Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: Decidedly Undecided, in reply to James Littlewood*,
Small parties all rely on swing voters, much more so than N or L, who’s voters are more likely to know who they’ll vote for further out from the election.
It's really hard to know if that's true. In the case of the Green Party, it would seem less correlated to undecided levels recently, which is some kind of evidence that they don't really rely on swing voters. My story about that is that it's quite an ideologically focused party, so decisions to vote for it are taken in a different way to decisions between purely pragmatic parties. But that's just my story.
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Hard News: Decidedly Undecided, in reply to izogi,
I have trouble seeing the relevance that could be obtained by looking at longer term trends.
Which is curious, if you think about it, because the long term trends are what generates by far the biggest part of where we are, and what happened last night is a tiny contributor. I think the interest comes down to the purpose. If you want to predict the future, then in a highly competitive domain, it's really difficult and short term advantage might be all you can rely on, since the autocorrelation fades off quite rapidly. But if you are hoping to influence the future, particularly at a policy level, or you even just want to come to a decision about what you think should be done about it, the long term trends are much, much more valuable than microanalyzing minor fluctuations.
The currency news borders on hilarious for this reason. You can have articles side by side simultaneously reporting the currency went up for x reason and the currency went down for y reason (and for the double irony, sometimes x=y), especially since the currency can be both up and down at the same time if you are comparing it to other currencies.
But in the long term, the reasons why there might be a sustained drop in a currency can certainly be robustly correlated to other factors at times.
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Hard News: Decidedly Undecided, in reply to Russell Brown,
the Right remains largely and firmly with National.
Well, and there's NZF, whose sudden change in apparent support was a big story for the last election, and could well be again.
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Hard News: Decidedly Undecided, in reply to Thomas Lumley,
Yes, and it's worth noting that decideds are not guaranteed to stay decided for what they decided, or even to stay decided at all.
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Excellent opening night. Big ups to all participating, really like Toi Iti and his panel. But of course I dig this polling stuff big time.
In the current form, the data don’t really provide any evidence for extrapolation to the election.
I don't really see much that could do that strongly anyway. We're talking about a time series in which the main participants compete fiercely, reacting to the polls themselves. But prediction isn't the only purpose in this information. Much more prominent is to understand what's going on, to explain what we saw happening, to even know what happened, so far as overall public opinion is concerned.
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Also, it would be the path of least ascent into the city for people coming off the Northwestern Cycleway. But that would require something better on Newton Rd than contesting an extremely busy on-ramp. It's not the route I usually take, preferring to climb to upper Queen St via the two ascents and descents, just because the cycleway is still safer.
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The case for K-Road seems pretty strong. I use it all the time, it's such an obvious route for bicycles to hug the ridge. Anyone coming from the inner West would probably prefer that over going down College Hill or Franklin Rd, and then having to get back up over the Hobson St Ridge, or worse, skirting right around the bottom of the ridge and having to deal with the Horror of Fanshawe St during heavy traffic.
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Excellent interview Russell. Such a righteous project.
Would love to hear a follow up now on
We are cautiously very optimistic about the new Psychoactive Substances Law in New Zealand. It might not be the perfect solution, but at least it’s attempting something new. [NB: See note in the introduction about the date of this interview.] The current system virtually guarantees that the most available, legal substances that young people are exposed to will be the least well tested and understood. Would you rather have your kids smoke pot or smoke an unidentified waxy solid from China that has effects similar to cannabis? That is, whether you like it or not, a very real question that the public faces.
I'd say that they are right in the main about the importance of trying something new, even if the end result was a complete U-turn. It's information about what can happens when you try a path.
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Very good post. It's still pretty shocking that Parliament would do this. To pass an actual law just to impose a budget constraint, on something so desperately needing more budget, and receiving so little. Quite amazing.
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Hard News: The Letter, in reply to Chris Waugh,
Considering that O'Sullivan and Savage are in the same stable, it's interesting that she points the finger at National. Either she's guessing (and not talking to Savage) or she knows something. I think the latter is more likely here.
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