Poll analysis unhitches itself from reality

Nothing much changed in a 1News Verian poll released on Monday. Some commentators treated the boring results as a blank canvas on which to express their creativity.Nothing much changed in a 1News Verian poll released on Monday. Some commentators treated the boring results as a blank canvas on which to express their creativity.1News presenter Simon Dallow described the results of the newly named 1News Verian poll on Monday as a harsh verdict on the government."It is just under three months until the election and Labour seems to have been dented by a series of ministerial distractions," he said as he introduced the story at the top of the bulletin.Despite that effort to dress up the poll as a tough verdict on the government, it was mostly notable for how un-notable it was.Few parties moved more than the margin of error from the last 1News poll in May, which also showed National and Act with the numbers to form the next government - just. National and Labour both dropped the same amount: 2 percent.You might have thought the damp squib of a result would put the clamps on our political commentators' narrative-crafting abilities.Instead for some it proved to be a blank canvas on which they could express their creativity. At Stuff, chief politics editor Luke Malpass called the poll a "fillip for the right" under a headline hailing a 'centre-right surge'.One issue with that: the poll showed a 1 percent overall drop for the right bloc of National and Act.Fillips generally involve polls going up not down. Similarly, a drop in support doesn't traditionally meet the definition of a surge in support. The lack of big statistical swings wasn't enough to deter some commentators from making big calls.On Newstalk ZB, political editor Jason Walls said Labour was plunging due to its disunity."All has been really able to talk about is what's happening within the Labour Party - be it Stuart Nash, be it other ministers who are behaving badly. Jan Tinetti. Voters punish that. And we've seen that from the Nats in opposition. They punish disunity."It's uncertain what National's equivalent 2 per cent drop was down to. Perhaps voters punish unity as well.Mutch-McKay's own commentary was a bit more nuanced, placing the poll in the context of wider trends.On TVNZ's Breakfast the day after the poll's release, she said some people inside Labour couldn't believe the results hadn't been worse for the party.Perhaps that air of disbelief also extended to the parliamentary press gallery…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details