pn891. A Funny New Poll

 

POSTSCRIPT. See new Talbot Mills poll result in the next post.

A new pollster has hit the NZ stage: Post/Freshwater Strategy. Hired by the Wellington Post, the head office of Freshwater Strategy is in Sydney, Australia. Its chief director is Mike Turner who has worked mainly with British Tories such as Boris Johnston and Liz Turner, and its NZ connector is Tim Hurdle, a former National Party staffer. 

Upfront about its probable right-wing political leaning, and the influence it could have on how people vote, the poll was surprisingly unclear about its methodology.  

Conducted on-line between 28-30 August (before the announcement of National's tax policy or Labour's free dentistry for the under 30s) 1,511 people were polled, 500 more than most polls. The stated margin of error was ±3%. Fine.

 But there was no mention of whether the poll used "weighting", the method used by pollsters to shape their sample to resemble the total population.  There was also no mention of those who refused to answer and about one in five (20%) of those polled were "undecided": a very high number.  Undecided and refused to answer usually account for 10-12% of those polled.

 Over 300 people  of the 1511 polled were "undecided" and  were excluded from the calculation of party vote totals and seats in Parliament.  This common practice, as I have noted in previous postings, distorts results.   I think they should be included in the analysis.  The poll showed National/Act to win 60 of the 120 seats in Parliament.  My estimate which included "undecided" resulted in 31 seats,  25 for Labour/Greens, and 18 undecided seats.

The poll showed NZFirst across the 5% theshold. With Labour having ruled out working with the party, NZFirst could give National/Act a more assured lead. One interesting finding was that the addition of Te Pati Māori party to the Labour.Greens line-up saw support slip 5%.  

The table below shows how the poll compares with the average of five other polls conducted in July-August by 1News-Kantar, Talbot Mills, Taxpayers’ Union-Curia, Roy Morgan and Newshub-Reid. It was slightly more favouable to National and the Greens, slightly less favourable to Act, and considerably less favourable to Labour.  Would I heed the results? No,it adds little and its methodology is unknown.  But the finding on the addition of TPM to the Labour-Greens line-up is disturbing and could speak poorly of our race relations.

-- ACW

pn975. In search of Winston Peters' Soul

"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"-- Mark 8. v.34-38.

 What some people will do to win votes!

 Winston Peters who is of Māori and Pākehā descent told voters in Howick that if NZ  First were part of the next government, he would remove Māori names from government departments. 

 

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At a time when many in the country are striving to retain the Māori language and include Māori in decision-making, especially on environmental issues, and when many Treaty settlements are progressing but not yet concluded, this man turns his back on  Māori taking part in the shaping of policies; while at the same time turning his back on part of his own inheritance. Another politician of part-Māori desācent, with physically less obvious Māori features, is Acts' David Seymour whose opinions on Māori issues are even worse than Peters'.  What is it with these men that the pursuit of power has so perverted their values?

Peters  says he's not attacking the Māori language but "the elite virtue signallers who have hijacked the language for their own socialist means ...This conceited, conniving, cultural cabal doesn’t represent hard-working ordinary Māori - they only seek to use Māori to further their own agenda."

Forget his cheap rhetoric about socialists, I'd challenge Peters to name one Māori leader who agrees with him, or a significant number of "hard-working ordinary Māori" who do not agree with their leaders.

He also said the tenets of co-governance were "based on a lie". "The simple fact is, Maori ceded sovereignty to the Crown, because for years before 1840 they wanted law and order in their country, no matter how much the cultural Marxists want to try and re-write history." That's not what Pākehā scholars like Claudia Orange has to say or how the wording of Māori and English versions of the Treaty is seen by the Waitangi Tribunal or in international law.

Peters asks why we are putting up with this "bulldust." Perhaps because, if the polls are correct, so  few of us would vote for NZ First.

For Winston Peters' address, click here.

Peters on kiwi identity. Click here.

For a related matter, click here. 

-- ACW

pn916. A Vote for National would be a vote for these reactionary ACT policies

Update. See also this Tweet from AynRandy. Click here. 

If National wins next year's elections, it will almost certainly have David Seymour's ACT  Party as its coalition partner.  With the ambivalent Christopher Luxon running with the hare and hunting with the hounds, we can always rely on David to spell out the unambivant.

 Make no mistake:  a vote for National is a vote his reactionary policies. 

In an interview on Q&A on Sunday  he promised to axe a raft of Labour policies during the first 100 days of office. 

 Here is his bulleted list, arranged under my headings with notes from various sources.  

HELPING THE RICH GET RICHER