Kiwiblog

Colin Craig’s Conservative Party has been claiming they will win Rodney, on the basis of this poll report, which is on their website. The key extract is:

47.2% of those who had decided who they were likely to vote for as an electorate candidate would vote for Craig.

This would position Craig in first place in the electorate, ahead of ‘The National Party Candidate/Mark Mitchell/Lockwood Smith (36.3%).

The polling was done by Research First. Whale recently revealed their director is a candidate for the Conservative Party. I commented at the time:

This does not mean that the poll results are or are not valid. As I said, validity is based on knowing the question asked and the methodology. You can poll for an organisation you are involved with. For example, Curia does an annual poll for the Republican Movement on whether people want NZ to become a republic when the Queen dies. Now I am on the Council of the Movement, but this doesn’t influence the results. The key thing is I have publicly disclosed my involvement.

Now in response to a request from Whale, Research First have released details of the questions they asked. It is good they have done so, because as I said the exact questions asked are often vital to interpreting a poll’s results. Their response says:

 Relevant questions included the following, in order of being asked:

1 For your party vote, have you decided who you will be voting for in the election?

2 Which party do you currently intend to vote for?

3 Have you heard of the Conservative Party?

4 Have you heard of Colin Craig?

Participants were read a brief preamble to provide context: ‘Colin Craig is the leader of the Conservative Party of New Zealand. In the Auckland mayoral election, Colin came third with over 40,000 votes’. Then asked…

5 If Colin were to stand in as a candidate in your electorate, what would be the likelihood that you would vote for Colin to be your member of parliament (on a scale of 1 = definitely; 2 = likely; 3 = neutral; 4 = unlikely and 5 = very unlikely)?

Those who identified they were neutral or unlikely to vote for Craig were asked:

6 Who do you intend to vote for?

Okay, let’s take this step by step. The first two questions are pretty standard. Then there are two specific question asking awareness of the Conservative Party and Colin Craig. Then a statement was read out which puts Craig in a positive light (mentioning his votes in the Auckland Mayoral election), and then they ask people how likely it is they will vote for Craig, and only if they say they are neutral or unlikely to they even ask you who else you will vote for.

The results are no surprise, once you realise this is the questions that were asked, and in what order. You have a number of factors here influencing the responses, namely:

• The mention of the Conservative Party and Colin Craig first
• The description of Colin Craig provided to respondents
• The question only asked about voting for Colin Craig, with no mention of anyone else
• Only if you say you are neutral or unlikely to vote Craig, do you even get asked whom else you might vote for
• The other candidates are unprompted, so you are comparing unprompted results vs a prompted result.

I am surprised that Research First did not insist on these questions being included in their report, as in my opinion they are quite vital to it. I also think it is unwise to compare answers to a prompted question to answers to an unprompted question.

If I was wanting to poll that seat, and get a result which was fairly trying to ascertain support, the questions I would use are either:

Which candidate, or party’s candidate are you likely to vote for with your electorate vote?

or

The candidates for Rodney are Colin Craig, Conservative; Beth Houlbrooke, ACT; tracey Martin, New Zealand First; Mark Mitchell, National; Terea Moore, Green and Christine Rose, Labour. Which candidate are you likely to vote for with your electorate vote?

One might also have a follow up lean question for those undecided. I very strongly suspect that the results to the questions above would be vastly different to the results of the poll commissioned by the Conservative Party.

There is never any 100% correct version of a question, and rarely 100% incorrect version. In terms of ascertaining potential support for Colin Craig, those questions may be legitimate if commissioned for internal use only. But what I think was wrong was to have them publicly reported as Craig being “in first place”. The questions should have been reported.

The lesson for media here, is to always ask for the questions. Those media who reported the poll, should be wary of doing so in future without checking.

The Electoral Commission has announced that the Conservative Party is now registered and able to contest the election.

There are now 16 registered parties being:

• ACT
• ALCP
• Progressive
• Conservative
• Libertarianz
• Mana
• Maori
• New Citizen
• Winston First
• Labour
• Alliance
• Greens
• Kiwi
• Democrats/Social Credit
• National
• United

I suspect Progressive and Kiwi will not actually contest the election and urge people to vote Labour and Conservative respectively.

Steve Hopkins at Stuff reports:

The leader of the Conservative Party, Colin Craig, has confirmed he will stand as the Rodney electorate candidate.

The announcement today ends speculation he would stand against John Banks in Auckland’s Epsom.

Craig says he was attracted to the challenge of taking on Banks, his former mayoral campaign rival, but he’s ”followed his heart by standing for the people” of Rodney.

”I’ve lived in Rodney and my business involvement here has spanned more than 20 years. Many of my family live here and I’m passionate about getting things moving for everyone in the region,” he says.

Craig’s father Ross Craig was a Rodney district councillor until the Auckland super city council was formed last year.

This is a much more sensible decision, than standing in Epsom would have been. Standing in Epsom would only have benefited Labour.

Craig appears to be seeking the same sort of voters as NZ First – socially conservative, and economically centrist. If NZ First does not make it back in, then in 2014 Craig has the possibility of picking up many of his voters. In 2011, it will be harder.

The Conservative Party claims polling in the area shows Craig is ahead of his nearest rival.

Meanwhile, further polling by the party claims to show Banks is struggling to win over Epsom voters.

Of those who had decided who they were likely to vote for as an electoral candidate in Epsom, 35.3 per cent say they would vote for the National candidate, 31.4 per cent would tick Banks, and 27.4 per cent say they would give their vote Craig if he was on the ballot paper.

So the Conservative Party claims it is ahead in Rodney? I’d love to see the name of the polling company they use for these polls, and what he exact questions were.

UPDATE: Act on Campus point out Craig was polling against the retiring MP, not the actual National candidate. He must literally have money to waste.

Personally I’m even more doubtful of a poll that says Craig would beat Lockwood if he was standing again.

A couple of days old now, but have to mention the by-election for Crewe and Nantwich (don’t you love English place names).

In 2005 Labour won the seat by over 7,000 votes – 49% to 32%.

In the by-election, the Conservatives won by almost 8,000 votes – 49.5% to 30.5%. So that is a 17% swing to the Conservatives. In 1997 Labour won it by 31% – 58% to 27%.

The highlight for me was the candidate for the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, a Mr “The Flying Brick” – and yes that is his legal name. He is their Shadow Minister for the Abolition of Gravity.

In nationwide polls, the Conservatives are 14% ahead of Labour, which would give them a 76 seat majority.

The results are yet to be announced for the London Mayoralty (Zimbabwe is almost faster with its results) but the expectation is that Boris Johnson has won it off Ken Livingstone, as Labour have been mauled across the board.

Pundits said a loss of more than 200 seats would be very bad for Labour. Well they have lost a staggering 331 seats – a once in a generation annihilation. In fact Labour only came third in the popular vote with 24% behind Lib Dems on 25% and Conservatives on 44%.

It is now being openly speculated that Prime Minister Gordon Brown may be rolled before the election. He is lucky in that there is no general election needed for two years, but unlucky in that that gives lots of time for discontent to simmer.

Congrats to all my friends in the Conservatives – must have been a good night of celebrations.