Waiariki: Marae digi poll has Flavell losing support, Sykes up.

The Marae digi poll on the Waiariki electorate came out yesterday - for what it's worth. They are notoriously unreliable.  The landline polls are increasingly picking up older householders and skewing to the middle class establishment that still maintain a landline - missing out working class and youth populations.  It isn't worth that much - the large differences in these polls and the election results proves that.  So I'm not that surprised to find the Waiariki polling this time round out of whack:

Waiariki Electorate Vote 2014

• Maori 50%
• Mana 21%
• Labour 17%

This looks definitive, decisive... until you consider the 2011 poll: 

Waiariki Electorate Vote 2011

• Maori 59.3%
• Mana 18.7%
• Labour 8.8% [18.8%?]

In the election of 2011 the Maori Party's Te Ururoa Flavell only had an 1800 vote majority over Mana's Annette Sykes, with the Labour candidate a distant third.

If an 1800 vote majority equates to 59%/19% then what does 50%/21% work out to? is it even a majority any more to him?

Comparing the 2011 poll with this one it shows a fall - a big fall - in Flavell's support and a rise in Sykes' support.  It shows that Mana is in a better position now than it was in 2011. It shows that Mana may have picked up some of Te Ururoa's collapsing vote.  The fourth candidate may only pick up a few votes in the West of the electorate, maybe 2-3% max so should not have a major impact.  

All up this is quite a favourable poll result for Annette Sykes.  It should be a big worry for Flavell, but so long as people like Slater and Farrar and the rest of the media keep misreading it then all the better for an upset based on that underestimation.  And if the door-knocking in my area is anything to go by and the extent of the negative reactions from Pakeha men to the National Party over the Dirty Politics saga is reflected across the country on polling day then there could be a major upset possible.