MEDIA WATCH: A desperate person clutches at online straw polls

1. It will be interesting to see the next poll as the NZF party leaders are exposed to their members as a self serving group . The Greens continue to tread water and Labour goes from one disaster to another. The Maori Party must see there is a oppetunity to get back in the race as nothing has been done to advance their people . They may decide to go with Labour but they got more done for their people under National.

   • Trevor – If you want to know what self-serving is, then I suggest that you read, “Dirty Politics.” You can get it from a library. No big words. Have a bowl handy in case you puke.

     But do tell how NZ First are self-serving. In printed words. Big words okay.

     • I have read it . Still voted for National as did a majority of people. I will save the bowl for when I read the next shallow report from Jacinda saying how successful they have been

       • “I have read it . Still voted for National as did a majority of people”

         And you seem proud of that? You need to look in the mirror for shallow!

         Nothing, absolutely nothing was achieved by National in 9 years and that is why the “majority” went with the left bloc including Winston.

         • National saved NZ from the worst of the GFC and Chch was served well by having a government that acted decisively to assist. They did not get everything right but if Labour had been in power we would still be waiting for the committees to report back . What gains has there been in the last 2 years in solving poverty housing hospital care child care the list goes on

           • Increase in funding to mental health for starters. Addressing neglected infrastructure by National. Winter energy payments, the list goes on and on.
             Trevor the bullshit that National saved N.Z. from those two events is just misguided. National should have thanked Labour for the way our countries books were left, ENABLING National the capacity to borrow. And Trevor don’t be naive if you think any other Government wouldn’t have just as easily fixed those two events.
             Labour are still fixing National and in particular Brownlees mess he left behind re the ChCh earthquakes.
             As for “waiting for committees to report back”, the right wing media has seriously brainwashed you.
             Solving poverty housing hospital care child care as you highlighted, was the aftermath of Nationals 9 years so thank you for highlighting that.

         • bert – I really do not think that Trevor has really read it. His previous comment about Treaty Settlements was totally nonsensical – he seems unaware of what the Waitangi Tribunal has been plugging away at for years – and often spectacularly successfully.

           But if he doesn’t like it here, perhaps he should stop whinging and consider going back to England – where knife crime on the streets is out of control, Brexit a mess, and the National Health Service imploding.

           • Thank you Pip, I was unaware Trevor was from England, that goes someway to explaining things. Just to add another gain he seems to have missed, that is cheaper doctors visits that certainly helps child care and poverty.

           • careful Pip that could be your racism coming out. I have just returned from UK and the knives crime is in the same areas of London it was in the 1970 when I left . Brexit was the result of a referendum which your lot see very keen on..Hopefully the saving grace will be the complete defeat of Labour and Conservatives can get on with fixing the mess finally.

2. Agreed Martyn,

   We need to be suspicious at any poll after the last polls were so out of touch with reality.

   When National were clearly seen as returning to the “dirty politics” saga again rather than offering us any constructive alternatives!!!!

   So why would the citizens want a toxic National Party back as Government?????

   It sends shivers down my spine!

3. The COL government have not been terrible, but they have not improved NZ statistics mostly because they don’t want to face reality of what changed in the last 6 years to make there be so many problems and they did not keep their promise on immigration or TPPA. Voters thought maybe Jacinda would keep the promises and not try and weasel into Nat Lite and Globalism, well we all know how that turned out.

   Clearly Kiwibuild failed because what Labour ideologically thought was the issue, aka shortage of homes for first home owners turned out not to be the main issue with Kiwibuild being a fizzle, and they have actually increased the housing lists, aka 12,000+ on state house waiting list, record food bank activity, increasing people on welfare, with 11% increase on jobseekers, with hospitals, schools and roads full to the brim!

   Judging by the paltry 2300 new state homes built, hopefully there is some brain in Labour and Greens to know, it is not that easy to wave a magic wand and suddenly produce affordable housing with dysfunctional for profit business and charities, neoliberal style when we are growing 1.5+% population every year and actually inexplicably increasing it by choice!

   The Mt Eden train closure has bought home the issue for anybody who uses it, closed for 4 years to produce the famed public transport! And that is if they keep on schedule! People have to live in the meantime and get around!

   My prediction is that the election is going to be very close. Jacinda dust, can’t dampen how voters getting fucked off waiting for the magical thinking of neoliberalism and globalism to happen and it hasn’t dawned on Labour and Greens yet that woke work with the far right wingers and push the majority away with their intolerance and impractical blame based solutions that most people see are not going to work and increase the problem! Think Pride Parade!

   In the UK Brexit got through because many voters did not take the referendum seriously, polling before showed that remain would win, so many voters were lulled into not caring and not voting. Lies were told and electoral spending and frauds were exceeded by Leave. But they got away with it!

   Only a small proportion of the UK population voted in the referendum. Aka approx 18 million were not on the electoral roll, approx 13 million did not vote in the referendum, approx 16 million voted remain and approx 17 voted to leave.

   How many of the 13 million would have voted if they were not told that remain had it in the bag? And how many of the 18 million not on the electoral roll but eligible to vote, did not enroll and vote because they were not aware it would effect them greatly.

   So again never believe the polls. These days they are easy to manipulate and people do protest voting at the last minute or don’t vote at all is disgust.

   COL are defiantly too complacent and never analysed why they are becoming so unpopular aka Greens and NZ First.

