0 The latest poll cycle

The most recent poll cycle ended last night with the One News/Colmar Brunton poll. And for the first time for a while, there are either no rogue polls, or there are five of them. 

Colmar Brunton, Roy Morgan, Reid Research, Ipsos and DigiPoll are all saying the same thing; John Key is set to win a third term as prime Minister based on the results in the back half of June. And to make matters even worse for Labour, only the Herald-DigiPoll has Labour ranking in the 30's, and even that's within the margin of error at 30.5%. The other four polls all have Labour with a 2 in front of its number.

Here's the One News-Colmar Brunton result, via TVNZ:

A ONE News poll/Colmar Brunton has found Labour has dropped below 30% support for the first time in two years.
The poll results come after supposed donations from Donghua Liu have dogged Labour leader David Cunliffe this week and taken a toll on the party.
The poll found 29% of respondents supported Labour - the party's lowest polling result since the aftermath of the its disastrous election campaign in March 2012.
"We've had a sustained smear campaign against us for the last couple of weeks. The poll has hardly moved and we're not that concerned about it," says Mr Cunliffe.
The poll also found National dropped one point to 50% popularity and could govern alone with 64 seats.
New Zealand First also dropped one point to 3.8% - below the 5% threshold.
The big winner was Internet-Mana Party on 2.8%.
Internet leader Laila Harre would be likely to return to Parliament on Hone Harawira's coat tails according to the poll.
"We've formed the alliance with Mana that's giving people the confidence to know that their party votes will count and so I think a result over 5% is certainly attainable," says Ms Harre.
The poll also found 10% of respondents choose Mr Cunliffe as their preferred Prime Minister while John Key won 47% of the vote.

David Cunliffe is blaming this result on a "sustained smear campaign" from National. He should not be so quick off the mark, and we'll see who was smearing whom when Donghua Liu gets his financial records from China and passes them to Paul Davidson QC. 

Labour has attacked Mr Liu's credibility, causing him to lose face. The Chinese businessman has every motivation to save face, and prove his allegations now, and David Cunliffe will have only himself to blame for throwing down the gauntlet to him.

The National Party conference at the weekend was a positive affair, with the only negatives being repeated warnings about complacency. With party membership in great heart, we are sure that National will succeed in mobilising its vote on September 20th, and Labour may just find that it does not have a mortgage on the so-called "missing million" on which it seems to be basing its chances.

Now attention shifts to the Labour Party "congress" next weekend, although we will hear little from that because the media has been excluded.

The June polls have been truly dreadful for Labour with less than three months remaining until the General Election. There must be some very nervous backbenchers at the moment, watching their jobs and taxpayer-funded salaries wafting away in the winds of public opinion. 

0 The Dom-Post on Cunliffe

The Dominion-Post took a deep breath and waited for an extra day before penning an editorial on David Cunliffe. But the delay makes it no less condemnatory; under the headline Scratch that itch while you can David the editorial opines:

David Cunliffe itched to be Labour Party leader for years. After losing power in 2008, the party lumbered along under two failing leaders. He barely hid his ambitions to replace them.
Now, 10 months into his tenure, he should take a moment to enjoy the role. Barring a miraculous campaign performance, he'll be finished soon.
Two events this week have pinned Cunliffe to the wall. One is a 23 per cent poll rating - apocalyptic territory for a major party. The other is an 11-year-old letter that contradicted his flat denial that he had ever helped controversial businessman Donghua Liu.
Never mind that the poll may be an outlier. Never mind that the letter is a fairly bland document, the type that MPs send out in droves over the course of a political career. Never mind that dodgy memories are congenital in politicians, as Prime Minister John Key will confirm.
The heart of the problem is Cunliffe's judgment and temperament, which have been found lacking yet again. Under direct questions on a specific matter, about a public figure involved in repeated scandals, the Labour leader got it completely, insistently wrong.

The Donghua Liu situation has certainly harmed David Cunliffe's reputation. But it is the continuing flow of negative polling that is hurting the most. Even yesterday afternoon, the Roy Morgan poll had a yawning gap between National and any Labour/Green alliance. Those MP's towards the bottom end of Labour's list are going to be very nervous at the moment.

The editorial continues, noting an odd decision by the Labour leader to lambast potentially two thirds of his caucus:

He followed up the blunder by issuing veiled threats at caucus colleagues considering disloyalty - all but calling them "scabs".
If Cunliffe was ahead in the polls, or if this was an isolated misstep, he could shrug it off quickly. But his support is so low, and his gaffes so familiar, the impression will linger longer than the incident itself: that he is not up to running the country.
From his secret trust for donations to his leadership bid, to his laughable description of his $2.5 million Herne Bay home as a "doer-upper", Cunliffe has repeatedly made a fool of himself in awkward, revealing ways.
Combine those mistakes with a haughty, serious style, a tendency to preach instead of persuade, a fondness for vague rallying cries (with liberal talk of "Kiwis") instead of insights that speak to people's concerns, and Cunliffe's predicament is not surprising.
Of course, the self-fulfilling nature of bad polling plays a part, too. Watching a party go into freefall is something like a bank run; no-one wants to be the last supporter standing. But Cunliffe has failed to stop the panic. 

