Privacy Politics

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What's the point of pollsters registering intentions to vote for a party that doesn't exist?

The Herald digi poll is out. National is ahead of Labour, of course, and the Greens reach the 5% threshold. The Maori Party is polling nearly double that of NZ First. The Kiwi Party is on 0.2, twice that of United Future.

The Christian Heritage Party, which doesn`t exist, is also polling 0.2% , twice that of United Future. One wonders what supporters of the Christian Heritage Party will do when they get to the polling booth.

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How did the Government statistician get his figures in the smacking referendum petition?

There's been a bit of misinformation around the smacking petition. I've seen news reports, blogs and media releases that have all provided incorrect figures, while correctly stating that the petition has been deemed by the Government Statistician not to have a valid 10% of signatures.

According to petitioners, they handed in 324,511 signatures on February 29, (not 324,316 as DPF noted). The sample was 1/11th - so 29,501 signatures were checked. That's a pretty high sample size meaning there is a higher margin of error.

Of those signatures checked, 25,754 were valid, meaning 3,747 were not. Of those signatories not qualified 3,373 could not be found on the electoral roll, 214 were illegible, 158 were duplicates and 2 triplicates. So 25,754 x 11 = 283,294. The number required is 285,027 so this indicates a shortfall of just 1,733 signatures, give or take errors.

However the Government’s Statistician's best estimate is just 266,903 or a shortfall of more than 18,000; nearly 17,300 greater than the 1/11th sample would indicate. The standard error is +/- 1600. He did a one sided hypothesis test at the 95% confidence level -and at the top confidence level (99%), that's 269,500. So why use the highest confidence level? How did he get his 266,903 number?

He used the estimator of Goodman and Kiranandana. No idea what that is. Can anyone tell me?

Update We have answers. Over at No Right Turn,Idiot Savant turned to google god to subvert the satanic statistics to assist me. Because there`s 160 replications, that suggests there will be a further 1600 replicates in the rest of the population at minimum, and up to a further 1,600 x 10 hidden replicates in the population as a whole. You also check the invalids (see comments for explanations of all this). So it may well not be as dodgy as Family First's Bob McCoskrie makes it out to be. Just pretty complicated.They`ll get the signatures.

Update 2After comments here, I have added in an extra sentence and shortened the post for clarity. And I see Gordon Copeland is also querying this.

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So, you`re on $60k. Income splitting for tax purposes could assist in getting you $5450 for having a child

So, you're earning $60,000, live with a partner who is not working. You have no kids. Money's tight and the Government has just passed a law allowing for income splitting for tax purposes. You`d like some more money without working additional hours.

Have a child and split your income for tax purposes. United Future is promoting a discussion document on it's income splitting policy. This document is a direct result of a commitment made in the confidence and supply agreement between Labour and United Future.

The Child Poverty Action Group, in its case for opposing income splitting notes that a household with a single earner on $60,000 can save $3,217 per year from 50/50 income splitting. However, a household on $36,000 stands to gain only $570 per year. That is, a family on just over half the income gets less than one fifth as much tax relief, and therefore this policy favours high income families and confirms to non-earning partners that if they choose to stay home to mind kids that United Future considers their economic worth is dependant on their partners income. A former cleaner whose partner is earning $60,000 will get 500% more tax relief than a stay at home accountant who whose partner earns $36,000, thus widening the gap between richer and poorer families. If one partner earnss $30.000 and the other $10,000 they`ll get nothing from income splitting.

But you`ll actually get $5450 a year extra if you are on $60,000 and have your first child. This is made up of $2236 Family Support and $3,217 that you'll save from income splitting for tax purposes, which will not be available to childless couples. However if you earn $36,000, you`ll get 72% more: $7072 in Family Support and $570 a year in income splitting.

The policy on its own favours high income families just as WFF favours low income families. And given that low income families are still struggling, even with WFF payments, an income splitting policy merely widens the gap between the rich and the poor. This is despite the fact that a tax splitting policy minimises the individual basis of our tax system and lowers marginal tax rates for higher incomes.

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