Yes they’re called ‘office phones’ because every MP may have an electorate office, and they have at least one listed phone. It would not surprise me if there is listed MP’s private number, ie the one that parliamentary services pays for (and has an answer phone on, you wouldn’t want to pick it up..).

However what exactly does that have to do with the problem that the polling companies face with lower numbers of listed landlines? Or is this just some pathetic attempt to get involved in the discussion?

This is a really interesting analysis. Especially as EVERY Labour Party MP has a land-line listed in the white pages!

Personally I don’ think there is a particular bias. It is just that the environment that they are sampling into is a lot more difficult. The diminishing number of listed landlines severely cramps their techniques because it is shifting the population of people with listed landlines away from the underlying population of voters.

That tends to favor the tories, or probably disfavor them if they start believing the polls too much.

1. Each individual poll is treated as single observation of the true value – there is no adjustment made for, for example, that Colmar-Brunton polls more frequently than UMR. Similarly, no adjustment is made for sample size. These are, of course, weaknesses. If I have time, I’d like to do a random-effects model to treat these types of things properly. But this makes a goodish first-order approximation.

2. The key result is that there are systematic discrepancies between the polling firms, and these are greater than any measure of “margin of error”. This is the most important point and is frequently overlooked by the MSM, who seem to be fixated with a change of 1% between indvidual pols. A poll of polls such as this tends to circumvent that problem somewhat, but it’s not perfect by any means (e.g. when we have lots of biased polls, the mean will also be biased).

3. Despite what everyone seems to think, there is no evidence here to suggest a “tory” bias in the Digipoll (subject to the given qualifications).

If you have suggestions about what else you’d like to see in this analysis, I’m open to them – please put them up on the wikipedia talk page!

As you know last time NZF said that they would talk to the biggest party first all polls were neck and neck and it is generally assumed that some people switched from the Greens and Act to Labour and National at the last moment to try to get their party of choice over the line.
This being the case a study of the above figures would conclude that the Morgan poll was uncannily accurate .
One would assume therefore they have not changed the way they canvas
voters. So it logically would be safe to assume that they are the ones to watch

However it has been my experience that the polls are less accurate the further away they are from the election. We notice it at an electorate level because we are looking in changes over time of canvassing of individuals (ie we randomly recanvass people). My home electorate is probably one of the most throughly canvassed in the country.

That way you can see the rate of movement from people to and from support of particular parties during the years between elections. It is never that high except when a new party comes on the scene and manages to pick up votes, or people decide that they don’t want to support a particular party because they are getting too far from their roots (2002 for instance). But generally they stay in roughly the same bloc, once voters are out of their 20′s.

So what I usually see coming up to an election is the national polls drifting towards the results I’d expect from the reading of the local tea leaves. What I’m using as a frame is the rate of change compared to other national polling sequences over multiple previous elections compared to what canvassing shows.

It is as empirical as hell, but doing that usually gives me a pretty good estimate of the major bloc outcomes. That is why I’m pretty sure that the Nay’s will go down a few points, and Labour will go up a few points at the Nov 8 poll.

There isn’t that much movement going on in the long-term support of parties. National has been slowly sucking up the right bloc support since their 2002 debacle. Labour has been running pretty steady, the greens have been slowly increasing their support by their retention of support from the young as they age.

In short I think that the swinging voter is an artifact of the polling system. They have been steadily getting less accurate over the years because the group that the sample from is getting smaller compared to the general voting population.

So what I’m seeing is the polls moving towards what I’m seeing on the ground. There are no major changes going on, it is just that the polls are getting more accurate as people stop refusing to answer the pollsters.

That today`s C-B poll shows a narrowing of the gap between Labour and National is interesting. Is their 47% now more accurate….or is National`s support now closer to 41%-42%…….

To me, this has always seemed the logical explanation for the rapid changes in the poll trends approaching and election, and why the polls get more accurate at the end.

I don’t know that there is much evidence that polls become more accurate the closer to the election. The experience from 2005 showed that there was enormous volatility between polls, both within different polling series and between those polling series.

We do know that the time-weighted polling average of all polls in the last 6 weeks was very accurate, but not the individual polls. I’d like to see some authoritative commentary on why that is. I suspect that with individual polling sample sizes decreasing, the margin for error increased: a poll where Labour’s true result was 41% may have put Labour’s support at 44%; it would have been well within the error range of 37%-45%; the next poll reported may have put Labour’s support at 38%, also within the error range. If you take the polls in isolation, you would assume that either Labour’s support had dropped from 44% to 38%, or that one of the polls was wrong. In fact, given the margin for error, they could well both have been right.

When you average them out, of course, you get much more confidence about the true levels of support. Relying on an individual poll result, though, is pretty hazardous.

I’m just trying to be optimistic. But you are right, National and ACT were stupid enough to attack him so hard that he can claim martyrdom, and maybe get NZF above 5% yet again.

Which is a pity. Because a nice tidy Labour-Green- Maori coalition (including a revisit of the Foreshore and Seabed Act) would suit me fine.

But if we have to deal with Winston again – oh, dear!!! Mind you, at least the Nats say they won’t have him at all, so his bargaining power is minimised, unless Key does yet another flip-flop.

But I think that NZF has a pretty good shot at tipping the 5% from my read of the audiences that he caters to. I’m afraid that the attack from the right was too blatant and too visible, and will now engender too much support. That is a real pity. He was getting close to being too respectable which would have been his death knell.

I’m expecting him to do better than expected in the maori electorates, and to hold most of his support in the seniors (that hasn’t died since the last election). But that is just my opinion. Besides Winston from all accounts is campaigning better than he has since the 90′s

For instance another possible reason for the decline in the Nay’s polls could be dilution. As the number of refuseniks for the pollsters decreases closer to the election, our ‘talkback’ audience influence in the polls declines. That certainly fits the available facts as well as the bleed idea that Tim was suggesting.

To me, this has always seemed the logical explanation for the rapid changes in the poll trends approaching and election, and why the polls get more accurate at the end.

However, I suspect that the msm will prefer the ‘bleed’ explanation because it allows them to construct a narrative to appeal to their audience. It is a lot easier than describing the problems with sampling.

I really hope not. A prima facie case exists that he is a corrupt scumbag (which I actually had my suspicions about 20 years ago when both he and were union officials).

The Labour Party has a string candidate, there is a Family Fist candidate too, who will split the moral conservative vote, and the Green candidate, Mua Strickson-Pua, is asking only for a GreenPartey vote, rather than the electorate vote.

Hopefully Field, like Peters, is on the road to electoral oblivion in two weeks.