According to the poll, 52.6 percent of voters agree the cuts should be cancelled, 37.9 percent say they should go ahead regardless and 9.5 percent did not know….
…But these results tonight will reassure Mr Key that voters understand he has to abandon the promise, and he is unlikely to be punished for it.
Duncan is limited here by the poor nature of much of the political polling that is done in New Zealand and by the horse race nature of what passes for political commentary in the global media. But that that is no excuse. The poll was commissioned by TV3 and Duncan is an ‘editor’ which I assume means he has some ability to decide what he covers and how he does so.
The underlying assumption of Duncan’s analysis of the poll result is that voters don’t have political preferences based on ideology or ideas.
If there is a majority of opinion favouring some policy, the thinking goes, and a majority of support for one party, then that party following that policy will be safe. It is not an immediately ridiculous idea, if you think that all voters are centrist wishy washy types without any underlying beliefs.
He ignores the fact that many National party followers, (who are obviously the ones most of interest to Key), actually base their support of National on ideas, rather than Key’s ‘niceness’ and what have you. One of those ideas is ‘cutting taxes works’.
Let’s say the poll had also asked about party affiliation. Let’s further assume that people who affiliate with parties do so for ideological reasons, and that they will answer ideological questions, (like the one in this poll about tax cuts), in line with their ideology, rather than along party partisan lines.
“37.9 percent say (the tax cuts) should go ahead regardless” Who do you think they vote for? There is too many for them all to be ACTies. Going out on a limb, I’d say that it’s the National party base. And many of those 52.6% aren’t National party supporters and won’t be won over by this. They have other reasons for supporting other parties.
Perhaps If Duncan wants to interpret polls rather than just report them, he should put some pertinent questions into the mix. Please.
-Pascal’s bookie
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress