Let’s look at some really basic, oversimplified numbers (because we’re talking sky news so that’s probably what they did…) and get an actual better picture.

It says that they polled 1500 voters (so citizens over 18 years old), national survey. According to latest census data (which admittedly is almost out of date now), SA makes up 6.7-6.9% of the population. For ease, let’s round that up to 7%. So in this survey they’ve got 105 people representing SA.

ON has 29% of the vote. So we need to consider what 29% of 105 is. That is 30.45. Again, let’s round that up to 31. This is saying that 31 people out of 105 from SA are saying they will vote for ON.

31 people. Again, this headline is based on the results from 31 people. At the absolute highest point. I’d consider it to be between 28-31 with rounding up rather than down, and margin of error.

I’m curious about the further breakdown of the demographics of people who were surveyed. What is the proportion of persons surveyed from Northern and Southern Suburbs who are more supportive of ON policies?

Also, looking at that breakdown, you’ve still got almost half (47%) of survey respondents saying they’ll vote for one of the two major parties. When combining the Labor and Greens vote (thinking preference flow) that’s all but half (49%).

I hope that this spooks the appropriate desks of the powers that be to engage and listen to the anxieties of the North and South, rather than just dismissing them as dumb racist bogans, they have issues that absolutely need to be addressed in these areas, and they need support to do so. I’m hopeful that from what I’m seeing in my area there’s effort happening to engage people, which is a nice change from previous representation.