New Zealand political discussion thread

[ethanhenare1]

Most Recent Poll by Newshub doesn't look too good for National or Bridges. (I've only just started posting on this forum so I can't post links yet it seems but I've included the most notable info.)

National: 41.6%
Labour: 47.6%
NZFirst: 2.9%
Green: 5.1%

Preferred PM:
Ardern: 41.8%
Bridges: 5.0%
Collins: 6.2%

NZ First once again falls below the 5% mark required to enter government and the greens are on the very edge.

[ethanhenare1]

Two very different poll results from One News and Newshub today.

One News Poll
Labour - 42% (down 6%)
National - 44% (up 4%)
Green - 6% (no change)
NZ First 5% (up 1%)

Newshub Poll
Labour - 50.8% (up 3.3%)
National - 37.4% (down 4.2%)
Green - 6.2% (up 1.1%)
NZ First - 2.8% (down 0.1%)

[ethanhenare1]

Preferred PM also contrasting.

One News
Ardern: 45% (down 6%)
Bridges: 5% (no change)
Collins: 6% (up 1%)
Peters: 5 (no change)

Newshub
Ardern:  49%  (up 7.2%)
Bridges: 4.2% (down 1.1%)
Collins: 7.1% (up 0.9%)

Newshub also polled performance for the two major party leaders
Ardern: 72.5% well, 15.6% poorly
Bridges: 17.4% well, 56% poorly

The preferred pm polls are a mixed message in terms of how well Ardern is doing but are bad news either way for Bridges and definitely good news either way for Collins.

[ethanhenare1]

Another interesting data point from Newshub relates to National's leaking of the budget.

When asked "Was National right to seek out and release Budget details before Budget Day?"
32.6% of all voters said yes
55.4% said no
12% weren't sure

And when specifically National voters were asked the same question
57.2% said yes
32.3% said no
10.5% weren't sure

Considering the fact the Budget was found quite easily via a fault in the Treasury's site rather than a hack as first speculated, I'm surprised how unpopular its leaking was with even a third of National's voters being against it. This may explain in part why Newhub's data didn't show a drop in Labour's numbers but doesn't really explain why One New's poll does.

[ethanhenare1]

It's weird that the two polls have such diverging narratives, I'm more inclined to believe the Newshub one myself, particularly because they were the most accurate in 2017 (Colmar Brunton had similar numbers in their final poll but they went from showing multiple Labour leads to showing a 9-point National lead). The average of the two polls is Labour 46.4%, National 40.7%, Greens 6.1%, NZ First 3.9%, so Simon Bridges may have gotten lucky with the Colmar Brunton poll as otherwise he'd be in the dreaded 30s, but Judith Collins getting ahead of him is a bad sign for him.

With the budget leak, it seemed like a bunch of pointless theatrics given the budget was going to be published a few days afterwards anyway and just an attempt by National to try and make Labour look bad. It's a bit similar to the expenses saga in which people put way too much importance on a leak of something that was going to be released anyway. 

Yeah, I'd probably agree that the Newshub poll holds a bit more weight. As for why the difference occurred, the only thing I can think of is that the Newshub poll was taken 30 May – 7 Jun whereas the One news one was 4–8 Jun, but I can't really see any reason why Labour's numbers would have been lower in those last few days than in the rest so idk. From the looks of it though, the Budget scandal either didn't have a negative impact on Labour at all (possibly even impacting National more) or if it did then the effect wasn't massive.

[ethanhenare1]

More poll data from both One News and Newshub, both on the topic of 2020's cannabis legalisation referendum

One News Poll on Legalisation
For: 39%
Against: 52%
Don't Know: 8%
Would not vote: 1%

Newshub Poll on Legalisation
For: 41.7%
Against: 48%
Don't Know: 10.4%

Green voters are much more likely to vote yes, National voters are much more likely to vote no, and Both Labour and NZFirst and closer to the centre with Labour voters leaning towards yes and NZFirst voters leaning towards no.

Definitely a swing towards unfavourability of legalisation from the last poll in may which had 52% being for and 29% being against.

[ethanhenare1]

Despite having very positive polls for Labour recently, today's Newshub Reid Research poll is quite the opposite.

National: 43.9% (Up 6.5)
Labour: 41.6% (Down 9.2)
Greens: 6.3% (Up 0.1)
NZ First: 4.0% (Up 1.2)
Act: 1.4% (Up 0.6)
Top: 1.1% (Up 1)
Maori: 0.7% (Up 0.2)

On the bright side for Labour, this would still not be enough for National to govern. Labour would receive 54 seats, and the Greens would receive 8, giving them a majority of 62. NZFirst is still below the threshold (but getting closer). National would get 56 seats with Act receiving for the first time I've seen in polling for a while, a high enough percentage to earn a second seat (Assuming he wins the Epsom electorate again). 

