Leading up to the General Election on 20th September, Raglan 23 has run a Raglan election poll on who Raglanders will be giving their party vote to. From the first days the Raglan political poll was up, the Green Party moved into first place, well ahead of National in second place. By early September, the Green Party had 39% of the vote with National on 15% and Labour on 12%. By the time the poll closed on 13th September, support for the Green Party had increased to 47%. A big thank you to the 43 people who voted.
In the 2011 election the party vote at the Raglan Town Hall booth was split 32% to National, 27% Green, 23% Labour, 6% NZ First, 5% Mana and 3% Maori, with the other 4% split between 5 other parties.
The Raglan 23 poll may show a swing towards the Green party in Raglan as one week out from the election, the Green party had 47% of the vote with National second on 14% and Labour third on 12%. While in this type of self-selected web poll, the results are based on people with strong positive and negative views, the size of the vote for the Green party may well signal a Green victory coming in Raglan.
While in office, the National Government has pursued a number of policies unpopular with many Raglanders with a strong pro-environment view. It appears that these policies may have rebounded negatively on National’s performance in the poll.
In early September, we asked Robert Moore, the Green Party candidate in the Taranaki – King Country electorate for his thoughts on the poll results: “It’s amazing to see the Green Party on 39% in your recent poll, we would love to see this replicated across the country! This election our priorities are for a cleaner environment, a smarter economy, and a fairer society, and this poll clearly shows how relevant those policies are to Raglan. Issues like deep-sea oil, seabed mining, smart jobs, conservation, climate change, transport, and the RMA also show that our values sit well with the Whaingaroa community. But to make sure we have those values strongly represented in the next government, we need to people to make their party vote Green this election.”
We also asked the candidates of the two other major parties for their views on the poll results.
Labour’ s Penny Gaylor said, “I’ll wait and give analysis and/or comment to the poll on 20 September thanks.”
And National’s Barbara Kuriger added, “This poll is around 3% of the people who voted in the Raglan town hall in the last General Election. On my five visits to Raglan, I’ve talked to many more people than 33 so I’m interested in the poll on September 20th”.
Full Raglan Electoral Poll Results
It’s general election time. On the 20th September my party vote will go to
- Green Party (47%, 20 Votes)
- National Party (14%, 6 Votes)
- Labour Party (12%, 5 Votes)
- Conservative (7%, 3 Votes)
- Maori Party (7%, 3 Votes)
- Internet MANA (5%, 2 Votes)
- The ACT Party (5%, 2 Votes)
- I’m undecided (2%, 1 Votes)
- NZ First (2%, 1 Votes)
- Democrats for Social Credit (0%, 0 Votes)
- Civilian Party (0%, 0 Votes)
- Ban1080 (0%, 0 Votes)
- NZIC (0%, 0 Votes)
- 1Law4All (0%, 0 Votes)
- Focus NZ (0%, 0 Votes)
- United Future (0%, 0 Votes)
- Alliance (0%, 0 Votes)
- ALCP (0%, 0 Votes)
- I don’t plan to vote (0%, 0 Votes)
Total Voters: 43
The Greens are hoping to raise their vote across the country from 11% in 2011 to 15%. Based on the 2011 results, that would equate to a 38% Green vote in Raglan Town Hall. Raglan23’s last poll in July 2011 predicted a 28% Green vote. Will this poll be as accurate, maybe reflecting Raglan concerns about deep sea oil, seabed mining, jobs, conservation, climate change, etc?
My take on this election is that the Greens have made no campaign errors, unlike National and Labour. The Greens look good as stable people who could be in a Government. Both the Colmar Brunton and DigiPoll results show a recent kick up for the Greens. These political polls are very complex and require interviewing the full spectrum of voters and then having a demographic model that pulls it all togther correctly. With a large percent of people no longer having a landline phone, the pollster models assume that people from a similar demographic breakout with only a mobile phone have a similar view. I don’t see that is a valid assumption. For that reason it may be that the election night results are quite different from what the landline telephone polls are suggesting. For this reason, the Green’s goal of 15% may well be achieved.