The news is not good for Labour. One News Colmar Brunton has released its first post-Budget poll and instead of receiving a lift, Labour has lost support among voters.
Labour dropped from 35% support in April to 29% in the current poll. National remained relatively stable on 55%. The main beneficiaries seem to be the Greens and New Zealand First who went up by 3.3% and 2.9% respectively.
The reason for the lack of post-Budget boost is perhaps best explained by another finding - 84% of those polled do not believe the Budget will improve their standard of living. Most rated the Budget as either poor or average.
Prime Minister Helen Clark has dismissed this poll as being "out of line" with other polls. She is correct to point out that different polling organisations have different results. This can be caused by a variety of factors including time of polling and the wording of the questions.
This does not invalidate the poll but simply suggests that it is
best used as an indicator of the trend of support for the various
parties. The trend is found by comparing the latest poll with
previous One News Colmar Brunton polls, not with other
organisations' opinion polls.
The graph is a visual representation of ONE News Colmar Brunton party vote polling data from the 2002 election up to May 2008. Election results in 2002 and 2005 are shown as large diamonds - the light grey lines indicate election dates. The dark blue and red straight lines are the best fit trend lines for National and Labour respectively. Both are good fits to the poll results. The lighter bands represent the 95% confidence limits around these trends.
The trends are striking. National's vote has been growing, on average, by just under half a percentage point (.46%) per month since 2002. At the same time, Labour's support has been dropping by just under a quarter of a percentage point (.23%) per month.
These trends have been amazingly consistent and strong, particularly for National. Don Brash's Orewa speech did seem to alter them for a time, sparking a boost for National (and dip for Labour) in early 2004. This disruption was not sustained and within months of the speech, support for both National and Labour had reverted back to their steady procession along the trend lines.
The trend has also been consistent through three successive National leaders. There was a spike after John Key replaced Don Brash as leader but again, the growth in National support settled back to the trend line.
This suggests that neither event on its own was decisive to National's renaissance. Instead, for six years now National has been heading towards victory and Labour towards defeat.
It is interesting that National's trend line crossed above Labour's before the September 2005 election. That was an election that National therefore could, or perhaps should, have won. The fact that it did not demonstrates that election campaigns matter and that trends are not set in stone. But the gap between the trend lines was small in 2005; small enough to be breached by interest free student loans and Clark's stronger leadership.
What do these trends forecast for this year's election? Making predictions is a dangerous business. Polls must be viewed for what they are - snapshots of opinions past and not predictors of votes in the future. The electorate is volatile and many voters only decide their vote during the election campaign. Support for the smaller parties usually grows at election time.
Most importantly, it is risky to project a trend forwards because trends eventually break. But given its length and strength, it will take a Herculean effort from Labour - and a similarly massive gaffe by National - to sufficiently alter this trend before the election. Labour's Budget was not a trend-breaker.
Moreover, the ever growing chasm between National and Labour makes a repeat of 2005 most unlikely. It is safe to say this: if the trend continues through to the election, even in a somewhat weaker form, National will win. What is even more remarkable, National would win a single party majority government.
But the key word is "if": election campaigns matter and trends eventually break. What is clear is the current polling trends are not good news for Labour.
Source: One News Colmar Brunton polling data
ONE News Political commentator Dr Therese Arseneau is a Senior Fellow in the School of Political Science and Communications at the University of Canterbury
