on-line for scrutiny.
For their own credibility and pride in what they do.
If that info is not available, the ABC or any news media outlet should ignore them.
Michael Taylor, could you get them to add Bluesky to the share links please?
Rod, we’ve put a BlueSky link at the bottom of the posts just below the Donate button.
All the you gov methodological stuff is on their website for those interested. Online panels are their data collection approach. https://au.yougov.com/politics/articles/51585-au-election-mrp-methodology. They’ve built a predictive model, but they don’t publish the level of detail required to give the model a proper appraisal.
Sampling is about as credible as the surveys which monitor health of having one glass of wine a week versus a bottle a day, survey conducted and paid for by the wine industry.
Steve Davis
I have read the Yougov MRP rationale but it doesn’t help me and that is obviously due to my lack of mathematical expertise or is it their gobbledegook ?
“The sample size involved – 40,689 interviews – means we have collected the opinions of many different voters from many different places across all electorates in Australia. Working with such large sample data requires successive rounds of trimming down the overall pool of interview data to create the best and most robust sample possible which we then feed into the MRP model. The effective sample size after trimming each model will be around 8,732.”
… successive rounds of trimming down the overall pool of interview data …
ie, eliminating as many reponses counter to the desired outcome as possible to skew the reported results.
This looks suspiciously like an attempt at election manipulation. Do people really change their vote based on polls? And do people actually tell pollsters the truth, and if those who answer pollsters questions in a way the pollster doesn’t like, are those answers included in the final analysis?
Thanks Terry.
Sounds dodgy.
The “trimming down” methodology is hidden.
And the end result is modelling, not polling.
With the software programing that’s available now, there should be no need for modelling.
Large sample sizes are dealt with all the time, as in presidential elections.
Looks like the yougov lizards polled the subscribers of newscorpse…do they have that many or is it just another invention by the propaganda division?
The next government needs to pull the rug out from under these arseholes.After the court decision in Nevada,the crumpled shithead will be ordering in an extra pallet of pull-ups.
More free media content for the LNP and too coincidental that YouGov dropped in time for Dutton’s interview and in the midst of a RW MSM campaign to platfrom him?
The YouGov MRP shows methodology, according to someone who looked it was an 8k population sample, from a 40k sample, without explanation, except maybe ‘cherry picking’ and/or manual ‘shaping*’ for the right outcome?
*Includes in US shaping new cohorts including young white males, immigrants etc., but ignoring the most significant and dominant cohort, white middle aged and older, middle class, conservative and/or Christian MAGA, especially the boomer ‘bomb’.
The poll meister Lynton Crosby always said ‘ignore the polls’.
Tragically, the ABC has dropped its quality of news and current affairs programs over the years with many excellent analytical programs being cut altogether. It is fast becoming inane like many commercial radio and TV outlets without the advertisements.
the dodginess of this organisation is unpardonable.
I think SBS is better on news and current affairs these days than the ABC, but it has ads like the commercial outlets!
I keep an eye on ABC and SBS news and current affairs programs, but for more factual news and analysis, I go to alternative reliable sites online.
Andy Alcock
I agree about the poor quality of ABC current affairs running up to an election. I wrote to the ABC before Christmas calling on them to have some in-depth analysis and probing scientific discussion on the question of nuclear power in Australia, this was after Dutton’s announcement of sites for his nuclear reactors but no costings or timeline. I suggested to ABC that Q&A would be an ideal platform for such discussion so that we could all get a better handle on this clearly important issue : I heard no more and now it seems that Q&A is in mothballs there really is no other suitable national program to explore this important subject.
You are the meal in their industry not the consumer and we do live in a world of ravenous consumption!
Yesterday we were shot down by YouGov, led by the ABC (not the US one, although sometimes hard to tell these days) and it was very un-Australian. Today and tomorrow, we have some time to recover, if we know how. The regular fortnightly Australian owned Essential Poll courtesy of Guardian Australia is out, telling us Labor and the Coalition were neck and neck, 48-48 2PP+ vote.
