Latest Colmar Brunton – Labour Greens ascendant

Written By: notices and features - Date published: - 62 comments
Categories: election 2020, greens, labour, national, uncategorized

Labour is coming off strastopheric polling but the Greens are looking safer.  And National is still on the decline.

The figures are above and things are looking promising.  Make sure you vote for your preferred progressive party this weekend if you have not already.

62 comments on “Latest Colmar Brunton – Labour Greens ascendant”

Comment numbers have changed to permanent references. Older quoted numbers may no longer identify the same comment.

  1. 1

    Incredulous to see the New Conservatives rising to 2% after attending a meet the candidate event in Waimakariri District last weekend.

    The local NC candidate had 6 mins to talk about NC policy, spoke entirely about himself (a topic he delighted in, but even bored the seniors rigid), then closed with "check out our website for our policy." The intense "pump up" session he took part in the corner prior with a couple of "advisors" (much to other early attendees amusement) was an epic fail.

    Laughter ensued when I saw him on tv the next night and realised he was the leader – Leighton Baker! Charisma & policy FAIL! If this is the best they have then I'm not even sure GOD can help them.

  2. 2

    74% of voters approve of the PM. That's remarkably high, and must include many National voters.

    Labour and the Greens will win, but the Blue Meltdown hasn't happened. Right now I think they'd settle for 40 MPs, even while Judith tries to burn off a few more.

  3. 3

    Given Colmar-Brunton's house effects and potential for Shy New Zealand First voters… it's actually not out of the question that New Zealand First might wind up with 4.5%… or even 5%.

        1. 3.1.1.1

          Yes. there's always that possibility.

          In that case I very much hope that NZ1 alone won't be in a position to tip Labour into govt. The outcome would be stagnation.

        2. 3.1.1.2

          Undecided also includes those not willing to say who they will vote for.

          A lot of NZF voters are not really undecided, just unwilling to say they are a NZF voter.

          I feel some of the real undecided are former National voters deciding if they should stick with them or vote for another party. But most of those abandoning National will likely be picked up by Act with few going to NZF or Labour, and I doubt any would end up with The Greens.

  4. 4

    Seems like National's campaign has been a waste of time. Using the wealth tax to scare voters hasn't made any detectable difference, unless you want to count a boost to the Greens. The election bribe had already failed. Nothing they've done lifted their vote. They couldn't even reclaim any of their supporters who switched to ACT. Total fail.

  5. 5

    NZFirst up 1%. Which is quite a lot when you were only 2% to start with. Late break of Nat voters heading to Winston? Could it happen? 5%? That would be the story of the night on Saturday.

    1. 5.1

      nightmare stuff.

      Although David Cormack said on Checkpoint he will eat his hat on air on RNZ on Saturday night if NZF get back in.

    3. 5.3

      would love to see nzfirst survive to haunt the nats. any poli that equally gets up nat and leftie voters SHOULD be in parliament.

    4. 5.4

      1 News have an annoying practice of only showing results rounded to whole numbers in their news reports of polls, and Colmar Brunton don't post their more accurate poll details for about two days after 1 News.

      But here's a credible claim that NZF only went from 2.4% to 2.7%, so like most of the others an insignificant change.

      https://twitter.com/SamSachdevaNZ/status/1316678220742193154

      With a lot of advance voting and little movement in polls over the last coupler of months it looks likely NZ First will miss the cut. Winston contrasts too much with Jacinda, and keeps promoting the past, reminding voters he's a politician of past generations.

  7. 7

    National's goose is cooked.

    The best that Nats can hope for is to influence the make up of the government by voting Labour to keep the Greens from being needed.

  8. 8

    With advance voting cranking along at a ferocious rate this poll may actually reflect something close to the vote count. 66% of people may actually be responding to the survey as exit poll govern that advanced voting is reported as being at 2/3s of last election's total vote.

  9. 9
    • Who usually has the most accurate poll? Seem to think it’s Reid?

    also overseas votes at 2.3% or something like that. They will go to Labour or Green.

    so sitting pretty for a centre left govt.

    i am pleased for the Greens, although part of me would like labour to go it alone. Trust the labour team

    1. 9.1

      Gavin White of UMR explored poll accuracy in 2014 of past elections for the One News Colmar Brunton,NZ Herald Digipoll,TV3 Reid Research, Roy Morgan and the Fairfax Ipsos. He went back and looked at poll results from every election since 1999.

