May 01, 2024
Polls fall short on Māori views
A Māori political scientist says Monday’s 1News-Verian poll showing falling support for Government parties missed any Māori perspective.
The poll showed National down two points to 36 percent ACT down one to 7 percent and New Zealand First dropping below the 5 percent threshold to stay in parliament.
Lara Greaves from Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington says Governments usually have a honeymoon bump in the polls after an election, but the coalition seems to be on the back foot.
But she says her doctoral research on the 2011 election showed how minority voices aren’t captured, especially when the sample size is only around 1000 eligible voters.
“Māori were represented by about half in those polls so that’s maybe seven or eight percent of those polled. So I can imagine it’s all intellectual property and their proprietary whatever so we don’t necessarily know all the percentages by ethnicity and sometimes they don’t even collect that data, but generally Māori are underrepresented in these polls, so we don’t get a really good view of how Māori are thinking or feeling,” Dr Greaves says.