Written By: - Date published: 4:25 pm, October 29th, 2007 - 50 comments
Categories: john key, labour -
Tags: john key, labour
Pol science lecturer and commentator Jon Johansson has given a lucid and scholarly account of the inexorable decline of John Key and National’s prospects. In a speech to the NZ First conference at the weekend. Johansson told delegates that after a promising beginning, Key has started to “unevenly walk the new generation walk…”
An excerpt:
“In fact, and despite Key’s and National’s high levels of popular support, his performance has become, in some respects, quite mediocre, with a thoroughly forgettable conference speech, presiding over and contributing to the recent series of policy gaffes, and coming up with what I describe as his ‘blerts,’ not all of which survive scrutiny. As an outside observer it seems to me that National’s old template has snapped back into place. ‘No risks’ and ‘inoculations’ on the right, and unremitting negative attacks on the left. It has also gone unnoticed that National’s overarching ‘change’ narrative that Key had begun to carefully construct through his ‘Burnside’ speech and subsequent regional conference speeches has lost all shape and focus. It also seems to me that National’s current low-risk strategy takes it down one of the few paths where it could conceivably lose what should for it be, from its current position, an unlosable election.
Second, Key is faced with presentational problems which potentially undermine any future-oriented ‘change’ narrative that would, I think, comfortably prevail at the next election. Voters might well be seriously entertaining changing from Labour but Helen Clark will counter by saying to voters… sure, but change to what? Change that sees 1990s retreads like Tony Ryall in health, Nick Smith in the environment, English in finance, and then John Key also has his Williamson’s, Lockwood’s and McCully’s as ideological talisman from the 90s. None of these individuals have public appeal so Labour will be doing its utmost to isolate and then contrast the respective front benches as a point of difference in its favour.
Thirdly, National’s eventual policy mix remains a mystery. This poses a risk for National as accusations of ‘Hidden agendas’ remains viable currency for as long as a policy vacuum exists. Secondly, the threshold for scrutiny of National’s eventual policy mix, post-’Hollow Men,’ will be higher than in ’05. National seem to feel they successfully inoculated against the claims made in Hager’s book once they replaced Brash with Key. Their tactics certainly gave the appearance of having worked given the lack of scrutiny of the book’s claims that ensued. But, I’d suggest, the lack of integrity that is at the heart of the ‘Hollow Men’ will be an important sub-text to analyses of National’s policy and Key’s campaign performance. Trust is conceivably the issue of the campaign. All in all, National remains fragile enough, and Labour patient, skilled, and ruthless enough, to think that this next election is far from being a fait accompli.”
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interesting Key still can’t seem to dupe the women folk
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10472850
rjs131 – preferred pm and party support generally track very closely.. After all people realise that a vote for a major party is effectively a vote for that party’s leader to be PM..
.. which makes this poll strange.. we would not expect to see a party’s support grow while support for that party’s leader being PM shrinks or vice versa.
We also wouldn’t expect a change in the current trend (Labour up, National down) without political events that cause people to change their minds. The latest budget figures are the only event I can think of that might have turned people back to National but usually budget numbers have no real impact on polls.
Now, a poll has a margin of error – 3.1% in a 1000 person poll. That means that the total error between parties’ support levels in the sampled population and the total population will be less than 3.1%, 95% of the time. However, 5% of the time the polling error will be larger than that – a rogue poll.
A good indicator of a rogue poll is numbers that don’t make sense – like the PM numbers moving in the opposite direction to the party numbers.
I don’t agree Sam. The incumbent PM nearly always beats an opposition leader. and minor parties leaders’ numbers are all over the place. Look at the relative numbers for fitzsimons and Peters and Greens and NZ first.
Incumbency is very powerful advantage as it is easier to go with what you know. And whether you like Clark or not she is very effective in presenting herself as a leader. She should be worried that some polls have had her and Key much closer – wasn’t she even behind in one?
I don’t know why we get excited about polls one way or the other. They were so ludicrously inconsistent last election that I lost all faith in them. Though as I recall some combined averages (over a reasonable period of time) were much more accurate.
rob
BEcause they provide easy news for Gallery reporters in a week when the house isn;t sitting. Otherwise they might have to go to a select committee and write notes or something rather than just interview their typewriter or get some low energy lightbulb newsreader to ask them patsy questions.
insider – I’m talking about movements between polls – the major parties’ leaders moved in the opposite direction o their parties, that’s a strange result
Oh, right, Sam. So the Roy Morgan poll, which was inconsistent with all the other polls, was valid, but the Digipoll which was consistent with all the others, detailing a 12 point lead for National, was a rogue poll.
I get it.
IP – you don’t get it it all stop boasting. Nobody’s impressed.
Digipoll has been consistent with itself, which is some kind of reliability , but that says nothing about validity . (If their sampling is flawed then the results are meaningless). And there isn’t that much other polling going on right now for Digipoll to be consistent with. It isn’t consistent with Roy Morgan (which did the best job of predicting the 2005 election).
There’s a useful (post 2005 election) article on the complexity and noise of political polling here:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10347022
But seriously – why get excited about polls?
Apologies, according to the article it is TNS Research (TV3) which was the most accurate preditor in 2005.
Simply not true, rOb. There have been five regular polls going on, with their results publicly released. They consistently show National leading by a twelve point margin.
Who gets excited by the polls? Well, the Standard did, just the other day, when it pointed to one Roy Morgan result as an indication of National in free-fall. Suddenly another poll comes out that is consistent with everything except the Roy Morgan poll, and yet it is the digipoll that is described as “rogue”. Brilliant.
I’m sure John Key will be devastated that his party continues to thump Labour in the polls.
“Simply not true, rOb. There have been five regular polls going on, with their results publicly released.”
My mistake then – I really don’t pay attention.
“Who gets excited by the polls? Well, the Standard did”
Which just goes to show they aren’t perfect! Sorry – I realise I may be in a minority of one in being unable to take polls very seriously.
“I’m sure John Key will be devastated that his party continues to thump Labour in the polls.”
If that is the sum total of the depth of his thinking on the matter then it’s fine with me.
IP:
The herald digi poll is notoriously dodgy – best to look to the roy-morgan and TV3 TNS polls for accurate polling. After all they were both on the money when it came to the 2005 election.
http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2005/3898/
IP only a novice would quote the herald dodgipoll as an authoritative source. TNS and Roy Morgan are the ones that the serious pollsters (including DPF – when you press him on the issue) look to for a reliable indication of where the electorate is at. Look at the 2005 election for example.
http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2005/3898/
Um – looks like my 2:55 pm post disappeared and re-appeared – sorry about the double post.