Sunday, February 18, 2007



Lazy non-journalism

I don't normally comment on polls, leaving it for the party hack blogs to crow or mutter about respectively. But the Sunday Star-Times piece about tonight's One News Colmar Brunton poll annoyed me. After reporting a large lead for National, it goes on to say

If the poll was translated into an election result, National could easily lead a government unless Labour signed up the Greens and another minor party to give a majority in the house.

So, National could easily lead a government, unless it couldn't. Kindof like "it will be fine tomorrow, unless it rains". And they call this "journalism"?

MMP raises some fascinating questions around coalition formation; it's entirely possible that a party could form a government despite not winning a plurality due to its superior ability to negotiate with potential coalition partners. It would be nice to see these issues analysed. Instead, we have the sort of lazy non-journlism seen above.

4 comments:

Surely it is pretty obvious that the most likely scenario is
Labour, Maori, green vs. national-act
With UF probably leaning slightly national's way and any parties who’s votes are not required not being included (labour would shed them in the order Maori, green, UF

To suggest anything substantially different to that seems just stupid. The person writing the article however seems to be implying they think national Maori ACT UF and National are a more likely coalition..

somthing they surely don't actualy believe...

GNZ

Posted by Anonymous : 2/18/2007 09:28:00 PM

And the TV3 poll at much the same time showed Labour ahead.

So it's same old, same old.

Methinks a lot might depend on whether NZF gets back into Parliament.

Posted by dc_red : 2/19/2007 09:37:00 AM

So Natinoal couldn't lead a government if Labour got the Greens and another minor party.

Seems like I can translate this as:

"If the poll were translated into an election result, National could lead a government if it had the support of either the greens or all the other minor parties."

Posted by Repton : 2/19/2007 10:06:00 AM

John: Looking at the seat breakdown (Nat 57, Lab 48, Greens 9, Maori 4, UF 1, ACT 1, Progressive 1), it all comes down to the Maori Party. Which is probably going to be the story of our politics for a while, unless Winston or Peter Dunne make a dramatic comeback at the expense of Labour.

Posted by Idiot/Savant : 2/19/2007 07:45:00 PM