Newspoll, The Australian‘s own opinion poll that tracks how voters are feeling about major parties and politicians, is copping a heap of online flack after publishing a rather questionable pie graph. And yes the pie graph is dumb enough to write an entire article about, because aside from being shittily designed it also appeared to make the results look less bad for Morrison.
The Newspoll graph was posted to Twitter this morning by The Australian, one of Murdoch‘s many flying monkeys.
The graph shows an increase in Anthony Albanese‘s popularity and a slight fall for Scott Morrison. However, as you can see below, the sections of the chart do not look how they’re supposed to.
That’s a mighty big chunk of pie real estate for someone with only 43 per cent.
We need to talk about this chart. Did one of the boomer editorial team cook this up in Microsoft Paint to make it look slightly less worse for Scott? #newspoll #wow pic.twitter.com/ZejUgFf2qk
— Ken McAlpine (@KenMcAlpine) January 30, 2022
A Murdoch publication twisting a graph because their favourite prime minister isn’t doing as well as they thought he would? No! Never! Shocking!
But really guys, come on. This is the most blatant twisting of the truth I’ve ever seen on Twitter and almost every day I see a bottom claim that they’re a top.
This is an incredibly bad graph. The difference between Morrison and Albanese is 2% but it’s made to look closer to 10% and the 16% undecided is way over represented. Horrendously biased from @australian #Newspoll pic.twitter.com/czv6Fy9igX
— Dancing Dan (@DancingDanB) January 30, 2022
Some folks on Twitter have done the Lord’s work by accurately altering the pie chart to show what it should have looked like.
And thank the heavens, because maths is not my friend and I would have botched the graph even further.
https://twitter.com/AusGovSlave/status/1487872944093212685?s=20&t=LZk7yTz7JV-snHe0_Cqu0Q
This is seriously some next level ridiculous 🤣 #newspoll pic.twitter.com/LpgJ0ov7il
— Alex Wallace 🏳️🌈✊☕ (@TheWallaceIsIn) January 30, 2022
No surprise, Albanese’s share of the pie should look a lot bigger than it currently does, and the ‘unsure’ section should be much smaller.
One Twitter user further pointed out that this fuck up might just be the result of The Australian‘s lazy journalism.
It looks like every month they post the same pie chart, despite the fact that the numbers have been changing. Folks, if the number falls, the slice of the pie does too. Even I know that.
At this point, I don’t know if it’s laziness or deception. Either way, it’s bad journalism #newspoll #newscorp pic.twitter.com/hzCYfAFlNv
— Claire Edmunds (@EdmundsClaire) January 30, 2022
And of course, some people ran straight to their computers to turn this whole Newspoll mess into a glorious meme. The speed of Twitter scares me. It takes me like seven days to think of a witty joke, and by then Twitter has moved on to the next Aussie media fuck-up.
NEWSPOLL EXCLUSIVE – Eleventy percent of Australians think Scott Morrington will wins the erection. #auspol #newspoll pic.twitter.com/k3PBrGiqZ3
— Finzensen (@Finzensen) January 30, 2022
Fuck, I kind of want a pie now. Might go and get me one. Heatherbrae’s here I come.
