policy.net.nz

Press Release

11 July 2002
For immediate release

policy.net.nz shows voters focus on 3 key issues in week #5

The fifth week of the general election has seen voter interests move towards three key issues, the Economy, Education, and Crime and Justice issues.

Voters who use the internet are giving clear signals of what issues concern them. They continue to check out Economic and Tax issues the most (13.6%, up from 12.4% last week), Education issues (12.8%, up from 10.7% last week), and Crime and Justice issues (11.4%, up from 10.5% last week).

Interest in Education issues are at their highest levels of the campaign.

But Health and Defence issues remain second tier in terms of voter interest.

Interest in policy positions continues to grow strongly, with a healthy +11% increase in traffic to policy pages over the prior week.

This free service, www.policy.net.nz, gives voters an easy way to compare what the parties stand for, in the words of each party’s own policy.

The crisp, clean layout of each page makes comparison easy.

Each policy comparison features the party logo (hot-linked to the party’s website), the spokesperson (hot-linked to their bio), and five bulleted key points, in the exact words used by the party, on their website. These bulleted points are themselves hot-linked back to the policy document on the party’s website, allowing direct reference to the original source.

The site traffic stats for policy issues for the first five week period of the campaign are as follows:
Proportion ofPages Viewed each campaign week
Issue #5 #4 #3 #2 #1

Education 12.8% 10.7% 9.6% 10.5% 10.1%
Economy 8.5% 7.6% 8.3% 7.6% 7.7%
Health 6.3% 6.7% 6.6% 6.0% 6.0%
Law&Order 6.1% 5.5% 6.0% 5.3% 5.5%
Justice 5.4% 5.0% 6.2% 5.4% 5.6%
Tax 5.2% 4.8% 4.7% 6.3% 5.9%
Immigration 5.0% 5.2% 3.7% 4.1% 4.2%
Treaty of Waitangi 4.8% 4.5% 4.3% 4.5% 5.5%
Defence 4.8% 5.2% 7.7% 5.4% 5.7%
Social Welfare 4.8% 5.1% 4.4% 4.9% 4.8%
Environment 4.5% 4.8% 4.3% 5.0% 4.2%
Special Interests 4.3% 5.8% 5.7% 4.9% 5.2%
Communications 4.0% 3.7% 4.1% 4.7% 5.4%
Science&Research 3.8% 4.2% 3.4% 4.9% 3.0%
Arts&Culture 3.8% 3.4% 3.0% 3.3% 3.7%
Foreign Policy 3.5% 3.8% 3.8% 3.3% 3.1%
Philosophy 2.5% 2.7% 2.4% 2.5% 2.4%
Industrial Relations 2.5% 2.3% 2.4% 2.6% 2.8%
Transport 2.4% 3.0% 3.4% 2.6% 3.3%
Housing 2.1% 2.1% 2.5% 2.5% 2.6%
Government 1.5% 1.9% 1.7% 1.8% 1.7%
Energy 1.4% 2.0% 1.8% 1.8% 1.7%

Sample size 7,064 6,340 5,676 5,525 5,064
change 11.4% 11.7% 2.7% 9.1%

These categories match those used on the website, and each can be opened to reveal many sub issues. More than 150 specific policy areas are analysed on the site.

The site has no editorial or commentary, and takes no position on any issue.

For more information, contact

David Chaston, Publisher

JDL
PO Box 47-756, Ponsonby
Auckland

Ph: (021) 997-311
Fx: (09) 376-1282
dchaston@policy.net.nz

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