Never believe the opinion polls, particularly in a febrile environment like New Zealand is experiencing at the moment. Remember the leadup to the 2017 election when Labour was on the nose, Andrew Little was its leader and the party was polling in the twenties? A change of leader at the last minute saved the party from annihilation and after some deals were done, Jacinda Ardern emerged as New Zealand’s Prime Minister.
Here in Australia, the Labor party was widely believed to be a shoo-in at the 2019 election. All polls indicated a comfortable Labor victory. Word has it that Bill Shorten was all packed up and ready to move into Kirribilli House. We were on our way to an awards dinner in Frankston on the evening of 19 May 2019. In the car on the way there, I was on my phone checking for early signs as to which way things were going. Exit polls were indicating a comfortable Labor win. At the dinner, I put my phone away to concentrate on the evening. Midway through the evening a friend sitting at our table said to me “Looks like your mate is going to win”. Out came the phone and indeed early results were showing the Liberals in the lead. The recently anointed Liberal leader Scott Morrison became Australia’s Prime Minister.
Opinion polling has changed considerably over the last few decades. As a university student in the early 80s, I worked on Saturdays for the Heylen Research Centre. They were the leaders in opinion polling and their political polls were usually pretty spot on.
Each Saturday we would turn up at the area organiser’s house for a briefing on that day’s work. We were each allocated an Auckland suburb and several streets in that suburb that we had to cover. We went door to door until we had obtained our allocated number of interviews. At each house, we were only able to interview the resident at the house who had last had their birthday. This method ensured a good cross-section of the population.
In this safety-conscious age the way we did market research in the 80s simply could not happen today. My only moment came when I knocked on a door in St Johns and a bloke with nothing apart from a towel around his waist answered the door. I prayed that he would not qualify, but he did. Luckily he ducked away to get dressed and I ticked one interview off my list.
Today most polls are done by phone, and many households do not have landlines. Many people do not answer their phones if they don’t recognise the number or if it is a private number. Online polls are self-selecting and cannot give an accurate measurement.
Opinion polls need to be taken with a healthy grain of salt as they can be wildly misleading. Do not assume that Labour will win on 19 September. It is not a foregone conclusion.
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