A public service announcement to help follow election result coverage
An email from a friend might help people follow coverage of the election results.
Over the past couple of days there have been silly comments in the media (both in print and on-line) saying that the Australian Electoral Commission has called various seats one way or the other. Example - the front page of today's Fin Review (David Crowe, chief political correspondent) says the AEC has "calculated that it [the coalition] would hold some of its marginal seats and Labor would lose the Tasmanian seat of Denison to Andrew Wilkie".
Of course the AEC has neither calculated nor forecast the outcome of the vote in any seat. All it has done is updated the two-candidate preferred (TCP) count in the various seats as counting progresses. When it was reported yesterday morning that the AEC was showing Labor would hold Denison, the AEC's website clearly showed that the TCP count had only been done in 6 of the 41 booths (which were done in alphabetical order and happened to include some big Labor ones), and the 'shock, horror' later reversal showing Wilkie ahead was after all booths had been done.
With thousands of postal, pre-poll, absentee and provisional votes still to count in all seats, the outcome can't be known for ages. The AEC moves seats on and off its list of close seats whenever the TCP figure for the leading candidate falls below or moves above 50.5%, so seats like Corangamite, Brisbane, Dunkley, Boothby and Brisbane can pop in and out like a yo-yo whenever the next batch of votes is added in.
You'd think experienced political journalists would know all that, or take the trouble to find it out, but apparently not so!
The beauty of an online world is that one is rather less constrained by shared follies among journalists.
Over the past couple of days there have been silly comments in the media (both in print and on-line) saying that the Australian Electoral Commission has called various seats one way or the other. Example - the front page of today's Fin Review (David Crowe, chief political correspondent) says the AEC has "calculated that it [the coalition] would hold some of its marginal seats and Labor would lose the Tasmanian seat of Denison to Andrew Wilkie".
Of course the AEC has neither calculated nor forecast the outcome of the vote in any seat. All it has done is updated the two-candidate preferred (TCP) count in the various seats as counting progresses. When it was reported yesterday morning that the AEC was showing Labor would hold Denison, the AEC's website clearly showed that the TCP count had only been done in 6 of the 41 booths (which were done in alphabetical order and happened to include some big Labor ones), and the 'shock, horror' later reversal showing Wilkie ahead was after all booths had been done.
With thousands of postal, pre-poll, absentee and provisional votes still to count in all seats, the outcome can't be known for ages. The AEC moves seats on and off its list of close seats whenever the TCP figure for the leading candidate falls below or moves above 50.5%, so seats like Corangamite, Brisbane, Dunkley, Boothby and Brisbane can pop in and out like a yo-yo whenever the next batch of votes is added in.
You'd think experienced political journalists would know all that, or take the trouble to find it out, but apparently not so!
The beauty of an online world is that one is rather less constrained by shared follies among journalists.