Great Ders of History: The 4.3%

I am fascinated by this graphic from a Business Spectator piece, detailing demographics that a company called Torque is using for their newly established political polling activities. You could see it as a magic quadrant on AOD-9604, or a mini golf course on acid.

To understand this picture, the firm’s methodology needs a bit of explaining. Torque normally specialises in market research for major retailers. If a supermarket wants to know where its customers are travelling from, their ethnicity, socio-economic status, hobbies, tastes or beliefs, the firm produces highly granular survey data that can identify even particular streets of interest with a retailer’s catchment.

For this election, the firm has applied a similar process to polling booths. Based on the swings of the 2010 election, and individual polling booth date released by the Australian Electoral Commission, it estimates that just 4.3 per cent of Australians will determine this election result.

Hmm, that sounds suspiciously like a 47% comment. I would see myself as #6, a Mature Affluent Urban. Apparently I'm not eligible to be a swing voter, because their research shows that only 11 of those 58 demographics are capable of being swung.

I'm not sure this is all that insightful, beyond that aspirational voters in the suburbs and INSERTLEADERNAMEHERE's battlers mostly live in marginal seats. Perhaps the leaders should appear in ads for supermarkets wearing guitars shaped like big red thumbs, or with an arm around a hunky celebrity cook? But hey, the parties have to spend all that money they raised on something. They might as well try something different than just relying on the likes of Hawker, Textor, or Australian Psychic of the Year 2013, Debbie Malone.

At least, now we know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.