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February 20, 2013 6:47am by David Farrar

Latest poll

The latest poll (Fairfax Ipsos) is at Curiablog. It shows no Government could be formed without the Maori Party.

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Comment35

NZ Politics
Polls

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Comments (35)

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sparky

I am beginning to think a lot of these polls, and being sort to suit the submitter. So starting to treat them as wishful thinking.
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February 20, 2013 6:51am
big bruv

“It shows no Government could be formed without the Maori Party.”

That is enough to send a shiver down the spine of all Kiwis.

I simply do not have any faith in our pollies (be they left or right) not to sell the country out to Maori if we were ever stupid enough to let the aparthied party hold the balance of power.
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February 20, 2013 6:59am
SPC

sparky the swings from poll to poll are largely within the margin of error of the polls. With the left and right combinations similar the result can be different even with changes within the margin of error of the polling.

Unless support drains away from National, or Labour implode, it would seem that the election result will be unclear even as we go into the 2014 campaign.
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February 20, 2013 7:19am
Pete George

National 44.9% (-1.3)
Labour 36.3% (+1.9)
Greens 10.7% (+0.2)
NZ First 2.8% (-1.0)
Conservative 1.6% (+0.2)
Mana 1.4% (+0.8)
Maori 1.3% (-0.1)
Act 0.4% (+0.4)
UnitedFuture 0.1% (-0.1)
Other 0.5% (-1.0)

Not included in these figures – 11.1% undecided.

Pollster Duncan Stuart said a breakdown of undecided voters suggested many were “soft” National supporters, who had started looking around.

So speculation is pretty much meaingless, the undecides will probably decide the election next year.

http://yournz.org/2013/02/20/latest-poll-the-key-is-undecided/
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February 20, 2013 7:20am
Richard29

The reporting of this poll on stuff had an interesting detail:

“Pollster Duncan Stuart said a breakdown of undecided voters suggested many were “soft” National supporters, who had started looking around.”

So basically an increasing number of people over time are getting bored of the current government that we’ve had for over 4 years, their lives haven’t really changed that much for the better, but they don’t really see the opposition as a workable government in waiting, so they are just kind of uncertain…

This also seems to gel with the differences between the Fairfax poll and the Morgan poll a few days ago. They are both on reasonably large samples and conducted at the same time, but the Fairfax poll has National at 45% and the Colmar Brunton poll has them at 49%.The big difference here is that the Colmar Brunton Poll has only 10% undecided and the Fairfax poll has 17.2% undecided. That is a massive difference and will be down to interview approach.

I’ve worked in and managed teams calling out on political surveys in NZ and Australia. The reality is that a whole bunch of people you speak to say they don’t know who they would vote for – they don’t feel that they have enough information to make a decision or they don’t want to give a ‘wrong’ answer in case they change their mind later.

Most people will give a preference if prompted with something like “So which party of the ones I listed, if you had to choose, who do you think you might prefer to vote for, even if it’s only a very small preference?” It was many years ago that I last conducted the Colmar Brunton Poll – but I’m fairly sure they employ a technique similar to this. That allows for picking up in changes of mood amongst the 20% or so of floating voters who are undecided.

The undecideds are a difficult group to get to grips with – on the one hand you don’t want to be reporting the preferences of people who are disengaged from the political process and may not show up on the day, on the other hand theirs are the votes which swing elections. They are often making their decision not on the basis of a good understanding of the policies of all parties and their implications but based on broad perceptions of the political brand or personalities involved rathern than anything substantive: “John Key seems friendly and down to earth”, “Those Labour people seem to be quite angry and negative”, “That Goff guy has been around for years”, “The Greens seem young and energetic and that Maori girl co-leader has such a warm smile”, “Winston is a bit of a character but he did achieve a lot for people like me with the supergold card and pension increases”.
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February 20, 2013 7:33am
Mark

Too early and too close to call an election at this stage. National simply need to get on with their programme and stop fucking around. The Asset sales programme is starting to sound like a future Tui’s ad. Key is fortunate that Labour has been so inept over the last 2-3 years but cannot continue to rely on that, he needs to demonstrate that hsi government is capable of delivering on the things we voted for.
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February 20, 2013 7:43am
Richard29

hehehe… Just saw PG’s post – very much the same conclusion…

Yup – the next election will be decided by the undecided’s (just like 2011 was – National won by around 1% but several percentage points worth of former Labour voters didn’t show up on the day).

