Tonights 3 News/Reid Research Poll will have National at 51%

By
Martyn Bradbury
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29
2

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I hear tonights 3 News/Reid Research Poll will have National on 51% and will claim that 65% of Labour voters back National’s Budget. Before the Left collectively contemplate suicide a couple of things.

1 – Based on the shallow analysis of the budget that most mainstream media ran, I’m surprised it isn’t 100% of Labour Party voters didn’t support the Budget. TDB has provided many analysis of the Budget showing it up for the sad joke it is.

2 – It’s the bloody 3 News/Reid Research Poll. In the month of the 2011 election, the 3 News/Reid Research poll took 3 polls over the 3 weeks of the last month leading up to the election. Remember, National gained 47.3%. In the first week of the final month 3 News/Reid Research gave National 53.3%, in the second week of the last month 3 News/Reid Research gave National 50.3% and in the 3rd week of the last month 3 News/Reid Research gave National 50.8%. They were out by 6%, 3% and 3.5%. Their margin of error was 3.1%.

When even the 3 News/Reid Research Poll are outside their own margin of error twice leading into the 3 weeks of the last election, I’d suggest the 3 News/Reid Research Poll is about as good at predicting elections as John Key is at remembering all the times he met his school chum Ian Fletcher just before offering him spy boss of the GCSB.

Despite what the corporate mainstream media are desperately spinning with their flawed landline opinion polls – the election will be far closer than they are claiming.

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29 COMMENTS

  1. You keep saying flawed landline polls as if statisticians don’t know how to skewer polls for contingencies such as cell phone owners.

    Also the metadata has been always relatively constant. So stop trying to rationalise to yourself that you have some kind of silent majority who isn’t being taken into account.

    • You are talking about weighting inside the Poll. The problem with weighting is that it’s still being picked out of a land line bias. The research tells us over the last elections that the mainstream media polls always over inflate National’s poll and always under value the Labour vote. That’s a fact.

      • Even if there was demonstrable evidence that was the case, it doesn’t change the fact that the metadata is stable and predictable. Also to suggest that a significant portion of labor voters are unrepresented only shows a self-delusion to make yourself feel better about the upcoming election and unwillingness to notice and address the legitimate incompetencies of the left.

        • Jimmy Russell says:
          May 25, 2014 at 9:27 am

          Even if there was demonstrable evidence that was the case, it doesn’t change the fact that the metadata is stable and predictable…

          You still haven’t explained what you mean .

          Using jargon by itself makes you sound poncey – not credible.

          If you have a point – explain it. Otherwise you’re using up valuable pixels in a finite universe.

    • Jimmy – “Metadata”. Nice big sciencey-sounding word.

      But what do you mean by that? Care to explain?

      By the way, as I wrote in December last year, on the issue of polling cellphone-only respondents; the 2013 Census revealed that “85.5% of households had access to a landline telephone at home, down from 91.6% in 2006″.

      This means that 14.5% of households did not have access to a landline.

      Subtract 1.6 percentage points from 14.5 percentage points as not having access to any telecommunication systems at home at all – and the implication is that 12.9% of households rely on some medium of communications other than landlines: ie, cellphones.

      “If the numbers of households without a landline are significant (+/- 10%), then polling companies will either have to adjust their polling techniques – or be rendered useless. Without factoring in cellphone-only households, polling companies risk becoming an expensive ‘parlour game’ with little value.”

      12.9% is a pretty fair indication of households that cannot afford (or have no need) of landlines, and rely solely on cellphones for communications.

      http://fmacskasy.wordpress.com/2013/12/12/census-surveys-and-cellphones-part-rua/

      http://fmacskasy.wordpress.com/2013/09/01/mr-morgan-phoned/

      • Hey Frank, its a commonly used word so why don’t you use a dictionary, if you need help with ‘dictionary’ then I’m afraid I can’t help you.

