SOCI832: Lesson 1.1 A Motivating Example

Reading

Nick Evershed, 2019. ‘The eight charts that help explain why the Coalition won the 2019 Australian election.’ The Guardian, Wed 22 May.


Google Sheets dataset used in The Guardian Australia analysis.


Overview of Lesson 1.1

Time: 20 minutes

Objectives

By the end of this lesson students should be able to:

  • Explain the main conclusions we can draw from about the Federal Election from the eight graphs The Guardian Australia article
  • Identify some of the main methods used in the analysis in the article
  • Articulate what is it about quantitative methods of social science that can make it so powerful and useful?


Eight Charts to Explain the 2019 Federal Election

On Saturday 18 May 2019 there was an Australian Federal Election.

Anyone in Australia who was vaguely political - irrespective of their beliefs - was shocked by about 10pm that evening.

The conservative parties in Australia (Liberal/National Coalition) had achieved a surprising win - going against all the published polling.

A few days after the election an article was published in The Guardian Australia which attempted to use the tools of quantitative analysis to explain - in just eight charts - why the conservative parties had won.

This article and the eight charts are a powerful testament to the power of many of the skills you will learn in this course.

Figure 1, Figure 2, and Figure 3 are good examples of the type of charts provided in The Guardian article.

Two-party preferred swing to Coalition vs median weekly income.

Figure 1: Two-party preferred swing to Coalition vs median weekly income.

Source: Evershed, 2019. The Guardian.

Two-party preferred swing to Coalition vs % not engaged in work or study

Figure 2: Two-party preferred swing to Coalition vs % not engaged in work or study

Source: Evershed, 2019. The Guardian.

Two-party preferred swing to Coalition vs % recent migrants

Figure 3: Two-party preferred swing to Coalition vs % recent migrants

Source: Evershed, 2019. The Guardian.

Exercise: What can we learn from The Guardian analysis?

Read the full Guardian article.

In groups of three discuss your answers to the following questions. Write your answers in the shared Google Doc.

  1. What are the most important conclusions you can draw from the eight graphs in the article?

  2. Which analytical techniques did the authors use in these figures?

  3. What is it about this quantitative analysis that makes it so useful?


Extension Exercise: How could you replicate this study? How could it be improved?

If you finish the first exercise early, try to answer the following questions.

  1. What concrete steps - from obtaining the data to publishing the figures and text - would you need to do to replicate this analysis?

  2. Which methods do The Guardian not use, but probably should to be sure of their results? Why?


Review of Lesson 1.1

Quantitative analysis can be used to:

  1. Explore important research topics and questions (such as the results of the 2019 federal election).
  2. Conduct analysis with high quality, relatively objective data (such as statistics from the Census and the Australian Electoral Commission).
  3. Evaluate and test for relationships - many of which we think are cause and effect - particularly when:
    • there is a lot of ‘noise’ in the data, or
    • there are many competing explanations.
  4. Give us exact numbers to express (1) the relationships; and (2) how confident we are in the results.
  5. Express these results simply, and in a compelling form (such as graphs and figures), which communicates to a large audience.


Further Reading

Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2019. ‘2082.0 - Discover Your Commonwealth Electoral Division, Australia, 2019’ 01/03/2019


Last updated on 29 July, 2019 by Dr Nicholas Harrigan (nicholas.harrigan@mq.edu.au)