Read the tone of disbelief in this ridiculously biased story by stuff.co.nz this morning…
Remaining upbeat in the face of successive sliding polls, Labour leader David Cunliffe says the “left-right balance” will ensure September’s election is a tight one.
Two new polls published at the weekend held mixed results for National, but showed eroding support both for Labour and Cunliffe as its leader.
This morning he denied the polls were pointing to a one-sided affair.
…the mainstream media are so blinded by their own flawed landline polls that the idea the next Government will be Labour led is as unlikely to graduate reporters as Lorde doing a McDonalds advert.
Here’s what the msm don’t tell you. Based on the their past predictions, here is how far out their polls have been…
National: 2.4% too high
Labour: 0.5% too low
Greens: 1.5% too high
NZ First: 1.1% too low
…these opinion polls don’t reflect public opinion, they manipulate them. Tell people that John Key will win by over 50% for 3 years and voters wanting change become disheartened and don’t bother voting. Our last election was the lowest voter turn out in over a century, allow the mainstream media to be dominated by hard right punditry and the rest is just a case study in how propaganda can be used to break peoples spirit.
So as far as the corporate media journalists are concerned, the election is in the bag and John Key is almost being given a moral mandate to lead as the biggest party. Of course, that’s all 1000% bullshit. Whoever has the majority in Parliament makes the decisions. If Labour+Greens+NZ First+MANA+Internet Party are the majority, then John Key doesn’t become Prime Minister.
This truth seems totally unknown to most political journalists and you can see how their hubris can lead to a meltdown.
Fast forward to September 20th. It’s election day, the flawed landline polls have continued to provide biased results, the expectation is National will win, all is well within the media punditry.
Then the results start coming in. Labour’s Chief-of-Staff Matt McCarten has played a strategic campaign. Waiariki goes to MANA and the Maori Party lose their other two electorates. They are shut out. Progressive voters in Epsom don’t vote for the Labour candidate or Green candidate and vote instead for National. Suddenly ACT are gone. National poll the highest of any other Party, but with only Dunne, don’t have the majority.
The spluttering on sets of the live election coverage are loud and angry. Anyone of the rabid right wing vampires put up to offer punditry start claiming that the gays, lefties, liberals, Maori’s, Unionists, Greenies have all conspired to cheat that good John Key out of his rightful place as leader.
The shockwave that hits National Party supporters as a victory 3 years in the promising doesn’t materialise starts a furious social media barrage of anger and threats.
There are demands for an ‘orange revolution’ protest march (probably made by Hooton) as every authority figure the right can find are thrown onto the Sunday morning media shows to proclaim all sorts of financial Armageddon that will occur when the markets open on Monday due to the uncertainty of the result.
The Progressive Left in NZ need to appreciate that even if we win in September, nothing is guaranteed. This election campaign will occur in the wake of the July Court case with Kim Dotcom where evidence will be provided that will be deeply damaging to John Key. At the same time the Edward Snowden revelations will be surfacing.
This election could be unlike anything we’ve seen before.
Not sure Dunne will get in, mate. The paperboys’ mums do not forget.
When you read all the comments in the NZ Herald Blogs it would appear Key is not so successful in that Tory Newspaper so I personally thinks some of these polls are being manipulated and are not particularly accurate.
There is an old political adage about having lies, damned lies and statistics. The National Party tell the lies, Hooton and Slater take care of the damned lies and the NZ Herald does the statistics – what a team!
How are they being manipulated and why doesn’t the Greens, Mana, and Labour raise this if they are?
The paperboy’s mums will do as they’re told. And with due respect to Peter Dunne and puns, “That’s no secret.”
If every Green voter in Ohariu voters Labour with their ELECTORATE vote – Dunne will be gone by dinner time on 20 September.
I hope 1,775 Green voters don’t make the same stupid mistake as in 2011, when they gave Gareth Hughes their electorate vote, thereby allowing Dunne to sneak back in. (http://fmacskasy.wordpress.com/fact-sheet-ohariu-2011-election-result/)
As for an “Orange revolution”, Martyn? Nah. New Zealanders are far too complacent. The same complacency that produced the lowest election turnout in 2011 will also make people to bored/lazy/uncaring to occupy Aotea Square or Molesworth St.
