Polity: National dropped 6% in 2008, 2011 campaigns

• notices and features
• 10 years ago
• Categories: election 2008, election 2011, election 2014, greens, labour, national, nz first, Politics, polls, uncategorized
• Tags: polity

Reposted from Polity, with a minor correction in the title.

At my briefing to Labour’s Congress over the weekend, I made a point about National’s performance in recent campaigns, which was later picked up in David Cunliffe’s speech.

National has dropped six percent each time.

For those interested, here is the data that sits beneath this claim. All I did was find any published poll where the field dates included the day three months before election day¹, then compared that to the final election result.

This six point drop in National’s performance often went to parties opposed to National. Famously, in 2011 the big beneficiaries were New Zealand first, who rocketed from around 2.5% in the polls all the way to 6.7% three months later. In 2008 the Greens were significant net beneficiaries of camaign-time changes. For completeness, I should note that in those two elections not many of National’s went to Labour2, but I think Labour’s ground game, both in terms of our volunteer corps and with the technology that helps them work, is streets ahead of 2011.

 

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1. I did make one one-day exception to get the 2008 N up, but this does not affect the point estimate at all
   
   
2. Labour also shed some support during these campaigns, but at less than a quarter the rate of National’s loss.