      All the surveys have overall margins of error of between them of +/- 3.1% and +/- 3.6%.

      From past elections-:
      " • 16 had National too high, while three had them too low
      • five had Labour too high, while five had them too low.
      • nine had the Greens too high, while three had them too low. That overstates the case a little, because the most any poll has been out for the Greens is 3.4%.
      • one had NZ First too high, and nine had them too low. The biggest difference was in 2002, when one poll had them 6% too low – mostly the differences are within 2%. "

      In summary White says

      "- National and the Greens' vote tends to drop in the last few days of the campaign while NZ First's picks up –
      – One way of looking at this further is to take the average (mean) error for these four parties across the 19 final polls included in this dataset and the average error is:

      National: 2.7% too high

      Labour: 0.7% too high

      Greens: 1.0% too high

      NZ First: 1.5% too low.

      ———

      – Counting all mainstream media polls since 2005 (excluding UMR but including TV3 and Fairfax / Research International polls in 2008 and 2011) leaves 14 polls and an average error of:

      National: 2.4% too high

      Labour: 0.5% too low

      Greens: 1.5% too high

      NZ First: 1.1% too low. "

      https://www.nbr.co.nz/wrong

      Colmar Brunton themselves confirm the +/- 3.1% but poll results are only indicative of trends as they do not account effects for non-voting.
      Colmar Brunton's last poll before the 2017 election they claimed as consistently close to the final result.

      1.6% too high for National
      0.1% too high for Labour
      1.7% too high for Greens
      2.3% too low for NZ first

      CB did not comment on their ACT prediction in there promo material. But by the CB poll in 2014 , ACT actual result was 0.36% higher than the CB poll. And in 2017 , ACT actual result was 0.2% higher than last pre-election CB poll result.

      https://www.colmarbrunton.co.nz/what-we-do/1-news-poll/

  10. 10

    I was driving through Epsom today and had to stop and pull over as Paul Goldsmiths was campaigning on a street corner. I went over and shook his hand as the “possible next leader of the National Party” and told a few people he might be the new leader on Monday. He wasn't that impressed with my comment. I then offered him $5 donation toward his $8 billion fiscal hole. He wasn't so enamoured by that offer either but laughed it off as good natured piss taking.

  11. 11

    @observer 2

    Don't you think the blue meltdown happened as the Covid lockdown hit? There’s pretty nothing left to melt now. 27% to 30% is probably the base of rusted-on Nat voters, like it is with Labour.

  12. 12

    @ken 5.2

    In the unlikely event Winston does manage to get back in he certainly won’t be needed by Ardern to form government. For all that though, I suspect NZFirst might prefer a term on the crossbenches this time round.

  13. 13

    I'm amazed that National can still pull 30% after the slow motion train wreck of a year and campaign they've had.

    1. 13.1

      The colmar brunton polls seem to be a bit more sympathetic to national for various reasons…the only true numbers will be known after the election. It's exciting!

  14. 14

    I was really nervous up till 6pm, worried that Labour's support might collapse, but it seems to be holding. Very good that the Greens are holding up. I think its all over rover for Collins, though holding my celebrations till 9 or 10pm Saturday.

    At the end of the day, a lot of the people who have voted, or will vote Labour/Greens, voted because they don't want Ruthanasia v2.0.

    Let's party like it is 1999 (again).

  16. 16

    I'd like to see a poll of polls but no one seems to be doing it. Perhaps there are not enough being done or the frequency is wrong but it seems to have been a good indicator in the past. When you have noisy data averaging out all the effects can be useful.

          1. 16.1.1.1.1

            The most striking feature of the first graph on the Wikipedia page is the drop in support for Labour and slight increase for the Nats. Seems overstated?

            1. 16.1.1.1.1.1

              Different smoothing techniques will give different results. I honestly wouldn't read too much into it, but I think it is fair to say that the high-50's low-60's results Labour were getting earlier this year were never sustainable in an MMP environment. In that sense their polling drop is real.

  17. 17

    I wonder what the news that PM will resign if the Labour party goes to the Opposition benches will have on those who have yet to vote.

    Far from reading that this may be unlikely and feeling that this may be a spur to vote Labour, I have a feeling that the general populace, yet to vote, may see it/read it that she will resign anyway, whether or not Labour gets in. I can't help feeling that this may have been a tactical mistake. It presumably came about in response to a question in the leaders 'debate' but …….

