TVNZ News is parroting the results of a Close Up at 7 0900 phone poll that received 17,000 calls opposing gay unions as a sign that New Zealanders are seriously opposed to civil unions. The reporting has had a ripple effect on talk radio, which has been over-run with callers talking about "fairies", "queers" and "sodomites" with little or no opposition from hosts. Callers and hosts to stations have been discussing TVNZ's poll as a serious snapshot of public feeling. TVNZ's last antigay 0900 poll in September asked if gay-parented families were real families, which concluded an emphatic no. Auckland University statistics expert Leila Boyle spoke to GayNZ.com in the wake of that poll to caution New Zealanders about taking the results of phone polls seriously. Such polls only canvass the minority of New Zealanders watching the TV programme in question, and then only the number that feel strongly enough to vote and then pay for the call. In addition, no allowance is made for repeat voting. "0900 polls show us how well organised groups are with regard to various issues," said Boyle. "A common occurrence when these polls happen is for people to call/email around all their friends and family and organise a stacking of the vote. In issues like this one, there are certain sectors who organise and organise well to skew the result around to their way of thinking. Then the media goes on about it as if it is representative of NZ opinion. "My view is that the only type of poll that can give us good evidence of what the NZ public is thinking is a well-designed one, carried out by an independent company, where careful thought creates fair, unloaded questions and contacts a representative sample of the NZ population."
Credit: GayNZ.com News Staff
First published: Saturday, 4th December 2004 - 12:00pm