Last week during our Civics class, students were selected to poll a number of classes regarding the Federal Election. Polling is an important aspect of any election campaign – it allows the candidates to gauge how they are doing in their attempts to convince the voting public to vote for them. With polls being undertaken every single day, political parties can change their message to suit what is happening.
The question posed to the students was the following:
If you were granted the right to vote, and the election was held tomorrow, who would you vote for?
The students were given five options – the Australian Labor Party, the Liberal Party of Australia, the Greens, Family First and ‘Other’, encompassing groups like the Democrats and independents. Four classes of boys and girls were surveyed, but some results were rejected on the grounds that the same students may have been asked twice. This is what we call a ‘learning experience’ – next time we will be allocating clear areas for group of students to poll!
Here’s what we got…
As you can see, the ALP are clearly in front with 38 votes. There could be a few reasons for this. The incumbency factor, meaning that sitting governments always have a slight favour in the polls, unless the government has been performing disastrously, could be having an effect. The fact that our school is located in the ‘very safe’ seat of Gellibrand in Melbourne’s West, a traditional Labor stronghold (or area of very strong support) may be another reason. The Greens are running in second, with 4 votes, beating the Australian Liberal Party’s 3 votes. Could this bode well for their campaign in the adjoining seat of Melbourne? Family First and Other got one vote a piece.
We will be holding another poll next week, using the same question and adding a few more to get a general sense of what students are feeling about this election. We’d like your suggestions. What questions should we be asking in the next Aussie Democrazy Poll? Reply as a comment or use the #aussiedemocrazypoll hashtag. We’d also like to hear your response to the poll – what stands out to you?
Could you conduct a Twitter poll to get a wider sample than just your school area?
Yep, we’ll do one tomorrow – thing is, we need to be sure we can get a reasonable sample side. I guess I’ll be spruking up a storm tonight! – Mr Stuchbery
P.S. You guys are doing a great job.
Good work guys. I think it’s great to see younger Australians are taking an interest in the process. You might like to ask about specific issues that cause your sample to vote the way they do. Maybe what they don’t like about the respective campaigns.
Excellent question – they did raise many issues when quizzing politicians online yesterday!
What is your school’s demographic?
We have 83 different nationalities represented at Caroline Chisholm. The largest group by far is the Vietnamese, with sizable Philipino and Chinese populations. The rest are a combination of Greek, Italian, Anglo-Australian and Eastern European.
All students who were polled were between 12 and 17.
We are in a blue-collar area, with a lot of manufacturing industry nearby.
- Mr Stuchbery
Was the ALP always presented as the first option? Any chance this affected the result? Would be interesting to test that out!
I drew up the survey sheet with the parties listed. I did put ALP first on each sheet. That’s a very interesting observation, I’ll swap them around next time! – Mr Stuchbery
Perhaps you could do randomised surveys like the ballots in Tasmania. Or not.
ACT and Tas? ballots sheets rotate candidates within the columns.
A good idea! We’ll do the same for the next two polls we hold.
[...] Democrazy: Our Key Demographics 28 07 2010 This week, having released our first poll, some people asked us what our demographics were. They asked this because they were wondering [...]
You might want to check this out too… would seem to be just the think for your school and class; http://tinyurl.com/2etykvh (Google’s Student Voice initiative – The 2010 federal election as voted for by under-18s )
Best
Chris
Thank god young people under 18 can’t vote.
Where did you run this poll … Rooty Hill High School? If this was a sample of North Shore suburbs the result would reverse the trend to Liberal.
If these so called interested and enlightened young people had any brain they wouldn’t be voting for a party that’s wasted billions, is full of inept hacks, and completely failed at developing and implementing any policy.
A vote for Labor is a vote for FAIL but worse still is a vote for the [living in dreamland] Greens.
We’re sure the results would be different if held elsewhere – and that’s something we can learn from! However, if we could refrain from the personal attacks, that would appreciated. – Mr Stuchbery
why has everybody voted for Labor? is there anything that they have done good for the country?