Hard News: Poll Crunch
173 Responses
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I'm relieved to see that the Davis interview raised others' ire.
It was excruciating and devoid of a single redeeming feature. The journalistic equivalent of an ice-cream induced brain-freeze on a summer's day.
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Depending on how the poll that counts shakes down, the Maori Party could get better results from the cross benches.
Discuss.
Much more convincing than your insistence that the Greens might not do what they've said. You might well be right. But I don't think it would take long for the public to get tired of it ...
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Ms Todd appears to also have had her tires slashed, presumeably by republicans
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The commission's big job in the past couple of years has been developing and executing the family violence campaign. Everything I've seen tells me they've done a notably good job at that.
Which couldn't be done within the Ministry of Justice like the rest of crime prevention?
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Greg I tend to agree. If an overhang makes the government against the proportions, it would not be something I'd be proud of, even if I'd generally prefer Labour over National. But it does seem that close calls are built into MMP since a Labour/National alliance is unthinkable to most. That means the third parties can and will push as hard as they can, preferring the situation that the big party is held in by only a few votes. Any time a government is getting cocky on account of it's large coalition, some piece of that coalition will flirt with opposition to keep the partner 'honest'. Naturally no honesty is required of themselves, although purely ideological ones like ACT and Greens will tend to be anyway. But the creepy personality based ones, and the race based one, can and will flip into power at whim.
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Depending on how the poll that counts shakes down, the Maori Party could get better results from the cross benches.
Discuss.
If they're genuinely a centrist party you mean? In the mould of the European centre pivot parties? Perhaps. It's not been a strategy successfully implemented in NZ thus far. I'd've thought NZFirst recent arrangement with Labour was a more likely... but given that that was decried by National, surely they'd never agree?
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Obama really dialled it up for his closing-the-deal speech in Ohio a few hours ago:
That was mighty.
And in case Flash embedding is broken (it's working for me on that clip, but not on others -- I'll get that fixed) click here.
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Much more convincing than your insistence that the Greens might not do what they've said. You might well be right. But I don't think it would take long for the public to get tired of it ... But I don't think it would take long for the public to get tired of it ...
Oh, I'm sure the Greens will do exactly what they say -- as far as they've gone. Jeanette went to considerable pains last night to make it clear that a coalition with Labour is very far from a done deal, but I guess certain sections of the commentariat (both left and right) will never get that memo.
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As for public fatigue with a Maori Party holding the balance of power from the cross benches? Perhaps perhaps perhaps, but (to coin a phrase) don't blame me I didn't vote for MMP. I'm just living with it like everyone else. -
And just for my own information, has anyone asked Key and Clark for a straight yes or no, on the record answer to this straight question: If entrenching the Maori seats was the ONLY barrier to forming a Government, would your party support the Maori Party's bill through all stages?"
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Which couldn't be done within the Ministry of Justice like the rest of crime prevention?
Or the Ministry of Social Development?
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If the gift of rhetoric consists of the ability to take what from anyone else would sound sappy and hokey cliché and turn it into inspiration and belief then my goodness, that Obama has the gift.
McCain just looks old and tired and Palin mean spirited when they go up against that sort of speech making. -
Jaysus! Does Wishart know?
I get it now. Ewww on me. :) Along with, though I'd love to see the Wishart expose on Tairana Turia's Marxist bi-sexcapades. Just not after a full meal.
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__Which couldn't be done within the Ministry of Justice like the rest of crime prevention?__
Or the Ministry of Social Development?
I guess so. Except it wasn't. Even if you don't see a need for the commission, it seems churlish to deny that it has executed an important project well.
This current campaign represents the first time a comprehensive strategy has been applied to family violence, taking in government agencies, support organisations such as Women's Refuge and the police. I'm no fan of Dunne himself, but I think credit is due to the commission.
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That was mighty.
Good lord was it what.
Interesting to note the closing out music though... pretty sure that was Mr Wonder - Signed, Sealed, Delivered? Stoked that he's dropped the country rubbish and gone back to what's awesome about America (yes, I'm looking forward to Thursday) but that's a pretty loaded message!