The poll concludes, ‘Labor’s policies appear unknown to voters as major parties neck and neck’
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/feb/18/guardian-essential-poll-labors-policies-appear-unknown-to-voters-as-major-parties-neck-and-neck
So here’s the follow-up article to continue the conversation and address this issue
https://theaimn.net/how-bloody-well-informed-are-we-it-doesnt-look-good/
Hey thanks everyone for your great comments, contribution and feedback. It’s reassuring to be a part of this community 🙂
Looks like we have work to do. But I reckon kicking Dutton out of Dickson would be a good start, only a 2-3% swing required – it was 2.9% swing to Labor in 2022. Unseating Angus Taylor in Hume would be nice but I don’t understand why he has such a strong margin, he is such a gaping idiot, when my ward on his northern flank is Labor.
why should the abc do albo’s work dutton is campagning by kicking the shit out of albo and albo is doing fuckall to show us how inappropriate the rabbptt, the copperman and the minister for everything were and dutton is worse. If Albo doesn’t bite (or at least bark) dutton is a winner simply using crime and immigrant QED.
PS
Unbelievably His Liberal Party colleagues describe Angus Taylor as a gifted strategist with strong economic qualifications and driving ambition. but I’m with you he sounds thick ..
What a rambling non-sensical piece. Not one shred of evidence, not any evidence that you understand anything about polling and how it works. Complete toss. You Gov have a very good reputation in polling and have been remarkably accurate with predictions in the past. Did you bother to do any research? Had you researched you might have come across a number of very good psephologists who understand this stuff and have written excellent blogs on polling misinformation. Your piece is not just misinformation but complete toss.
Will Murray – If you read the article without whatever agenda you are pedalling, you might realise your critique if you can call it that had nothing to do with YouGov’s ability to predict an outcome or their ‘perceived’ or ‘alleged’ reputation, the latter of which is highly subjective, contrived, proscribed and sold by the dominant voice/s. There is no exact science around predicting polls, it is more statistical data crunching, based on normal distributions, algorithms, modelling and probability, influencing and a good deal of luck at best, not to mention the qualitative and quantitative size and integrity of their samples, and method, and thereafter how it is used by the dominant agencies to pedal their own agendas and propaganda – None of that is science or equitable. Market research is barely a pseudo science for many reasons not worth explaining to you here given your rant and insults. In fact market research is almost the opposite in purpose, and antithetical to empirical science, where you largely set out to prove not test or disprove your hypothesis and squeeze as much juice out of it for economic gain, profit or political influence as you can. The mere act of observing makes you a participant capable of influencing the outcome. So much more if you are assuming the role of predicting the outcome, with or without hidden agendas, direct or indirect, as many like to be on the winning side or in the perceived mainstream, not outsiders.
But as I said this was not the issue tackled here. The biggest flaw in your argument however, is the degree to which polls, which as you attest with their reputation get pedalled avidly by certain media agencies, in this case beginning with the ‘highly respected’ public broadcaster ABC where people would be easily influenced in their voting habits, and how this ultimately influences, infects and influences, deliberate, by design or by chance the outcome, ‘you get what you see or believe’, populations are fickle and easily manipulated. But you missed all that.
That raises the spectre of political influence and interference and how that is marshalled by the MSN, big business, vested interests, foreign entities and governments for political gain, and how they may acquire, sponsor agencies, tools and measures like this (before and after) – News Corp, Sky News, IPA, YouGov (noting their partisan background, political roots and interests, for profit, and the questions of who funded them and why – they don’t do it for free!).
So you totally missed the point and used the wrong net to catch your fish. Great tactic along with the malicious personal attack because your argument is a disguised attack, demonstrating you are quite incapable of respectful objective critique, sense of humour, understanding of the role and function of satire, and the moral-ethical issues which you so conveniently ignore. Democracy is not a business, it is not here to serve those vested interests, it is a system to provide fair and effective governance of a nation and give the people genuine representation. It is worth defending from the thieves out there who are stealing our voice, our votes and insulting or threatening anyone who who dares to disagree with them.