  2. All that said, you must be aware that iPredict (that you endorsed in the last election as being far more accurate than the MSM polls) has a 73% chance of the next PM being National.
    https://www.ipredict.co.nz/app.php?do=contract_detail&contract=PM.2014.NATIONAL
    Sad, but true – it’s looking like a another 3 years of John Key and his cronies. Expect civil liberties to be even more eroded as they go all-in on their neo-liberal agenda.
    I’ll be voting in the election regardless, as I have done the last two elections, to specifically not vote for John Key.

    • The problem with iPredict now is that it doesn’t have the ideological wide spread awareness on it – ACT are polling 4 MPs for Gods sake. When we did the show last election it had a lot more buy in from the full ideological spectrum, I think that has dropped a lot over the last 3 years.

  3. OK. So even if the polling is skewed in Nationals favor by 5% the left is still well behind the eight ball. National have demonstrated – with their latest budget – absolute mastery of the political landscape in NZ. As long as they remain a left of center government with John Key as PM it’s very hard to see what the Labour Party and the left generally can do about it.
    At some point – and maybe a third term will be it – the real ideological motivations within the National Party will emerge and start to bite middle NZ. So far that has not happened and until it does it’s hard to see any obvious differentiating policies Labour can come up with.
    For middle, working and beneficiary NZer’s free healthcare for under 13’s is an absolute winner – how an earth did a National government end up delivering this policy? Election year sweetener or not – I still can’t get over it.
    My biggest hope is that there is now a genuine and apolitical repudiation of neo-liberal economics in NZ. My biggest fear is that National are a wolf in sheep’s clothing – albeit a very patient wolf.

  4. If the stats in this poll materialise then it really makes no sense and heres a quick sample why;

    Government debt under the John Key/Bill English has taken off into the stratosphere
    Household debt even worse,
    Running a worryingly non diversified economy heavily reliant on one country for one type of export
    A budget that apparently is in surplus but if you eliminate all the latest rounds of cut backs we are well and truly in deficit
    A government for whom money buys you all the access to ministers you can afford and if you are wealthy enough, ever need.
    A government who is not so much in denial about climate change as one who couldn’t care less, hence the bottomless pit of money going into motorways.
    Christchurch still struggling years later even though the government rewrote statutes to override decision making.
    Houses now totally unaffordable in Auckland and Christchurch and not to far behind in Wellington.

    Yes all the ingredients to justify another 3 years, I don’t think.

      • EXACTLY, Frank, once they will be voted in, they will sit down, and discuss and prepare the next slash and burn policies, and beneficiaries will be first candidates, for more “welfare reforms”, denying more entitlements, making it yet harder to qualify as sick, injured or disabled, and they will come full swing, knowing they can do almost what they wish then.

        This is what the ones most vulnerable and likely affected must be informed about, by Labour and Green MPs and candidates, right now, so they will enrole and vote.

        Also the middle class must be reminded, housing will not get cheaper under National and interest rates will go up, and you will have to pay more for a roof over your heads, one way or another.

        Real per capital health spending seems to have been reduced, as I hear, so prepare for that also.

        And giving these Nats another term will be the most stupid thing voters can do, that is of course apart for the top income earning and wealth owning per centage voters of National, who will make sure they get more cake and leave less crumbs for the rest.

  6. The MSM Club, always happy to join the latest dinner parties and other socials with Cabinet Club members, with the government ministers and MPs, and still “grateful” for the Pinot Noir last Christmas, they have in their vast majority decided, we want another bottle of Pinot Noir, we want more paid for socials, and we want job security in the privately dominated media landscape.

    Hence the election will be “guided” into the lap of Key and Nats.

    That is what they seem to have done, and little else. The “soft” way they now treat Cunliffe and other opposition politicians, it seems to prove, that in their eyes it is all a “done deal”. They can afford to be “kind” about it now. Campbell dared to step out of line, raising questions about Dotcoms treatment and the GCSB again, and was instantly “tall poppied” (pushed down).

