POLLS AND PUNDITS

Last week I looked at how pollsters try to get a representative sample of the population so they can more accurately gauge how the wider population might vote in the upcoming general election.  This week I’ll try to demystify ‘margins of error’ in a poll by looking at the latest one.

Released just two days ago on Sunday 27^th July, the latest ONE News/Colmar Brunton poll reckons that National is still out on its own and has climbed to 52%, while Labour has dropped, they're down to 28%, as have the Greens who are down to 10%.  It also reckons that New Zealand First is steady on 4% as is Internet/MANA on 2%, while the Conservatives have risen to 2%.  And at the tail end ACT is steady on 1%, while the Maori Party have dropped to 1%. 

Do the math and that all adds up to a neat 100% of the representative sample, which in this poll was 1000 eligible voters who live in a house with a landline phone. 

Straightaway we can see that these mainstream polls are practically meaningless for many, if not most, Maori; especially the majority aged between 18 and 25.  Land lines? Pfft. 

Engari, even if those little peccadillos mean nothing to eligible Pakeha voters over 25 years of age, they might still want to know – how accurate is the poll?  This is where the margin of error comes in.

This latest poll took place last week from Saturday 19^th to Wednesday 23^rd July, and it has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1% at 95% accuracy.   

Simply put, 95% accuracy with a 3.1% margin of error means that if the same poll was conducted again a number of times during that same period, but with a different 1000 people, Colmar Brunton reckons that 95% of the time the results would be the same – plus or minus 3.1%. 

That also means the initial 52% support for National could be anywhere between 48.9% and 55.1% in subsequent polls.  That will be no comfort to Labour whose initial 28% could be anywhere between 24.9% and 31.1%, which is still not enough to cobble together any kind of government at all. 

Most mainstream pundits are doling out predictions of a National win, backed by Labour’s poor polling.  But our own pundits see it differently.  As one of our whanau from Te Paatu puts it – "only 2 wite guyz repping 4 us – 1 whairawa-as 1 pohara-as lol."  

Straightaway every Maori knows which two ‘guyz’ she’s talking about, and their names aren’t John or David.

So in summary, for Maori the mainstream polls mainly exist to give us an indication of how the majority of non-Maori people might vote.  They also give the mainstream media something to talk about.

However, ultimately, the important thing for all of us in this particular game is to enrol, then vote by ticking our preferred candidate and party.  We can do that, regardless of what either the polls or the pundits might say.