Australia Defends Extra Troops for Iraq, Polls Sour

[struggle4progress]

Feb 22, 2005 — By Michael Perry

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian Prime Minister John Howard defended on Wednesday his decision to change policy and send hundreds of extra troops to Iraq, as opinion polls showed Australians overwhelmingly opposed the move.

Howard, who announced on Tuesday 450 more soldiers would go to Iraq to guard Japanese engineers and train the Iraqi army, said he could not rule out further deployments. <snip>

A telephone survey of 17,000 people .. found 71 percent opposed the deployment compared with 29 percent in favor. <snip>

A survey .. found 69 percent of people believed the government was pushed by the United States to send extra troops.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=523360

[bemildred]

1. No offense, but they elected this fuckwit, again. nt

[hatrack]

2. Agreed - you clowns voted for this dweeb, AGAIN

Get a brain morans!!

[soaky]

8. and you clowns voted for bush again

oh that's right, not all of you did... just like not all of us voted for howard.

[bemildred]

9. True, we are worse. nt

[soaky]

13. not worse

we're all just outnumbered by stupid people :)

on edit: i mean, of course, the people who voted in our respective 'leaders'

[Art_from_Ark]

15. As I understand it, only a very small proportion of Aussies actually voted

for Howard, that is, the voters in his riding, or whatever it's called in Australia. Everyone else voted indirectly for or against Howard, by voting for candidates from Howard's or opposition parties.

[soaky]

16. true, only the people in howard's electorate actually voted for him

personally, to be their local rep, and we don't vote directly for our PM, but we know the mechanisims and consequences of how we vote in our electorates.

[struggle4progress]

4. Yes. Well, um ... sigh ... eom

[0rganism]

3. "Australia defends"??? Don't they mean "PM Howard defends"?

Leviathan lives.

[Jack Rabbit]

6. Exactly

I resent it when "US" is used for "Bush".

[paineinthearse]

5. A telephone survey of 17,000 people .. found 71 percent opposed the deploy

I am not a statistitian, but I've often wondered why US polls sampled 1000-2000 people. Australia is so much smaller, and they samped 17,000.

Any statistitions care to enlighten me why the difference in sample size?

[bemildred]

7. It's easier to fudge the results with a smaller sample.

And a lot cheaper, hence more "efficient".

[Catamount]

10. Without offense to my fellow duers, there are more enlightened people

in Australia. I don't know why, but it might be because of the weather!:)

[Richard Steele]

19. I think it's because they are upside-down...

They get more blood-flow to their brains.

[Catamount]

20. LOL That must be it!!!!!!!!

[daleo]

11. I am very surprised they sampled that many.

I suspect a typo.

At the stated sample size, the poll should be accurate to within about +/-0.65%, which seems like oversampling to me. A sample one-tenth that size would be accurate to within about 2%, which is usually considered good enough. Polls cost money, after all.

The other possibility is that they wanted results that were very accurate for small sub-groups, such as states with small populations, ethnic groups, age cohorts, or political party affiliations. That is the only reason I can see for such a big sample.

FWIW, I have to make these sorts of calculations at my job.

[Matilda]

17. I think you're probably right - not likely to be that big a sampling.

But from these figures, it would have to include a lot of people
who voted for Howard - what did they expect from the little weasel?

[ECH1969]

12. A survey of 17,000 people?

Damn, that would be really expensive and unnecessary. A poll of 1,000 is a good poll. Maybe, it was one of those call in polls where they tell people to call in to see how they feel about a certain issue and you get an answering machine where you press one or two for your view positive or negative on the matter.

[skids]

14. Or maybe their polling firms just aren't as chintzy as ours n/t

(EDIT: Oh, and a belated welcome to DU :-)

[theHandpuppet]

18. ABC chose an odd headline

It was not Australia defending extra troops for Iraq, but John Howard -- unless ABC believes Mr. Howard to BE Australia. Very misleading on their part, purposely I'm sure. Methinks that should have read, "Australian *PM* Defends... "