The reverse midas touch

Written By: - Date published: 12:01 pm, July 4th, 2010 - 8 comments
Categories: dpf, parliamentary spending, polls - Tags:

It was interesting to see David Farrar leapt to a “they did it too” defence of the taxpayer-funded ‘survey’ that National MPs are sending to selected voters around the country.

Farrar posts a survey from Pete Hodgson from last year that he alleges amounts to the same kind of propaganda-dressed-as-surveying. Does it? well we can compare the questions:

From Hodgson: “some people say the Government is acting responsibly to the global economic downturn, others say thay are doing too little” – give your opinion between 1 (responsibly) and 5 (too little)

From National: “Budget 2010 clearly demonstrates National’s commitment to reform the welfare state, support people into work, and grow the affordable housing’ – agree, somewhat agree, disagree

They seem pretty different to me. And if you insist that they are the same, you’re surely positing that they are both misuses of taxpayer money, which doesn’t absolve National.

Marty called this push polling, Actually, I disagree. Push polling tends to be stronger and used to spread smears (McCain’s black baby is the classic).

No, this looks like a Farrar special to me, and his rapid response confirms it.

Farrar just can’t help himself. His questions are never neutral, they’re always slanted to give him the data that his clients want to see. It’s not an attempt to influence the public so much as an attempt by Farrar to curry favour. What we have here isn’t push polling. What we have here is bad polling from a bad pollster.

You might remember that it was Farrar’s dodgy polling that convinced National to run Melissa Lee as the candidate in Mt Albert in the first place. I guess Lee getting caught out with a dodgy ‘survey’ is just Farrar’s reverse midas touch striking again.

Bright Red

8 comments on “The reverse midas touch ”

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  1. roger nome 1
    4 July 2010 at 12:43 pm

    meh – place is just a right-wing echo chamber, although he does get a tv soundbite at times. So it is worth pointing out his nonsense from time to time.

  2. Jim Nald 2
    4 July 2010 at 12:48 pm

    Reverse Midas? P’haps the Sadim touch?
    Sadim Divad Rarraf.
    Hope that’s not sodomic 🙂

  3. Santi 3
    4 July 2010 at 3:44 pm

    Money talks and Farrar is a well-paid National party mercenary. Half of Welllington knows it.

  4. Emp 4
    5 July 2010 at 10:48 am

    “You might remember that it was Farrar’s dodgy polling that convinced National to run Melissa Lee as the candidate in Mt Albert in the first place. I guess Lee getting caught out with a dodgy ‘survey’ is just Farrar’s reverse midas touch striking again”

    Got any evidence for this? Or is the standard’s readership so low now that you’re hoping to drum up some publicity by getting sued?

    [lprent: Ah, the last refuge of the terminally incompetent debater – threatening to sue.

    Curia does a lot, if not most, of the polling for the National Party. In particular in the period leading up to the Mt Albert by-election there was a lot of polling by Curia reported by people in the electorate. A lot of that polling was about the type of candidate. National put up an appalling candidate for Mt Albert as was evidenced by the result. It is a reasonable inference that the two are connected.

    But if someone wants to waste money, then they can try to sue. It is rather hard to see what for… But I’d love to get disclosure on what polls Curia was running at the time. Could get some interesting posts out of it. ]

  5. jaymam 5
    5 July 2010 at 2:42 pm

    I was phoned by Curia recently and asked for by my name. The interviewer said the questions would take five minutes. When I said I would vote for Len Brown he didn’t want to ask further questions.
    What was that about? What questions would Curia ask of non- Len Brown voters for five minutes?

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