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3 News poll

Written By: Tane - Date published: 8:53 pm, October 23rd, 2008 - 47 comments

Tonight’s 3 News poll has the election wide open with two weeks to go, putting the Left on 59 seats to the Right’s 60. 3 News says that with the Maori Party in the kingmaker position it’s too close to call, but when Colin Espiner is promising to print out his blog and eat it […]

A missing NZ Herald poll?

Written By: Dancer - Date published: 1:54 pm, October 23rd, 2008 - 23 comments

Now I’m not one to gossip (well, not too much) but in the last few days I’ve heard from several people that the NZ Herald has held back an opinion poll. Why might they do this? Well perhaps it’s related to NZ First apparently polling over 5%. That could really set the cat amongst the […]

TV3 poll shows movement

Written By: Dancer - Date published: 8:31 pm, October 10th, 2008 - 28 comments

From TV3 A full 3 News political poll shows Helen Clark is back up off the canvas, while John key has taken a significant blow, in the very week he tried to land one using tax cuts…. Labour has been 12 points behind in the 3 News Poll since March 2007. Now that gap has […]

Roy Morgan poll

Written By: Tane - Date published: 2:09 pm, October 10th, 2008 - 69 comments

The new Roy Morgan poll is out today. It was taken between Sep 22 and October 5, and has National’s vote collapsing by 7 points to 40.5%, Labour up one to 37.5 and the Greens shooting up to 9. So very good news for the Left. I’d be careful about reading too much into this […]

Polls and the art of confusion

Written By: Dancer - Date published: 10:24 am, September 21st, 2008 - 16 comments

Nats Golden Run – the headline accompanied by vivid graphic in the Dom Post yesterday would have had many on the left sighing into their morning long black. But upon looking at it more closely I discovered that the dramatic graph wasn’t the result of the Fairfax poll (which has the National/Labour gap closing one […]

Why the polls suck.

Written By: lprent - Date published: 6:49 pm, September 20th, 2008 - 34 comments

Newswire have a new poll “Is it a done deal? What the polls don’t tell us” which makes for some interesting reading. It was a limited poll done around Wellington on Monday using a true random polling technique. It also reported all of the figures including the numbers for which there was no answer. As […]

Roy Morgan has Winston on 5%

Written By: Tane - Date published: 12:52 pm, September 19th, 2008 - 93 comments

If the latest Roy Morgan poll is to be believed, John Key’s big gamble of ruling Winston Peters out of any future coalition may well turn out to be one of the stupidest plays in New Zealand’s political history. According to the poll, NZ First has increased its hypothetical share of the vote to 5%, […]

Burned

Written By: all_your_base - Date published: 9:46 am, September 18th, 2008 - 33 comments

Under the headline “National MP ‘least prefered’ in own website opinion poll” the Kapiti News reports that Nathan Guy trails Darren Hughes 5% to 95% in his own Facebook poll. Comments on the poll include: I don’t trust Nathan Guy to work properly for all the people of Kapiti and Horowhenua. I’ve heard nothing from […]

The polls and petrol prices

Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 1:43 am, September 8th, 2008 - 19 comments

Updating a post from a few months ago, here’s how Labour’s Roy Morgan poll numbers are going compared to the price of petrol since the last election (the price of petrol axis is inverted, lower line = higher price). The trend continues, when petrol prices go up support for Labour goes down and vice versa. Labour hit a […]

Fewer bureaucrats

Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 3:20 pm, September 5th, 2008 - 39 comments

OK. They were laughably bad before but now they don’t even have the grammar correct. If you can count it, you use fewer: less water, fewer litres of water; less bureaucracy, fewer bureaucrats. Simple. This from the bunch promising to magically raise education standards? Wait though – since when did National have a policy to reduce the number […]

Granny beside herself as polls turn

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 11:50 am, September 5th, 2008 - 20 comments