Just had a look at a few of the results on CuriaBlog – the Roy Morgan poll is interesting – it has the lowest level of undecideds (3-4%) and they consistently poll the Greens a couple of points higher than the other polls (and above their actual representation in parliament which is about 11%). This is the risk of pushing too much for a preference.

Your pot smoking uni student might give a verbal preference for the Greens when somebody calls them up at home and asks them, but when expressing their preference actually involves remembering which day the election is on, getting out of bed on the right day, walking down to their local school, standing in a line and ticking a box then those two points of Green support disappear.

The electoral commission did a really interesting study on the impact of sending text reminders on election day – you wouldn’t think something that little would make a big difference – but it had a double digit impact on turnout in some demographics:
http://www.elections.org.nz/sites/default/files/plain-page/attachments/Txt_trial_election_08_final_report.pdf
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February 20, 2013 7:52am
krazykiwi

So racists hold the balance of power? No wonder Key is busy selling current and future New Zealanders out in the disgraceful ‘constitutional review’.
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February 20, 2013 7:53am
Pete George

Richard29 – the undecideds don’t make good stories so they make dramatics over a percent or two, but you just have to see the late move to NZ First last election and the predicted drop below 50% for National to not get any hopes up this far out.

Your comments were very interesting, explains a lot of what I had suspected, I’ve blogged your comments, worth circulating them.
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February 20, 2013 7:55am
joana

Parata is not helping National in CHCH with a recent survey saying 71 per cent want her gone..Her extraordinary inability to apologize was captured many times on TV..It is not a good look..Key’s faith in her raises questions about his judgement especially as he credited her with such good communication skills..This opinion is simply not borne out by the facts.
Key’s dodgy answers re the Sky City deal won’t help National’s prospects either..
The silence over the Mainzeal fiasco and Yan and Shipley’s involvement and advocacy on his behalf is doing little in the integrity stakes.
On the ground , the cost of living is escalating and wages are stagnating..A recent Aussie visitor who was here three years ago was staggered at the cost increases in CHCH.
The screwing down in the health sector is increasingly taking its toll.
These are just a few recent things..In the back of many people’s minds is the memory of National’s tax cuts for the rich..We no longer have great things like community education. It is difficult not to see National as governing by the rich for the rich.
And as for Key’s attidude towards islam of ”live and let live” it is like many of his other utterances , simply lame.
Even Crosby Textor and Steven Joyce’s drawl won’t save National at the next election.
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February 20, 2013 7:57am
krazykiwi

Richard29 – Anyone sufficiently disengaged and disinterested so as to need a TXT message reminder to vote should be removed from the roll.
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February 20, 2013 7:59am
joana

There was no late move to NZF at the last election. This is just a lazy notion made up by lazy journalists and others so easily willingly to swallow the propoganda that NZFirst was finished..Hide and go had such the thorough outing in the media they did not expect a resurrection which just shows how easily fooled many people are..
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February 20, 2013 8:07am
rg

Another example of pollsters trying to influenece elections with a guess that National will take Epsom off ACT. This assumption assumes that the people of Epsom will actively choose to elect a Labour govt by dumping ACT. If anyone can give me any reason why Epsom voters would do that I will vote the Green Party myself.

The seat projection for Epsom is nonsense, it is a classic example of pollsters trying to influence the outcome. Not one poll in Epsom has ever been correct, which proves either incompetence or bias. The pollsters need to be called to account.
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February 20, 2013 8:08am
Manolo

The racist Maori Party will be history after the election. The Left is preparing to take power and damage our country even further, after six years of timid and inconsequential National Party governing.

NZ diving to the bottom will only gain speed.
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February 20, 2013 8:33am
Richard29

@PG
Thanks for the hat tip.

@Joana
I kind of agree and kind of disagree on whether there was a late swing to NZ First.
I know there were some Labour voters who voted tactically (similar to National Voters in Epsom) to get NZ First above 5% thinking that this would make the difference between victory and defeat for Labour – in the end it didn’t.
There is a big similarity here with the recent Lower Saxony election in Germany (also MMP with 5% threshold) where Conservatives voters split their vote to keep the Free Democrat Party (Liberal Party) above 5%. The final result saw a doubling of the FDP vote but didn’t change the outcome of the election because it was just a reshuffling of votes on the right not a swing away from the left.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/lower-saxony-election-results-make-fdp-dependent-on-merkel-a-878781.html

