Voters focus on 3 key issues in week #5
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