As the polls start to turn on National – and a new poll out yesterday saying the Left working with the Maori Party would have the numbers why aren’t we surprised that Granny Herald’s â€˜your views’ section today asks voters if they think the polls are accurate? Could they be more blatant in their concern […]

Roy Morgan shows Left ahead

Written By: Tane - Date published: 5:14 pm, September 4th, 2008 - 89 comments

John Key’s impatience to get the election over and done with makes a lot more sense in light of today’s Roy Morgan poll. The poll has Labour up 4 to 38%, the Greens up to 8% and National down 3.5 to 44.5% – well out of their comfort zone given their lack of viable coalition […]

ACC privatisation costs National support?

Written By: Dancer - Date published: 12:27 pm, September 4th, 2008 - 18 comments

A reader just sent us this poll from NZ Doctor magazine (offline): If there was a snap election tomorrow, 38 per cent of GPs would vote National and 36 per cent for Labour, the latest New Zealand Doctor / IMS Health Fax poll shows. Labour’s comeback might be attributed to National’s ACC stance. The poll […]

The polls are weird

Written By: lprent - Date published: 11:04 am, September 2nd, 2008 - 10 comments

Dave at Big News has a good post up on a vagaries of the polls. It expands on something that Idiot Savant noticed at No Right Turn in his post Priceless. I/S observed:- I don’t normally poll blog, but this I can’t resist: according to the graphic for the latest Herald digipoll, the Christian Heritage […]

Herald poll shows Nats’ lead collapsing

Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 10:50 am, August 28th, 2008 - 36 comments

Today’s Herald-Digi poll is the first to be released that was taken after the secret agenda tape scandal had fully emerged and had some time to sit in voters’ minds. Which makes it worrying reading for National. They have lost 5.4% support (54.4% to 50%) and Labour has benefited from that loss picking up 5.5% (30.8% […]

TV3: Labour clawing back National’s lead in latest poll

Written By: Dancer - Date published: 6:50 pm, August 24th, 2008 - 31 comments

According to TV3 “Labour is on the move. The latest 3 News poll shows that less than three months out from the election, their support is heading upwards. And once you add the Greens and the Maori Party into the mix, a Labour-led coalition is not out of the running just yet.” Why will this […]

Kiwis don’t trust Nats

Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 6:13 am, August 20th, 2008 - 38 comments

According to the Colmar/Brunton poll, 50% of Kiwis don’t believe National is being open about its plans vs 37% who believe the Nats are being upfront (presumably, the other 13% offered no opinion). That’s got to be worrying for National. As I’ve said time and again, the three grounds that politicians are ultimately judged on […]

Reviewing the weekend polls

Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 9:30 am, August 18th, 2008 - 37 comments

As I said last week, the polls that came out this weekend can not reflect any impact of the secret agenda tapes. The Roy Morgan poll was 50% over before the first tape even came out, and remember it was not until mid-week that the story was really big. Similarly, the Fairfax poll was mostly […]

Before the polls

Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 6:29 am, August 14th, 2008 - 54 comments

There’s a Roy Morgan poll out today or tomorrow, then polls from Fairfax, TV1, and TV3 on the weekend. Naturally, people will be watching these closely to see if National has been damaged by the secret agenda tapes. Do not expect the polls to show National taking a big hit and don’t take the lack of a […]

What was it about that Herald poll?

Written By: Dancer - Date published: 5:24 pm, July 29th, 2008 - 20 comments

Should Labour be worried about today’s poll in the Herald which contrary to other recent polls showed the gap between the parties rising? Colin Espiner doesn’t seem to think so, suggesting: I wouldn’t take much notice of the Herald DigiPoll. This one’s even worse than the last one. It was taken over THREE WEEKS and interviewed […]

Kiwis love their rail

Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 7:46 pm, July 21st, 2008 - 57 comments

