As Labour leader David Cunliffe faces ongoing pressure to reverse his party’s fortunes ahead of this year’s election, he faces increasingly difficult questions about why polling shows the party performing worse than it did under previous leader David Shearer.
Cunliffe has spent two days attempting to explain a Herald-DigiPoll survey that showed Labour dropping below 30 to 29.5%. But speaking to media outside Parliament today, he outright dismissed the polling, downplaying its significance, and suggesting that media put too much stock in it.
“I know you’ve heard it before, but you’ve heard it because it’s true,” said Cunliffe. “The only poll that matters is the one on election day, and these sorts of polls will go up and down, but all they are really, at this early stage, is noise, and a scientifically established set of data that points to a fairly concrete conclusion about the mood of the electorate and my party’s probability of winning this election.”
“It’s only March, we’ve got a long way to go, and all you can really tell from this poll, or that poll, is that I’ve failed,” he said. “At the very worst, all it says is that I’m incompetent and unfit to lead this country. Nothing more.”
One News polling expert John Key said that Labour’s results were “unsurprising,” but “a little unfortunate.”
Key said that Cunliffe seemed like a “nice guy,” but that “it doesn’t seem to be working, does it?”
He added that he didn’t know much about Cunliffe, but was confident “it will all work out in the end.”
In other news, new ACT leader Jamie Whyte is receiving praise from his party after lifting their poll results to a recent high of just above 0%.