Poll dancing (Patreon)

Before Tova O'Brien had even finished discussing last night's poll result, National had a press release out saying this was a rogue poll: one of those outlier polls that happen occasionally but are completely detached from reality. In her interview for the news broadcast, National leader Judith Collins also repeated that it must be a rogue poll.

Very Winston response that.   

Some other gallery journalists who got the press release from National were a little surprised, saying they'd never seen a major party (that wasn't NZFirst) just dismiss a poll as rogue before.

Straight after the poll came out my phone blew up with people from National - MPs and others - saying this poll was miles away from their internal polling. Similar sort of a message that Gerry gave in the National press release.

Except nobody released National's internal polling to support this.

Couple of things to think about here. Firstly, this is the opinion polling that has come out since we went into lockdown:

You'll note that there is only one poll that has National above 31, and that's the Colmar Brunton poll that ran on 1 News last month. Colmar are known to favour National anyway. Maybe that was the rogue poll?

Also, it's weird that if this was a rogue poll, it was only National and Labour who were effected. You'd think we'd see some variance with the other parties, but they are all hovering closely to all other polls.

And finally, even if we take what a bunch of National folk are saying as gospel, and that this was a rogue poll, how far out is it? Even if it's 10 points for both National and Labour - and a 20 point variance would be a *huge* variance - that puts National on 35 and Labour on 50. That's still ... not good for National.

I can understand why National are desperate for this poll not to be viewed as reality. This sets a narrative that they are sinking very quickly. It can make volunteers dispirited and not want to come out and help. It can depress the vote if your core base just don't bother going out on election day if they think you're going to get smashed. So good on ya National, at least you're trying.

Collins got about 14% as preferred PM which is concerningly small for a politician who is very well known. It's about the same that Muller got, who was not well known. This means that there is a core 14% of the country who would vote for National no matter who was in charge (except Simon Bridges). So 14% is their floor I reckon. 

With Labour polling so high, it now becomes a case of those left Labour voters deciding if they want the Labour MP ranked 75 to get in, or if they want to chuck their vote at the Greens so that numbers 1-8 get in.