New Poll of Polls predictions revealed – how have new results affected election chances?
The current governing parties’ probability of gaining power again has strengthened slightly on the latest NZ Herald-Motu Research Poll of Polls.
That’s despite the gap between the current Government parties – National, NZ First and Act – narrowing with the Opposition – Labour, Greens, Te Pāti Māori – in the new Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll released on Tuesday.
The Tuesday poll results showed the Government bloc on 62 seats, down three since the latest Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll in April. The Opposition bloc was on 58 seats, up three.
Labour was in the lead on 31.9%, but its result was down 1.5 points since the April poll. National nudged up 0.2 points to 30%, NZ First was down 1.9 to 11.7%, the Green Party was up 1.9 to 9.7%, Act was down 2.5 points to 6.5%, and Te Pāti Māori was at 4.1%, up by 1.5.
According to the Poll of Polls model, which takes into account these new results, the probability of the coalition winning a second term after the November 7 election is 89.6%.
That is up from 88.3% when the model was run before Tuesday’s poll.
Motu Research’s senior fellow Dr Stuart Donovan said the model’s results show little change.
The reason why the coalition’s probability of returning to power has increased marginally may in part be down to the emphasis the model puts on Labour’s result in the latest Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll, he said.
Donovan said Labour’s fall was consistent with information from other recent polls. For example, Labour has shifted downwards in the past two Taxpayers’ Union-Curia polls.
“The model is saying we’re actually quite confident that Labour’s support has fallen so that gets a relatively high weight,” Donovan said.
That meant the downward pressure on Labour was flowing through the model and suggesting the coalition’s chances of returning were improving.
The changes for some other parties were “a bit anomalous” within the context of other polling data, so less weight is applied, Donovan said.
Another factor to consider is that smaller parties’ support is inherently more volatile so shifts in their results are given less weight.
“If we get another poll that was to confirm the direction of change that we see in the [Taxpayers’ Union-Curia] poll, which is NZ First and Act falling, Greens and TPM support rising, then that would probably cause the model to update its expectations about the state of the race.”
That may lead the Opposition’s probability of entering office to improve.
The Herald will publish an updated Poll of Polls after new poll results have been released.
The Poll of Polls uses data from public polls and other private or less frequent polls and inputs them into a computer model using polling data going back to 2014. It then runs 4000 election simulations, which are used to form probabilities of various election outcomes.
The average results of the model’s election simulations for the individual parties have also remained relatively static since the last Poll of Polls.
Labour is on 33.2%, giving it 42 seats, while National is on 29.4%, with 37 seats. NZ First is the third most popular party on 13.5% or 17 seats, the Greens are at 8.9% or 11 seats, Act is at 7.6% or 10 seats, and Te Pāti Māori is at 2.2% or three seats.
This would give the coalition parties 64 seats, which is an additional seat to the previous Poll of Polls model result. The Opposition would receive 56.
The seat calculation assumes there is no overhang and Te Pāti Māori receives at least one electorate seat.