Speaker 1: You're listening to the Weekend collective podcast from News talks'd.
Speaker 2: Be right into the politics solo. Last week, as I
Speaker 2: referenced briefly, the latest one News variant pole had national
Speaker 2: and labor down, while an r NZ Read poll done
Speaker 2: the same week had national down, Labor up, and one
Speaker 2: of them had one side forming a government, the other
Speaker 2: had another side, and the Taxpayers Union Courier poll had
Speaker 2: both up. You'll see the same with overlapping polls by
Speaker 2: different agencies showing significantly different results. So why are we
Speaker 2: doing polls this far out from an election? What are
Speaker 2: we looking to learn from them? And so I thought
Speaker 2: we'd have a chat with our Taxpayers Union executive director
Speaker 2: Jordan Williams, who joins me now, Jordan, good afternoon.
Speaker 3: Get Tim.
Speaker 2: What's the point of political polls at this time of year.
Speaker 3: Well, it gives you a snapshot on the government. Is
Speaker 3: that relative to the other parties of course, or you
Speaker 3: always say, you know, don't look at any particular poll.
Speaker 3: It's the trend that matters. And what all the polls
Speaker 3: are telling us is that it's actually very close each
Speaker 3: In the TVNZ and the r n Z Read research.
Speaker 3: You know, TVNZ had a majority of the center right,
Speaker 3: I think of two seats. R INZ had a majority
Speaker 3: of the cent to the center left of two seats.
Speaker 3: Both of those tell you it's very close indeed.
Speaker 2: Okay, so just explain to me. I've got a bit
Speaker 2: of a beef, which you can probably allay with the
Speaker 2: margin of area of three point one percent. So one
Speaker 2: News spend a lot of time talking about all such
Speaker 2: and such as down one or down two. It's all
Speaker 2: within the margin of era being three point one percent,
Speaker 2: which I understand means if somebody scores, say ten percent,
Speaker 2: we're confident that they're in reality between seven and thirteen percent.
Speaker 2: So can you put that in perspective for me, because
Speaker 2: it's almost never any not even lip service paid to it.
Speaker 3: That's not quite right, of course, So that when they
Speaker 3: talk about the the margin of era, what they mean
Speaker 3: is sorry to put a stats head on, but go
Speaker 3: for it. It's an era, it's a confidence interval, and
Speaker 3: so you you know, statistically it's it's either ninety or
Speaker 3: ninety five percent confidence it's within that bound. So there'll
Speaker 3: always be rogue poles, you know, I talk about with
Speaker 3: a taxais union pole, you know, one and twenty in
Speaker 3: theory is rogue, which is why I say you never
Speaker 3: put a particular emphasis on one pole. It is the trend.
Speaker 3: And that's really why the tax Boers Union started polling
Speaker 3: with our monthly polls is because there's the media have
Speaker 3: pulled right back. What you get is, I mean ran
Speaker 3: zet I think are polling every three or six months,
Speaker 3: and you sort of that the media like to dial
Speaker 3: it up to eleven, that there's some huge significance in
Speaker 3: this pole. The good thing about monthly polling is that
Speaker 3: if you've got sort of three consistent poles that start
Speaker 3: to show a trend, then that's when you would put
Speaker 3: put meaning into it. But just to pull you up.
Speaker 3: The confidence interval or the margin of vera is done
Speaker 3: at the fiftieth percentile, and if you go back to
Speaker 3: your fifth form stats, you'll know that as the number
Speaker 3: goes down, the confidence into or the margin of era
Speaker 3: goes down. It really infuriates me when I read in
Speaker 3: a court judgment some years ago this stupid High court
Speaker 3: judges not understanding basic stats. They talk about you know,
Speaker 3: that's parties in the margin of era, meaning it could
Speaker 3: it could have it could have none, or it could
Speaker 3: be double that's nonsense on Steltz because of course the
Speaker 3: margin of ERA is about half once you get to
Speaker 3: blow about ten percent.
Speaker 2: Okay, So I guess the margin of ERAa is more
Speaker 2: relevant to the parties who are polling thirty forty percent.
Speaker 2: So if somebody's polling forty percent, it could be you know,
Speaker 2: there's a ninety five percent confidence. Basically it could be
Speaker 2: within close to three points other side.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And of course the secret source for the different
Speaker 3: polsters is that there are various different ratings. I mean
Speaker 3: I can, of course I'm not a polster. I simply
Speaker 3: contract of polling companies to do the texpos. You can
Speaker 3: poll each month, but our supplier, we go back through
Speaker 3: the elections, has tended to get that right than say
Speaker 3: the closest the least wrong out of all the poles.
