Beyoncé polling at 4.8% as preferred PM among 18-24s

Beyoncé is the fifth most preferred Prime Minister according to an informal poll run by a youth voting organisation.

The poll, which was undertaken online from 3 - 20 September this year, was put together by RockEnrol, an organisation founded in 2014 with a view to reinvigorate New Zealand’s youth voter turnout.

Beating the singer to the New Zealand’s top job is US politician Bernie Sanders at 5.1 per cent, Green Party Leader James Shaw on 7.1 per cent, with Labour Party Leader Jacinda Ardern very popular among those surveyed, scooping a 53.8 per cent share of the vote. The National Party’s Bill English garnered a comparatively paltry 11.4 per cent.

The poll had 1045 respondents, 63.4 per cent of which were from the 18-24 age group. The next largest group of respondents was the 25-29 age bracket, which represented 15.1 per cent of the sample.

Laura O’Connell Rapira, co-founder of RockEnrol, says the primary aim of the poll was to gauge the issues that matter the most to young people.

“Some young people can be turned off politics because it appears either too dry or too adversarial. This poll was intended to inject a bit of fun into the electoral process,” she says.

“There is an emphasis on trying to figure out why young people don’t vote, but what we really need to find out is what young people want - what are the issues that they care most about?”

“What we have found is that young people do care very much about a broad range issues,” says O’Connell Rapira.

Free tertiary education, which is often touted as a self-serving interest for young voters, was the number one issue for only 4.5 per cent of participants.

The most important issue by far among those polled was housing (“Ensuring everyone has a warm, dry home”) at 28.4 per cent. Climate change was next on the list at 16.7 per cent, then job fulfillment and security (13.8 per cent), health (12.7 per cent) and increasing tax on the top earners (9.2 per cent).

Whether it is unconstitutional to be a Queen Bey and a Prime Minister at once remains unclear.

The poll is still live and can be found at http://poll.rockenrol.org.nz/

ENDS

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