Molesworth & Featherston (Weekend) – November 25

Direct Link To This Week's Weekend Update Edition:
http://molesworthandfeatherston.info/pdf/Mand25Nov05L.pdf

Rolling poll of polls

New data, grumpy man from Government

At last, some serious action in our rolling poll of polls with two new sets of data, including one from TVNZ showing National leaping ahead. Given that the last TV One poll just two days before the election gave National a six point lead (and has developed a deserved reputation for having a pro- National methodological bias) then we were prepared to take it with a grain of salt and its usual weighting in our poll.

However, so outraged was one of our subscribers - a not exactly disinterested observer as careful readers might detect - that he was moved to write that he hoped “Molesworth & Featherston gets stuck into TVNZ for its complete idiocy in its report on its latest poll result.”

Our correspondent noted that the report on state TV claimed the previous comparable poll was on polling day and had Labour on 39 and National on 39. But, as we have reported above, the last Colmar Brunton poll we know of was on 15 September and had Don Brash’s lot on 44 and Helen Clark's mob on 38, so it couldn’t have been that one.

The election result was 41-39 to Labour so it couldn't have been that one either. Well we can only recommend a little lie down, some deep breathing and a diet of our estimable data once a week as an antidote to all that bile.

The two elephants are roughly where the election left them.

ALSO IN THE WEEKEND UPDATE…

AXE SWINGS

Pages of media tattle for you this week. The columnists who took on the Herald over its payto- see website have quit or been dropped. Page 2.

MEDIA TATTLE

TVNZ gets a new political editor. Simon Dallow moves on, along with the editors of Rip It Up and the Women’s Weekly. Page 2-3.

NOT CONFIDENT

Michael Cullen warns of a ‘rough-lending unless we stop borrowing to spend. Page 4.

TOURISM

After a decade of double digit growth in visitor numbers there are signs the high dollar might have put a dent in short term arrivals. Page 5.

The Weekend Update is a complimentary, condensed edition of the paid-subscription only Governor’s Edition published last Tuesday.

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