The point about the self-fulfilling nature of polling is very valid here. There have been three polls this week. Labour's best result was in the Herald-DigiPoll, which showed the party up marginally to 30.5%. But a party supported by less than a third of voters is not going to be able to lead a coalition government. Roy Morgan had Labour at 28.5%, and of course the nadir was the Stuff-Ipsos poll where Labour garnered just 23.2% support; less than one in four.

After either today or tomorrow, depending on how one interprets the words "the 3 months prior to the announced date of a general election" in Labour's constitution, a no-confidence vote in the leader can be triggered within the Labour caucus, and a new leader can be elected without having to go to the party and the unions. 

Replacing David Cunliffe in this manner would be extreme, and would risk alienating supporters and unions (and their dollars). We think it is an unlikely outcome, but it is one that cannot be ruled out if the next round of TV polls confirms this week's polling.

But the mere fact that this discussion is even taking place suggests Labour is not a happy place at the moment. Momentum plays a big role in politics, and right at the moment Labour has none. There will be a number of Labour MP's looking nervously at their prospects of employment beyond 20 September, and that cannot be good news for David Cunliffe.

0 Poll of the Day - 19 June 2014

It's a day for polls. And whilst the Stuff-Ipsos poll spells very bad news for Labour, you have to chuckle at this one:

If you haven't voted on the Cunliffe Catastrophes poll yet, it's still going, at this link. Given that the Labour leader has only been in office for nine months, he's amassed a pretty impressive list already, and you're spoiled for choice.

For the record, we voted for the leadership donations catastrophe, because it was the one that has the potential to harm Mr Cunliffe's credibility the most. 

The longer he refuses to disclose who the anonymous donors to his secret trust are, the more questions will be asked, and the longer the speculation will continue. David Cunliffe should have killed the story stone-dead by being transparent.

0 A poll sandwich

The two main newspaper groups have released political polls this week. If the Herald-Digi-Poll was bad news for the Labour Party, then they're not going to like this morning's Stuff-Ipsos poll, completing the poll sandwich.

But there's no escaping it; here's the bad news:

Labour's support has slumped to its lowest level since the 2011 election, with leader David Cunliffe battling for survival after it emerged he intervened in a residency application for Chinese businessman Donghua Liu.
In the latest Stuff.co.nz/Ipsos political poll, the party has dropped 6 percentage points to 23 per cent. National is soaring on 56 per cent, which would allow it to govern alone. Click here for full graphics. 
Cunliffe has failed to stop his party's slide in the poll since he took over as leader in September, and is now facing election humiliation. His support as preferred prime minister slipped to 11 per cent, down two points. Prime Minister John Key edged ahead, up three points to 51.4 per cent.
As he faced fire over the Liu allegations, Cunliffe insisted he retained the confidence of his caucus - but admitted he had broached the subject with senior colleagues.
Tomorrow a pre-election window opens, allowing the caucus to dump its leader without triggering the wider vote of the entire party's membership. After a wave of dismal results, the latest poll would leave Labour with 29 seats, meaning five MPs would get the chop if the election were held today. National would score 71 seats.
Our polling took place earlier this week, before the Liu revelations came to light. It shows disillusioned Labour supporters are now undecided where their loyalties lie. Respondents who voted Labour in 2011, and planned to do so in September, fell from 81.6 per cent in February to 61.3 per cent. The drop in support is greatest among 30 to 44-year-olds.
Ipsos managing director Matt Benson said past Labour voters were now unsure who to vote for.
"An increase in alternate party activity on the Left side may have traditional Labour voters weighing up their options and thinking again about Labour. On the other side, as the party options for conservative voters reduce, we are seeing them flock to National." 

This truly is a terrible poll for Labour, and it's not the news they needed this morning after a brutal day in the spotlight yesterday. Here's the poll in graphical form:

Every sandwich needs a filling. For this poll sandwich, the filling has been the revelations that Donghua Liu made donations to the Labour Party, and that Mr Cunliffe wrote to the then New Zealand Immigration Service on behalf of his constituent back in 2003, which was a time when Labour supported business migration from China. The latter revelation came just a day after Mr Cunliffe had denied ever advocating on behalf of Donghua Liu.

If Labour MP's were looking for an excuse to change jockeys in the run-up to the Big Race on September 20th, Mr Cunliffe has obliged. Add to that suggestions from this latest poll that five Labour MP's could be looking for employment after the General Election, and a casual mood for change within the party could become more urgent.

David Cunliffe was in a defiant mood yesterday afternoon; publicly, at least. But he flew to Auckland to appear on Campbell Live last night, and we wonder if there have been any behind-the-scenes discussions in his absence. We wonder if the Campbell Live appearance was a tactical error from Mr Cunliffe, rather than hunkering down in the War Room with his Chief of Staff Matt McCarten, and planning his strategy.

Today will be a very interesting day indeed. We heard whispers last night from a very surprising source not too distant from the Labour Party that two Labour MP's have been counting their numbers, and that one in particular believes they have enough support. This poll may be a catalyst to act, but it may equally be a catalyst not to act, and to wait for the post-election fallout.

