About the 1998 NZES Midterm Study
This survey was conducted a month before the National-New Zealand First coalition government's collapse in August 1998, providing a unique opportunity to capture opinions about the first coalition government under MMP and the new electoral system. Questions probed attitudes about the electoral system, political parties, and politicians.
The principal researchers are (with current affiliations):
For frequencies and discussion click here.
For a more detailed analysis see: Jeffrey A. Karp and Shaun Bowler. 2001. "Coalition Politics and Satisfaction with Democracy: Explaining New Zealand's Reaction to Proportional Representation" in European Journal of Political Research. Volume 40, No 1. 57-79.
Technical Details
Between July 13 and July 23 a survey of voting age
New Zealanders was conducted by computer-assisted telephone interviews
from the department of Political Science and Public Policy at the University
of Waikato. Residential telephone numbers were randomly sampled for the
survey by Telecom, and respondents were randomly selected within households.
Respondents were weighted by household size, and slight over-representation
of more highly educated respondents was corrected by further weighting.
With this correction, within expected error margins the sample is broadly
representative of adult New Zealanders. Similar findings on support for
political parties and preferences for political leadership as other currently
published polls confirm the representativeness of the sample. In the interview,
535 New Zealanders responded to a series of questions probing attitudes
about the electoral system, political parties, and politicians. Funding
for the survey was provided from the University
of Waikato School of Social Science, and the Department
of Political Science and Public Policy, University of Waikato. The
questionnaire was designed by Jack Vowles, Jeffrey Karp, and Susan Banducci.
The researchers thank the respondents for the 10-15 minutes of time they
so generously donated to this research.
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