SST/BRC Poll: Feb 05

Today's Sunday Star Times reports on the latest poll under the headline "Labour leads Nats by 11 pojnts". I would link to it, but Stuff isn't available to Xtra users any more, apparently, since the de-peering by TCL. (Though it could be something else, I suppose.)  The numbers, with the January poll's results in brackets:

Lab - 45% (44)
Nat - 34% (34)
NZF - 7% (6)
Grn - 7% (6)
ACT - 2% (3)
UF - 2% (3)
MP - 2% (2)
Dest - 1% (1)

In the Preferred Prime Minister stakes:

Clark - 54 (56)
Brash - 22 (36)
Peters - 10 (8)
Fitzsimons - 1 (1)
Turia - 1 (0)

Some other numbers were also published, in response to January's speech by Don Brash at the Orewa Rotary Club.

"Did Orewa II make you more likely to support National?"

Yes - 16%
No - 71%

"Should mothers have benefits reduced if they have more children while on the DPB?"

Yes - 36%
No - 53%

Quite a nice 55th birthday present for the PM, I guess, which she celebrated yesterday. I am, to be honest, quite surprised at these results given the furore over NCEA and the Scholarship stuff, as well as the police & the Wananga issue, in the last few weeks. The poll was conducted 9-21 Feb, so it should have captured some of that stuff.

On the other hand, we may be experiencing a local version of the "Westminster Bubble" effect where commentators and the 'chattering classes' get very wound up by an issue, but ordinary punters are getting on with their lives in economic boom-land.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was a bit of the latter going on.

Comments

[Greg Stephens]

I'm on Xtra (broadband) and have access to the STUFF website. The poll is at http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3200944a11,00.html

The poll shows that Orewa II was not a significant event. Don Brash did not hit on a note that many people think about. People have heard the arguments before, and didn't like Ruth saying them and won't like him saying it either.

[Graeme Edgeler]

Another example of SST bias:

whilst not a big fan of the actual policy myself, even Don Brash hasn't suggested that "mothers [should] have benefits reduced if they have more children while on the DPB" - he merely questioned whether they should get an automatic pay rise...

as for asking "Did Orewa II make you more likely to support National?", without also asking whether it made people less likely to support National ... well, I think National will be pretty happy when they pick up an extra 16 percent of the votes - that would be easily enough to put them on the Treasury Benches =)

[Rich]

I thought that all along about NCEA and scholarships. How many students are entered for Scholarship - 1%? That leaves a fairly small proportion of the population (and I suspect an even smaller proportion of swing voters) who care what happens.

For your average student, I think the NCEA is probably working out reasonably well and giving them the results they might expect.

Politicians and media people do tend to be drawn from the highest academic stratum (with obvious exceptions) and thus have a tendency to expect education policy to prioritise their subgroup, rather than the general population.

[Jordan]

Graeme - the number in support was less than National's existing level of poll support, indicating that National voters disagreed with the statement. Hardly an endorsement.

Rich - I think you are probably right.

[DC]

Graeme - don't be fooled that the problems with NCEA is all about scholarship. That's the Govt trying - and succeeding - in ringfencing off the issue.

There are substantial issues at all levels of NCEA, including wide variations from year to year, subject to subject and very worrying failure rates (4 major external standards at level 2 English had failure rates between 57 and 66% - it used to be that 60% or more would pass!)

Of course NZQA would argue children are more stoopid than they were last year...

[PaulL]

One of my constant bugbears with the media is the lack of translation from percentages into seats and potential coalitions - i.e. who could form a government with what parties?

To this end I have built a web page that at least partially does this based on poll data and a set of assumptions, and also allows for user entered data (personal projections). I will load each poll that I see onto the page as a selectable value.

This poll is loaded, at:
http://lambert-roxburgh.homemail.com.au/Election%20Extrapolations/ElectionProjections.htm

The relevant observations (based on some assumptions about electorate seats) are:
Greens 9
Progressive 1
Labour 55
Maori 4
United 2
NZF 9
National 41
ACT 2
Total 123 - an overhang of 3 seats

The left could form a government with Green, Progressive, Labour giving 65 seats.

The right would need ACT, National, NZF, United, Maori, Labour giving 113 seats, a very unlikely coalition.

(the page implements the Saint Lague calculation, but may have errors - any corrections please e-mail me and I will correct).