And these are the unknowns that we really need to know more about.

Prebble's back but!

The ones we know about can at least be ringfenced as known unknowns. But this is moving into the territory of unknown unknowns.

I'm the last of those, I've always had a bit…

And I'm one of the said GenX/Y 'cord-cutters', in more ways than one.

Beloved and I clocked it last night as…

Though presumably at least one person suggested that "Spark" sounded "dynamic" and "innovative" ...

A second important issue in…

I blame brand perception surveys. Being asked to quantify my feelings from 1-7 on 20 minutes' worth of repetitive, barely distinguishable questions is not at all my idea of a good time. The dropout rate during those surveys must…

This is true. And if it were only 2011 that followed this pattern then I wouldn't be so sure. But it's also based on 2008 where the same thing. Most polls had National 2-3% higher…

I think National last support late in the last election because of the cup of tea fiasco,…

Exactly. I was aware of this but as the results you list above show there isn't really a significant difference. I think the non-polling cell phones isn't a big deal.

I think there is some flaw in the methodology that the pollsters use which means National…

"At present my view is that, in New Zealand, non-response is a far far bigger source of error than…

Yesterday's polls plus the last Roy Morgan poll for the four biggest parties:

National – RM 45.5, CB 47, RR 45.9
Labour – RM 31.5, CB 31, RR 31.2
Green Party – RM 14, CB 11, RR 11.3
NZ First – RM 3.5, CB 7, RR…

I read somewhere that the biggest complexity of cellphone polling is that a lot of people have multiple cellphones…

This is only a factor if the people who don't own a land line vote differently from those who are in the same demographic and do. So say half the people between 18-30 don't have a land line if the other…

Quite the opposite. It's very hard for them NOT to make 3 elections. That's the median…

One factor may be the lack of exit polls. Pollsters can use the demographic data obtained from exit polls to help weight their…

“A survey in 2012 by Canstar Blue found that a third of Generation Y in New Zealand have abandoned landlines; 14…

No, because that kind of maths is well above my pay grade. But, yeah, I would like pollsters commenting on political polling (and how they are reported) to be more forthcoming about any potential…

In the US there is a huge volume of polls around the election and…

My mistake. It's the don't know + refuse to say figure, which is up 5%, but I accidentally left out out the second part. I've corrected the wording.

Is there any part of his maths you question? Because that post is really just maths. And it's on the UMR website.

So declaring a victor before polling really does make everyone less likely to vote. And more so for National matches…

I have just been reading interviews with various people on The Nation and from Rachel Smalley, Gower and Simon Shepherd. Can I say the Garneresque grotesque style of interviewer spitting out suggestive questions followed with…

I'm not picking on UMR in particular, but one thing I'd like to see more of in pollsters commenting on polls and their reporting is full disclosure of their political/media clients.…

My guess is that uncertainty will be across the spectrum. There's good cause to pause before…

Apart from the obvious and very troubling bias in all the polls towards National there is a huge problem with the way the data is reported for any party that gets significantly less than 50% of the vote. By reporting…

Even when everyone had a landline, there was a bias in who picked up the phone, could be bothered to talk to you, etc.

I believe that pollsters in these cases make an empirical adjustment based on demographics (so they ask people a/s/l and use that)…

I guess it might…

At the least, the increase in undecided voters — some of whom may be turning away from labour and Cunliffe, remember — seems worthy of comment.

Heh. No, it was a typo. Thanks

Yes. Or even that there’s some kind of systematic lying about intentions to vote National. Or that the undecided at polling time subsequently decide before the election itself, and…

You really think Winnie's going to string everyone along for three months? :P
I guess it's not without precedent.

It's entirely possible that they're measuring accurately, and that people are consistently having a last-minute change of heart on election day. An arbitrary adjustment…

1.1% of, say, a thousand voters is 11 people. .4% (the TVNZ level of support for ACT) is 4 people. In other words, when you…

He's not the only one to do that. I find the mass kvetching a bit wearying at times.

I do not care how either Labour or the Nats are rating on their own,…