A dedicated polling blog

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I have established a dedicated blog on polls and polling – curiablog.

Curiablog will be a specialist blog on polls and polling, with a mainly (but not exclusively) New Zealand focus.

I hope it will provide the following information:

1. A record of all public polls published within New Zealand, and links to the original data or at least media reports based on that data. This is not just party political polls, but also issue polls.
2. A size and time weighted average of the public political party polls
3. Over time, a guide to useful information on polls and polling including FAQs on issues such as exit polls, why polls disagree etc etc. I will generally link the best overseas content where appropriate.
4. Links to significant overseas polls.
5. Links to and commentary on blog posts on polling from some of the international specialist blog sites.

It is not intended to be a partisan debating forum. Comments are welcome of course, but it intended to be somewhat more sedate than Kiwiblog.

One feature of the blog, which people may find useful, is a sidebar graphic showing the latest size and time weighted average of the public polls.

There is also an excel spreadsheet on the blog which people can download and they can see the individual polls, the weightings, the electorate seat assumptions, and the projected/likely Electorate and List MPs in the future Parliament.

Note that this is all based on the publicly available and published polls. It should not be regarded as a prediction by me on individual seats or candidates. Generally no seat is assumed to change hands unless a poll has been published in the media showing a change.

Other bloggers are welcome to display the graphic on their own sites. It will be updated daily and will automatically update on your site when it is updated here, except at month end. To add it to your own sidebar just copy the text below:

<a href=”http://curiablog.wordpress.com/2008-public-poll-average-calculations/”><img class=”alignnone size-full wp-image-15″ src=”http://curiablog.wordpress.com/files/2008/07/curiappa.jpg” alt=”” width=”161″ height=”355″ /></a>

WordPress doesn’t allow me to place updated graphics in the same location for the whole year, as it files by month. This means at the end of the month the graphic location will change (from “…/2008/07/…” to “…/2008/08/…” etc. So once a month just need to change your text, or copy the new location from here.

I hope people find it useful, It has only modest content for now, but overtime I hope it will be a useful permanent repository of public polling information in New Zealand.