Probably very few readers here are
interested in the minutiae of Victorian opinion polls, but I thought this was particularly
striking. The Ages poll taken
last weekend for the upcoming Victorian state election has some surprising
number. One surprising, and too good to be true, number is that Labor is ahead by 22 points on two-party preferred. If only
that were true. But what seemed more interesting were the numbers about the
Liberal Partys speeding policy. Traditionally in Australia, like in most other
places, if you were within 10% of the speed limit you wouldnt get ticketed.
The Labor government abandoned this policy, directly
police to ticket anyone who was measured to exceed the speed limit by more than
the margin of error of the radar detectors (about 3 km/h). The Liberals claimed
this was just a revenue raising policy (which was probably true, even if it has
a nice public safety side effect) and promised to abandon it.
Now Id expect this would be a vote winner
for the Libs. And I wouldnt have expected much of a demographic
split in the results, except maybe a slightly higher support for it in
non-metro areas. Well, that was all mistaken. Here are the relevant numbers,
with the support for the policy listed first.
Overall: 33-59
Metro: 33-59
Rural: 35-60
Men: 44-49
Women: 23-69
Good thing Im not a political advisor, huh?!
The last two lines were a complete shock though. I dont recall seeing that big
a gender gap on any polling question in Australia for a long time. Even on
issues where one traditionally expects a gender gap, like child care or
abortion rights, theres usually nothing this big. In fact its very rare for an
Australian poll to get numbers this lopsided on any partisan question. Speed
limits are obviously a very minor issue, but maybe it signals a wider gulf in
attitudes towards the proper balance between safety and liberty. If I was a
political scientist looking at Australians attitudes about the role of
government in setting this balance, Id start polling on a few other related
issues to find out.