Now Bill English has taken over from John Key as Prime Minister there will be a lot of interest in what the polls do.
Internal party pollsters may be busy but the public are unlikely to get much of an indication this year.
Roy Morgan may do a December poll but their polling is usually over two weeks so would span the transition from Key resigning to English taking over. At best it may give us a rough indication.
I think it will be the end of March before we get a good idea of whether the polls show any support shifts or not, by then we will have several Roy Morgan polls plus possibly Colmar Brunton and Reid Research polls for comparison.
Poll possibilities:
- National hold or rise – I wouldn’t rule this out but it’s feasible, Labour, Greens and NZ First haven’t changed apart from their hope levels.
- National drop a bit, but from currently high forties to mid forties which is still within recent fluctuations – I think this is most likely short term while the public ponders.
- National drop to the low end of their recent range in the low forties – quite possible but unless English stuffs something up badly I think less likely.
- National support crashes and Labour leaps – a lefty dream rather than likely reality.
Andrew at Grumpollie has looked at what might happen with ‘preferred Prime Minister’ based on past Colmar Brunton trends in WHY WE SHOULDN’T GET EXCITED ABOUT THE NEXT PREFERRED PM RESULT:
The next Colmar Brunton preferred Prime Minister result will generate a lot of interest – probably a few cheers from the opposition and kind folks at The Standard, and fairly cautious or defensive responses from some National Party supporters.
Here are my predictions:
- Bill English’s result will be lower than John Key’s current result of 36%.
- Andrew Little and/or Winston Peters’ results will increase, but probably not substantially (which one does or doesn’t increase could be interesting!)
- John Key will still feature strongly in the results for this question.
- Support will increase for Paula Bennett and Simon Bridges.
He also suggests what reactions will be and why people need to ‘calm the farm’ – I hope media will remain calm but doubt they will resist trying to make a sensation out of rough indicators.
There are also some interesting trend charts from Colmar.
The only certainty is that polls will continue to fluctuate – plus too much will be read into them by media and pundits with vested interests.