More interesting polling
The Fairfax group of newspapers (The Dominion Post, The Press, many of New Zealand’s morning provincial papers) has this morning released the first in what will be a series of opinion polls in the run-up to the election. Questioning 1110 people, and with a margin of error of 2.9%, it has the largest sample size of all the publicly-released polls.
The poll’s headline figures are no surprise - being very much in line with TV3’s poll on Thursday night: Labour on 40%, National on 38%, NZ First on 9%, the Greens on 5% and all other parties at or below 2%. So, still only four players with significant support, and the two blocs (Labour/Greens=45% vs National/NZ First=47%) are very evenly matched.
Inside the Dominion Post, the party vote figures are broken down into demographic groups, providing some fascinating insights into each party’s constituencies. For example:
- There’s a big gender gap between the major parties: Labour has a 13-point lead over National among women; National has a 7-point lead over Labour among men. There’s also a geographical divide: Labour has a six-point lead in the cities; National has slim leads in the provinces and the country.
- NZ First is getting a great deal of support in the provinces (13%) and among people over 55 (15%).
- The Greens are getting a great deal of support in Wellington (10%) and voters aged between 18 and 24 (11%).
- Act is getting almost all of its support from men (its support among women is recorded as 0%, which means it must have come in at less than 0.5%). Meanwhile, Destiny is outpolling Act among Wellington voters and voters between 18 and 24! Admittedly, the numbers involved with Act and Destiny are so small as to be statistically meaningless…
The other interesting question the pollsters asked was whether you thought parties should declare before the election with whom they are willing to go into coalition. 68% agreed or strongly agreed that parties should do so.
Meanwhile, the Dominion Post’s poll story reports of rising tensions between Labour and NZ First. After the Prime Minister said that New Zealanders didn’t want a repeat of 1996 when NZ First led everyone to believe that it would coalesce with Labour only to go with National, Winston Peters retorted:
That’s a lie and she knows it’s a lie.
Well, no, Winston. More like a uncomfortable truth that you’ll have to hide from as you campaign this year. It’ll be interesting to see how NZ First support holds up as Labour starts saying loud and clear: a vote for Winston Peters is a vote for a National-led Government that will sell-off state assets, slash taxes, and erode public services.
June 18th, 2005 at 6:57 am
OK, so that is a party support poll, and yes, I do find the results interesting. However, aside from party support, do we not have the expectation that Jim Anderton, Peter Dunne, and Tariana Turia will take their individual seats?
June 18th, 2005 at 4:44 pm
Your last sentence should read :
…. a National led government that will sell-off state liabilities and any assets that the state shouldn’t own, reduce taxes so that hard-working New Zealanders can reap the rewards of their efforts, and ensure the creation of an efficient and streamlined public service that can provide top rate core services without wasting tax dollars.
June 18th, 2005 at 4:52 pm
Gary, I wonder how old you were in 1989?
June 18th, 2005 at 5:19 pm
joy - 32
June 18th, 2005 at 5:53 pm
Thank you Gary. From the crispness of your comments I thought you may have been too young to remember or fully understand the devastation that was commenced by Roger Douglas et al and continued under National. Thinking of those years still gives me a sense of despair.
June 23rd, 2005 at 1:09 am
Benefits for hardworking NZers- but it doesn’t work like that. That way reinforces the have/have not scenario. Sure it could mean that tax dollars won’t be ‘wasted’ but of course this depends on your definition of wasted. Is this efficient like the privatised American Health system? Right, ‘cos they’ve got it all sorted out & running just great.
Tax cuts generally help those at the top, especially when instigated by National, rich get richer poor get poorer.
Selling off assets creates competition in services where there shouldn’t be competition. Not every venture needs to make a profit. Understand that sometimes we’re all better off with a slightly inefficient state owned enterprise (as opposed to the old groaning-with-bureaucracy systems) rather than privatisation where people can miss out on services that they need when companies decide that profit is all that matters no matter the consequences to the people involved.
For the record I turned 4 in 1989