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Friday, May 30, 2008

Dodgy Polls


I am becoming increasingly suspicious of dodgy polls, and here is the latest –

Budget fails to do the trick for the Government
Labour's tax-cutting Budget has had no immediate impact on its poll rating in today's Herald-DigiPoll survey, the first major poll that includes a large post-Budget sample. The economy has moved into top spot as the issue most likely to influence voters in this year's election, just nudging out tax cuts, which is the second most important issue. Labour has moved down one point to 36.2 per cent but National has also moved down fractionally, by 0.6 to 51.5. The gap between the two main parties has barely budged from last month's poll: 15.3 points, compared with 14.9 last month. National would still be able to govern alone. National leader John Key continues to poll just ahead of Helen Clark as preferred prime minister, 44.6 per cent to 42.3 per cent.
Ok, here are the problems with these Polls - they don’t call cell phones (it’s cheaper that way) and so they create an automatic filter that doesn’t catch the younger more mobile electorate, they never take into account the Maori Party will probably win 7 seats through the Maori Seats, they rarely show the don’t know, in this latest case it is 13% and anything over a 3% margin of error is considered pointless and the second part of this Poll that showed a drop was 4.6% - add to this that a large chunk of the electorate don’t know an election is on this year all add up to me for results that are highly questionable, interestingly talking to some Labour Party insiders their UMR polling is showing nothing near the numbers being spat out by some at the moment.

8 Comments:

At 30/5/08 10:20 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

We get it. Polls aren't perfect. But the trend is indicative of a Labour beatdown because the same imperfect methodology was used back when the parties were polling even. Phil Gough knows the truth even if you want to believe rumors about unreleased internal polls.

 
At 30/5/08 10:20 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

There are definitely a couple of polls out there now that can pretty much be written off as rogues - including the one that put a 26 point gap between Labour and National.

There have been some recent internal rumblings amongst pollsters that Labour are on the up since the last budget and with National's increasingly frequent gaffes and a certain shadiness about policy details I think this could be a close one.

 
At 30/5/08 11:18 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yeah Bomber no young people ever answer the phone at home. How unscientific.

Really, everyone with half a brain knows these polls are an only an indication and should be taken with a pinch of salt.

 
At 30/5/08 11:55 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Don't worry bo ber. If Labour loses the election, there will be more people reading your blog. Yeah right!

 
At 30/5/08 4:40 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"These polls are bloody ridiculous and they mean nothing."

Is that because they point to the electorate supporting national?
How inconvenient

 
At 30/5/08 5:10 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

More good pictorials, you have received the MQ,
remember the strength as it comes through

 
At 31/5/08 4:30 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Only those who don't really have a life can be bothered answering pollsters' questions. The rest have better things to do.

 
At 31/5/08 6:09 pm, Blogger Mr Grinch said...

"Yeah Bomber no young people ever answer the phone at home. How unscientific.

Really, everyone with half a brain knows these polls are an only an indication and should be taken with a pinch of salt."

I'd say your oppinion should be taken with a grain of salt. Or meh, just not taken at all.

Most young people living in flats and going to university don't have home phones because of the bills.. It's not 'unscientific' at all. Almost all polls - and certainly the heralds political polls - are not targetted at a young market.. That's common knowledge.

 

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