ACT Polling v Election results

A reader asked me to look up and compare ACT’s polling three months before an election with its actual results. I’ve done so with data from One News Colmar Brunton showing the election result, the poll results 90 days out and the difference

• 12 Oct 96 – 6.1% v 3.2% – 2.9% better
• 27 Nov 99 – 7.0% v 5.0% – 2.0% better
• 27 Jul 02 – 7.1% v 3.5% – 3.6% better
• 17 Sep 05 – 1.5% v 2.o% – 0.5% worse
• 8 Nov 08 – 3.7% v 0.6% – 3.1% better

So on average ACT has scored 2.2% better than the TVNZ poll had them three months before the election. In the last election they got 3.7% despite a poll result of 0.6% three months earlier.

In the August 2011 Colmar Brunton poll, ACT were at 1.7%. While this is well below what Don Brash would have wanted or expected, I think people should be very cautious with suggestions that ACT may only have one or two MPs. I believe it is quite possible they could get a result such as they did in 2008 with five MPs or so.