The next election is a long way off and new party leaders are still bedding in. But already TV news networks and their political pundits are predicting what will happen next based on the opinion polls they pay for.
Tova O'Brien highlighting Judith Collins' showing up in their latest political poll. Photo: screenshot / Newshub at 6
"Seriously bad news for Simon Bridges," was Newshub's takeaway from the latest political poll commissioned from Reid Research.
But the poll showed his party pulling away from Labour after the Budget and an election is still two and a half years away.
Why would National's new leader worry?
Only 90 out of the 1000 people surveyed chose Simon Bridges as their pick for PM. Newshub political editor Tova O’Brien told viewers this was the lowest rating for a National Party leader in a decade. At the same point in their leadership predecessor Bill English and John Key had rated much higher.
True. But John Key was a party leader up against three-term opponent on the way down and Bill English was already the actual prime minister.
Newshub didnt mention the PM before those two - Helen Clark - who was live on Three just one hour later on the Project.
"Believe me I was a bit down about it when I went down to two per cent," she said.
But five years later she was in the middle of a nine-year run as PM riding high with as much as 45 per cent of the public’s backing in the polls.
That didn’t fit the Newshub narrative of Simon Bridges' job under threat because he was “failing to connect with voters”. (We’re not actually due to be voters again til late in the year 2020 by the way - but that's another story . . .)
Crusher crashes the poll party
There was another reason pundits reckoned this poll was a problem for Simon Bridges.
"Wait a minute! What's this?" Tova O'Brien told viewers with a flourish as if Newhub at 6 was Play School.
It was Judith Collins in the round window.
"With 3.7 per cent, they like her more than they liked Jacinda Ardern when she first appeared in the poll in 2015," she said.
Tova O’Brien wasn’t the only political reporter excited by this.
"National MP Judith Collins is on the preferred prime minister board for the first time," said the opening line on Stuff’s story about Newshub's poll.
The Spinoff reckoned Judith Collins was “storming onto the scene" and a piece in the Herald by political PR consultant David Cormack was headlined "Reasons Kiwis prefer Judith Collins over Simon Bridges" even though the opposite was clearly true for twice as many of people who were polled.
None of these stories mentioned that Judith Collins had already showed up with two per cent support in TVNZ's poll at the end of April.
On Newstalk ZB Mike Hosking predicted Ms Collins' poll rating would overtake Simon Bridges' one after a further few polls and "a spill" would then be on.
"Remember where you heard it first," said Mike Hosking (who also wrote a column titled “Three reason Labour won't win” three months out from the last election).
Is Simon Bridges really ready to be rolled (or crushed) after just a couple of poor personal poll performances? Or is it the story the media want?
"Bridges or Collins? I'd take Collins, and then take a seat - and watch the sparks fly," Mike Hosking wrote in the Herald last year when the National leadership was up for grabs.
On the Newshub website two day before the Newshub poll, Tova O’Brien said maybe National should have picked Judith Collins as leader, dubbing her “the comeback queen.”
And that comeback, according to Tova O'Brien, was media-driven:
"Collins seems to be getting more airtime, more name recognition and landing more hits on her opponents than the man who actually won that leadership contest," she said on the Newshub website.
"Collins doesn't need to leave her electorate or the Wellington beltway - her mug is all over the news and riddled through the papers," she added.
It's the same thing the pundits say about Winston Peters in run up to each election when he and his party surge in the polls, earning him the media’s “kingmaker” title
In last weekend’s Reid Research poll for Newshub Mr Peters got just 4.6 per cent in the preferred PM poll.
But the support for him, Simon Bridges, Judith Collins and everyone else who’s not Jacinda Ardern put together still didn't come close to number that don’t know who they want as PM - or didn't answer the question.
More than 4 in 10 people surveyed didn't choose anyone - though that’s not mentioned in any Newshub story or on the website of Reid Research.
Another day, another poll
TVNZ's political editor Jessica Mutch presents the findings of the latest Colmar Brunton poll. Photo: screenshot / TVNZ1
24 hours after the Newshub poll, TVNZ unveiled its latest one from Colmar Brunton. It returned similar results.
Judith Collins was again picked by two per cent as preferred PM.
But 35% of the 1,000 people surveyed in that poll didn't know who they preferred - or wouldn’t say.
A year ago this week, that figure was a whopping 44 percent.
Around election time, that falls to a about a quarter in the Colmar Brunton polls as people focus on their choices, so another reading of both of this past week's polls is that there’s plenty of time for Simon Bridges and his party to appeal to more of the people due to vote again in late 2020.
But that would crush the story the media seem to want to tell us between now and then.
