The Herald Pref PM rating
The Herald reports:
John Key’s popularity has dived by 8.5 points in the first political poll since Nicky Hager’s book Dirty Politics was released, according to a Herald DigiPoll survey.
Mr Key is still well ahead of Labour Leader David Cunliffe but Mr Cunliffe has jumped by 4.1 points.
Mr Key is preferred Prime Minister by 64.8 per cent, compared with Mr Cunliffe on 14.6 per cent.
The figures do not necessarily reflect the party vote standings which will be released in tomorrow’s Herald.
What this story doesn’t mention until later on is Key’s rating jumped 8% in the last poll, so this takes it back to where it was two polls ago. Here’s his rating since the 2011 election:
- Apr 2012 64%
- Jun 2012 64%
- Sep 2012 66%
- Mar 2013 63%
- Jun 2013 65%
- Sep 2013 56%
- Dec 2013 62%
- Mar 2014 67%
- Jun 2014 66%
- Jul 2014 73%
- Aug 2014 65%
I’ve never known the Herald to release one part of their poll before the main poll. My guess is that the party vote figures have not moved much, so they released this early to try and get a bad news story in, to justify their frenzy over the Hager book.
National were at 55% in the party vote last poll. There is no way they’ll be that high again. The two polls before that were 50% and 51% so anything at or above that level would be pretty good in my view. And recall this poll is taken entirely after the Hager book was released.