Where I agree with you is that I think the polls tend to understate the resilience of NZ Firsts voter base (there is probably a fairly firm hard core of around 4%). I suspect that between electoral cycles NZ First vanishes into that grey “Don’t know” space – for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, it is decidedly uncool to vote NZ First. Have you ever seen somebody at a party or social event mention that they voted NZ First – laughter and mocking normally ensues. From my days on the phones I can remember the embarrasment and equivocation in peoples voices when they said they’d back NZ First, as if I might suddenly take time out from the phone interview to tease them.
Secondly, Winston has built his political persona and brand around being this outspoken controversial maverick figure who will “keep the bastards honest”. His whole pitch is going for the protest vote – those people who vote because they feel they should but are equally disengaged from all sides of the political spectrum. The thing about the protest vote is that it is buried in that grey ‘no preference’ space between elections and only reveals itself on the day.
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February 20, 2013 8:34am
Redbaiter

What this poll and every poll shows is that the National Party has no message.

They are utterly incompetent and cowardly and incoherent.

If they had half a clue the Maori party would be exposed for what it really is, a racist horror, and a blight upon NZ’s electoral system.

Nobody in the National Party has the balls or the ability to put this message across. Least of all smiling boy Key and his bunch of weak progressive media advisers.
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February 20, 2013 8:42am
Rick Rowling

even with changes within the margin of error

The margin of error doesn’t mean what you think it means.

It also doesn’t mean what reporters think it means. If reporters understood it, they would report the confidence level to give the margin of error some, you know, meaning.
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February 20, 2013 8:47am
Ross12

Redbaiter

I would not go as far as you in your criticism. But I agree that National are very poor communicators. The latest CHch school situation is a good example. Their media people should put a simple bullet point Press Release out giving all the basic facts ( the 9300 empty seats , the cost of rebuilding/repairing affected schools , the shift in the population to different suburbs etc). Then the average person would be able to see the reasons behind the decisions ( they may not come to same conclusions but at least they would see why the decision was made). Most of these facts came out but I had to search through all sorts places ( including comments on blogs) to try to piece it together.
( DPF did it on here but did go far enough –maybe he did not have all the info. and it is not his job to do it anyway)
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February 20, 2013 8:58am
Pete George

Not one poll in Epsom has ever been correct, which proves either incompetence or bias.

I think it illustrates the futility of expecting accurate polling in an electorate where votes can potentially change the outcome of the election. In that situation a significant proportion of the voters wait until close to the election so they can assess the otions and possible scenarios.

The polls and media can stuff things up (adversly influence the result) when they report that Act might not win the seat, that might help boost the electorate chances of Act but can put people off party voting for Act around the country because doubts have been raised about whether it would be wasted vote or not.

The same thing happened in Ohariu. Private polling had shown that Dunne was fairly secure, but media polling and reporting promoted doubt. Dunne ended up winning comfortably enough but the party vote slipped everywhere else. Polls and reporting may have made the difference between getting another seat for United Future, and that would have been quite significant in the overall number of MPs and coalition possibilities.
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February 20, 2013 9:04am
Tauhei Notts

I have only recently found this out; but to communicate with people under the age of 30 text messaging is the only way.
Forget snail mail. E mail does not seem to work, unless they have above average intelligence. For the great unwashed majority it has to be text.
I envisage a big increase in text messaging by political parties in the run up to the next election.
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February 20, 2013 9:07am
Redbaiter

The worst thing is that the National Party is now so left wing that it puts effort into destroying the Conservative Party while sucking up to the racists and separatists who form the Maori party.

Controlled by politically confused progressives (like Key), National sees the Conservatives as more of a danger to NZ than separatism and racial strife.

What National needs to do is try and support the Conservatives and bring down the racists, but National is full of racists and progressives, so they cannot.

These racists and progressives will lose National the next election. At the moment they are completely destroying National’s brand and making the party indistinguishable from Labour.
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February 20, 2013 9:30am
Pete George

There was no late move to NZF at the last election. This is just a lazy notion made up by lazy journalists and others so easily willingly to swallow the propoganda that NZFirst was finished.

I don’t know what you base that on. NZ First polls before the 2011 election:

One News 2.9% – 05 November to 09 November 2011
3 News 2.4% – 3 November to 10 November 2011
Roy Morgan 3.0% – November 7-18, 2011
Fairfax 4% – 17 to 21 November 2011
Roy Morgan 6.5% – 22 to 24 November 2011
Election result 6.9% – 28 November 2011

Single poll (Roy Morgan) trends also show a late lift for NZ First:
3.5 August 15-28, 2011
3.5 August 29 – September 11, 2011
1.0 September 12-25, 2011
2.0 September 26 – October 9, 2011
2.5 October 10-23, 2011
4.5 October 24-November 6, 2011
3.0 November 7-18, 2011
6.5 November 22-24, 2011

NZ First last bettered the threshold in January 2011 (5.5% which was abnormally high then).
http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2011/4724/
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February 20, 2013 9:32am
toad

@rg 8:08 am

This assumption assumes that the people of Epsom will actively choose to elect a Labour govt by dumping ACT.

