pn845. Up the Pole. Ardern and Luxon Approval Ratings Meaningles, Misleading and Deceitful. UPDATED

Up the pole has various meanings including the literal, climbing on a pole, crazy and in difficulty.  

Up the poll (Updates highlighted)

There's something amiss in the reporting of the latest Kantar Political Poll.  1News  cites a statistic that does not appear in the Kantar report:  How well or how poorly those polled thought the PM and Christopher Luxon did their joh.  Where did 1News get its information?  I wonder why is it not in Kantar's full report?   Here are the results:

I also suspect the statistic itelf. For four reasons: 

1) The high proportion (11% for Ardern and 37% for Luxon) of those polled who "did not know" or refused to answer (see table). 

2) The dubious means of calculation.  Subtracting disapprove from approve gives some sort of average but it is highly influenced by relative percentage size, and does not take the undecided into account. Despite the PM's approval rating being significantly more than Luxon's, the statistic only gives Ardern a +15 while Luxton is much higher  on  +22.  1News tells us this is a first time ever for a Leader of the Opposition. 

The approve-disapprove question is dichotomous. Those polled had to state one of the other.  The question does not allow for degrees of approval or disapproval. Those who disapproved or approved only a little counted the same as those who disapproved ore approved a lot. A far better measure would have been an approval-disapproval scale, e.g.,  from 1-5, 1-10, or -5 to +5, with 0 being a neutral position.  

3) The statistic's  result should be broadly similar to the results of the preferred PM question (Ardern 35% and Luxon 17%), but it is the stark opposite. Well behind on preferred PM question Luxon is well ahead on the approval-disapproval rating. In reality—if not in the poll— both results cannot be simultaneously true. 

As Lexi Matheson (ONZM) tweets on the heading ‘PM's approval rating hits record low.’

It hasn’t actually. This headline is simply algorithmic nonsense as 52% of those polled approve of Ardern’s performance. Further evidence, if any was needed, of Stuff’s rabid anti-government bias.

Phil Quin tweet's on the Herald heading, 'Ardern's popularity plummets; Luxon overtakes her in new poll': 

This unbelievably dishonest  headline would make Newsmax blush. Willful obfuscation fashioned to deceive. Shame @nzherald for this vile partisan hackery. Will reporters who work hard & prize journalistic standards stand up to this? For democracy's sake, I really hope they do. 

4) I think the statistic is a inferior measure to the preferred PM question and  essentially redundant.  If it needs to be asked, a scale would have been far better for reasons explained above.

It was hardly surprising to learn that most of Ardern's support came from Labour, the Greens, women and younger voters, while Luxon's support was from National, Act, those on incomes over $100,000, men aged 35-54, and Asian New Zealanders. 

To present this statistic as some sort of early victory for Luxon, with no mention of its limitations,  is misleading and deceitful. 

  There has been a significant drop in the PM's popularity but she is still well ahead of any contender. Here are the Kantar preferred PM results  polls since October 2020:

  (See also pn843).

Update

Today's (Monday) media headings  reveal their normal biases. It is not that they are "factually wrong"  but their bent and the  absence of comment on the significance of the statistic reflects bias. One could argue they are "morally wrong," 

  L. Prent wrote in the left-leaning The Standard:

I find the leader preferences tedious and usually irrelevant for overall results. I guess that the media need to get their talking points somewhere because they seem to have problems with understanding numbers.

Here are some of the headings:

 

NZ Herald - "Jacinda Ardern's personal ratings plummet"

Stuff - "Jacinda Ardern is no longer the leader with the highest approval ratings"

Bernard Hickey in Te Kaka - Jacinda Ardern's "personal popularity continues to fall."

Guardian - "Jacinda Ardern's poll rating at lowest point since becoming NZ's PM".

and so on...

 

Related https://www.1news.co.nz/2022/01/27/poll-national-rises-arderns-preferred-pm-result-drops/   

Your comments would be welcome.

-- ACW