Written By: - Date published: 2:49 pm, October 24th, 2008 - 83 comments
Categories: polls -
Tags: roy morgan
And the polls keep coming. Today’s Roy Morgan poll has Labour down 5.5% and National up slightly, while the Greens rise to an astonishing 11.5% – that’s 15 MPs. NZ First drops just below the threshold to 4.5%.
Under this scenario an LPG+M arrangement is possible, but only just, with 61 seats out of 121 between them.
And Roger Douglas would be back in Parliament.
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Tim, you probably know this, but for those who don’t: you can only be sure that (correctly done) weighted averages remove sampling error. In general, you can only *hope* that they’ll remove non-sampling error. If you have a very good idea of the accuracy of individual polls, like 538 does, then you can have something stronger than hope, but we don’t have enough data in NZ for that kind of precision.
The best argument for polls-of-polls is that they worked pretty well in 2005, but 2005 didn’t so obviously display the systematic differences we’re seeing this time.
I don’t think that it does take time for political events to flow through into voting intentions. If an individual is discouraged to vote for a particular group because of a political scandal, then it would be straight away, when the scandal is at its peak and the media is reporting on it substantially. That’s when most people would formulate their own view on it.
It doesn’t make sense to suggest that the change in voting would come later — for at a later time the particular scandal would not be most likely forgotten.
This poll does show a fourth term labour government, but I doubt that it is completely accurate. If you look at the rolling average, from all polls, National is achieving a much higher percentage than in this poll.
As for the trends, the left bloc has indeed increased their vote. But that was inevitable. However what is important is that both blocs have now stablisied, which is good news for National.
It might be regarded by you as the least accurate polling company, SP. That’s a matter of opinion. I’m open-minded about all polls, including Roy Morgan. You have a tendency to cherry-pick the poll results you like, and disregard any poll that doesn’t suit your interpretation of the facts.
The Herald poll had Labour leading National by 3.5% in the week before the election, and Labour leading National by 7 points the day before the election. 3 News had Labour leading National by 9 points 10 days before the election, and National leading Labour by 2 points a week before that. Colmar Brunton had National trailing Labour by 3 points three weeks before the election.
This says to me that all of the polls–Colmar Brunton, Fairfax, the Herald, Morgan and TV3 are very bouncy. This is why they have margins for error.
Take a single Morgan poll: the current one has a 3.6% margin for error. This means that it is 95% probable that National’s support is somewhere between 39.4% and 46.6%. Labour’s support is 95% likely to fall between 29% and 35%. Neither of those results are inconsistent with Morgan’s last poll. It is quite possible that neither National’s, nor Labour’s support, have changed since the last poll.
No they don’t SP. Both the CB and Herald have National peaking in June-July, but their support on a weighted average within the Herald and CB datasets at over 51% and within that range since. Labour’s support in both those poll sets has broadly been around the 36% range.
No it hasn’t, SP. On a weighted poll average, the LPGNZF vote has risen slowly from 41.5% in July (its lowest point) to 44.9%. On a weighted average it has never been as low as 33-35%. The NACTUF vote has decreased from 55% to 51% in the same period. The close has not accelerated in the last three weeks.
NeillR, I’m going to do something unprecedented here, and agree with you. If a great number of people vote for the Greens over Labour, and Labour drops too low, the Maori Party will find it very hard to work with Labour – they’ll have lost the moral authority, even as a lesser minority, to govern. Sure, overall, more than 50% of people voted for a centre-left government. But with the left fragmented in a new MMP system the MP will find it nigh on impossible to work with the left based upon such a result.
If the Greens keep taking Labour’s votes, National only look more likely to govern with Maori abstention.
Matthew – nail hit on the head.
Even Sharples comments said this the other day – it would make it easier for the MP if Labour get the majority of the votes come election day. Clearly, from every poll, they will not.
Matthew said:
I think that’s very insightful analysis, Matthew. On pretty much every poll, the Left can only govern with Maori Party support, and even then, pretty much only if NZ First passes the threshhold. The more power that the Greens have within the governing group, the more demands they will think they’re entitled to, and the harder it will be for Labour to accommodate centre-parties like the Maori Party and NZ First.
There is another potential risk for the Left if the Greens get too powerful before the election: that centrist, soft Labour voters alarmed at the prospect of the Greens having significantly more power, drift across to National.
National has the same problems, of course, with Act becoming too powerful. It scares the living sh*t out of many centrist voters currently supporting National. Roger Douglas may well be the darling of Act Party gatherings, but he’s held in pretty low regard by a big proportion of the population. The difference is that the Act Party has failed to get any real momentum this election, and the prospects of the Act Party wielding much power in a government with just two seats, is very remote. If the Greens had 15 seats against Labour’s 40, however, it would be a very different story for the Left.