A poll on TV1 shows that Kiwis overwhelmingly support the Government move to bring rail back into public ownership. Despite a question that explicitly states the cost of Kiwirail but none of the benefits, respondents still voiced very strong support for the purchase- 68% in favour vs 24% against. The Government has acted in a […]

NZIER poll

Written By: Tane - Date published: 4:04 pm, July 14th, 2008 - 37 comments

Buried away in the NZIER’s recent TNS survey on the Emissions Trading Scheme was this political poll showing a surprisingly high number of people still undecided on who they’d vote for. You should be aware it’s based on some pretty shonky methodology (basically it’s a weighted online survey), but it’s interesting to see what happens […]

Mind the gap

Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 6:10 am, July 10th, 2008 - 16 comments

It’s worth remembering that polling gaps really do narrow when election campaigns start. We all remember the 2002 campaign. Labour reached 53% support in April; on Election Day in July, they polled 41%. The gap between labour and National had been blowing out to 30% in the polls but in the end it was less than […]

Did Clark endorse push-polling?

Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 3:59 pm, July 3rd, 2008 - 18 comments

Some of the more excitable righties on the blogosphere and John Key have taken a throw-away comment in Audrey Young’s blog to mean that Helen Clark said Labour will be doing push-polling. Here’s what was actually said, according to Young’s recording: Reporter: Will Labour use push-polling with ‘the truth?’ Clark: Well I’m not sure how […]

Helen, stop critiquing polls

Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 9:23 am, June 25th, 2008 - 318 comments

Everyone in the know is aware that Colmar Brunton is the worst polling company in New Zealand and constantly over-rates National. We also know Fairfax isn’t much better. There’s no use in going on about it. It’s not a good look. The fact is Labour is well behind National in the polls. There’s no point […]

Petrol price hits parties in the polls

Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 7:16 am, June 17th, 2008 - 120 comments

A reader sent us this graph. It plots President Bush’s approval rating and the price of petrol. (the price of petrol is upside-down, a fall in the price is a rise on the graph) As you can see, spikes in the price have been followed by a fall in Bush’s support and the reverse is […]

Polling companies confirm reputations

Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 12:02 pm, June 3rd, 2008 - 61 comments

Another pair of TV polls, another embarrassment for Colmar Brunton as their poll goes widely out of line with the others even as TNS/TV3 is confirming the established trend. Still, neither of the polls looks great for the Left. National would govern alone under either result. That said, given the trend of 35% for Labour, […]

On the perils of polls

Written By: Steve Pierson - Date published: 11:28 am, May 30th, 2008 - 43 comments

We’re used to hearing that a poll has a margin of error but what does it mean? A margin of error of 3% doesn’t mean the poll’s numbers are definitely within 3% of the â€˜real’ numbers, it means there is a 95% chance they are within 3% of those numbers; that is, one in 20 […]

Herald Digipoll

Written By: Tane - Date published: 10:41 am, May 30th, 2008 - 22 comments

Another Herald Digipoll is out today, with a sample taken both before and directly after the Budget. The poll pretty much confirms what Roy Morgan showed us last week – the gap between the two main parties remains about fifteen percent and the controversial and highly publicised Fairfax poll was probably a rogue. Of course, […]

Farrar’s company, Curia, polls for Family First

Written By: all_your_base - Date published: 1:32 pm, May 29th, 2008 - 16 comments

I’d thought at the time that it seemed a little odd for David Farrar to pass up a free hit regarding the Family First commissioned study on smacking. The headline in Granny Herald was: “Poll shows we’re still smacking our children”. What an opportunity! Turns out though, that it was Farrar’s company, Curia, that did […]

Roy Morgan

Written By: all_your_base - Date published: 9:44 am, May 23rd, 2008 - 23 comments

There was a Roy Morgan poll out yesterday showing a gap of 14 between National and Labour. Party support varied only slightly from the previous Morgan poll. The Morgan poll differs hugely from the controversial Fairfax poll from a week or so ago which showed a gap of 27 points. This just goes to show […]