Stay tuned; and we hope that Mr Cunliffe doesn't choke on his poll sandwich.

0 Quote of the Day - 17 June 2014

Danyl at the Dim-Post has been collating results of all the political polls around the place. And as he has added this morning's Herald-DigiPoll to the mix, he makes this pithy observation:

Updated the tracking poll to include the Herald digi-poll and last Roy Morgan poll, both of which are ‘bad for the left’. Bias corrected version below. Non bias corrected over the break.
What jumps out at me here is the comparison with the last election. Labour are trending down, just like last time – but now their votes are (mostly) going to National, not the Greens. Which makes sense to me: we have no idea what National plans to do in its third term, but that lack of vision is still preferable to being governed by a collection of left-wing parties who all hate each other but want to run the country together.

Now given that Danyl is not exactly a supporter of the parties of the political Right, this is a very candid admission on his behalf with regard to the parties of the Left. He is however (and Rex will not approve of us saying so, but it's our blog!) right on the money.

0 100 days to go

UPDATE: There seems to be a glitch in the system, so we've taken the poll down for a wee while. Like the Labour Party with all its promises, the system doesn't seem to be counting at the moment...

*************************

The Herald notes that there are just 100 days to go before New Zealand goes to the polls on 20 September 2014.

To mark the occasion, we've kicked off our June political poll a day early. We've also combined the Internet and Mana Party, given Kim Dotcom's recent purchase of Hone Harawira's party.

As usual, the poll will close on the 20th of the month at 7pm. It will then be three months to the minute to when the polls close for the 2014 General Election.

We realise that this poll is completely unscientific; we don't need to be told that! But it's our blog, and we decide what gets published here, so polling it is!!

Thanks in advance for taking part. We'll report back when the polls close.

0 Quelle surprise...

As regular readers will be aware, Martyn Bradbury is paid by several unions to run the Daily Blog. He's also paid by his bestie Kim, and the reason for that is now apparent.

The Daily Blog is, like us, running unscientific election polls. Here's the latest one, sent to us by a reader who took one for the team and ventured over there:

It's interesting that Martyn Bradbury's blog is the only place that has MegaMana featuring prominently in a poll. Perhaps Martyn has been spending his days voting, deleting the cookie, voting, deleting the cookie, voting etc etc.

But it's also interesting that at a blog funded by the union movement, with many of said unions affiliated to the Labour Party, Labour is trailing both MegaMana and the Greens, with a mere 20% of the vote. 

If Labour can only register 20% of the vote on a blog which should be friendly towards it, the party is going to be in big trouble when it goes to the country in September.


Footnote: The latest Keeping Stock political poll will go up on Friday morning, and will remain open until 7pm on Friday 20th June; exactly three months from the moment when the polls close in the 2014 General Election.

0 A self-fulfilling prophesy

John Armstrong waxed lyrical about the Labour Party in his Saturday Herald column. It started like this:

It must surely be tempting fate to mention it, but there are definite signs that Labour has finally emerged from its long bleak winter of dysfunction, despair and inertia.

We wonder what Mr Armstrong will be saying today, after three polls in the last week all showed Labour going backwards.

And we doubt that David Cunliffe will be in any way grateful for John Armstrong's self-fulfilling prophesy. The piece was so out of touch with Armstrong's normal pieces that we even wondered whether Hey Clint and Matt McCarten had managed to hack Armstrong's NZ Herald access, and submit their own column in Armstrong's name!

So we think that Mr Armstrong will be getting a call from Mr Cunliffe's press secretary today, who is also named Cunliffe. He'll be asked not to tempt fate in the future, and to refrain from self-fulfilling prophesies, thank you very much!

0 The Keeping Stock Political Poll - May 2014

Our most recent political poll closed at 7pm on Tuesday night. 320 people exercised their choice, an increase from the numbers who participated in April. 

There wasn't a lot of change this month, and David Cunliffe will be grateful that Labour was up two percentage points to 2%. Here are the results, in graphical form:

Some commenters have suggested that these polls are a waste of time, given our obvious political leanings. We reject that.

We make no claim that these polls are in any way scientific, and we accept that they are likely to be skewed in favour of right-leaning parties. But anyone can visit Keeping Stock, and pretty much every month the number of people visiting our blog increases; except when we take holidays! The polls are open to anyone who wants to express an opinion, whatever their politics are.

The polls are what they are, and we will continue with them until the General Election on 20 September.

0 The next Keeping Stock Political Poll

We've just loaded up our second Keeping Stock Political Poll for the 2014 General Election. You can vote up until 7pm on Sunday 20th April, which will be exactly five months before the polls close on election day.

We had an exceptionally good response to our poll last month, and it will be interesting to see if this poll has a similar trend. That's of course only going to happen if people express an opinion, so the ball's in your court.

We will continue this polling in the week leading up to the 20th of each month up until September. We've been out of town over the weekend, hence the delay in getting this poll up and running.

Thanks (in anticipation!) for participating. We look forward to sharing the results with you soon after polling ends.