Two very different pictures are emerging between the iPredict market and the mainstream media polls.
Roy Morgan’s this week was terrible for the Left, yet the iPredict markets are suggesting something very different.
The iPredict Election show called the election closest last election and their read on National’s vote on election night suggests that punters acknowledge National are not doing nearly as well as the polls would have us believe. Punters willing to put their money where their mouth is say…
Of major parties, National is expected to win 42.6% of the party vote, down from 44.68% last week. Labour has made significant gains and is up to 32.3%, from 28.71% last week, while the Green Party is down fractionally to 10.20%, from 10.24% last week.
Of smaller parties, NZ First is expected to win 5.1% of the party vote, down from 5.7% last week. The Conservative Party’s forecast party vote is down slightly to 3.6% from 3.8% last week, and remains short of the 5% threshold required for parliamentary representation unless it wins an electorate seat. Act is steady on 2.3%, as is UnitedFuture on 0.5%.
The Internet Mana alliance is expected to win 2.0%, down from 2.6% last week, while support for the Maori Party is 0.9%, down from 1.0% last week, and the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party has fallen to 0.2%, down from 0.32% last week.
I think ACT is over priced, Conservatives about right, IMP way too low and Greens I would buy up to 14%.
Where Labour wins is in the debates. The reason so many wanted to see the back of Shearer was Shearer’s inability to stay on topic for 30seconds without wandering off into oncoming traffic. The claims that Labour have made a mistake with Cunliffe because Shearer had polled higher is no defence for what’s about to begin. Shearer’s terrible on camera performances would have seen Key mutilate him alongside the collective gasp of shocked Labour voters who respond by staying home again. The way they did for Phil Goff’s performance when he made C3P-O look fluid and natural.
Cunliffe has a manufactured media narrative wrapped around him, only geeks watching Parliament TV have any idea of how good he is. He needs to turn out the performance of his life in these debates and the fact is he does have that ability is what the campaign will need to rest on. When the masses with a mainstream media pre-conditioned view of Cunliffe turn up to watch Key smash him and end up watching Cunliffe do what he does best, watch for the genuinely honest beach cricket rule mentality of “Cunliffe won the debates, he should win the election”, to come into effect,.
You can only beat Key by outshining him.
Sadly, the more people get to know Cunliffe the less likely it is that Labour’s vote will increase.
He comes across as more than a little bit disingenuous and quite a bit like he is saying whatever he thinks will work. He has his fans, but I doubt that many people will warm to him. I hope I am wrong.
He needs to show his kind side, he has got it in buckets..but has a dry political persona in public.
You could have easily been describing Key with that synopsis, except Keys’ fans are the media and therefore the ‘great brainwashed’ out there!
Cunliffe isn’t going to get any traction with Shearer’s old policies.
You can also help beat Key by hard yards. The various enrol and vote campaigns (e.g. NZCTU “Get Out and Vote”, Labour Party “I’m IN”) are all worthy of support. The non party ones are politically ‘agnostic’ so there is room for everyone.
AND support community action regardless of the election with Mana Movement. Big numbers will be needed soon at Glen Innes Auckland re the
war on the poor going on there.
AS much as I agree with a lot of what you say Bomber, being a fellow iPredict user, I don’t think you can rely too much on what’s happening there, just now.
There’s probably a LOT of wealthy (or ish) people who can ‘make a position’ on iPredict, just so there’s no ‘bad news-publicity’ coming from a quote to that site.
How much would it really cost to ‘warp-twist-influence-manipulate’ iPredict, with the volumes involved?
I’ve been shorting ACT since they were 3.6% of the vote. But it costs the ‘market maker’ peanuts to put up ACT at 2.5% and take maybe a $1,000, maybe worst case $5,000 loss…..certainly this far out from the election.
As someone who has been really disappointed with Labour of late, and not shy to profer my opinion on this, I do still feel compelled to back David Cunliffe from a personal level.
@Anchovy – I don’t agree with your opening supposition. My experience has been quite different – i.e. the better people get to know DC, the more they realise that he is actually a bloody good bloke.
