Posts by BenWilson
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Polity: Poll Soup, in reply to Mr Mark,
Yes, the NZES is a start, but you can't get the data for 2014, for starters. It's not yet released. I spent a lot of time analyzing that study last year so I can have a look at how much longitudinal use it is. Definitely way better than nothing.
But either way, it's not helping us to make judgments about things that have happened since 2014, even if you get the data. Without the 2014 data, you're back to 2011. Would still be interesting to see what patterns there are with individual voter movement.
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Polity: Poll Soup, in reply to Mr Mark,
Labour lost a whole swathe of voters to National at the 2008 General Election – and they weren’t lifelong/core Lab voters who saw the Nats as traditional enemies.
I'm curious if you know how many, and how you know. Longitudinal studies aren't that common. It's common to say "Labour lost voters to National", but actually proving this based on opinion polls of total support is not very compelling. To really answer the question of who changed their vote, and from whom to whom, you have to actually design your study to answer that question.
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Yes, that’s a hill to climb. No, that’s not a towering cliff-face. I think any prognostications of doom are pretty premature at this stage.
Absolutely. It's close.
Yes, 1 in 12 National voters switching would get things closer. However, that's not the only way the gap could be closed, and I'm not sure that we really know enough about the way people change their votes to say that it's the way it would be closed. Also possible is that 1 in 12 National voters stop voting and a similar number stop not-voting and vote for the "Left coalition", ie Labour or the Greens.
It seems to me more likely that this is the way support swings in NZ. People move in and out of not-voting. I think this simply because it is a much smaller step, and we're talking about two parties that have very big solid cores of lifelong voters, highly tribal. A not-vote could be a more palatable protest than a vote for their traditional enemy.
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I feel about the flag debate about how I feel about purchases of clothing or paint color. Which is that it's impossible to be rational. The whole thing is opinion and feeling. Of course it matters. Some clothes look better than others and you probably want those, but the process of choosing is so fucking arbitrary that I seldom have any time for it.
The difference between flags and clothes is that I have to wear clothes, so I have to choose. I don't have to wave a flag. I never have waved the NZ flag, nor flown it, so I abstain from this choice. This is a job for flag wavers. Do as you will, I just don't care. Please don't spend too much more money.
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Has Slater won any day in court yet?
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This was always going to happen - that National would be pushing through something unpopular at the same time as Labour finally managed to suggest something truly popular, and the ridiculously trivial attention diverting flag debate is finally getting to the point where it's true cost has begun to register. So switching focus either way just isn't going to work. I'd expect Key's strategy now, if he still has any savvy left, will be to try to divert attention to the Green Party/The Far Left. And pray for some headline grabbing crisis abroad.
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Polity: Leaving only footprints, in reply to B Jones,
Top and tailing, wood smoke, and stranger farts and snores...
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Polity: Leaving only footprints, in reply to Moz,
Nah, fastest HPV is a bike
A recumbent bike. I don't really count anything with a pacer vehicle or going downhill as truly self powered. But you're saying it wasn't a tricycle, specifically, right? I don't think that's going to make it any slower - just less safe :)
It looks a bit like this
Indeed. I think I'd be a bit chicken for it, particularly in Oz, where they do actually have serial killers.
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Polity: Leaving only footprints, in reply to Moz,
You stealth camp in Ozzie? You're game.
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Polity: Leaving only footprints, in reply to Moz,
What could possibly go wrong with putting a blind person in charge of the fastest self-powered vehicle ever invented?
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