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WEEKDAY‐ONLY POLLING AND PARTISAN SUPPORT LEVELS: EVIDENCE FROM NEW ZEALAND
Author(s) -
Salmond Rob
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
australian and new zealand journal of statistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.434
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-842X
pISSN - 1369-1473
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-842x.2008.00527.x
Subject(s) - polling , demographic economics , political science , public administration , economics , computer science , operating system
Summary Some scholars have argued that opinion polls conducted only on weekday evenings are likely to be biased in favour of right‐wing parties, but there is no scholarly consensus on this. This paper presents evidence from New Zealand suggesting that weekday‐only polling consistently increases the reported support levels for right‐wing parties. Polls conducted only on weekdays in New Zealand give estimated support levels for the major right‐leaning party approximately five percentage points higher than do concurrent polls that survey voters both on weekdays and during the weekend. Results for left‐leaning parties are also broadly consistent with this effect.