But you’re spot on about one thing; the right will shriek and wave their fists in blood-vessel-bursting-apoplexy when Key is defeated on 20 September.
Hate this argument Frank. Why vote for a party that sells working people down the river. Don’t Blame the green voters, blame labour for being sell out to fear and the almighty dollar. How about Labour voters stop voting for a party that serves the interest of anyone but them.
The Green voters can still party vote Green, but voting for Gareth Hughes is a complete waste of time. Guess what chance Gareth Hughes has of winning Ohariu?
Zero. A big fat zero.
Same thing happened in Chch central, the Green vote for David Moorhouse gave the electorate to Nicky Wagner.
By all means give your party vote to a party left of Labour, but Mana and Green voters throwing their electorate vote down the drain is what will get Key back in.
I would love it if the Greens and Mana had a chance of taking more electorates, I really would, but that will happen in another few elections once their party vote gives them a larger platform.
Joyce and Key want you to vote for your local Green MP. Don’t get played by them
God I’m so over the condescension from the liberal left. “Vote this way, it’s better for you” – Left liberals have sold us out and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who hates them.
Labour supporters need to take a step back and look at the party they are up holding. One: They have not denounced neo-liberalism. Two: They have been voting to bash low income families, beneficiaries and the like. Three: they support the TPP. Four: they still carrying dead wood. Five: they are a bunch of left (cough) liberals. Six: They take contributions from the corporations.
I’m a left wing voter, I don’t support labour who are a right wing party – who use the language of the liberal left, to offer the veneer they care.
Really? Is Labour Liberal?
Thanks for the update Adam, I hadn’t read any of Labour’s policies for the past 30 years. Here I was thinking Labour was a revolutionary socialist party…
“God I’m so over the condescension from the liberal left.”
I’m not a Liberal and I’m not a Labour supporter. Stop being so predictable with your wannabe revolutionary drivel. That’s also played out and its going nowhere.
The suggestions I gave you is the best option we have for shifting the political centre away from Liberalism. An electoral vote for a Labour MP is not a vote for Labour policies. The party vote is the one that reflects the policies you like.
the reason the turnout last election had very little to do with the MSM trumpeting a national victory in the making, it was a choice of voting for a slightly paler version of the douglas/lange/moore/prebble tyrannic gvt with a leader that made john cleese walks look normal or doing the most despicable thing of all and voting national, most took the option of opting out of voting pretending that their vote wouldnt be missed.
It will all come down to Peters and who he decides to make PM, and we haven’t got the faintest idea which way he’ll go. That’s where the real intrigue is.
If the left does become the next government, right wing voters in general will not take it well and will feel that they have been robbed of their birthright. The hating will start immediately and will not let up for as long as a Labour led government is in power.
“will not take it well”. That is an understatement my friend. They will spit the dummy and throw all their toys out of the pram. It will be a fine sight to be sure.
I don’t get why ACT winning in Epson is such a problem?
Assuming that doesn’t being in a second MP and based on poll numbers they’re no where near that mark, then all National get is the illusion of a coalition. Lose one MP but get one from ACT…….zero net gain isn’t it???
Kevin – you’re quite ‘right’ (excuse the pun). But only so long as ACT’s Party vote stays under the (approximate) 1.2% de facto “threshold” for bringing in a second MP on David Seymour’s “coat tails”.
If their Party Vote rises above 1.2%, Seymour brings with him a second ACT MP.
It’s a Two Fer deal. Two for one.
Hence why every Labour and Green voter in Epsom should hold their noses and vote National, as these figures for 2011 illustrate:
Election night results 2011
BANKS, John (ACT) 14,150
GOLDSMITH, Paul (National) 11,665
PARKER, David (Labour) 3,093
HAY, David (Greens) 1,670
Majority to John Banks (ACT): 2,485
Win: ACT
Transfer electorate votes from David Hay (Greens) and David Parker (Labour) to Paul Goldsmith (National),
GOLDSMITH, Paul (Nat) 16,428
BANKS, John (ACT) 14,150
Revised majority to Paul Goldsmith (Nat): 2,278
Win: National
…and the threat of a second ACT MP is eliminated.