Speaker 3: And in some of that secret source or the difference
Speaker 3: between perhaps Radium New Zealand Television New Zealand, is each
Speaker 3: polster waits on slightly different things. So for example, some
Speaker 3: polls I think that the are in ZED won the
Speaker 3: Australian company that did the worst of the Australian election
Speaker 3: are variant. You know, I think they are online only
Speaker 3: and you get some that have a particular waiting for
Speaker 3: phone calls, some which include cell phones now some just
Speaker 3: online panels which can be which you know, attract a
Speaker 3: different demographic. And then of course you've got I think
Speaker 3: television New Zealand weight for all of age, ethnicity and
Speaker 3: education status, where I don't think are in z weight
Speaker 3: for the education status. So there's lots of sort of
Speaker 3: that modeling behind the scenes is kind of what you're
Speaker 3: paying your expert pole stuff for their expertise than were
Speaker 3: Sorry they won't let me say this, but from a
Speaker 3: third party suspective, it looks a little bit of an
Speaker 3: art rather than a strict science. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Actually, by the way, I think I'm pretty sure read
Speaker 2: research is online only and I think very into a
Speaker 2: mixture for my memory around. Yeah, but I guess the
Speaker 2: question is, I mean, how how much does methodology matter?
Speaker 2: Because I just asked chat GPT and it gave me
Speaker 2: some interesting answers around the propensity of online polling to
Speaker 2: maybe favor people who are a little bit more technologically
Speaker 2: literate and also anyway, but I mean, what do you
Speaker 2: think about the method of online versus phone versus I
Speaker 2: don't know, in the middle.
Speaker 3: Of the studio you get every three years, you get
Speaker 3: a sort of you know that they have to pony
Speaker 3: up and you get the actual results in the leeching,
Speaker 3: and of course you can compare against all the different
Speaker 3: polling companies. The other reason we use polling and we've
Speaker 3: found it so useful though, is the polling of issues.
Speaker 3: So do you think back years ago to when we
Speaker 3: were doing our three Waters campaign. As part of the polling,
Speaker 3: we were not necessarily releasing it every month, but that
Speaker 3: for us was quite a useful benchmark to know how
Speaker 3: we were going in terms of that campaign. And it
Speaker 3: was quite quite incredible the dramatic change within a month,
Speaker 3: and it was the moment we won. It was actually
Speaker 3: when the mayors of Auckland and christ Church came out
Speaker 3: together against three Waters. Now, of course it required twelve
Speaker 3: months of campaigning beforehand to get to it, but we
Speaker 3: could tell just immediately a dramatic jump. And so from
Speaker 3: a lobbying campaign perspective, and I'm sure the parties would
Speaker 3: they might not be quite as open, but that's the
Speaker 3: sort of thing they're looking for. Similarly, around issues, you
Speaker 3: will know that we often release favorable unfavorable results on
Speaker 3: politicians I can tell you that I get politicians calling
Speaker 3: me saying, why don't you put my name in the
Speaker 3: preferred PM. Well, it's actually unprompted, I won't name, and
Speaker 3: shame that those particular politicians come on the other one
Speaker 3: that we don't release it all. We certainly do release
Speaker 3: it every month to our members and supporters, but that
Speaker 3: is country right and wrong direction? Do you think the
Speaker 3: country is going in the right or wrong direction? And
Speaker 3: that tends to be a precursor to the party vote.
Speaker 3: I've sort of noticed that if that dramatically shifts, it's
Speaker 3: usually three or four months later you start to see
Speaker 3: a shift in the party vote between the government and
Speaker 3: the opposition.
Speaker 2: I guess i'd probably answer the question do you think
Speaker 2: the government's going in the right or wrong direction? Because
Speaker 2: the country could be going in the wrong direction for
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of reasons, I guess. But that's the
Speaker 2: art of the poll, isn't it. Are you happy with
Speaker 2: the way the media report polls?
Speaker 3: Well? I find it interesting that and I think it's
Speaker 3: it's sort of pasted the parcel of having particularly television
Speaker 3: US out and not doing as many poles as they
Speaker 3: used to. That they dial the results of every pole
Speaker 3: up to eleven. I mean, you think about it. You know,
Speaker 3: we're a humble taxpayers union. We're a pressure group. You know,
Speaker 3: we have we wear our mission on our sleeves. And
Speaker 3: yet I'm pretty confident that a lot of our poles
Speaker 3: we just play down the middle for what they are,
Speaker 3: as opposed to dial up to eleven as some sort
Speaker 3: of disaster melt down the beehive because of one single pole.
Speaker 3: As I say, poles will bounce around. It is the
Speaker 3: trend over time that matters. And that's why I think
Speaker 3: from our perspective, monthly polling is so good because once
Speaker 3: you're starting to see sort of three poles in a
Speaker 3: row showing a significant difference from say six months ago,
Speaker 3: that NAT is telling you something much more than a
Speaker 3: single pole or a single snapshot.
Speaker 2: What about internal what about parties political parties internal polling?
