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Polls as of May 08. National need a surfboard to ride this wave…

By Conrad Reyners | 17 May, 2008

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Here are the national polls as of May 08. National are absolutely dominating, despite not yet announcing any seriously hard hitting policy initiatives. It looks like tired government syndrome has struck again. Poll results after the jump.

The latest polls, it’s still too early to do any real analysis of the data here, so im opening it up to the floor. What do you guys think? Does National have an unsurmountable lead? And if so, what the fuck is justifying the gap?

Comments

Jeeves
May 17th, 2008 at 2:17 pm

Labour is out of touch and people want a change. Same thing that happened to National in 1999. I guess we’ll hear the serious policy soon, but it will be poll driven and won’t rock the boat. Again, same as Labour in 1999.

Conrad Reyners
May 17th, 2008 at 2:21 pm

But why the shift to the right? Why aren’t the Greens picking up any substantial gains in the polls? According to this poll they are fairly static. I’m just posing that as a question here.

Chris
May 17th, 2008 at 4:06 pm

“despite not yet announcing any seriously hard hitting policy initiative”
Err, broadband?

Conrad Reyners
May 17th, 2008 at 4:20 pm

hahahah you must be joking.

Jeeves
May 18th, 2008 at 12:29 pm

You’d think $1.5 billion was serious?

Conrad Reyners
May 18th, 2008 at 1:08 pm

It’s just parrying Labour’s own policy. Its hardly ‘hard hitting’.

Kerry
May 18th, 2008 at 11:54 pm

National policy has been weak, and “in development” for most of the past 2 years, to the point where they can’t be questioned on any firm policy statements from any other party, because they don’t know where they stand on anything.
(correction: Bill English has always blatently supported education vouchers, whether the party policy reflects that or not… I s’pose that counts as his own personal own-goal, which is something that runs in his family - google his son, Rory English, for interesting blog behaviour!)

Strangely, other parties work out policy positions before designing campaign materials (well, the Greens certainly do, and I think the Maaori Party has headed in that direction, too), so perhaps National might surf towards some better planning before they get caught with the Emperor’s New Clothes showing to all and sundry.

Polls this early often are an indicator of the electorate’s message to the incumbents, rather than a firm indicator of voting patterns to be enacted.
It’s going to be an interesting one, still.
Might be time to stock up on the makings of buckets of G’n'T.

Critical_Lemon
May 19th, 2008 at 4:34 pm

The fibre optic policy is just pandering to a buzz-topic at the moment which is a seriously misunderstood one. While rolling out all that fancy wiring to almost every home in the country sounds nice, there is no actual practical use for it.

Having spoken to a couple of National MP’s (and had two lecture us in POLS111) I’m of the impression that they’re waiting as late as possible to announce policy so that Labour doesn’t adopt the policy itself before most of the country knows about it (like they did in 2005).

Jeeves
May 19th, 2008 at 7:51 pm

Well it’s not parrying Labour policy - you only need to see Labour’s reaction to understand that. I think Critical Lemon is right, though a) it’s a silly policy buzz thing, and b) they don’t want Labour to steal their ideas again.

John Lock
May 22nd, 2008 at 9:43 pm

All the Nats have to do is not make any big fuckups and it’s theirs. Labour aren’t doing badly or anything too wrong - people are just bored of them and want change. If voting in elections was reserved for people who actually understood what they were voting for, the Nats wouldn’t stand a chance. Apart from being incompetent and divided, they’re a front for greedy fat-fingered 90s politicians who don’t give a shit for the average kiwi. These people are simply interested in lining their pockets at the expense of others.

I realise there is the occasional decent hearted Nat, but they aren’t exactly on the front bench. And when they are, they don’t last long. Katherine Rich.

And anyway, the Nats have nothing to offer under 30 year olds. The average older Nat supporter despises young Nat supporters more than they do young Labour supporters.

Wake up young Nats - think for yourselves rather than walking in daddies footsteps.

Critical_Lemon
May 22nd, 2008 at 10:17 pm

There’s a bit of a pattern. Socialist government helps the social side of things for a couple of terms to be replaced by a capitalist one that sorts out the economic mess of the socialists. It works well.

John Lock
May 23rd, 2008 at 7:43 pm

Yeah, unfortunately the Nats keep on screwing the economy up. It’s usually Labout that makes things good. I’d have more respect for the right if they did there job properly. Hell, I’d even vote for them every forth term if so.

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nameflConrad Reyners

Conrad is a very grumpy boy. When he was little he had a curl in the middle of his forehead. When he was good, he was moderately good, but when he was mean he was HORRID. He likes guns, bombs and shooting doves. He can often be found reading books about Mussolini and tank warfare. His greatest dream is to invent an eighteen foot high mechanical spider, which has an antimatter lazer attached to its back.