verging_on_random

Venture capital wanted

May 28, 2007 on 7:54 pm | In Uncategorized |

I am sick of polls that tell me how people would have voted if an election was held today. As we all know, an election wasn’t held today … making the poll results rather pointless. Moreover, the endless inane ‘analysis’ about whether a small movement in poll results was down to Burkegate, or Santorogate, or the comparative attractiveness of Tip’s tracksuit v J-Ho’s nifty number, is excruciatingly boring.

However I concede that I am in a minority and that lots of people enjoy this sort of thing. Therefore I have applied my creative mind to improving the process and come up with an absolute bottler of an idea.

Remember the worm that they use in debates to show which side is winning the hearts and minds of the audience? I reckon they should apply the concept to polling. Sign up a random 100,000 voters to an online service and every 30 minutes, have them click on the party they would vote for if an election was going to be held that day. The aggregate results can be a permanent display at the bottom of every web page and TV screen in the country.

Is that a cool idea or what? We can see instantly the effect of a Rudd backflip, an Abbott insult or a Gillard kitchen makeover. Political pundits will be ecstatic writing ever more turgid analyses of what caused the 90 minute blip in support for the Greens at 6 am yesterday while the rest of us can get on with our lives.

I need a silent partner to fund the thing. If you were going to give your personal details to that chap from Hong Kong whose bank is holding all that money for the Iraqi general who got killed (so sad), please send them to me instead.