Te Tai Tokerau

The Herald reports:

A poll of Maori voters indicates Mana Party leader Hone Harawira (below) could face a challenge in his Te Tai Tokerau electorate seat.

The full results of the nationwide TVNZ Marae Investigates DigiPoll survey of 1000 voters will be released this morning.

In results released to the Weekend Herald of 93 Te Tai Tokerau voters polled, 30 per cent said they would vote for Labour candidate Kelvin Davis, compared with 28.6 per cent for Mr Harawira.

About 22 per cent said they would vote for Maori Party candidate Waihoroi Shortland.

The first thing to note is 93 voters is very small for a poll. I don’t like samples under 300. At 93 the margin of error is 10.4%, so a gap of 1.4% between the candidates is not statistically significant. In fact it is only 57% probable that Davis is ahead.

Also worth noting that a poll before the by-election showed Hone leading by just 1% and in fact he won by around 8% or so. That poll was from a different company, but is another reason to be cautious of reading too much into this poll.