Stat of the Week Winner: March 29 – April 4 2014

Congratulations to Myles Thomas who is our Stat of the Week winner this week for nominating the following poll question:

“Statistic: In the latest 3 News-Reid Research poll, when asked if David Cunliffe’s actions were worthy of a Prime Minister, 65 percent of voters, almost two-thirds, said “no”, while only 27 percent said “yes”.

As Russell Brown points out – this question is ludicrous. What does that even mean? That people think he’s not fit to be Prime Minister? That it was an unworthy action of someone who aspired to be Prime Minister one day? It’s actually a hard question for even a Cunliffe supporter to answer “yes” to. As a bit of emotional framing it works well, as a research question it’s bullshit.

This seems to be a news company engaging in dodgy push-polling and the claiming the inevitable but meaningless result is news. Wrong on several levels.”