What is likely to be the last political poll of the year, from 1 News/Colmar Brunton, has national in a strong position, and ACT rewarded for David Seymour’s work on the End of Life Choice Bill.
National 46% (down 1)
Labour 39% (down 1)
Greens 7% (no change)
NZ First 4% (no change)
ACT 2% (up 1)
The Opportunities Party 1%
New Conservatives 1%
Maori Party 1%
Don’t know or refused to answer – 17%
(Results rounded to the nearest whole number so small party results and movements can be exaggerated) .
Preferred Prime Minister:
Jacinda Ardern 36% (down 2)
Simon Bridges 10% (up 1)
Judith Collins 4% (up 1)
Winston Peters 3% (down 1)
Between November 23-27, 1006 eligible voters were polled by landline (504) and mobile phone (502). The maximum sampling error is approximately ±3.1%-points at the 95% confidence level. The data has been weighted to align with Stats NZ population counts.
Labour result lowest in two years, National-ACT could form Govt – 1 NEWS Colmar Brunton pollhttps://t.co/I6A8TTo0GH
Newshub released a Reid Research a poll on Sunday with ridiculous headlines and claims. 1 News released a Colmar Brunton poll last night with less dramatic but still over the top claims. Polls are just polls, especially this far from an election, but they try to get value from the expense of polling by making stories out of them that aren’t justified.
Last time the two polled the biggest talking point was how different their results were. The Reid Research poll was regarded as an outlier, being quite different to any other polls this term.
The most notable thing about the polls this time is that the results are very similar, taking into account margins of error of about 3% for the larger results, and the fact that Colmar results are rounded to the nearest whole number.
National: RR 43.9% (+6.5%), CB 47% (+2)
Labour: RR 41.6% (-9.2), CB 40% (-3)
Greens: RR 6.3% (+0.1), CB 7% (+1)
NZ First: RR 4.0% (+1.2), CB 4% (+1)
ACT: RR 1.4% (+0.6), CB 1% (-)
TOP: RR 1.1% (+1.0), CB 1% (-)
Maori Party: RR 0.7% (+0.2), CB 1% (-)
I don’;t think it’s surprising at this stage to see National a bit ahead of Labour, Labour has had a mixed month or two and is struggling to make major progress due to the restraint of coalition partner NZ First.
Green support looks at a safe level, but is well below what they were getting last term (about half).
NZ First are still polling below the threshold and will be in a battle to stay in Parliament.
Is is fairly normal these days there are a number of borderline governing scenarios with these numbers, with National+ACT and Labour+Greens thereabouts but not certainties.
A lot may depend on whether NZ First make the threshold or not next election. Both other times they have been in a coalition government they have lost support at the next election.
The Newshun headline says “Jacinda Ardern, Labour take massive tumble in new Newshub-Reid Research poll” but a more accurate description would have been “Newshub poll looks more likely following last rogue poll”. It wasn’t a massive tumble for Ardern, more like a large correction by Reid Research.
A poll by Victoria University/Colmar Brunton shows a spread of political affiliations or leanings. Asked:
Most political parties in New Zealand lean to the ‘left’ or the ‘right’ with their policies.
Parties to the left are liberal and believe governments should support the less fortunate people in society.
Parties to the right are more conservative and believe in individual responsibility.
Some parties position themselves in the centre. How would you please your political views using the scale below?
30% – Left-centre left (0-4)
29% – Centre (5)
35% – Centre right-right (6-10)
5% – Don’t know
Alternately grouping 4 and 6 as close to centre:
21% – Left-centre left (0-3)
51% – Centre (4-6)
24%- Centre right-right 7-10
5% – Don’t know
I am really not sure where I would place myself, as I have a range of leanings depending on the issue or policy. Most likely I would go 5 as a rough average.
The poll also gauged trust per political affiliation.
The results show the centre-left have the highest trust of any political grouping in 13 of the 23 institutions or groups they were asked about.
The least trusting group is those immediately to the left of the centre-left, the left, who have the lowest trust of any political grouping in 17 of 23 institutions they were asked about, including big and small businesses, the church and the police.
The left also have the lowest level of inter-personal trust.
However I have some doubts about the results. In almost all results the ‘Left’ (presumably 0-3) result was zero trust, with the only question registering any response from the left being on saying Yes to corruption being widespread in new Zealand Government.
A third “Who do we trust?” survey, taken in March 2019 by the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies in association with Colmar Brunton, surveyed 1000 New Zealanders on various issues of trust and life satisfaction.
New Zealanders who trust the government to do what is right for New Zealand:
2016 – 48%
2018 – 65%
2019 – 63%
People satisfied with life in general (10=completely, 0=not at all):
10 – 6%
9 – 12%
8 – 25%
7 – 25%
Total ‘satisfied’ (7-10): 68%
6 – 13%
5 – 11%
4 – 4%
Total ‘neither nor’ (4-6): 28%
3 – 2%
2 – 1%
1 – 1%
Total ‘dissatisfied’ (0-3): 3%
Total who comment on blogs and social media who are dissatisfied? Not asked, but I suspect that is disproportionately high going by the tone of many comments.
