The Morgan Poll, Today and Later
As readers will have seen, the latest Roy Morgan poll came out last evening, recording a substantial gain for the left bloc, and a large fall for National.
On last night’s numbers, Labour and the Greens make 45.5%, and along with New Zealand First they get to 51.5%. National languishes on 42.5%, and the Conservatives on 0.5% all but disappear. All this, of course, comes with the usual caveats about one-poll-only, Morgan bouncing around a bit due to a slightly smaller sample size, and so on.
The timing of the poll makes the news even worse for National. Only around half the interviews took place after the Williamson resignation, almost none of the interviews took place after the Collins meltdown, and exactly none of the interviews took place after the revelations about Cabinet Club. The full effect of National’s current horror period is not recorded in this poll.
Looking forward, this means the next Morgan poll, which should come out in the week after the Budget, will likely contain almost none of any Budget bump that National gets, and will instead mainly record the depth of National’s pre-Budget fall.
So I expect the next Morgan poll will remain bad for National, even as it comes out after the Budget. We’ll get a reasonable sense of any Budget bump in the Morgan poll after that.
I’m guessing the other news outlets are holding their next polling for after the Budget, which means their movements will pick up the combined impact of this week’s storms and next week’s Budget. That will be difficult to unpick with any kind of rigour.