Tuesday 23 August 2011

Polls, uugh

I don’t usually comment on polls, the mainstay of political blogs and commentators who have nothing much to say.  So I don’t know why I’m bothering now—unless it’s because I hate stupidity as much as I loath the errant certainty that folk always feel about their favourite polls.

Anyway, for all the triumphalism and rending of both garments and alliances over recent polls (the reaction depending entirely on your party perspective, of course), few seem to have observed that even if Phil Goff’s own party does as poorly in this Election as the pollsters expect—as poorly even as Bill English’s did a few years back—the Red Team as a coalition is only a dozen or so seats away from the Blue Team, which has fewer and lesser partners.  And there has never been a time under MMP when a party has scored more than fifty per cent of the vote on election night.

I’m just sayin’…

1 comment:

Libertyscott said...

Indeed, and in 2002 Labour was triumphalist in believing it could win on its own right.

MMP wasn't supporting by the far left for nothing after all.

National's formula for success is actually dependent on Labour winning all of the Maori seats from the Maori Party.