Updating my comments on an earlier posting (re the Herald poll), here’s a summary of how stats in the three polls have changed since each previous poll:
National TV3: +0.1; Herald: -1.0; Roy Morgan: +2.5
Labour TV3: -1.6; Herald: +1.3; RM: -5.5
Greens TV3: +2.0; Herald: +0.5; RM: +2.5
NZF TV3: +1.8; Herald: -0.7; RM: +0.5
Act TV3: -0.1; Herald: +0.2; RM: N/C
Maori TV3: -0.2; Herald: +0.5; RM: +0.5
United TV3: +0.1; Herald: +0.2; RM: -0.5
Progressives: TV3: NC; Herald: +0.3; RM: -0.5
Other: TV3: -1.1; Herald: -1.2; RM: +0.5
Gap between Labour and National
TV3: 7.7 (+1.7); Herald: 13.4 (-2.3); RM: 11 (+8.0)
Gap between National/Act/UF & Labour/Greens/Prog
TV3: 0.6 (-0.4); Herald: 9.1 (-2.8); RM: 3.0 (+5.5)
So, only common trend to come out of all three polls in last couple of days is a steady increase for the Greens.
Morgan Green+ Lab 43.5% nat act 46.5%
Herald Green+ Lab 42.4% nat act 51.6%
TV3 Green+ Lab 46.2% nat act 46.8%
so LEFT ABOUT 44% RIGHT ABOUT 48%
Interesting
If you took 0.5% from the Greens and gave it to NZ First, the results would be very interesting indeed…
Matthew Pilott said: If the Greens keep taking Labour’s votes, National only look more likely to govern with Maori abstention.
Matthew, you are forgetting policy considerations and just considering “the game”. The Greens and the Maori Party have voted the same way on legislation and have a greater policy synergy than either of them have with either National or Labour. Together they could form a very strong bloc to force Labour to agree to entrenching the Maori seats and even getting a review of the Foreshore and Seabed Act on the table again.
If the Greens and the Maori Party can get between them 16 or 17 seats, which seems a reasonable possibility given at least the Morgan/TV3 poll scenario, that could be a real possibility. I can’t imagine National would ahve a bar of entrenching the Maori seats, and the Green will not support National in forming a Government anyway.
So it is not all that simple. I think that wavering voters moving from Labour to the Greens actually strengthens the bargaining position of both the Greens and the Maori Party, given that Maori Party voters have little affnity with National and supporting a National-led Government, even through abstention, could be very dangerous politically for the Maori Party..
outofbed said:
Morgan Green+ Lab 43.5% nat act 46.5%
Herald Green+ Lab 42.4% nat act 51.6%
TV3 Green+ Lab 46.2% nat act 46.8%
And that was before we got the Second Stanza of the Lockwood and Maurice Show this week.
Things could be very close and very interesting.
Academic Jo Atkinson was on Nat Rad Panel this arvo:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/afternoons
at about 20 minutes into it. He talked about some of the difficulties with polling. Part of it is that no company tells all of their methodology, probably to cover up any inadequacies in their techniques. He said that the Herald Digipoll had shrunk the numbers of participants recently to save money. So the sample is a bit too small, especially when it comes to the small parties.
He said that Roy Morgan has a much bigger sample so should be more accurate, but it also tacks it’s political questions onto some marketing stuff, and asks a lot of other questions. This could influence the responses, and may account for the way the stats fluctuate from poll to poll. Though I see the sample size was quite a bit smaller for the latest Roy Morgan poll (about 743, while the last poll was about 923), and I thought Atkinson said the Herald digi poll was too small with a sample size of about 750. hmmm. The Sept & Aug sample sizes were around 820-840. Does this have to do with don’t knows?
Atkinson also said that most of the polls don’t change more than the margin of error (I think about 4 points in the Roy Morgan poll), but that the news media likes to make it sound like there are changes, when none really happen.
Furthermore he said the fluctuations in polling may have to do with strategic voting and people changing their minds about this as the election gets closer.
I just checked the sample sizes for the last Herald & TV3 polls. Herald digipoll was 750 people. TV3 was 1000 (therefore a bigger sample and likely to be more accurate than the Roy Morgan poll of Herald digipoll – though the TV3 one is not a lot bigger IMO). I note also that the TV3 one used mixed random and quota sampling – ie selecting from a random generation of phone numbers to get a representative cross section of age, sex and geography. Are there other criteria they should have included?
TV 3 info accessed from here:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0810/S00351.htm
If a great number of people vote for the Greens over Labour, and Labour drops too low, the Maori Party will find it very hard to work with Labour – they’ll have lost the moral authority, even as a lesser minority, to govern
At what point do you consider Labour to be “too low”? My personal opinion is that if National outpolls Labour, then they (Labour) have lost the moral authority to govern.