The most distrusted groups are Bloggers/online commentators, followed by Members of Parliament and Media.
But it may not be as bad as it appears at a glance. At the bottom of the pile are ‘Bloggers/online commentators’:
I have complete trust – 0%
I have lots of trust – 3%
I have some trust – 30%
I have little trust – 43%
I have no trust at all – 24%
So a third of people have either some or lots of trust. That may seem low, but many if not most people will have little to no idea about ‘Bloggers/online commentators’ apart from a smattering of negative headlines, if that.
I don’t trust some but I do generally trust many.
There would be few if any bloggers with a public profile (as a blogger) other than Cameron Slater, David Farrar, Dermot Nottingham and Martyn Bradbury.
New Zealanders perceptions that citizens’ interests are equally and fairly considered by government
People who live in Auckland, who were born outside of New Zealand are more likely to say citizens’ interests are considered a great deal.
People who are dissatisfied with life, distrustful of people and who have political leanings to the right are more likely to say citizens’ interests are considered very little or not at all
The two polls announced on Sunday gave quite different party results. Not surprisingly Simon Bridges likes the 1 News Colmar Brunton poll has National improving and just ahead of Labour, and is less happy about the Newshub Reid Research poll that suggests a slump in support for National.
The two polls were consistent on one thing, the dismal level of support for Bridges as ‘preferred Prime Minister’, but Bridges has tried to divert away from those results.
Mr Bridges told Morning Report today that while the polls “simply can’t both be right”, the 1 News Colmar Brunton poll was the most similar to the party’s own polling.
But Bridges gave no details about his own party’s polling, so what he implies on that is meaningless. And while promoting the Colmar Brunton party result he tried hard to avoid any discussion on Colmar Brunton’s 5% for him as leader (Ardern was 45%, Judith Collins 6% and Winston Peters also 5%).
But he refused to comment on what the polls said about his personal rating and whether he had been in discussions with Ms Collins regarding the leadership of his party.
“What matters in polling ultimately is where parties are at, that’s what determines power and we’ve got a situation where there are two polls,” he said.
“It’s an interesting phenomena, a lot of ink has been spilled on it, one of them can’t be right, but ultimately what these polls show is the National Party up, they show a Labour Party down…
He then launched into a political speech, diverting from his inaccurate claim.
National was up 4 to 44% in the Colmar Brunton poll, but that is still short of where they need to be without potential coalition partners.
But National were down 4.2 to 37.4% in the Reid Research poll. Even if this is a bit of an outlier or a ‘rogue poll’ it is still what should be a very worrying result for National, and for Bridges.
And in both polls Bridges was lower than Judith Collins on a paltry 5%.
And Bridges’ performance in the RNZ interview is unlikely to have helped his lack of popularity.
Is Judith Collins damning you with faint praise there? Simon Bridges:
No. Look, the reality is I’m comfortable with my leadership. I’ve got the great backing of a great team. And I’m focussed on holding the Government to account and our positive plans and policies.
Uninspiring political palaver.
…as I say to you, I’m focused on New Zealanders and what they want. And I think the reality is, you said the polls were damning, actually what the poll there from Television New Zealand and which we are seeing as well shows is National up, Labour down, and that’s very easy to understand because Labour is not delivering on it’s, it;s failing to deliver on it’s promises.
The reality is that most New Zealanders are far from focused on Bridges as a potential Prime Minister. Bridges can try to divert all he likes, he is not delivering on likeability, credibility or leadership.
He then launched into more diversion from leadership to his over-repeated political talking points. He then claimed poll success.
“So you believe Colmar Brunton?”
Yeah because it’s very similar to what we are seeing. And you know look there will always be variety in these things, I mean it’s sort of a new phenomenon isn’t it, we’ve seen it in Australia and America and other countries. But I know we have very strong polling and is very similar to what we’re seeing in TV New Zealand, and frankly when you look at this budget…
Diversion again.
“So the Reid Research, it’s is an outlier as far as you’re concerned?”
Well I think you’ve got a situation where you’ve got variation haven’t you, you’ve got one poll is very different to another, they simply can’t both be right.
“Are you also in your poll looking at rating as preferred Prime Minister?
We look at all sorts of things, but I’m not going to talk about that…
“Are you also in your polling looking at rating as preferred Prime Minister?”
We look at all sorts of things, but I’m not going to talk about that…
He was happy to talk about his own polling being ‘similar’ to a more favourably public poll, but doesn’t want to talk about specifics or about unfavourable polling. This just comes across as evasive.