I’m of the opinion that his initial (almost evangelical) speeches and public appearances which put a lot of people off him, weren’t representative of who and what he really is. I suspect that this “zeal” was either the result of over-eagerness to impress (caused by a quite understandable need to “show positive and strong leadership qualities” given the number of knives that were still protruding from his back) and/or some bad PR advice!
I think that people often forget how very difficult a situation DC was thrown into.Being knocked back twice by “his own people” (!), when he was clearly the best man available, and then being “sent to Coventry” would have knocked anyone’s confidence and their conviction with the Party.
So he really was thrown in the deep end, as he mentioned recently, there was no “Party leader instruction manual”, and he wasnt exactly surrounded by a lot of helpful chaps to help him learn the ropes!
He took a mature (some might now say “naive”) and forward approach with the fuckers, sorry colleagues, who tried to keep him out, even though they KNEW that most Labour supporters wanted him as leader.
The ensuing “spirit of reconciliation, let’s forgive and forget for the good of the Party” is probably a fair indication of his integrity and willingness to forge ahead for the better good.
With hindsight, was it the right thing to do? Did he have other, better options, or did he just have to suck it up and work with what he had? I’m not qualified to answer those questions, but I think he got the shit end of the stick, to be honest!
Despite my reservations about the apparent direction of the LP, and the need to invite certain MPs to a tour of Yemen, I’m confident that DC has the goods over JK in a face to face conflict/debate
We all know that when Key gets pressured, when he’s asked awkward questions, when he trips up over his lying tongue, that he gets flustered and stuttery, and then smarmy and aggressively defensive. His TRUE character comes out.
David Cunliffe will out-wit and defeat Key in such a debate, and I’m sure that many New Zealanders will realise for the first time that he is a better, more trustworthy and genuine Kiwi bloke, with his heart in the right place.
Very,very well said Tim,
Although I thought he has delivered two of the best political speeches I have heard since the days of David Lange.
My wife and I went along to his ‘State of the Nation’ speech and I have to say it was pretty damn impressive.The hall was packed to the gunwales with people spilling out into the surrounding courtyards .He spoke without notes for about 40 minutes,covered a wide variety of relavant topics and was totally engaging throughout.His sincerity was obvious and it was all laced with a bit of light hearted humour.We did not find it ‘preachy ‘at all and came away feeling we had just witnessed some thing pretty special.Our thoughts were,’now there is someone who should be running the country’
Of course the media showed nothing of this, so ‘Joe public remains blissfully ignorant.
There are fundamental differences between opinion polls and iPredict.
Opinion polls attempt to measure people’s party preference “if an election was held today” (the day they are polled).
iPredict is a prediction of the election result on election day. That’s quite different.
And as Kevin says, iPredict can be easily manipulated without spending much money. It can be used as a party campaign/PR tool.
But polls can be easily manipulated too. And I have no doubts that national use polls as electioneering tools.
For example, ACT’s percentage of the vote on iPredict, is presently kept ‘artificially’ high by ONLY a block of ‘BUY’ shares, of 50 at 2.2%. Which costs the person $10.10 to be wrong.
So for the cost of $10 the ACT party can (for the mean while) get cheap GOOD publicity for it’s supposed ‘standing in the poll’.
Now image what some one willing to loose say $100 or maybe even $1,000, let alone $10,000, could achieve by ‘playing the iPredict system’.
It’s great for us who are happily taking their money for such crazy ‘bets’.
But then again we don’t believe what iPredict is saying. We’re just taking the money, and they are happy to ‘pay us’ for the GREAT (almost free) publicity.
Yup, that’s the real DC Grant, the one that the public will get to see in the debates. He’s at his best when he’s relaxed and comfortable, rather than hyped up too much.
He’ll crucify the Smiling Assassin ! Yeehah !
If there’s any justice in the world…..
No, he won’t. Helen Clark didn’t. Phil Goff didn’t. David Cunliffe won’t.
Both Clark and Goff did,but the media the told the ‘great brainwashed’ out their otherwise.
You see,because Key is a media construct you can make people who are not totally ‘with it’, believe anything.
You are a classic case in point!
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