Should that occur then National is in the prime position to begin coalition talks – if they can’t do a deal then it falls to Labour (as second largest) to try. What i find interesting is that everyone assumes that a deal can be done between Lab/Green/Prog/Maori – i’m not so sure. And i’m not even so sure that anyone would want to put that deal together.
I don’t believe it will be in the best interests of the country to do a deal like that. Frankly, if the TV3 poll was reflected on election night, the best thing that could emerge would be a Nat minority governing with a conditional C&S agreement with Labour. This would be a huge shock to many (Labour supporters in particular), but it is the only sane way to get through the current economic crisis. Unfortunately, i don’t think that Helen Clark would be up to such a deal, so it would remain to be seen if she stepped aside to allow it to go ahead.
NeillR
A Nat-Lab coalition should not be ruled out, if parliament was genuinely “hung”.
But obviously Clark would be PM. Nobody could seriously suggest Key is better qualified for the job, if you put them on the same team.
(Mind you, I’m 99% certain the Grand Coalition won’t happen – our political culture is not like Germany)
I don’t think “moral authority” comes into it. Under FPP, most lefties would probably give their votes to Labour. In MMP we have more choices. If there were enough seats between Labour and Greens to put them close to the Nats, I think they could try to form a coalition. Labour & The Greens have both already signalled they would try to negotiate this.
In practice, if it were that close between left & right blocks, then I think both Nats & Labour would set about trying to negotiate a coalition at the same time. The MP might well be the kingmaker, and they might chose to talk first to the Nats if they thought the Nats had the mandate. But if they couldn’t get the deal they wanted, and thought the Nats wouldn’t achieve the desires of the MP voters, they might try to do a deal with Labour.
That’s MMP. People vote for each of the parties mostly knowing what the preferences of each party are. It’s not the same as FPP. I think it’s more fruitful to think in terms of voting blocks rather than outright party winners.
>>>At what point do you consider Labour to be “too low’? My personal opinion is that if National outpolls Labour, then they (Labour) have lost the moral authority to govern. <<<
Say we had the (unlikely) scenario of National 45 percent, Labour 30 percent, Greens 25 percent. Suggesting that the Greens should have a moral obligation to back the Nats under that situation would be ludicrous: if 55 percent of NZers want a Labour/Green Government, they should not be lumbered with a National Government just because conservatives threw their votes behind one party, rather than two. Under MMP a group of parties has just as much moral legitimacy as a single party. This FPP-style “the Nats have a moral right to govern because they’re the largest single party” argument is just a hangover from a bygone era, and one that I find exceptionally annoying.
My personal opinion is that Labour is fit to govern solely on track record.
Key and his coterie of grey suited adventurers want to have a little ‘go’ at running the new zealand economy.
nup.
nicely put randal.
“unfurling a protest banner in Tiananmen Square, Beijing”
Good on him for doing so. If only some National or Labour MPs had sufficient courage to stand up for what is right in such a manner.
This FPP-style “the Nats have a moral right to govern because they’re the largest single party’ argument is just a hangover from a bygone era, and one that I find exceptionally annoying.
It seems that you are showing an FPP mentality – i never said that National would have a “moral right to govern”, but that Labour would have lost theirs by virtue of the fact that another party (in this case National) would have out-polled them.
It is only natural that the largest party is given the first option to form a government – it’s happened in every MMP election that we’ve had so far and in each case the major party has been able to form a government.
I can’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be the case this time and as i’ve stated before, it is the most natural course of events as it means the least number of parties would have to be involved (cf: Nat/NZF in 1996).
“it’s only natural” = WARNING: Fallacy approaching.
It’s not about who gets the most votes/seats, but which party or group of parties can represent the majority of voters. If National only receives 45% of the votes,/seats they can’t claim to represent the majority of voters. The Greens have already said that the Nats won’t be able to represent Green’s voters, while Labour may be able to provide more of what Green voters want.
If a 45%-of -the-seats Nat government can’t do a deal that will provide what 50% of the voters want, they can’t claim the authority to run the country. ie if The Maori Party has the balance of power, they might talk to National first. But ultimately the MP will do a deal with the party/parties that they think can deliver most of what their voters want.
So basically it may be that Labour provides more of what the majority of voters want, if National falls short of a 50% majority – much fairer than an FPP system where getting 45% of the vote means you can govern, even if it means that the majority of voters (55%) don’t want you AT ALL.
NeillR: Anyone can attempt to form a government. There’s no first dibs for the party with the most members; except inasmuch as they are probably most likely (all else being equal) to form a government. The Cabinet Manual, which sets out the rules for these things, is quite explicit that the Governor-General has no input in the process whatsoever, except to abide by whatever decision the parliament reaches. (see http://cabinetmanual.cabinetoffice.govt.nz/6.36 ). Conventionally, it’s happened that that the party with most seats approaches the G-G and announces that they believe they have enough votes to govern; but if that party cannot muster sufficient votes, nothing prevents any other party or group of parties from doing so. They needn’t wait until the leading party declared it cannot. If a week out from the election the Labour, Green, Progressive and mÄori parties declare that, if they have enough votes to govern they will form a coalition, and it turns out that they do after the vote is counted, the G-G is bound to accept that without anyone else getting a look in. Not that anyone else would succeed anyhow.
