Last night there was a One News poll from a period including the Uffindell investigation non release, the Gaurav Sharma release, the mood of the boardroom, and the PM at the Queen’s funeral and the United Nations.
Jessica Mutch McKay was up first, no one could really remember her full name since she got married. Some of the more junior staffers actually seemed to think her full name was Jessica Then Tova, which was ridiculous.
This was her big night, her chance to join the pantheon of NZ political reporters like Paddy G - who could forget the catch phrases “Who’s in the Danger Zone” he’d say like he was in Top Gun, “Yes or no Minister, yes or no?” - classic P Daddy.
And best of all “This is the fucking news!”, who would have thought a visit to the Auckland Law School Revue would result in one of the classic moments in Kiwi television? And he was still at it even at the Queen’s funeral exclaiming “fuck, they do know her” about the Prime Minister.
Maybe that was the way to make it a bit more exciting, a bit more Paddy, drop the ‘F’ bomb, bring the gangster.
She pictured herself looking down the camera at the start of the news “Here are the Mutcha f’ing polls!”, she wondered if throwing some sort of gang sign would make it more convincing. But she didn’t actually know any gang signs and she was quite worried about getting arthritis.
She’d been a bit thrown by the change in anchor. Someone said it was “JC back on the big show”, OMG she thought, not Judith Collins, things must be bad in the polls if she was there. But no, Judith was over on Twitter lying about a “jobs tax” which National had identified as the next step in their strategy to scare people into voting for them.
No, JC was dear old John Campbell, he’d said it was “Marvellous” to see her, but she got the impression he felt that way about most people. He’d talked very calmly “now Jessica, is it all right if I call you Jessica? How about we forget all the tabloid headlines and hyperbole and you just explain to me like a well informed adult what happened in the poll.”
She looked at him, was he serious - “do you mean we just sit here and I calmly explain the news even if it doesn’t really tell us much?” He beamed “yes, that’s right we’ll just sit here like two adults having a mature conversation and just say it how it is even if it means saying - no real change, it’s still a year away, nothing to see here”.
She looked at him as if he was insane - “and you think people will watch us just sit here calmly and tell them nothing happened?” He grinned, “exactly, we report the News.”
He said the word ‘News’ like he’d just thought of the idea of simply informing people. Good grief they’d done that for decades and it worked well until competition came along. Now it was all about ‘capturing eye balls’ for advertisers.
Sometimes Jessica dreamt she was skipping through the forest with a butterfly net but each time she looked at the net there were no pretty butterflies but a collection of eyeballs. It was like a bad trip, and it didn’t help that the wardrobe department kept dressing her as if she was playing the lead in Alice in Wonderland.
“Is Labour on the ropes?” asked John Campbell causing thousands of lefties heart palpitations. Oh god, that’ll be the next thing thought Jessica - Paddy will be doing the bloody ‘Fight for Life”. Who would he fight - Simeon Brown? Then she banished the thought, wouldn’t pay to be sniggering as she introduced the very important polls.
John continued “The major parties are neck and neck in the race to next year’s election according to the latest….”
Here we go she thought, and she was off...
“And leading the News National with no change at all steady on 37. Labour up to 34, but that is only up by a little bit, so that is a bad result for them.
ACT are down two and the Greens are stable, both sitting on nine so some recovery after the story of the Green’s catastrophic leadership debacle as championed by One News”. She glanced over at her deputy Maiki - ha kicking the Greens over being too democratic, like fish in a barrel she thought.
“NZF steady on 3 and Te Pāti Māori is on 2, and let’s take a look at some of the other parties” Jessica drew breath and tried not to smirk thinking “and why would you want to do that?”
“TOP have dipped to one, the New Cons, Social Credit, and Tamaki NZ are all steady on one. Legalise Weed, the Hunting and Tinfoil Party, and Rural NZ make an appearance on one a piece, so a lot of smaller players registering.” She thought - heck that’d be more than 10% of votes wasted on parties that won’t get into parliament, but didn’t mention it.
“13% don’t know how they’ll vote or refused to say”, and those’ll be the ones deciding the election so we’ve no idea, she thought before continuing. “So looking at how these numbers translate to seats in parliament, National and ACT could form a coalition with 61 seats. Now over to DEPUTY political editor Maiki Sherman for something less important.”
Why did Maiki get the nice outfit, this was Jessica’s big night. But no, she looked like she was wearing someone’s idea of modern Amish maternity wear. It was especially insulting after Maiki has asked if she was pregnant again, not it turned out to suggest she looked fat, but out of interest for when she’d be going on Maternity Leave.
A few people breathed a sigh of relief at the poll. Nicola Willis took her long knife and put it away for now. The News was droning on “Inflationary pressure around the world, affecting us here but not as badly as other countries” she rolled her eyes - what a bloody catastrophe this lack of a catastrophe was.
As the segment went to the adverts Campbell was wrapping up “so really with the undecideds and the margin of error this poll makes us none the wiser as to who will win, how wonderful” he purred. Jessica’s career flashed before her eyes and in the corner of the studio was Maiki smiling at her knowingly and knitting a pair of baby booties.
Already other platforms would be picking up the news. RNZ would describe it as Labour eating into National’s lead. There would be an interview with Luxon spouting that the poll showed the country was fed up with the government. When the presenter asked why his own preferred PM numbers were down he’d say they didn’t take anything from individual polls because they went up and down. Then he’d go on to tie himself in knots explaining how they would borrow money for tax cuts but it wouldn’t be called borrowing.
During the ad break questions began to be asked in living rooms across the country, and on social media. Jessica scanned them, and knocked out some replies under an alternate name.
“Why are you so biased?”
“Of course the left think we're right and the right think that we're left, but the less interesting reality is we have to make a headline out of a one or two percent change in a poll with a margin of error and a bunch of people not giving an answer, sound dramatic, like the sky is falling, like why even have an election?
Some of our people are really thrown by the accusations of bias. Poor old Katie Bradford is so desperate to show she isn’t a far left nutter like her mum that she ends up looking like Judge Judy disapproving of a preposterous tale every time there is something about the government.”
My wife said her hairdresser’s neighbours’ brother said he’d never been polled so all polls are fake.”
“Does this guy believe in any unusual theories?” she asked. “Well it’s hard to say, he lives out in the bush and there is no internet or phone coverage so I wouldn’t know”.
“But why do you need to ask such absurd leading questions, like in the press conferences and when you interview them?”
“Well few ministers can be relied on to make a firm commitment to something before they have an understanding of what is involved. Some of them need a little prod to either CONFIRM or DENY a cast iron guarantee right there and then, if they won’t fully commit we make it sound like they don't care or are incompetent.”
And she thought to herself - “this is the fucking news.”
I listened to luxon on RNZ this morning , man they picked a muppett to lead the nats, he simply could not answer Corin's direct question , the obfuscation was just dismal , NZ is going to be in a real bind if this lot are elected next year. and yes his comments regarding the poll were just more word salads, at 20% he should be tendering his resignation , he doesn't connect with people at all.
Well my take on the poll was that James Shaw after nearly being ousted as party leader by a few Green party delegates registered on the preferred PM poll and Labour increased its percentage of party vote from the last poll. Meanwhile, Chris Luxon went down in the preferred PM poll and Act decreased its percentage of party vote from the last poll. Overall it was a better poll for the left than the right.