The first ONE News Colmar Brunton poll taken since the General Election last november reveals that National's popularity remains intact, despite the on-going ACC controversy.
The polling was done in the period of Nick Smith's resignation, the on-going ACC controversy, and questions being raised over the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) restructuring.
Despite this, National's party vote support is at 51%, up 1% since the previous Colmar Brunton poll. This would see the party with 65 seats, enough to govern alone.
The Labour Party was up one percent too, to be at 29%. The Green Party rose one percent, to be at 11%.
As usual, the egotist Cameron Slater "thinks" it's all about him:
Labour can put this poor result down to the fact that Trevor Mallard decided to ignore his leader and run a baseless smear against me and Simon Lusk in parliament, and defame Judith Collins outside of parliament.
However there is a far more reasonable answer... the Culmar Brunton poll favours National. Frank Macskasy explains:
On 10 November 2011, a pre-election Colmar Brunton poll gave us these following results,
National: 54%Labour: 28%Greens: 11%NZ First: 2.9%The Election Results, on 26 November, painted a somewhat different picture,
National: 47.31%Labour: 27.48%Greens: 11.6%NZ First: 6.59%
National’s polling on Election Day was nowhere as high as Colmar Brunton’s previous, far-fetched results. (Though Labour and The Green’s results were reasonably close to previous polling, Colmar Brunton had totally under-estimated NZ first’s voter support.)
In which case, Colmar Brunton’s current poll results today (1 April) – which seem to be a rehash of last year’s skewed figures – should be viewed with considerable suspicion,
National: 51%Labour: 29%Greens: 11%NZ First: 3%
What Colmar Brunton’s figure’s do show, is that National’s support is dropping; 54% to 53% to 51% in the polls. That’s a 3 percentage-point drop from 10 November 2011 to 1 April 2012.
Apply that same 3 percentage point drop to National’s Election Day electoral results and you get 47.31% to 44.31%.
Converted to seats: 54 seats out of 120/121. Even if Banks and Dunne retain their electorates, that gives a National/Banks/Dunne coalition 56 seats out of 120/121.
So much for David Farrar's claim that National is up 1% then eh!
However the poll was announced by TVNZ on April fools day, and Culmar Brunton has not made the poll results available on their website, so I'm still a bit dubious.
