Talk:Opinion polling for the 2010 Australian federal election

	Australia portal Opinion polling for the 2010 Australian federal election is within the scope of WikiProject Australia, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Australia and Australia-related topics. If you would like to participate, visit the project page.AustraliaWikipedia:WikiProject AustraliaTemplate:WikiProject AustraliaAustralia articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by WikiProject Australian politics (assessed as Low-importance).
	Need help improving this article? Ask a Librarian^{What's this?} at the National Library of Australia.
	The Wikimedia Australia chapter can be contacted via email to helpwikimedia.org.au for non-editorial assistance.

Elections and Referendums

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Elections and Referendums, an ongoing effort to improve the quality of, expand upon and create new articles relating to elections, electoral reform and other aspects of democratic decision-making. For more information, visit our project page.Elections and ReferendumsWikipedia:WikiProject Elections and ReferendumsTemplate:WikiProject Elections and ReferendumsElections and Referendums articles

Politics

	Politics portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Politics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of politics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PoliticsWikipedia:WikiProject PoliticsTemplate:WikiProject Politicspolitics articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Significant events[edit]

I think it would be a nice addition to have significant political events running alongside the polling. To start we could put in major events such as changes in party leadership; putting these events in should be non-controversial. Then hopefully we can get consensus for events such as the ETS backflip, Oceanic Viking or the OzCar affair. Note I don't think whether or not the event affected the poll should be the basis for inclusion - quite the opposite - the idea is that the reader can see whether or not the event affected the poll. It can be interesting that a significant event DOESN'T affect the polling. --Surturz (talk) 20:26, 26 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Here you were telling us not to link polls to events... then you pull this on us... incredible... Timeshift (talk) 05:06, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So much for trying to find a middle ground. Sigh. I had hoped we might actually cooperate for once. --Surturz (talk) 02:45, 29 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

File:Australian federal primary polls 2008 to 2010.svg and File:Federal ALP 2PP polls 2008 to 2010.svg both have graphical indications of events and the polls, would it be satisfactory if they were included? The should probably be on this page anyway... -- Lear's Fool 02:48, 29 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think they should be included. Currently this page is more-or-less a cut-paste from the newspoll website. It might even be a wp:copyvio, the newspoll website does have copyright notices... --Surturz (talk) 08:05, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Newspoll releases (PDFs) state "Any reproduction of this material must credit both NEWSPOLL and THE AUSTRALIAN". Timeshift (talk) 09:49, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Percentage points[edit]

Now, let's sort this out. WP:MOSNUM, the style guide for numbers and dates, clearly states that percentage points should be used to avoid ambiguity that arises when expressing changes is percentage. Such an ambiguity will arise in the plus-or-minus 3 per cent that I found here an hour ago. Three per cent of what? I have changed it to "percentage points". Apart from our own style guide, I see The Australian used "percentage point" on the front page—last week or the week before. The Sydney Morning Herald uses pp unerringly. Tony (talk) 00:51, 21 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have this sense of déjà vu, but never mind. I would state once again that 'percent' is obtained by division; 'percentage point' is obtained by subtraction. It's really not very complicated that even thickoes like me can understand. There do not seem to be any cogent arguments advanced to support the insistence on ambiguously using 'percent' when the intention seems undoubtedly to mean 'percentage points'. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:07, 22 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's the clearest explanation I've heard. Thank you, OC. Tony (talk) 10:32, 22 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank god for that one. Sheesh. Timeshift (talk) 08:31, 23 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]