First, we have a Mixed Member Proportional voting system that means we have two votes, one, for the party of our choice, the other for wannabees in our electorate. There are 120 seats in Parliament, 72 electorate seats and 48 party seats which are scaled up or down to make the overall results proportional.
The polls only ask about our party or List vote, and yet many people, myself included, vote for one party with our party vote and a different party with our electorate vote. It is true that the party vote largely decides seats in parliament but if both the electorate and party votes were counted separately we would have a better idea of the actual support for individual parties.
Secondly, the polls often ask what we think of the direction the government and the economy are heading but these very general "summary" questions do not tell us what people think about policies and actions on individual issues such as health, education, child poverty, social inequality, wage levels, taxation, the environment and so on which in various ways combine to produce our answers to the"summary" questions.
Further, I would like to see answers cross-tabulated by parties so that we can know how people who voted for each party answered on each policy issue. Their answers could be shown on a 1-10 scale from very bad to very good..
Thirdly, we are asked for our preferred PM even though we never vote for the PM. With National votes shared among several possible contenders, it might be better to also ask which person voters would like to see leading their preferred party.
Knowing how all voters think may be helpful but lumping all voters together may be misleading. What Labour voters thought about Judith Collins as leader of the National Party, for instance, is not important. It's the opinions of National Party voters that count.
What do you think?
-- ACW
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