“How to misinterpret by-election results”

At Australian Policy Online, Swinburne Politics Professor Brian Costar writes about how the press got the Gippsland by-election (and the state by-election for Kororoit in Victoria) so wrong: We are told that the Rudd government is “reeling” from the “backlash” it suffered in Gippsland, where it took a “savage swing of 6.5 per cent.” The reaction to the Kororoit result has gone even further – some accounts would have us believe that the Brumby Labor government is set for certain defeat in 2010.

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