Not right Neale

On Nine to Noon, Neale Jones said:

I worked for some pretty unpopular Labour leaders and I can tell you that is a very bad sign. David Shearer never went into net negative off memory, I think Andrew Little may have dropped once for one poll into net negative, and David Cunliffe was quite frequently in the negatives.

This is absolutely not the case. Not only did every Labour Opposition Leader pre-Ardern have net negatives for favourability, they were not a statistically insignificant -1%, but were heavily underwater.

Phil Goff started off positive until April 2009 and then went seriously underwater. He hit the depths of -45% in mid 2011.

David Shearer also started off positive and stayed above 0% until July 2012. He hit a low of -28% in July 2013 but had recovered to -10% when he was rolled.

David Cunliffe never got positive and his nadir was an unimaginable -52% after he lost the 2014 election but declared he wanted to stay on.

And far from Andrew Little only once dipping below 0%, he only once dipped above 0%. Little stayed positive until only March 2015 and he spent two years underwater and also ended up on -28%.

The hundreds of thousands of people listening to Nine to Noon will have been totally misled by that statement.