Polity: The new TV polls

• notices and features
• 10 years ago
• Categories: polls
• Tags: polity

The original of this post is here. 

The TV1 and TV3 polls yesterday show roughly the same situation, which also mirrors Polity’s poll of polls.

National retains a smallish polling lead over the left bloc of around four points. But Winston Peters and New Zealand First are starting their surge toward the 5% threshold. If they cross that threshold it would complicate the post-election picture enormously.

One added element to account for, though, is the increasing evidence of a modest mismatch between poll-based estimates of popularity and actual popularity in elections. Gavin White from UMR showed a few weeks ago that there are some important patterns of apparent bias in the polls. Specifically, the final polls before our MMP elections have tended, on average, to poll:

• National: 2.4% too high
• Labour: 0.5% too low
• Greens: 1.5% too high
• NZ First: 1.1% too low.

If we apply those possible biases to the latest Poll of Polls, we get a projected election result that looks something like this:

• National: 45.4%
• Labour: 32.1%
• Greens: 10.3%
• NZ First: 5.6%

Still a small bloc-level advantage to National, but close. And post-election it would be all down to Winston.