Labour and Greens well ahead | The Jackal

20 Apr 2013

Labour and Greens well ahead

You'd be excused for missing an article in the NZ Herald today about the latest Roy Morgan poll on voting intention. Relegated to a brief 100 words on page five, it fails to mention some important facts, with the online version not much better:

The latest Roy Morgan political survey shows the support for Labour and Greens has bumped up enough to give a Labour-Greens coalition the seats it would need to govern.

The Government has taken a major hit in the new poll, which shows National down 3.5 points to 40.5 per cent last month.

Support of Labour is up one point to 35.5 per cent and the Greens edged up slightly to 13.5 per cent.

The gap between the two major parties has tightened - the smallest since the 2008 election when Helen Clark's Labour Government lost the election and brought the current National Government, led by John Key.

Since Mr Key became leader of National in November 2006, the National vote has never dropped below 40.5 per cent and has not dipped below that mark since October 2006 when Don Brash was still leader of the party.

Gary Morgan states:

Today’s result is a clear boost to Opposition Leader David Shearer and comes as National faces a number of challenges that appear to have dented its support — the axing of 140 jobs by the Department of Conservation, the ongoing Novopay Payroll Issues, the bungled handling of the Kim Dotcom ‘affair’ and serious breaches of privacy by both the Ministry of Education and the Earthquake Commission.

The polling actually shows that a potential coalition government between the Labour party and the Greens is 8.5% ahead of National, and with NZ First they're a whopping 13.5% ahead. So why isn't this news being given more prominence by the MSM?

Contrast that lack of proper coverage with this article showing National up in the Herald Digipoll to 50.9% just before the last election. They subsequently won with 47.31% of the vote, showing just how much biased polling favours the right.

Below is an MMP seat allocation calculation based on the current Roy Morgan percentages. Some marginal electorate seats have also changed to reflect current polling percentages.


If this trend continues, Labour and the Greens look set to form a majority coalition government in 2014.