Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few argues The Wisdom of the Crowds. If this is the case and, to the extent twitter is representative of the Australian population, Joe Hockey should pay attention to the twitter results on his climate change question. He twittered hey team re The ETS. Give me your views please… on Friday.

A random sample of responses to his climate change question finds:

• 51.6% say support the ETS and/or don’t sell out on your previous support for these laws
• 43.2% say no ETS and/or delay it, it’s just a tax
• 2.1% say become the leader, presumably implicitly saying no to the ETS as well
• 3.2% say twitter discussion about this is silly

Details of this sample are here.

Joe Hockey asked this question as the opposition liberal party is pushing him to become leader. This change will overturn his previous position – and the party’s decision last week – to take action on climate change by passing the Australian emissions trading legislation (ETS).

And the current leaders views? “This is not a game . . . We’re talking about the future of our planet. We’re talking about whether we, the Liberal Party, will want to be a credible, progressive political movement of the 21st century” 27/11/09 Malcolm Turnbull quoted in The Age.