    This is New Zealand politics and election campaign year reporting at its worst, but it is real.

    So dear candidates, ignore the polls, do not bother pleasing and crawling up to the media, like appearing on this super shallow, at times appalling Paul Henry Show, or on “Seven Blunt”, and go out there, hold meetings and events all over the country, on squares, in halls, do walk-abouts in the streets, visit work sites, visit kindergartens, hospitals, railway stations, use social media, blogs and more, and just push ahead, with your message, disregarding!

    That is all I can say to this, as polls will fluctuate from month to month and later week to week, while we get super shallow, poor reporting on what the Budget and other news are really about.

  7. I always thought that polls enabled predictions about the group that was polled. The daily blog poll gives me an idea on how daily blog readers will vote. Unfortunately it doesn’t indicate what will happen in the election. Yahoo polls of yahoo users seem hopelessly geared to the right. Surely it is commonsense to say that landline polls indicate how landline owners will vote and as a significant goup of people probably young and poor don’t have landlines this will skew landline polls to the right and they are really as reliable as a yahoo, or daily blog poll for predicting an election.

  8. Yes, that’s the post-Budget bounce for you! To be expected. I’m not panicking. I think it will be close and even John Key says it will be close and that his party should take nothing for granted!

    • It’s the new normal. Sort of like the politics of the 50s and 60s all over again.

      This is what democracy actually looks like.

  10. It seems the only chance Labour has is if the polls lie like a Justice Minister or a Prime Minister.

  11. I think what the polls have proved is that issues around M.P.’s are nothing more than beltway issues. I have told Grant Robertson this more than once. Labour have wasted the first half of the election year focused on issues mainly of interest only to themselves.

    • The trouble is in NZ, and I haven’t seen this before is we have real issues, real problems either that have developed or developing that are going unchecked and largely unchallenged. This governments senior ministers along with their well funded, well connected PR machine are so slick and so misleading that the unquestioning trusting public think everything is as they are told even if they have the occasional nagging doubt something is not right.

      We are told in lazy easy to digest, almost subliminal if not repetitive tiny bites that our economy is booming, Rock Star economy, David Cunliffe is tricky, the OECD is wrong about house prices, its simply a shortage, its the Christchurch City Councils fault, we (National) inherited a mess, crime is down, family friendly budget, brighter future or reverse logic like the Greens are the “Nasty Party”,. Its all utter baseless unsubstantiated shit! Stunts like that with Shane Jones also help the cause.

      Most of the public are by in large disinterested in politics or what happens outside their own lives or front door unless it directly affects them (who cares if its close to home as long as it’s not you) and are content to hear the soothing tones of the Radio Network news, the NZ Herald or our so called news at 6.00 PM tell us its fine.

      And of course its the way leading questions are asked in polls and in what order. You can lead most animals by a lead if you want and a polls no different especially if you have a predetermined result in mind.

      Despite what the PM is saying the last thing National want is for us to think this is a close run thing. They want “you” to stay at home because that “you” wouldn’t vote for them anyway.

  12. Yes Martin, I agree. All the three polls – Roy Morgan, TV1 and TV3 are rogue polls. As Cunliffe said on TV3, the only poll matters is on the 20th September.

    • “Labour Voter” – the Roy Morgan poll was conducted some weeks ago, prior to the budget being released, and at the height of the Collins/Oravida scandal.

      Hence it would have shown results from a different political environment.

  13. Wow, you’ve done it now Martyn, you’ve awakened the ‘Hoo’ – ton beast!
    Next we’ll have Michelle Boag here commenting and then you’re in deep blue doo-doos.
    Green milk and ham-fistedness on the menu and you’ll even get Judith Collins commenting.
    They’ll bring all their cronies to this blog, vote on the poll on the right and soon, even the Daily Blog poll will be brought into line with the MSM corporate fiction being spread like manure on a dairy farm.

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