    If it did not then along with the over long election extension (we should have gone to the polls 10/10 or 3/10) this may be another cause of softening the vote for Labour. I really want the Greens there as a 'ginger group' for Labour, to keep it steering left and not too centrist. Yet to vote and this was what I was going to do but now……..

    Why are we not talking about it? it is like an elephant in the room.

    1. 17.1

      Talk about what? Jacinda was simply stating the obvious.

      The only issue is whether she should have given a straight answer to a straight question. She could have said "Well, if I lose I'm going to call in the police to investigate the rigged vote-counting", which is about the only way she could lose.

      Anyway, her answer isn't "news". Bored journos needed a headline from a boring debate. A better headline would be "PM over-estimates intelligence and integrity of clickbait headline writers". But that isn't news either.

  18. 18

    In need of some clarification

    early votes are counted on the night and at the polling both where they were cast ? ( as from memory analysis is done? predictions and swings by comparing past elections votes cast by polling station)

    all special votes are counted at a later date I.e those cast outside the electorate, overseas etc ?

    1. 18.1

      Correct. Also, special votes include those who enrol on election day itself. Those votes will likely skew young/left.

      Thanks to the advance voting, we'll know the trend very soon after 7 pm, much sooner than we used to.

  19. 19

    Yes the Greens have jumped 2%, but the real is the story is horse called NZF driven by The Grey Fox aka Winston Peters entering the final turn with 200m to go having trailing field for most of the race at Addington is he doing to do it?

    Like the previous greats Blossom Lady, Armalight, Lord Module, Cardigan Bay and those like watching a monkey ride on the back of horse? The horse called Kiwi the 82 Melbourne Cup which always had a habit of running last until it entered the final turn when it hit the AB’s (After Burners).

    2. 19.2

      Very fanciful Scud. I'm getting a little lightheaded as we near the final hurdle. So am putting on the commentary from Spike Jones.

      I am looking at what fees we might like to charge if Labour wins the election after we have put up a pretty good commentary for the duration. I am just looking at Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and a sample of his charges:

      Detecting and triangulating vectors of interconnectedness of
      all things – 150.00

      Tracing same to beach on Bahamas, fare and accommodation – 1500.00

      Struggling on in face of draining scepticism from client, drinks – 327.50

      Saving human race from total extinction – No Charge.

    3. 19.3

      the real is the story is horse called NZF

      Winston is the KT Tunstall of victories over polling averages – two surprise hits in a catalogue of otherwise consistent mediocrity.

      Outside of two well understood last-minute surges driven by major media attention, NZF results over the last 26 years have pretty consistently landed around their polling expectations. There's nothing in this campaign to suggest a late surge over 5% is likely or plausible.

  20. 20

    An interesting observation…

    "I cannot claim to know definitively why the Green support dips for the election and jumps up immediately after. I surmise that because good news and general competency doesn't grab headlines and that the hard work of Green MPs often flies under the radar. However, a good number of voters do recognise the value that the Green MPs bring to parliament and when our representation is lower than expected, the disappointment shows in the following poll."

    http://localbodies-bsprout.blogspot.com/2020/10/polls-show-regret-for-not-voting-green.html

    assuming the polls do indeed behave so, and theres no reason not to think they dont, then it will be interesting to see if the trend continues post this election.

    1. 20.1

      yep. This is the first election being in govt so will be interesting to see if the trend continues.

      Otoh, they usually pick up more votes from the overseas voters (and maybe special votes?), sometimes getting an extra MP.

        2. 20.1.1.2

          It's based on 2013 census data, so not very reliable. Auckland Central has a very transient population, a lot of the "estimated population" around the CBD would be students, including thousands of international students who aren't even in the country.

              1. 20.1.1.2.1.1.1

                that says they can't enroll.

                "You’re not eligible to enrol and vote if any of the following statements are true:

                you have to leave New Zealand by a set date, such as a date on a student, work, or visitor permit"

            2. 20.1.1.2.1.2

              Depends on their situation, but the point is that the census population is people who are there at the time, at that place. Includes everyone.

        1. 20.1.2.1

          Prisoners would not have been in the polling either but then I'm not sure what happened with the mix up to its outcome on the day when that Bill was passed.

Comments are closed.