pn892. An update on yesterday's "funny poll": Talbott Mills results

 

The new Talbot Mills poll was also conducted (24-30 August) before the release of National's tax and Labour's dental policies. It showed Nat/Act neck-and-neck with Lab/Greens  ahead by 1 parliamentary seat, and needing NZFirst support to govern. The NP had 45 seats, Act 11, totalling 56 seats in the 120-seat parliament. The LP had 37, Greens 15,TPMaori 3,  totalling 55. NZF would have 7 seats.

On preferred PM, Hipkins had 28% down 6, and Luxon had 26%. 

Here's the Talbott Mills poll, which show NP/Act with 46% support, and LP/Greens/TPM with 44.4%, a difference of 1.6%, hardly the clear lead claimed in the media.

Bryce Edwards' NZ Democracy Project provides daily links to the main media, and the headings often indicates each article's position.  Today's were almost all negative for Labour, for example:

Brian Soper - Last poll puts National 10% ahead of the Labour lot. Wrong.

Tova O'Brien - Internal Labour polling shows Labour is stuffed.

Thomas Coughlan -  Support for Hipkins plummets. 

Luke Malpass - Nearly 2/3rd of voters think country is going the wrong way.

Liam Hehir - Labour's misinformation crisis.

Andy Fyers - The Right block now has clear lead. Wrong.

Most referred to the Post-Freshwater poll, (see previous post, pn891) ignoring the later Talbott Mills poll.

The actual differences by which NP/Act were ahead of LP/Greens/TPM were:

Freshwater 6% 

Average of six polls 4.8%

Talbott Mills 1.6%

And that's before we take the margin of error of about ±3% into account!

The media's job is to accurately report the news; not to influence voters with their views — or how badly they read figures.

-- ACW