The UMR poll deliberately released last week appeared designed to be a hit job on Judith Collins. Most of the press releases carried the headline ‘Unprecedented poll result as David Seymour overtakes National leader Judith Collins in new UMR poll’. According to UMR this was ‘unprecedented’, a statement proved incorrect by David Farrar. He says it’s not unprecedented for a third party leader to outpoll a major party leader. In a 1994 ONCB poll Helen Clark was 6th behind two minor party leaders and went on to do quite well.
This fact illustrates a good point about the media and also UMR for that matter. So keen are they to make a case that there is no fact-checking. Claire Trevett in the NZ Herald gleefully told readers that the poll showed that Seymour was the preferred Prime Minister on 12 per cent leapfrogging Collins on 10 per cent. This is all meaningless margin of error stuff. The poll noted 15 per cent of National voters picked Seymour as their preferred PM. “David Seymour can now claim to be preferred Opposition leader.”
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was, of course, up in the stratosphere at 55 per cent popularity which means, contrary to public opinion we have seen recently, people absolutely love the idea of a bike bridge and being told what type of vehicle they can drive.
They must be overjoyed at the proposed hate speech laws and presumably would love to have an exclusively Maori Upper House. The nonsensical new history curriculum must have also gone down a treat.
The population must be really chuffed that we’re importing and burning low-grade coal by the boatload now. They must be crying out for a tram up Dominion Road and ecstatic that virtually no one is using the Hamilton to Auckland Ghost train.
Claire is overjoyed to point out that National’s party support had dropped to 24 per cent, down three points from the last UMR poll a month ago, while Labour had risen slightly to 48 per cent. So after all I’ve listed above, we can add that people evidently don’t mind that they are shut out of the housing market. Landlords and farmers are supposedly very happy to have all the extra rules foisted upon them, and we are presumably beside ourselves with joy that Marama and Willie are befriending gang members both in and out of prison and that the Human Rights Commissioner Paul Hunt is using our money to give them koha.
YEAH RIGHT! To all of the above.
Having published a few more figures from the poll, only then does Claire let on that this poll isn’t the normal poll UMR does for the Labour Party. It is their monthly omnibus poll for UMR’s other clients where a number of other chosen topics are canvassed.
Now I don’t know how many clients UMR have – 1,199 people took part, though you wouldn’t find my name amongst them – but it is hardly representative of the population as a normal political poll would be. This is a private poll, requested to be released by a private person we are told, just three days after a bad news poll for Labour. A poll completed by Jacinda Ardern’s go-to company for polling. What is going on here?
The answer is in the headline of the media release and the media dutifully picked up on it. Peter Williams on Magic Talk was lauding Seymour and lamenting the fact that Collins wasn’t getting cut through. Duncan Garner on the AM show had Simon Bridges on with that miserable soul, David Parker. Garner was desperate to get Bridges to admit he was mounting a coup to oust Collins. Heather du Plessis Allan and hubby Barry Soper are both convinced Collins is there just to sort the party out until the next leader comes along. Where is the next leader?
The rubbish UMR poll had Collins on 37 per cent preferred leader and Luxon, the only other National MP to rate a mention, on 5 per cent.
The unvarnished truth is that the Government, Ardern especially, want Collins gone.
It is obvious watching Question Time. It’s the sharp wit versus the half-wit. The Roy Morgan poll figures were much more accurate when reflecting the current mood of the country – 38 for Labour compared to UMR’s 48 and 29.5 for National compared to UMR’s 24.
If the media like to acknowledge government handouts in this way, we must not be taken in likewise. It is a well-known trait of dictatorships that one of the important facets of brainwashing the comrades is to get control of the media. We mustn’t fall for it. National have a choice: go for woke or go for broke. To my mind, it is the latter that needs to be uppermost in their thinking, policies and strategies for 2023.
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