Brash now Preferred PM

The Sunday Star-Times reports this morning that Don Brash is now ahead of Helen Clark as Preferred PM.

Brash is the choice of 44% to 41% for Clark. Historically this is almost unheard of. Except during election campaigns, PMs normally rank twice as high as other Leaders due to the incumbency factor.

National also leads Labour 48% to 37% in the all important party vote – almost identical to TV One last weekend.

Clark’s is really grasping at straws when she tries to dismiss the result by claiming the sample of 500 is “absurdly small”. The maximum margin of error (at 95% confidence) for 500 is 4.5% while for 750 which her own polling company uses, it is 3.7%. So the difference in reliability or margin of error is only 0.8% effectively.