It won’t make one jot of a difference. The “forgetful” MP for SkyCity and his cabbage boat have already ensured that ACT won’t get above 1%, so even if he were to be re-elected it won’t give the Nat bloc any more seats.
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February 20, 2013 9:40am
Peter

I would not go as far as you in your criticism. But I agree that National are very poor communicators. The latest CHch school situation is a good example. Their media people should put a simple bullet point Press Release out giving all the basic facts ( the 9300 empty seats , the cost of rebuilding/repairing affected schools

I thought so, too.

I don’t know what it is about National, but they can’t communicate to save themselves. What are their media people doing?

There is one, simply justification – and inescapable truth that justifies the closing of schools in Christchurch – 9300 empty seats. Repeat that at every opportunity, and most New Zealanders would understand it and agree.
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February 20, 2013 9:42am
sparky

I don’t know what it is about National, but they can’t communicate to save themselves. What are their media people doing?

LOL, so are you suggesting that the Labour Party Shearer can communicate. OMG.
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February 20, 2013 9:58am
Manolo

Today’s National Party is a party of weaklings, pantywaists, yes-men and blind followers.
Gone are the days where National was to the right of centre.
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February 20, 2013 10:01am
Redbaiter

“What are their media people doing?”

Too many of them are trolls on Kiwiblog.
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February 20, 2013 10:08am
Griff

Redbait I see the overwhelming support for cccp 1.4% inspiring dont you think.
At this rate they will fail miserably to make a dent in the future direction of New Zealand politics.

Seems there is little support for conservative policy’s in New Zealand.

Did you ever think that you might just be a lunatic fringe?
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February 20, 2013 10:22am
Redbaiter

Its either the racists and gay marriage or the Conservative party.

Make your mind up retard.

Edit: O0ps, no mind to make up have you.
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February 20, 2013 10:25am
Harriet

Griff – “…..Seems there is little support for conservative policy’s in New Zealand.

Did you ever think that you might just be a lunatic fringe?…”

No.

Maori women have the highest abortion rate in the world – this is quite telling – firstly, Maori women don’t think that living life as a Maori is worth it. Secondly, maori women are not supported by Maori men – the taxpayer supports them. Thirdly, maori are already ‘more of something else than maori’ – maori are dying out.

The Conservatives support Marriage and the family, and are also anti-abortion. Both policies, amongst others, can return Mana to Maoridom.

Maori childrens natural parents make the best parents for Maori. Maori womens’ boyfriends don’t. The Conservatives support this view.

The lunatic fringe is really The Mana Party. They have achieved nothing. 😎
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February 20, 2013 10:36am
Pete George

The lunatic fringe is really The Mana Party. They have achieved nothing.

They have one MP in parliament. That’s something compared to zero MPs.

And holding an electorate seat makes it much more likely they could get in again next time. Holding a seat is easier than trebling your party support.
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February 20, 2013 10:43am
Peter

LOL, so are you suggesting that the Labour Party Shearer can communicate. OMG.

No.

I’m saying National communication is dire.

I didn’t say it was totally incomprehensible.
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February 20, 2013 12:35pm
muggins

Am I the only person that thinks these polls are just a waste of time?
I mean, how far away are the next elections, for goodness sake.
And what about NZ First. It does not even rate at the moment and look what happened last time. The media is still getting over the shock.
If I had my way I would ban political polls altogether, or failing that limit them to one or two a year, with none whatsoever in the last six months prior to election date.
This morning there was a whole page of the Dompost not worth looking at. And I bet TVNZ and TV3 will be coming up with monthly or bimonthly polls from now until election date.
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February 20, 2013 3:27pm
muggins

Talking about political parties, is it a given that the Greens would always support Labour if they [ the Green party] were in a “balance of power’ position?
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February 20, 2013 3:32pm
sparky

Reply to Muggins.

Am I the only person that thinks these polls are just a waste of time?

No your not the only one Muggins. I totally agree with you 100%. It is 20 months away, to an election, and quite frankly polls every day almost are a waste of time. They make no sense.
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February 20, 2013 4:41pm

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