Thanks Frank, as I thought, IF ACT where any where near 1.2%, but if as looks to be the case, they’re aren’t, come election week-day, then it’s a ‘non issue’, and we should all be using what energy we have to fight the more important battles,
e.g. get Dunne out,
get Hone in,
get the Internet Party in,
but most of all to get this ‘not for the average and most Kiwis’ National (ha….more like foreign…e.g. USA) party ….OUT of power and watch them self implode over their next ‘leader’……and what a bunch of far right nasties they have to choose from. They’ll make aledged-possible WW2 Germany sympathisers look left wing !!!
No, it’s not just the threat of a second ACT MP. Even if they just get the one, that’s an extra MP on the right. National’s party vote doesn’t change, and ACT winning Epsom won’t necessarily lose National a list seat (and even if it does, it could cost Labour one as well, depending how the numbers work out: have a play with this calculator and you’ll see just how sensitive the calculation is to small changes in party vote).
Perhaps you hadn’t noticed, but we have this thing called MMP. It means that the number of seats National gets is proportional to its party vote, regardless of how many electorates it wins. So ACT getting Epsom doesn’t mean National gets one less MP, they just get an extra one from their list to top them up, in addition to their ACT stooge.
Is that so Bennet ? Can any one else conforms he-she right? Bomber?
Because if that’s so, then that is a VERY powerful argument as to why we should get ACT out of Epson.
I get the gist of the argument, but the question is are the number such that it’s likely to happen that the Nats will get an extra MP through MMP
Yes it is indeed accurate. It is one of the reasons National has the accommodation with ACT. Essentially if ACT does not win the seat their votes are wasted and the seats are reallocated on a proportion basis amongst the other parties that are in parliament.
Of course the belief that Left wing voters could rort the result in Epsom is a joke but that is a different matter entirely.
I’d like to propose some new rules for Parliament. Like an uniform: Blue jackets for Natz, Red jackets for Labs, Green for Greenz and Yellow/Orange for NZ First, Red and Black for Mana and Purple for Internets. That way there would be none of that PATHETIC squabbling over who’s got the most Adrienne Winklemans or Trelise Coopers or Hugo Bosses etc. Plus viewers of Parliament TV could clearly see which party the speaking pontificator belonged to and commit this to memory, just like they do when a rugby or netball player commits a foul.
I also think parliamentarians should be given points off for personal attacks on other members, one word answers to questions or moonlighting as real estate agents or used car salespersons. I think there should be an interactive facility so that dedicated viewers of the parliamentary process can register ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ via Freeview so that incoming polies are given a chance to gauge any feedback. It’s only fair, after all, they are all getting paid above minimum wage to administer ‘Democracy’ to everyone whether they like it or not.
One other thing, monthly mufti days/ onesies/ wearable art would enliven “Democracy Nation”, plus one of those commentators off Prime TV.
I think we should replace most of them with a direct democracy option. Most citizens are as qualified to vote on legislation as current MPs, and it would put performance pressure on those who remain. Gaming MMP will become a nostalgic dream for rightwing scumbags.
Talking about poll accuracy your poll has the greens as the main party in the left coalition about as much chance as the reality of your blog.
ZERO.
ps.
The polls you scoff at come in close election after election.
Actually, Jim47 – no.
Polling results close to the election in 2011 were all over the place. See my analysis here; https://fmacskasy.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/three-recent-polls/
Roy Morgan, TVNZ/Colmar Brunton, and Fairfax/Media Research all had varying degrees of “success” when it came to polling closest to the final election night results.
And don’t forget that several polls had National high on 51%, 52%, and even 54% on one occassion leading up to the 2011 election. National’s final tally was 47.31%.
So your faith in polling is not supported by the facts and figures.
And if you went to a right-wing blog you would expect a similar poll to favour National wouldn’t you? Probably should engage your brain before you start pressing keys.
The metadata don’t lie.
There is only one thing wrong with this article. Wasn’t the Orange Revolution in Ukraine done by the good guys? Slater, Hooton et al certainly do not fit into this category. Perhaps would have been better named the colourless revolution because it would have been done by colourless toadies.
Perhaps Bomber means the Orange movement supporting the ongoing English occupation of northern Ireland? I definitely see some parallels with the US corporate occupation of Auckland, which seems to be spreading like a cancer towards Hamilton and Whangarei.
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