Ardern's personal polling also took a drop, with it falling 10.6 points from their last poll down to 38.4%. She's still by far the highest polling candidate with National leader Simon Bridges at 6.7% (rising 2.5) and National MP Judith Collins at 5.2% (dropping 1.9).

These dops have been blamed largely on the recent Labour staffer sexual assault controversy, the general failures of Kiwibuild (National has really been hitting them hard on this). And criticisms over the government handling of Ihumatao, which may have worsened Arden's and Labour's standing with some Maori voters.

[ethanhenare1]

weren't the government planning on reducing the threshold to 4% and abolishing that stupid "coat-tailing" rule anyway?

Back in March Green MP Golriz Ghahraman introduced the Strengthening Democracy Members Bill which among other things included those two reforms. If this bill were implemented it would come into effect by the 2023 election but it so far hasn't been passed or even introduced to the house and to be honest I don't think I've really heard anything about it since it was announced. It's likely that the Greens are still trying to get support for the bill from Labour and NZFirst behind the scenes (I know Winston Peters is strongly against the bill). Either way, it won't be coming into effect in the upcoming election. Which is in my opinion unfortunate as they're in my view, good reforms.

[ethanhenare1]

Yeah Winston's position seems ironic, I heard him in a speech say "if you can't get 5% you're no darn good", especially given he's fallen below 5% twice and could well do so again in 2020.

Yeah, it's pretty dumb saying a party shouldn't be in parliament if they can't get 5% considering that's exactly what he did from 1999-2002 thanks to winning the Tauranga electorate.

[ethanhenare1]

This poll isn't great for Labour, and the trends are concerning. However, it does depend on what you compare the poll to. If you compare it to the last election, the results look more favourable for Labour.

National: 56_ 43.9%(-0.5%)
Labour: 54+8 41.6%(+4.7%)
Green: 8_ 6.3%(_)
ACT: 2+1 1.4%(+0.9%)
NZ First: 0-9 4.0%(-3.2%)
120 seats
61 for majority

And of course, as an actual election outcome a Labour-Greens coalition without NZ First would be a great result and cause a leftward shift in policy.

I think it's best to take a balanced approach and think about the trends between different polls as well as the trends from the last election. Labour getting 51% of the vote was a bit unrealistic of course, no party has ever won an outright majority under MMP. The upcoming election does look competitive, Labour does have weaknesses on areas like tax, and if the global economy does slow that would be very damaging to their election chances. However, Labour's position is not actually bad right now, and I think Jacinda is the favourite to win.

Also the NZ media does have a problem with taking poll results too literally, which they really should have learned was a bad idea from recent election results in the US, UK and Australia. They should emphasize more how polls are rough guides and can't be exact, or there is a risk that they end up with egg on their faces after the election.

That's a very fair point, I definitely think that while recent polling is troubling for Labour, it's far from a death sentence, in fact, I would argue a Lab-Green coalition is still favoured to win, just maybe in a closer election than previously expected. I also agree that NZ media tends to obsess over polling numbers a bit too much (perhaps because the MMP system allows them to be instantly converted into seat projections). But at the end of the day, it's still a year out from election day, from memory the chances of a Labour victory seemed pretty unlikely at this point in the last election cycle so a lot could still happen from now to election day.

[ethanhenare1]

Okay, I understand the irony considering the post I literally just made. But I just saw a notification from One News saying a new Colmar Brunton poll is out (I hate how we have to wait months for any polling and then get two within two days). So since I've been posting new polls so far may as well keep up the trend. This new one is definitely a worse poll for Labour than the Newshub one as it would give National and Act enough to govern, and is the first poll I've seen this cycle that has given them enough to do so.

- National: 47%  (+2%)
- Labour: 40%  (-3%)
- Greens: 7%  (+1%)
- NZFirst: 4%  (+1%)
- ACT: 1% - (Steady)
- Māori: 1% - (Steady)
- TOP: 1% (Steady)

Preferred PM:

- Ardern - 38%
- Bridges - 9%
- Collins - 5%
- Peters - 4%

[ethanhenare1]

Tbh one of my biggest takeaways from this poll is holy crap I'm glad that we're finally getting more polling than just Reid Research and Colmar Brunton for this election. Another interesting thing to note about this poll that may explain some of the differences to previous ones is the fact it's using online polling instead of polling just by phone. I must admit I haven't done a ton of research over exactly how accurate each method is but my gut says YouGov's methodology seems pretty solid. Other things to note are that this poll was taken before the highly publicised NZFirst Donor scandal so NZFirst may be doing worse off overall than what's shown here. The Green's had a pretty good result, possibly as a result of their Zero Carbon Bill passing in Parliament just before the poll was taken. This bill may also in part explain ACT's comparatively good result pf 2% (enough to get them a second seat for the first time since 2011) as they were the only party to oppose the Zero Carbon Bill and a few National supporters who disliked their party's support of the bill may have migrated to ACT. Overall, interesting results, hoping for further polling soon.