Carol: It’s also important to note that a coalition can, under MMP, still form a government (50% of seats + 1) even having received fewer than 50% of the party votes. This is rare, but possible, and it could happen in this case because of the overhang caused by the mÄori party, who might win seven seats and only garner 2% of the party vote.
Regardless of some abstract idea of moral authority, it’s still a legitimate government, as were National’s governments in the 1998s and 90s when they received less popular vote than the Labour-aligned bloc, but won more electorates. We don’t use `moral authority’ to decide who governs; we use an electoral system.
L
You can’t have it both ways. If Labour gets 36% of the votes then that means that 63% of voters don’t want them. Even an NCEA graduate can see that’s not a mandate. There are probably just as many Greens and Maori Party supporters who don’t want a Labour government than do.
Sure, they are probably prepared to stomach it because the alternative is National et al, but that’s not the point. The point is what is going to create a stable government – and it’s not Labour/Greens/Maori/JAPP.
In fact, what’s more likely is that the “right” faction within Labour will threaten to cross the floor if Clark doesn’t do a deal with National. That would see a National minority government, with Clark “stepping aside” as leader – with the country’s best wishes and a recommendation for a UN role.
Once we have our first MMP grand coaltion, we will see the system operating as it was intended. But it won’t occur while we have leaders who rant “over my dead body”.
NeillR: “If Labour gets 36% of the votes then that means that 63% of voters don’t want them.”
No. You don’t vote against parties – you vote for one. Just because you only get one party vote does not mean you have explicitly stated you don’t want all the parties for whom you didn’t vote. If Labour gets 36%, that means means 64% (fixed your failed-NCEA maths, there) of people want someone else more than Labour but might be prepared to accept Labour in coalition with their party of choice. If (as may be the case) those electing the remaining seats to make a majority is made up of people who voted Green, mÄori, Progressive or whatever, then that is a mandate.
I recognise that grand coalitions can occur under MMP more easily than under FPP, but not this campaign. There’s too much blood on the floor for that. And your speculation about a `right’ faction within Labour crossing the floor is as ridiculous as the suggestion that John Key might approach Winston Peters if he needs a spare vote come November 9.
L
pretty scary really – are there really that many people lacking a functional moral compass that labour can poll 32%?? it beggars belief that over 10% support the Greens – a group of politicians who have argued for minimising the ability of police officers to defend themselves, pretty disgusting really. what is wrong with these people???
as for that pensioners leaflet rort – labour should be forced to pay for that from their own pockets.
fact is good people don’t vote labour
I think grand coalitions are more likely to occur when the two ‘main’ parties have a smaller share of the vote than they do in NZ at present. The left wing of Labour and the right wing of National are not compatible at present. National will need to dump the KBR.
Lew, i suggest you read Carol’s comment for context.
My bad on the maths. I suppose i’ll get a “must try harder” sometime soon?
The grand coalition can’t go ahead with Clark as leader, though Key has been able to broker a number of deals – s59 amendment being the most prominent. For my mind, his most sensible first move (assuming National gains more seats than Labour), would be to offer the grand coalition – if it’s turned down and Labour form a government with the Greens/Progs and Maori it gives National the moral high ground if it falls over.
As for the “ridiculous suggestion” – can you explain why Phil Goff was the only Labour MP who put “Labour MP for …” on his “information kit”? All the rest (apart from Lesley Soper) ensured that there were no references to the Labour Party. The right has been down for a long time within Labour – what easier way to purge the stranglehold of the left than to whisk their majority straight out from under their feet? The old saying about “the enemy of my enemy” has never held more true than within Labour.
“a group of politicians who have argued for minimising the ability of police officers to defend themselves,”
cite? I think you mean that they have argued against giving the state more power to use force against it’s citizens.
“fact is good people don’t vote labour”
Hey, it’s Sarah Palin! Thanks for dropping by, Governor. Love your work!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_New_Zealand_general_election,_2008
Makes interesting reading
So what qualifies an opposition government to run the country? do they all need to attend university so they can be accredited? Or after 9 years is it impossible for another party to run the country. Luckily we live in a democracy where the choice of government is largely influenced by the will of the people through MMP, not by who extremists think are qualified (or unqualified) to run the country.
Matt. Hillarious.
Now you’re really reaching.
Speaking of Wikipedia has anyone notice John Key’s middle name has been amended? Maybe someone with an account and the know how could look up and see if the amendment originates from a parliamentary ip address.