Things I learned this afternoon

Fairfax has an awesome infographic on its latest poll results. David Farrar reports Keith Ng's the guy behind it; it's hellacool.

It is impossible to come away from the detailed breakdowns with anything other than thorough admiration for the juggernaut that John Key has built. iPredict's saying 90% likely that he forms the next government; I can't think of anything that's a more sure bet on iPredict; I'm very long and have been for rather a while (1400 shares long National bought at average of $0.76; 1200 short Labour at average of $0.22 but hedged by a few hundred on the Labour Justice Minister contracts that span the Labour space but were much cheaper than buying Labour).

Things that surprised me:

• National Party support is stronger in Auckland (60%) than on the Mainland (55%). The rural/urban split still kinda holds, but National still has 55% of the urban vote to 62% of the rural.
• There is NO gender split on support for National. 56% of men and 56% of women support National on the Party Vote. ACT is a sausage-fest (3.6% to 0.7%), but that's not a big surprise. A bigger surprise is that the gender split on the Greens is so small: 6.2% of men and 6.5% of women support the Greens. There is a big skew towards Labour among women, which mostly comes at the expense of ACT, Maori, and NZ First.
• Green voters are the ones saying they're most likely to move overseas: 3.6% say they'll definitely move overseas for the long term. Sure, NZ isn't as green as the Greens would like. But where is better?!
• Among those who voted National in '08, 82% say they'd pick John Key as most preferred PM; "don't know" is next on 14. Among those who voted Labour in '08, only 19% say Phil Goff is their preferred PM and 21% say Key. Read that again. More people who voted Labour in '08 prefer John Key as PM than prefer the current Labour Party Leader. 43% of Labour's '08 vote say they don't know who they want as PM. Of those intending to vote Labour this time around, 20% say Goff is the best PM, 46% don't know, and 16% say Key is best.  If this isn't enough to get Labour to knife Goff, I don't know what is. iPredict says only a 10% chance of that happening; I'm going long.

Things that didn't surprise me:

• National polls best among the 35-59 set: 60% support among that group. But they still have 49% of those under 35 and 55% of those over 60.
• ACT polls best among those over 60, with 2.9% support there to the 2% in the younger cohorts. Not particularly surprising as ACT has been pushing policies that resonate with social conservatives, alack alas. 6.6% of the oldies like NZ First but nobody under 35 does.
• Few that voted National in '08 plan to flip to Labour - 4.5%. But 11% of those who voted Labour last time around plan to vote National. Labour is keeping only 79% of those it had in '08; National's keeping 92%. Even the Greens are only keeping 62% - 11% of former Greens are flipping National.

The only interesting question is whether National will govern alone or need a coalition. If it goes coalition, 32% of those saying they'd vote National this time prefer ACT as partner; don't know is next on 25%, then the Greens on  19%. More National supporters prefer a Blue-Green government than prefer a National-United Future government (1.8%) or a National-Maori government (13%).

If there were a button for a National-Green coalition government where Greens got responsibility for copyright and for marijuana law reform, I'd be pushing it. As only 13% of Green supporters prefer coalition with National, they'd then spend three years rending themselves asunder over their supporting National. And, we'd get decent copyright policy as well as a voice for civil liberties.