And re this "tell people where who you're going to go with in advance" stuff - while I certainly would personally prefer if I knew where that vote was taking me, I'm also comfortable (perhaps comfortably naive) that people vote knowing who they're voting for. And if that involves a lack of clarity on possible coalition agreements then so be it. -
Lines give the mean estimated by a Loess smoother
And here was me thinking that a Loess smoother was a type of earthmoving equipment specialised for wind-blown soils.
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And this just has to hurt ...
Sarah Palin's home state Anchorage Daily News endorses Barack Obama
Sanity in Alaska. Who would have thought!
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I'm no fan of Dunne himself, but I think credit is due to the commission.
I'll take that further and admit to a surprising respect for a few of the policy platforms that he proposes - tax simplicity etc is particularly appealing to me.
Of course that's then u-boated by the suspicion he'd burn them all for a sniff at being the Minister of Maintaining-Those-Funny-Little-Plants-on-Roundabouts... -
Sanity in Alaska. Who would have thought!
Well, I never held any prejudices about the sanity of Alaskans. At least, not until I heard about Palin.
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The other thing Peter Dunne has in common with the Nats is the desire to sell things ... or in this case, to give them away.
My curiosity was piqued by the juxtaposition of a supposed major oil find with the UnitedFuture policy that the stuff be given away.
I for one have no realistic expectation that there is anything resembling 12.6 billion barrels of recoverable oil on the East Coast. But I am convinced about the desire of Peter Dunne to effectively give whatever is there away to the lowest bidder:
We believe that the general policy should be a zero royalty rate with the government reserving the right to apply a royalty, on a case-by-case basis specific to rate of any medium to large oil field discovered
If anyone could explain the logic of this - and our local UF candidate can't - I'd be much obliged.
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Much more convincing than your insistence that the Greens might not do what they've said. You might well be right. But I don't think it would take long for the public to get tired of it ...
My inner pessimist says that the public would get very tired of it very quickly. To which the only response is "fuck them". The idea of Maori exercising real political power should not be considered automatically horrifying in this day and age, and the fact that it is says rather a lot about how far we still have to go as a society.
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My inner pessimist says that the public would get very tired of it very quickly. To which the only response is "fuck them". The idea of Maori exercising real political power should not be considered automatically horrifying in this day and age, and the fact that it is says rather a lot about how far we still have to go as a society.
Yes, although so far this scenario has been played entirely inside your head, it has to be said - I wouldn't mind seeing it tested in reality. Not saying you're going to be proven wrong, necessarily, but we'd have to just see.
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I'll take that further and admit to a surprising respect for a few of the policy platforms that he proposes - tax simplicity etc is particularly appealing to me.
Tax simplicity is nice. Drowning the government in the bathtub so you can give a couple of billion to the rich isn't.
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Yes, although so far this scenario has been played entirely inside your head, it has to be said - I wouldn't mind seeing it tested in reality. Not saying you're going to be proven wrong, necessarily, but we'd have to just see.
as I said, it's my inner pessimist (as opposed to my outer one). Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.
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Oh wait, haha, my mistake. It was in fact a profile of Peter Davis, the Prime Minister's husband. Perfectly acceptable questions, then, eh?
You need Peter Williams.
When asked by Paul Henry this morning to ask Steve Williams how much he was worth, he said the question was "vulgar" (nice use of the word too), and refused to ask it.
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McCain just looks old and tired and Palin mean spirited when they go up against that sort of speech making.
Nope, they do that just by going up against themselves. When this is all over, could they junk the Rove-bot and release the man I used to respect? As for Palin, I don't care where she goes as long as it doesn't lead back to the Republican nomination in 2012.
My inner pessimist says that the public would get very tired of it very quickly. To which the only response is "fuck them".
A more temperate response is, to get all CSI for a moment, that the evidence doesn't lie. And neither does cold hard numbers. You don't have to like the outcomes, but we do have this tiresome universal suffrage and a secret ballot so suck it up unless you're going to show me credible evidence of massive election fraud.
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