Speaker 2: What sort of caution notes of caution should we have
Speaker 2: if any on those ones, Well, they'll.
Speaker 3: Only lead them of cocause because we can see what's
Speaker 3: going on. I find it delightful the way that the
Speaker 3: parties only lead their internal poles when it's helpful to
Speaker 3: them or to trip up the other side. They're probably
Speaker 3: more interested in the reaction to political scandal or events
Speaker 3: of the day than a group like the Texpaths Union.
Speaker 3: But the reports that we send to our we called
Speaker 3: our Texpower Caucus, our most generous supporters, is in effect
Speaker 3: the reports that the leader of the opposition and the
Speaker 3: Prime Minister is getting also every few weeks or every month,
Speaker 3: depending on the party, with that real granular data. So
Speaker 3: an example would be how was the center right or
Speaker 3: how is a particular party doing in rural communities or
Speaker 3: with a particular gender for example. Now, of course, as
Speaker 3: you get more and more specific, your sample size gets
Speaker 3: lower and lower, and your margin of error gets larger.
Speaker 3: But again, you put a number of polls together, you
Speaker 3: start to get really meaningful data. We did that with
Speaker 3: the mayors last year. We asked over a series of
Speaker 3: about eight poles to rank your performance or rate the
Speaker 3: performance of your local mayor. And then for those for
Speaker 3: those cities where we had enough I think it was
Speaker 3: sort of over three hundred responses, we ranked the performance
Speaker 3: of every mayor. Now we got some angry emails, but
Speaker 3: why didn't you do our mair? Well? The short point is,
Speaker 3: and for some small councils, we just didn't have enough
Speaker 3: responses even over a long time frame.
Speaker 2: Statistically meaningful data should have a fun inbox to look
Speaker 2: at just a couple of quick questions. What's the red
Speaker 2: flag tip for you that makes you go no, I'm
Speaker 2: not buying that result. Is it just a statistical anomaly
Speaker 2: where it stands out from all the others? I mean,
Speaker 2: would there be a time when you look at your
Speaker 2: own pole and go, oh, hell.
Speaker 3: Well, of course, I'm One of the great things about
Speaker 3: doing polling is that any political leader will take your
Speaker 3: phone call every month to give them the heads up,
Speaker 3: as it really is a courtesy all the leaders officers
Speaker 3: or the leaders of each of the political parties and
Speaker 3: give them a heads up three or four hours before
Speaker 3: public release. And the line I have found I use
Speaker 3: when it is quite a shift in the polls, as
Speaker 3: I say to them, you know, well, you know one
Speaker 3: in twenties a rogue and this could be a rogue.
Speaker 3: This hasn't setted recent polls, but then again there's been
Speaker 3: a few of our polls where subsequent Television New Zealand
Speaker 3: staff Roy Morgan have actually confirmed our results. So you
Speaker 3: don't really know at the time, but if it's if
Speaker 3: you can't explain a dramatic shift. The one I find
Speaker 3: really interesting is that January. We usually first in the
Speaker 3: field in sort of mid January, and there's been a
Speaker 3: few summers where there's been quite a shift in the
Speaker 3: polls that sort of we haven't been able to unable
Speaker 3: to explain subsequently confirmed by subsequent polls. But I will
Speaker 3: admit that those poles I have thought this be a
Speaker 3: roague because as I say, one in twenty has those
Speaker 3: two large parties outside the confidence in the marketing of error.
Speaker 2: Hey, I really appreciate your time this Aftener and Jordan, Hey,
Speaker 2: just one quick question. Actually, have you ever done a
Speaker 2: poll on how we feel about our nuclear free status?
Speaker 2: Because I reckon that there's a lot of assumptions made
Speaker 2: about that. This is just one a completely different issue.
Speaker 2: But can I nominate that for a question? Do you
Speaker 2: think we should cling on to our nuclear free status?
Speaker 2: And I reckon you do that you'll be in for
Speaker 2: an interesting result.
Speaker 3: I actally think we should. We have quite a long
Speaker 3: list of things that we'd love to poll on, but
Speaker 3: we tend to stick to things that are in the mission,
Speaker 3: in the in our wheelhouse of taxes, government waste government accountability.
Speaker 3: But I should add that the only thing is is
Speaker 3: that if we didn't release it and it leaked, I
Speaker 3: would worry that people would say there was some sort
Speaker 3: of conspiracy. I love polling on sort of interesting issues,
Speaker 3: but I am duty bound to keep, you know, keep
Speaker 3: it within the mission.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, stick around because we're going to ask callers
Speaker 2: what they want, what question they'd like you to to
Speaker 2: poll on next and I'm going to throw that one
Speaker 2: over the great Okay, geers, Jordan, thanks very much for
Speaker 2: your time. All rights Jordan Williams, TAXPAS Union executive director.
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