The rolling average of the polls is shown below.

After a lengthy break I will be updating Curiablog with poll details regularly again.

It is very rare to have a dead tie between two candidates, but that is what we got – of the 85% of respondents who had a preference between John Banks and Len Brown, they got 50.0% each.

Banks, who is the client who commissioned the poll, has a small 4.4% lead when we ask Aucklanders unprompted who their preference for Mayor is. He gets 42.5% to 38.1% for Brown. Bob Harvey is at 7.2% and Stephen Tindall at 4.8%.

But in the second question, when asked if it is a choice between John Banks and Len Brown, they are dead even. This is a change from the previous poll in September when Brown was almost 10% ahead of Banks.

It looks like it will be a very interesting contest!

Guyon Espiner commented that if the Government leads by this much during the worst recession since the 1930s, the fear for Labour must be what might happen next year when presumably the country has come out of recession.

The March 2009 public polls newsleter by Curia has just been published. As one can see not a lot of change. The newsletter is e-mail only, and you can subscribe to receive it at this webpage.

Also of interest to some people may be a recent poll of small and medium busineses by Curia for BDO Spicers and Ideas Shop. Curiablog has a summary of some results and links to the main reports. I found it interesting that recruiting and retaining staff was still cited as a major challenge for many SMEs (despite the recession) and also the number of firms that had flexible working practices such as being able to go from full-time to part-time, or work partly from home.

For example while the UMR poll did find only 28% opposed to the new law, they also found 58% agreed that “There are certain circumstances when it is alright for parents to use physical punishment with children” .

In fact only 20% of UMR respondents disagreed with that statement.

I’ve also covered in some detail, how different polls can be focusing on different elements of a law, and differently worded questions can produce different results. This does not mean either one is biased – it means they are focused on different things.

I plan to also do at least a couple of blog posts a week highlighting interesting overseas polls, or commentaries based on polls. Also to cover stories about polling itself.

Just done a short post quoting Scott Rasmussen on Obama’s poll numbers.

On a size and time weighted average of all polls National/ACT/United Future have 64 seats and need 62 to govern.

If you take account of the last four polls only, the change is Labour drops one to 43and ACT gains one to four.

Whether or not there is a clear result, will depend on turnout primarily. If people want a change of Government you have to go vote for it.

Both polls show that National/ACT/United Future can form a Government, but that it is possible the Maori Party can hold the balance of power. The Greens are up strongly and in TV3 Labour dropped away a lot.

Chris Trotter on Alt TV this week said that on current polling a Labour/Green/Maori Party Government would be the most left-wing Government New Zealand has had for at least 70 years.

And he is correct. With the Greens at 10% they would not be a minor coalition partner but would pull the Government greatly towards the left and away from economic growth (which they don’t even like much). Of a Cabinet of 20, the Greens could expect five or six places, or in other words every current Green MP would become a Minister – including Keith Locke, Sue Kedgley, and Sue Bradford.

So it a clear choice for voters as we head into the election. As we face unprecedented economic challenges, it is a choice of a National-led Government that makes up 95% of the Government, or what Chris Trotter calls the most left-wing Government in 70 years.

The size and time weighted average still has a National-led Government possible without the Maori Party, but this will change as the older polls with a larger gap get less weighting.

By keeping the file name the same, it means other sites (such as Kiwiblog and Policy Net) can have the graphic automatically updated.

But there is a problem. WordPress seems to cache the old graphic and it takes one to two days for the new graphic to appear.

Anyone know of a way to stop this by clearing the cache? Note that curiablog is run on wordpress.org – it is not my own installation.

For example the latest TV3 poll had:

Obviously the great news is that Simon Bridges is 20% ahead of Winston Peters. Peters is facing a crushing from someone born around the time Peters was first elected to Parliament.

What I also found also of interest is the party vote results with NZ First at only 6%. Last election they got over 13% so this is a loss of over half their support.

The time and size weighted rolling average now has National at 51.5% and Labour 33.1% – a 18.4% gap. If one takes just the latest four polls into account it is 50.8% to 33.9% – a 16.9% gap. The average gap in June was 23% so a definite closing.

The graphic showing the rolling average hasn’t yet shown as updated, even though a new one has been uploaded. The WordPress site seems to cache material for a while and then suddenly the new one appears. So it should update soon.

Curiablog will be a specialist blog on polls and polling, with a mainly (but not exclusively) New Zealand focus.

I hope it will provide the following information:

1. A record of all public polls published within New Zealand, and links to the original data or at least media reports based on that data. This is not just party political polls, but also issue polls.
2. A size and time weighted average of the public political party polls
3. Over time, a guide to useful information on polls and polling including FAQs on issues such as exit polls, why polls disagree etc etc. I will generally link the best overseas content where appropriate.
4. Links to significant overseas polls.
5. Links to and commentary on blog posts on polling from some of the international specialist blog sites.

It is not intended to be a partisan debating forum. Comments are welcome of course, but it intended to be somewhat more sedate than Kiwiblog.

One feature of the blog, which people may find useful, is a sidebar graphic showing the latest size and time weighted average of the public polls.

There is also an excel spreadsheet on the blog which people can download and they can see the individual polls, the weightings, the electorate seat assumptions, and the projected/likely Electorate and List MPs in the future Parliament.

Note that this is all based on the publicly available and published polls. It should not be regarded as a prediction by me on individual seats or candidates. Generally no seat is assumed to change hands unless a poll has been published in the media showing a change.

Other bloggers are welcome to display the graphic on their own sites. It will be updated daily and will automatically update on your site when it is updated here, except at month end. To add it to your own sidebar just copy the text below:

<a href=”http://curiablog.wordpress.com/2008-public-poll-average-calculations/”><img class=”alignnone size-full wp-image-15″ src=”http://curiablog.wordpress.com/files/2008/07/curiappa.jpg” alt=”" width=”161″ height=”355″ /></a>

WordPress doesn’t allow me to place updated graphics in the same location for the whole year, as it files by month. This means at the end of the month the graphic location will change (from “…/2008/07/…” to “…/2008/08/…” etc. So once a month just need to change your text, or copy the new location from here.

I hope people find it useful, It has only modest content for now, but overtime I hope it will be a useful permanent repository of public polling information in New Zealand.