Austin Mitchell

Dunedin Central: A Long-Term Study of Voting

Three surveys in seven years have provided a considerable amount of information about New Zealand voting habits. The present survey is a small one involving only 163 interviews in one electorate, Dunedin Central. It concentrated on two problems: political information and the social background. In addition, as a study involving two interviews nearly two years apart, it can cast some light on long term voting habits.

The 1966 General Election: The Candidates and Their Campaigns

New Zealand electors choose between two main political parties with two programmes, the emphasis is on measures not men. The two parties, however, are also teams of individuals whose characteristics tend to typify their party as a whole and help to build its image. Among those actually elected such factors as age, education and social background influence their attitudes and approach to policy: social conditioning has its effect. The teams of candidates are collections of individuals, each with his (or her) own approach to campaigning, his own assessment of the electoral situation. None is likely to subscribe fully to the academic theory of the relative unimportance of the individual candidate and his efforts. Who were the candidates and how did they campaign are therefore questions worth asking. In 1966 they were put to the candidates themselves by means of postal questionnaires.

Fendalton: A By-Election Opinion Survey

By-elections have always presented a particular challenge to the psephologist. The motivations of the non-voters are normally difficult to interpret and as the poll goes down so do the dimensions of the problem increase. Crude voting figures tempt the researcher to assume that change largely takes the form of a greater or lesser fall in the percentage shares of the enrolment of the different parties competing. The scale of its apparent losses to abstention therefore measures the standing of a party. Such thinking is perhaps a convenient form of journalistic shorthand. Not only does it largely ignore the role of the ‘changers’; it also assumes, explicitly or by inference, some kind of rational process, almost a decision to abstain, on the part of non-voters. In both these respects by-election commentary tends to ignore the findings of opinion surveys at general elections. Clearly there is a need to go behind the voting figures of a by-election and to assess the results in the light of the actual processes ...