Media Release

19 September, 2005

Keepleftnz.org wins comprehensive victory in polling battle

Keepleftnz.org’s sophisticated poll of polls and its industry-leading poll of poll of polls predicted the on-the-night election result better than all the major polling organisations.

“On average, we only got parties vote shares wrong by half of one percent. And we were never wrong by more that 1.1%. And in our poll of poll of polls, we got within 0.2% for both Labour and National. We rule!” sang John, Paul, and George, more or less in unison.

“Our methods for aggregating polls, and even for aggregating rolling polls, cut through the volatility and vacillation from one poll to the next. We produced an accurate picture of New Zealand’s underlying political attitudes” said a triumphant Ringo.

Keepleftnz’s poll of polls used data from all polls over the previous four-week period, weighted to give recent polls and larger polls more influence over the final predictions.

Yoko beamed: “This is a huge victory for the little guys and gals. Why pay many thousands for a market research company to do political research when you can see ours for free?”

In other news, the price of accessing keepleftnz’s poll of polls is rumoured to increase shortly from zero to “many thousands”.

Table: Poll results released in the last week of the campaign

Polling Organisation Average Error Average Major Party Error Largest Error
Fairfax (Wed) 1.56% 3.56% 3.74%
Morgan (Thu) 1.45% 2.44% 2.63%
NZ Herald (Fri) 1.22% 3.05% 3.86%
TV1 (Thu) 1.19% 3.56% 4.37%
TV3 (Thu) 0.78% 0.58% 1.83%

keepleftnz.org
Poll of Polls (as published) 0.63% 0.76% 1.13%
Poll of Polls (updated) 0.46% 0.40% 0.99%
Poll of Poll of Polls 0.50% 0.11% 1.10%

Notes:

1. The “errors” are calculated using the absolute differences between the predicted and actual (on the night) party vote percentages for Labour, National, New Zealand First, Green, United Future, ACT, and the Maori Party. Major party errors refer to Labour and National.

2. The keepleftnz poll of polls as published on 16/9 did not include the results of the Herald’s poll in its calculations. The updated poll of polls simply adds the Herald’s results into the mix using the usual method.

ENDS

© Scoop Media