   Labour have pretty much failed on their promises and like the Natz are probably astonished that that the PPP and free market approach somehow does not deliver housing quickly and affordably because there are huge other factors at play like fake labour, fake materials, and quality control and deregulation meaning that building housing with multiple subcontractors all putting on margins with cheap unskilled labour on visas and cheap materials that might be not suitable (aka fire proofing Grenfell, Sky City, lead in the hardware, bad concrete, metal, steel etc) makes it very time consuming as the end result can need rebuilding.

   • Without a proper National Census this Labour Party and coalition has been driving in the dark without headlights…following merrily on their high salaries along the road of the National Party

     Labour Party and coalition partners should have demanded and put in place another accurate real National Census. It is only on this basis that real public policy can be formulated and action taken

     ….The last so called flawed National Census was set up deliberately to fraudulently spoil and negate the real statistics by the ruling Jonkey Nactional Party…in order to disguise and obfuscate who owns what housing in New Zealand…who is actually living in their houses or a foreign owner living overseas ?…how many NZ houses are empty?….how many new immigrants do we actually have living in NZ since the last National Census?…how much of New Zealand and assets eg housing and health and education …has actually passed out of the hands and lives of New Zealanders (who have paid taxes in New Zealand all their lives)?

     While the ageist entitled privileged wokey globalist Greens would like to attack New Zealanders and blame the Boomers for everything including housing scarcity …this scarcity is actually what is happening to the Boomers

     ‘Christchurch man paralysed waiting for surgery, suffered irreversible loss of function’

     https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/117773603/christchurch-man-paralysed-waiting-for-surgery-suffered-irreversible-loss-of-function

     This is a treacherous disgrace for a modest uncomplaining older New Zealander who has paid taxes all his life . Nor is he the only New Zealander so betrayed under this government …there have been young ones too and New Zealand girls

     People voted for this Labour Coalition for change , if not radical change for the better…so yes imo the Election will be very close and the Labour Coalition may well lose…because people will vote with their feet

4. I don’t know why people doubt the polls when they were right last time and they predicted Winstone to have the upper hand and he did

   • That’s not how I remeber it. I remeber every Green member shrieking that Labour and Greens had enough votes to govern by themselves but when the final telly fell, they didn’t even.

   • Does anyone really care anymore? You know the old saying “If voting made a difference it would have been made illegal.” I have never had more faith in that statement than I do now.

5. “This is such a bad poll because it makes the Left feel a lot more complacent than they should..” Which left is that? As far as I can see there is no left anymore. Its globalist neo liberalism all the way and voting makes no difference because these days whichever way you vote its Coke and Pepsi politics.

   • Yep, pretty good analysis.

   • Sean I think that the reality is that most commenters on this blog, even though they often disagree with each other , actually have more interest in politics and more understanding of what needs to be prioritised than do most if not all the politicians. They are thee because they have chosen that vocation. They found in school that they could talk to a crowd and politics seemed like you get to make the rules for everyone else , the pay is good, the superannuation is excellent , so lets have a go at being a politician! Knowing anything that matters to people or the country is a consideration that comes a long way down the track. It’s not what they are there for. They just want to get the right sound bight for the next election, not do anything radical to upset the apple cart. The perfect mode is to do as nearly nothing as possible so as not to do anything wrong and loose their job.
     The country really runs itself. Politicians just occasionally interfere , but not in any way that interferes with the running of the country. By the international corporations of course.
     Cheers D J S

6. What a bunch of whingers on TDB lately!–and I am not talking about the article writers.

   Tory toadies sneaking in here after the demise of their beloved Whalespew, and nihilistic, despondent, “once, maybe, were lefties”. Give me a break. Anyone can point out what is wrong, and it needs to be done in great detail sometimes–but eventually “a plan” has to result and some “action” to implement it.

   NZ is a difficult case politically with a permanent underclass thanks to Roger and Ruth, that was never dealt with in terms of retraining, just swamped with low wage imported labour for the service/dairy economy. We have hundreds of thousands of self employed and SME type operations, a neanderthal provincial population, so it is not easy to advance leftist 21st century ideas.

   But there is hope. The 170,000 Climate Strikers a few weeks back, the spontaneous outpouring of support for Ihumātao that saw the Police operational numbers outflanked by online organisation. Unions are starting to make a comeback. Various useful reforms have been implemented; but the political priority is rolling back the Neo Liberal Consensus that all the main parties support. That is more the type of discussion I would like to see here rather than which party polls higher in which bent poll.

   Finally, Don’t ever talk about not voting you lot. That is a “no no” even in a bourgeois Parliamentary Democracy such as we have. Precious rights and some level of regard for social order, should be respected lest we get to a Bolivian situation.

7. … ‘ but the political priority is rolling back the Neo Liberal Consensus that all the main parties support. That is more the type of discussion I would like to see here rather than which party polls higher in which bent poll ‘…

   ^

   This is what needs to be focused on. This right here.

   Short and sweet.

   And not much more to add, I believe.

8. The only question that matters is are any of them going to act like the climate crisis is the crisis it is?

9. The Left? What Left?..You mean the Centrists maybe? The folk trying for the soft National voters to swing things their way?

10. Now that most people don’t have a landline, how do the pollsters collect data?

    These online polls are a joke.

    Firstly few serious people in NZ look at any NZ media because it is a joke. They get their news from diverse overseas sources. So the online polls miss out a significant segment of the population.

    Secondly they are open to manipulation. I know for a fact that when online polls appear, some groups organize themselves via messaging apps to flood the poll and so as to distort the result.

    So I suppose we can expect to see wildly varying poll results leading up to the election. The Aussie general election, Trump’s election and the Brexit referendum should be a reminder of the uselessness of polling.

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