Conservative parties in Australia believe that nuclear power is popular — based on biased push-polling.

A Newspoll survey led to a page one article in Murdoch’s Australian, under this headline: “Powerful majority supports nuclear option for energy security”.

The Australian’s political editor Simon Benson wrote in February: “Labor is now at risk of ending up on the wrong side of history in its fanatical opposition to nuclear power.”

The party “ignores this community sentiment potentially at its peril”, he added.

The story was prominent across the Murdoch-owned media including Sky News.

The Newspoll question was: “There is a proposal to build several small modular nuclear reactors around Australia to produce zero-emissions energy on the sites of existing coal-fired power stations once they are retired. Do you approve or disapprove of this proposal?”

The results were: 55% approval; 31% disapproval and 14% “don’t know”.

However, the poll was a crude example of push-polling designed to generate pro-nuclear results and headlines. Its many faults were identified by polling experts Kevin Bonham and Murray Goot and economist Professor John Quiggin.

To give just one example of the bias: replacing Australia’s 21,300 megawatts of coal-fired power generation capacity with small modular reactors (SMRs) would require a large number of reactors, not “several”, as Newspoll asserted.

If, for example, NuScale Power’s 77-megawatt reactors were chosen, 277 reactors would be required.

In broad terms, the tricks used by pro-nuclear push-pullers involve swaying opinions with biased preliminary comments, biased questions, limited response options, and misreporting the findings.

Specific tricks include:

• Presenting or implying a narrow or false choice - as with the implication in the Newspoll survey that Australians could choose between nuclear reactors or coal.

• Asking respondents if nuclear power should be “considered” or if they support an “informed and balanced conversation”, and then conflating support for those bland propositions with support for nuclear power itself.

• Linking nuclear power to climate change abatement without mention of the downsides or expense of nuclear power, or alternative and arguably better ways to address climate change.

• Asking respondents if they support “advanced” nuclear power or “the latest nuclear energy technologies” without noting that “advanced” nuclear power reactors are few in number, they aren’t really “advanced” in any meaningful sense and, in some cases, they are used to power fossil fuel mining or pose increased weapons proliferation risks.

• Reporting on poll results without clearly stating what the actual survey questions were.

• Avoiding the word “nuclear”........

© Green Left Weekly