August 19, 1999

National should make public its 'Coromandel polls'

Green Party Co-Leader Jeanette Fitzsimons today called on National MP Murray McLean to "come clean" and release the survey results he claims to have for the Coromandel electorate.

She was responding to a press release issued today by Mr McLean in which he said his own polling results were "substantially different" from a poll carried out by independent market research company Reid Research Services Ltd, which showed Ms Fitzsimons two percentage points ahead of Mr McLean in the seat.

The Reid Research Services poll was commissioned by the Green Party but undertaken by an independent market research company using professional techniques.

"I call on Murray to reveal who did his polls, when, what the credentials of the interviewers were, how many people were sampled, the geographical spread of the respondents, how the results were weighted and what the margin of error was," Ms Fitzsimons said.

"We revealed all this in the Reid Research Services poll results."

Ms Fitzsimons said the only point in Mr McLean's statement that she agreed with was that all parties did their own internal polls.

"When they are not professionally verifiable we keep them to ourselves," she said. "All the Green Partys' own polls have shown it is a close race between Murray and myself.

"We commissioned the Reid Research Services poll because we decided it was about time a neutral and professional survey was done of the electorate and if Murray can not release his polls he needs to admit they were not professionally done."

ENDS

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>