Election 2011 - iPredict claims victory over opinion polls

Online political marketplace iPredict is claiming victory over traditional opinion polls.

"No poll came even close to iPredict in forecasting this election result," spokesman Matthew Hooton (also an NBR columnist) said late Saturday night.

Beyond the overall party numbers, iPredict also said Act's John Banks would win in Auckland, despite polls giving National's Paul Goldsmith the edge (although arguably said polls had a scared-straight effect on the electorate).

The site is owned by Victoria University and its data is based on the bets of around 6000 registered traders.

iPredict chief executive Matt Burgess also noted that the market had appeared to slightly underestimate the centre-right National Party’s vote share and slightly overestimate the centre-left Labour and Green parties vote shares.

“This is an important result to us, because it lays to rest concerns that, because predictions markets involve money, they may have a bias toward the centre-right. That appears not to be the case.”

Although iPredict was one of the first to highlight the rise of NZ First, at best Winston Peters' party got just over 5.1%, and iPredict's final data had it at 4.5% (NZ First got 6.81% on Saturday; special votes have yet to be counted).

The traditional polling firm that got closed to the NZ First result was Roy Morgan, which had the party on 6.5% (although its poll was askew in other areas, including its 14.5% for the Greens. On Friday, the company did note it overestimated the Greens' vote at the last election by 3.3%. It claimed the lower actual vote was because Greens did not man all voting stations).

With the benefit of hindsight, it seems NZ First could have been drawn older Labour voters turned off by Phil Goff's pledge to raise the age of super. But why was this trend missed by pollsters? "Maybe the old dears were too slow to get to the phone," quipped one commentator on Twitter. Received wisdom also had NZ First benefiting from the teapot tape saga.

ACTUAL VOTE

Click to enlarge. Special votes still to be counted. Source: Electoral Commission.
 

IPREDICT'S FINAL BULLETIN (FRI NOV 25)
National: 48%
Labour: 28.1%
Greens: 11.7%
NZ First: 4.5%
Act: 2.5%
Mana: 1.9%
Conservative: 1.8%
Maori: 1.1%
United Future: 0.5%

ROY MORGAN (FRI NOV 25)
National: 49.5%
Labour: 23.5%
Greens: 14.5%
NZ First: 6.5%
Act: 1.5%
Mana: 0.5%
Maori: 1%
United Future: 0.5%
(Convervative Party not included in published summary)

HERALD DIGIPOLL (FRI NOV 25)
National: 50.9%
Labour: 28.0%
Greens: 11.8%
NZ First: 5.2%
Maori: 0.4% 
United Future: 0.0%
Act: 1.8%
Mana: 0.3%
Conservative: 1.3%

3NEWS REID RESEARCH (FRI NOV 25)
National: 50.8%
Labour: 26.0%
Green: 13.4%
Act: 1.0%
Maori: 1.5%
United Future: 0.0% 
Mana: 1.1%
NZ First: 3.1%
Conservative: 1.8%

ONE NEWS COLMAR BRUNTON (THURS NOV 24)
National: 50.0%
Labour: 28.0%
Green: 10.0%
Act: 1.7%
Maori: 2.0%
United Future: 0.1%
Mana: 1.0%
NZ First: 4.2%
Conservative: 2.4%