Editorial: Voice of people content

In an ideal democracy the voice of the people would be heard during election campaigns as strongly as the voices of those seeking their votes. The campaign is, after all, an employment interview and it is a sorry employer who must sit largely silent while the applicants compete to second-guess what it is the employer most wants.

The tendency these days is to imagine the voices of the people were much better heard when politics happened in town halls and on soap boxes at street corners. But, in truth, the only voices likely to emerge from an audience back then were those of the loudest wit, or a heckler from a rival party, or the odd character with a local axe to grind.

Television put an end to public meetings. These days campaigns are conducted almost entirely through the media. Events are staged for the camera. If there is an audience it is likely to be small, slightly bemused to find itself featuring in politics and well vetted to ensure that nothing awkward will be said.

Yet the media in their various ways try to put voters' voices into the hubbub. Radio invites listeners to call in, television does the occasional "vox pop" or sometimes selects an audience to quiz candidates. Newspapers often seek out "typical" voters and monitor their views in more depth. The internet permits exchanges between parties and people on line. Then there are the polls, endless polls.

Properly conducted opinion polls are a valuable gauge of the public response to politicians and parties, but little more. They do not easily allow electors to express reasons and concerns except in the most general terms. They may find health or unemployment, for example, to be the main worries of the greatest number but they cannot make a closer inquiry.

People with a product to sell, including political parties for that matter, find that a reliable sample of the population cannot tell them enough. Often they supplement polls with selected panels, "focus groups", that can answer open-ended questions and elucidate their views. Qualitative research, as they call it, attempts to find out why and to what extent people think as they do.

The Herald has carried out some extensive qualitative research for this election, publication of which began at the weekend and continues today. With a notebook, pen and a consistent format of questions, reporter Simon Collins has travelled from one end of the country to the other, talking to more than 600 people, on the streets, in supermarkets, wherever he found them.

The results do not claim the accuracy of a statistically selected sample but they come close. By ensuring the age, gender, ethnic and geographical composition of his sample was as close as possible to that of the population, Collins has also produced a sample of party-voting intentions that resembles, remarkably closely, the results of the latest Herald- DigiPoll survey.

He found the country in a generally contented state. Fully 81 per cent of those interviewed rated things "okay" or better. They were usually talking about the economy, which they saw producing plenty of work. Still, when asked what could be improved, the largest number voiced concerns about the economy, jobs and social welfare.

The next most common worry was education, which probably reflects the prominence of the teachers' dispute, and the third was crime. It is easy to dismiss law and order as a hardy annual of desperate politicians, but our survey has found a genuine unease around the country. Far fewer mentioned Treaty of Waitangi issues and genetic modification.

But contentment is the striking conclusion. There is not much that many want to change this year. It is useful to hear it, so long as it is contentment, not complacency.

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