An overhang hangover
The prospects of an overhang in the new Parliament have probably been grossly exaggerated. Pundits have long supposed that the Maori Party will win almost all of the seven Maori electorate seats but not win enough party votes to justify these seats, on a strictly proportional basis. However, my gut instinct at the moment is that the Maori Party will win fewer electorate seats than expected (perhaps three or four) and easily get the 3% or so of party votes to cover this allotment.
TVNZ’s Marae programme has released a couple of Maori electorate polls in recent weeks, and both of them have the Labour candidates slashing the hitherto huge leads held by the Maori Party candidates. For example, in Marae’s April poll, John Tamihere was trailing Pita Sharples by 36 points. Today’s poll has Tamihere just 2 points behind. Watching John Tamihere and Pita Sharples on Marae this morning brought home for me how Labour has implemented this remarkable comeback. First, it has a huge amount of money to pour into the Maori electorate campaigns. Second, it can and will argue that a vote for the Maori Party could be a vote for a National-led government. Third, Labour’s response to Pita Sharples’ embarrassing reaction to the Zimbabwe affair will have reminded Maori electors that, Tariana Turia aside, a vote for the Maori Party will be a vote for political novices…
On other hand, the Maori Party probably won’t be very worried about this new poll. After all, they are simply media reports which haven’t been independently verified by the United Nations. So, like with Mugabe’s atrocities, it would be premature for the Maori Party to give these reports any credence 
July 30th, 2005 at 12:01 pm
Aye, but you really should point out that it one of today’s polls that shows the cat-killer back to 2% behind. The other poll, as the Herald points out still has Sharples 38% ahead. Definately some dodgy methodology here!
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10338304
July 31st, 2005 at 11:43 am
How can polls outcomes be so different? and both claim to have a margin of error of 3% or whatever? This seems crazie to me. Do u think that there are cases where people making the polls are triing to use them to influence outcome? I mean polls should be useful information for voters, not weapons to be used against them.?!?
October 26th, 2006 at 10:01 am
i attacked a voter with a poll once, he never voted for National again, not after that little incident.