“You said broadly speaking that the polling is reflective in terms of the party vote. Is it also reflective in terms of your personal rating?”
I’m confident and comfortable in my leadership. I’m focused on Kiwis blah blah blah…
“…what about your personal rating?”
My answer is, that’s not what I’m focused on. I’m focused on [repeated political palaver].
“Nonetheless you’re very happy to share…that aspect…Mr bridges we’re trying to talk about polling…
…and I’m trying to talk to you Suzy about what New Zealanders care about.
“I know but the questions I’m asking you about are about your polling…”
And I answered them.
“No you haven’t. You’ve been very open about your party vote, but you haven’t been very open about your preferred Prime Minister status, Why is that?”
I haven’t actually told you a party vote.
He’s correct about that.
What I said it was similar. Because, because what matters in polling ultimately is where parties are at. That’s what determines power….
And what determines to a large extent where a party is it is it’s leadership.
…ultimately what these polls show is they show a National Party up…
False. One up, one down. And even the up poll is within margin of error stuff – and importantly, National 44%, compared too Labour+Greens on 48%, meaning they have prospects of forming the next Government alone, and National has little prospect of forming a government even on the favourable poll result.
The discussion waffled around, then:
“What is it like for you to be consistently polling behind Judith Collins in the preferred Prime Minister stakes?”
It is great that we have a fantastic team with Judith, with Paula, with Mark, with many people who are, in fact, wha…
A poor, evasive, uninspiring performance from Bridges. I don’t see him lifting his polling or prospects – he’s stuck in the leadership death zone.
I think there has been much ado about a couple of poll results, with much more made of the results than they deserve, The polls are of interest but not of great importance in the whole scheme of things.
But it’s worth listening to what the polling companies think.
Last night’s polling results had little in common, with the only consistency across both being that Simon Bridges is a very unpopular party leader. In short: the Colmar Brunton poll showed National up to 44%, and Labour dropping to 42%. It showed Jacinda Ardern as preferred prime minister for 45%. The Newshub Reid poll showed National at 37.4%, and Labour at 50.8%. It showed Ardern as preferred PM for 49%.
The Colmar Brunton explanation:
…the divergence doesn’t necessarily mean one is wrong. “Without digging into what Reid’s methodology is and what the details are it’s hard to comment on why there’s a difference,” said Jason Shoebridge, CEO of Kantar, Colmar Brunton’s parent company.
I asked him why he thought there was a difference in the results, and it turns out there’s a simple explanation: “Reid use an online methodology as well as landlines, and we just use landlines and mobile phones. Then there’s a difference of when we were collecting the data – we were collecting later than they were.” Colmar Brunton was conducting their research from the 4th to the 8th June, and Newshub-Reid Research did theirs from the 29th May to the 7th June.
The last Colmar Brunton poll was taken in the days following the Christchurch terror attacks on March 15th, an event for which Ardern was near-universally praised for her handling, so it’s not surprising to see Labour’s popularity declining closer to what it was before the attack. With this in mind, alongside the recent furore around the wellbeing budget, Ardern’s result in both polls could be seen as a win.
One way to tell the accuracy of a poll is how it fits into the over-arching trends, and in general, polls prior to this showed Labour going up and National going down. Shoebridge believes the only true measure of a poll’s accuracy is an election.
that should be impressed on the media who promote their polls as major news.
“Where the stress really comes in is on election night – that’s the real test,” he explained. Political opinion polling is the most high profile work the company does, even though it’s only a small proportion of their business. “We always want it to be as accurate as possible, and we’re confident in our numbers.”
Reid Research was confident but offered no explanation.
Reid Research was not at liberty to release more information to us due to its commercial relationship with Newshub, but said it was confident its poll was correct.
A poll with a small sample cannot be ‘correct’. The only correct polls are elections. Everything else is an approximation with well known margins of error and possibilities of greater errors.
It is almost certain that if another poll was taken this week it would have a different result.
While one of the poll results just released may give Simon Bridges some confidence he may hang on to his job as National leader the rest of the results remain dismal for him, with his personal results very low (and lower than Judith Collins), and National slumping to 37.4% in one party poll.
The good news:
Colmar Brunton has National bouncing back to 44% (up 4), close to Labour on 42%.
“We did the right thing in exposing weaknesses in the Government,” Bridges said.
“I think it’s something you can’t be driven on polls by.”
His near future as leader may depend on what Natikonal’s internal polls are saying. If they are anything like Colmar Brunton then Bridges may hang on for a while yet, but if they are closer to Reid Research then National may decided that decisive action is required.
At Kiwiblog in A tale of two pollsDavid Farrar focuses on the poll discrepancies and ignores National’s and Bridges’ results and says:
Bottom line is that at least one of those polls is wrong. They can’t both be right.
What he doesn’t say (and can’t really) is how National;s internal polls compare. His Curia Research does these polls for National.
