“[The polling] correctly pointed to a change of government,” Farrar said. “The polls weren’t pointing to a National-Act majority; they were saying you would need New Zealand First. By the time we get final results, that could well be the case.”
Comparing last night’s preliminary party vote tallies to recent polls, it appears National has done slightly better than expected and the Greens and Act slightly worse, though the polls generally were fairly close across the board.
The last Herald Poll of Polls gave National, Act and New Zealand First a 99.8 per cent chance of forming a government after the election, and National and Act a 28.5 per cent chance without New Zealand First.
And it gave the left-wing bloc statistically a 0 per cent chance of forming a government.
Our last Poll of Polls had National at 35.5 per cent of the party vote, a few points under the 38.5 per cent of the party vote it secured in the preliminary results.
Other polls in recent weeks had put National at a party vote share of between 34 per cent and 40.9 per cent. The final poll of the campaign, the 1News Verian poll, had National at 37 per cent.
With hundreds of thousands of special votes still to count, it is possible that National’s party vote share declines slightly between now and the final results, which would make those polls look even closer to the mark, analysts said.
In the past, researchers say, special votes have tended to favour the left-wing parties. According to one study by the Parliamentary Service, National has lost at least a seat or two between preliminary and final results in each of the six previous elections.
If those trends are repeated this time, National-Act’s implied seat tally of 61 could fall below the threshold at which they’d be able to form a government without New Zealand First.
Recent polls more accurately predicted Labour’s share of the party vote.
Our final Poll of Polls had the governing party at 26.8 per cent, compared to the 26.9 per cent share they achieved last night.
Last week’s 1News Verian poll had Labour at 28 per cent, while Newshub-Reid Research put Labour at 27.5 per cent.
Our final Poll of Polls had the Greens at 12.4 per cent and Act at 11 per cent, both a few percentage points higher than their party vote share after last night.
Several recent polls had the Greens higher than their preliminary result, although pollsters say it is not unusual for the party to do better in polls than it does in elections.
The real surprises for the pollsters on the night were in the electorates, Farrar said.
In Auckland, for example, National has turned several seats that were once considered Labour bastions into hyper-competitive races, which was not predicted.
“No-one saw that Mt Roskill or Te Atatū or New Lynn were competitive. These were seats National had never held.”
