Media release: Campaign for MMP
Friday June 17, 2011

Voters sticking with MMP

Campaign for MMP says that as the referendum on our voting system nears, a just-released opinion poll makes it clear that New Zealanders are broadly happy with MMP.

Research NZ has this afternoon released an opinion survey which asked voters to choose between our current and previous voting system. (The actual referendum question will feature three other systems also).

They reported that there was a clear preference for MMP at 49 percent, compared with First Past the Post at 33 percent. Their survey was released shortly after 4pm on Radio New Zealand’s Afternoon programme. Research New Zealand said they expected support for MMP to grow.

Sandra Grey, Campaign for MMP spokesperson, said the strong support for MMP echoed support in three other recent polls.

“We’re taking calls and emails from members of the public daily about how they can get involved to make sure we keep MMP.”

She said the best thing MMP supporters could do was to get the message out about this year’s referendum to their friends and family, and through their community networks.

Sandra Grey said that voters clearly want to retain a genuine choice in how they elected their MPs.

“Under our old system, the National Party supporter in a safe Labour area saw their votes totally wasted. The same applied for Labour supporters in National areas, and supporters of smaller parties also."

“MMP is our system. We chose it in 1993, and we’re very close to keeping it. Let’s make sure we do.”

Ends.

Today’s result follows a UMR poll in May which had 50% support for MMP in May, NZ Herald’s January Digipoll with 51% MMP support and a December TVNZ Colmar Brunton poll with 50% support for MMP.

Note: Research New Zealand have not yet posted their survey online. Research NZ's Emanuel Kalafatelis discussed it on Radio NZ's Afternoon programme today - audio of that discussion is here (streaming online) or an mp3 download is here.

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