One comment (Captain Mainwaring):
Looks like TV3 did their poll at the teachers union HQ and TV1 did theirs at the RSA.
Polling is expensive, got to do it the cheapest way possible.
But whichever one you believe, Bridges is toast. Lets get it over quickly and cleanly, preferably by QT Tuesday.
Great night for @Twitter. We all get to choose our poll to suit our spin. Except on one matter.
The leadership situation in @NZNationalParty reminds me of that in @Conservatives until a couple of weeks ago. It is obvious the current leadership is unsustainable and that there is only one alternative that would be credible to the party membership, media and public.
However, that alternative scares or is opposed on other grounds by sufficient numbers of MPs to prevent the change, keeping the incumbent in the job.
In both cases, the incumbent does not have any genuine support in the party except a very small group of advisors whose own careers depend on hers/his.
But the opposition to the only credible candidate prompts fantasies of other alternatives, and those being speculated about to get their hopes up.
While the MPs waste their time on naval-gazing, the party’s position only gets worse. Moreover no real policy progress can be made because everyone is waiting for the leadership change.
There are even those who say “well, the next election is obviously lost so we are better to let the incumbent take the blame for that and then the successor can take over after that”. This is an insult to those who genuinely see Ardern/Corbyn as needing to be defeated.
Eventually what happens is that the situation gets so bad it forces events. That has happened with the @Conservatives but not with @NZNationalParty.
Those in the National caucus taking the cynical “Simon can take the fall in 2020” attitude need to search their consciences. They have a responsibility to take whatever steps are needed to maximise the chances of defeating a totally incompetent and increasingly corrupt govt.
Just as Boris Johnson is the candidate most likely to defeat Corbyn, @JudithCollinsMP is the candidate most likely to defeat @jacindaardern. She has a duty to step up. And the caucus has a duty to back her even if some of them don’t like her very much. More tomorrow.
There will no doubt be more about the National leadership.
The Reid Research poll was conducted between May 29 and June 7.
The budget was released on May 29.
Preferred Prime Minister:
Jacinda Ardern 45% (down 6)
Judith Collins 6% (up 1)
Simon Bridges 5% (no change)
Winston Peters 5% (no change)
This is sort of interesting but doesn’t mean a great deal. National back up a bit, Labour have eased off an unusual high at a favourable time for them and Ardern.
The Australian election result a week ago defied the polls. The Brexit referendum, Donald Trump elected president of the USA and the New Zealand election in 2017 all delivered different results to what polls were predicting.
I think the biggest problem here is the word ‘predicting’. Media has become obsessed with trying to predict election results. Polls are only designed to be approximate snapshots of voter leaning or intent, with typical statistical margins of error of 3-4% (as at the time the poll was taken, not on the election date).
In each of these examples, the Left has appeared stronger in polling data than the Right and, more importantly, the Left has polled higher than what the electorate has ultimately delivered.
It is worth noting that, in the above examples, polling data was very close to the final results. A little swing this way or that, added to margins of error, could be all the explanation required.
Don’t forget movement on voting intentions as voters close into making an actual decision on election day.
There is a school of thought, however, suggesting there is a trend at play here. The theory posits much of the major media organisations around the country and the world are staffed – at least on the “shop floor” – by a majority who swing left politically.
Is it possible an element of that presumed political thinking comes through in reporting?
There are two separate issues – polling, and reporting of polls.
Is it possible consumers of that news then feel it is more acceptable, when asked, to align themselves to the tone of the news stories and causes of the day, rather than more conservative views which may out them as morally outdated?
Is it possible the highly visual social campaigning undertaken by some on the political left – current strikes and marches are a fair example – compel those polled to err towards the left? And that, months later, in a private voting booth with just themselves, their personal views and a list of options in front of them, they opt for their own views – even if those views are more conservative than they’re willing to admit out loud?
There could be many reasons why this apparent trend in polling is resulting in a mistaken skew leftwards. It could well be the sample size listed in this piece is far too small to be worth analysing. Perhaps there is no issue at all.
I think there is very little issue. Polls don’t decide elections, media don’t decide elections (despite them appearing at times to do their best to influence them rather than report on them) – voters decide elections. It isn’t a contest between pollsters and voters.
Political arguments, intellectual disagreements and challenges to our world view are generally tiring and difficult. Is that what’s at play here?
Is the Left winning the publicity and polling battle, but losing the war?
That’s a different issue again.
And it isn’t entirely accurate – in the last New Zealand election the slightly more right leaning National Party won the election battle, but lost the coalition war to Labour, NZ First and the Greens.
There’s too many variations and variations to make any sort of statement about problems with political polling.
The best solution is to polls as approximate indicators of support prior to elections, and to ignore most media overstatements about their importance.
The media need to learn that they don’t decide election results beforehand. Voters have the only say.
