Hard News: Decidedly Undecided
142 Responses
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Sacha, in reply to
the poll of polls
that could be another story for MediaTake to cover some time.
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And I was able to tell the world that Maori Television’s news and current affairs division is poised to become a player this year. It will be polling all seven Maori electorates, at least two of which (Te Tai Tokerau and Waiariki) may be critical at a national level.
That's great! Does anyone know what plans there are to poll Epsom and wherever Colin Craig is standing?
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James Littlewood*, in reply to
In the case of the Green Party, it would seem less correlated to undecided levels recently
True that. But then again, the Green Party is no longer small. To put it different, the bigger a party gets, the more it needs to retain, including by reactivating previous voters.
Small parties can gain simply by causing people to question the way they vote. Draw a circle, see where they land. If one of them lands in your circle, next thing you know, 5%. Kinda thing.
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James Littlewood*, in reply to
As the actress said to the bishop.
Roflnui.
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Andrew Robertson, in reply to
Does anyone know what plans there are to poll Epsom and wherever Colin Craig is standing?
I suspect that's a sort of 'we could tell you but...' type situation. :)
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Tim Michie, in reply to
Living on the coattails of Epsom I'd say there's little worth polling the individual electorates (and Ōhariu) as either the candidates get in or National does but these minor parties' national party vote for whether an electorate win bring others into parliament a better spend of polling budget.
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Ah for a NZ version of Hugh McKay, whose specialty is small, focus-group type research. Hugh is a great human being. And I think the reason the news likes to focus on currencies is that they see it as part of "the economy" which we all know doesn't exist and which Rod Oram and I have agreed is a silly term (see my blog post )
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
what we are after is a proper representative sample
To be completely anal, we don't want a representative sample of the population but only of the population that will actually vote on the day. It's pretty clear that a significant percentage of the population make their political opinions felt by actively not voting.
The difficulty is that those that choose not to vote may well choose to answer the polls and may at the time of the polling say they will vote.
When you combine the difficulty of getting a truly representative poll result with the appalling standards of reporting of polls by the media at large then I think there is a very real case for saying the polls are deceptive. Perhaps not deliberately deceptive but in practice they act to give the public a false impression of the state of political opinion in New Zealand.
Given that, I'd argue they should be banned.
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a minor continuity cavil
on the show, before the last break
you say "...after the break Toi looks at Matariki"
but he doesn't really,
it's all about the theatre company.
Matariki's just used as a segue pivot...
...bookending really...Which was a shame, as root vegetable
planting aside, I wanted to know why
giving things away was 'very Matariki'... -
Sacha, in reply to
Does anyone know what plans there are to poll Epsom and wherever Colin Craig is standing?
I imagine Farrar will be doing them daily.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
telegraphing the punchline...
wherever Colin Craig is standing...
... is a pole!
</flagging a dead horse>
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BenWilson, in reply to
The difficulty is that those that choose not to vote may well choose to answer the polls and may at the time of the polling say they will vote.
I guess so, but every person polled could lie about anything. It's exactly the same problem.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
To be completely anal, we don’t want a representative sample of the population but only of the population that will actually vote on the day.
True, but there’s a complication in that different polling firms handle the likely-voter issue differently. Some push further towards saying “Okay, if you were going to vote, what would that vote be?”
Andrew will be able to explain what Colmar Brunton’s practice is there.
Given that, I’d argue they should be banned.
Andrew will doubtless be suggesting that you and he retire to the carpark to sort this out like men :-)
But he does have a point (which he expressed on the show) that polls also play a hugely valuable role in establishing what the public really thinks on controversial issues. His example is the marriage equality bill debate, which saw a huge text-in response to Campbell Live which was very much anti, while proper polls consistently showed the public in favour. We’ve seen similar situations right back to homosexual law reform, where the single scientific poll (by a VUW researcher) showed the public was way ahead of Parliament on the issue.
Otoh … the death penalty and smacking. The polls on those are usually quite scary, although it would be interesting to see a properly-phrased poll on the latter now.
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linger, in reply to
in what situation could Colin Craig be a polled answer?
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BenWilson, in reply to
Given that, I’d argue they should be banned.
I was waiting for a kick off for this part of the debate :-)
No way, is my response. Hell no, even. It's news because people want to know it. You have to have a lot stronger argument than "the information is low quality" to take away the right to know that information. That it might impact the outcome needs a whole lot more proof and unpacking before it would fly. You have to show that the impact is in itself something very undesirable, and that's not at all clear. Then you have to show that improving it isn't possible, which it clearly actually is.
You can be absolutely sure that if publishing polls were banned then polls would still be taken and the information would simply benefit a smaller number of people to a much greater degree. Also, people would still want to actually know what the result was going to be, would cast around, and the only info they'd have would be inside information or gossip or propaganda. I don't think that's a big improvement, likely to create less problems.
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Thomas Lumley, in reply to
But he does have a point (which he expressed on the show) that polls also play a hugely valuable role in establishing what the public really thinks on controversial issues.
If an issue is already controversial, this is much more valuable than a petition -- it's really hard to get a few percent of the population to sign a petition, but it's much easier to sample people and ask their opinion. Binding petitions and referenda make sense in principle (if not necessarily in practice), but I think we'd be much better off replacing non-binding self-selected opinion samples by proper surveys.
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What would it take to establish a system of surveying public opinion on contentious bills going through Parliament, before the third reading? It should be in far more depth than a single petition/referendum question allows for (and the referendum/petition system takes far too long).
This could reasonably accurately inform Parliament of public opinion in a timely way so parties and MPs could use that in making their decisions on voting. It can inject the 'voice of the people' into the process and better inform our representatives.
The public submission process serves a purpose but it is sometimes misused to erroneously represent public opinion - ie "80% of submissions opposed the bill".
Polling experts could advise whether random polls or establishing a large focus group or rolling survey group or whatever would provide the best means of establishing public opinion before bills have been fixed in law.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
“the information is low quality”
That wasn't what I said. I said the polls are deceptive. that is a totally different reason for banning them.
By the way there are several countries where polls are banned for a period prior to the election date without any collapse in the society.
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Andrew Robertson, in reply to
True, but there’s a complication in that different polling firms handle the likely-voter issue differently. Some push further towards saying “Okay, if you were going to vote, what would that vote be?”
Andrew will be able to explain what Colmar Brunton’s practice is there.
We use a leaner and we also gauge likelihood to vote. The leaner is asked if anyone says they don’t know which party they would vote for (eg. Which party would you be most likely to vote for? ). Everyone is asked who they would vote for, even if they’re unlikely to vote. However those less than ‘very’ or ‘quite’ likely to vote are filtered out at the analysis stage.
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BenWilson, in reply to
That wasn’t what I said. I said the polls are deceptive. that is a totally different reason for banning them.
What did you actually mean by deceptive? It's a word that carries connotations of dishonesty.
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As ever on things newsy... | Chris Morris has it nailed ]] ...especially like the currency susan...
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Sacha, in reply to
that is ridiculously clever
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Sacha, in reply to
We use a leaner
just like pubs
and fancy office layouts (Russ will know what that refers to) -
Sacha, in reply to
those less than ‘very’ or ‘quite’ likely to vote are filtered out at the analysis stage
do you mean out of all respondents or just the ones who have earned the leaner?
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Andrew Robertson, in reply to
do you mean out of all respondents or just the ones who have earned the leaner?
Out of all responses to the party vote question.
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