Pollster stands by work despite Labour attacks

Wednesday, 18 September 2024

David Farrar was a Young National volunteer poller before founding his company Curia.

High profile pollster David Farrar is standing by his research company’s work and says it will remain subject to scrutiny, despite parting ways from the country’s professional standards body and being attacked by Labour for producing “junk data”.

This week a Taxpayers’ Union - Curia poll showed a tumble for Labour leader Chris Hipkins, both in the preferred prime minister and favourability ratings. Hipkins has dismissed it, telling RNZ that Curia was a “National Party” pollster and the poll was an “outlier” compared to some polling he had seen, including Labour’s own internal polling which Hipkins declined to reveal.

“I do note that the company that does that is no longer a member of the professional body for pollsters, because the professional body for pollsters said they weren't following valid polling methodology,” Hipkins said.

Labour MP Ayesha Verrall took the dismissal of Curia polling a step further on Tuesday, saying: “There's no point looking at junk data.”

Farrar founded Curia Market Research, which does polling for lobby groups and parties, after first getting into polling as a Young National volunteer in 1992, continuing to poll for the party for many years before founding Curia in 2004. National was its first client.

David Farrar, far left, pictured in 2003 when he was a strategist, alongside National Party press secretary Vanessa Rawson (L), Bill English and senior whip John Carter (R).

Farrar estimates he’s completed 3000 polls, including for Labour although he is known as a National supporter, and is well known as a political commentator, blogger and researcher.

In August, he announced Curia had resigned from the Research Association New Zealand (Ranz), the professional standards body which investigates complaints made against members.

The association holds its members to best practice guidelines for the conducting, reporting, and publishing of political polls in New Zealand.

Farrar, in a lengthy post on his Kiwiblog explaining his resignation, said he’d dealt with a large volume of complaints and that the complaints process had been “weaponised” against him.

One of the more recent significant complaints the association had referred on to an independent body and which was still under consideration was about a question relating to puberty blockers. The complaint was that the question was biased.

“At the end of the day what they basically said was, you asked a question a client wanted you to ask and we think you could be kicked out for it,” Farrar told The Post. “Which would mean nobody would be doing any polling for industry lobby groups.”

Taxpayers’ Union’s Jordan Williams. The Taxpayers’ Union commissioned Curia for its latest political poll.

Farrar said he resigned because of the stress of fighting endless complaints and because the association was considering expelling Curia anyway.

Farrar said he now planned for Curia to become a member of a global code of conduct which was identical to New Zealand’s, was developing a complaints process through its website as well as a mechanism by which queries about published polls could be made available online, and would also hire a peer reviewer if issues were raised.

Farrar felt “very strongly” that complaints upheld against Curia “don’t reflect reality” and he’d had strong support from senior research industry figures. Regardless, the company had never been busier, he said.

“I don’t claim perfection, [but] I’ve been doing this 20-25 years, I have a very good track record of accuracy. I’m very confident in what we do,” he said.

“People have attacked my polls and every competitor’s polls for the last 10 years through social media. This isn’t anything new. Usually, because it doesn’t get them the results they want.

“The Ranz decision has allowed people to point to that as a reason to attack and I do understand that, [however] this isn’t some members of the public who don’t have a political leaning, this is people who have strong political views, and again, this is nothing new,” he said.

“The people whose opinions I do respect, which is obviously clients, a number of people in the media and very senior people in the research industry, have been very supportive, I think because I did manage to lay out on my blog the full context for this. I do quite strongly feel that it hasn’t been a fair decision making.”

Research Association NZ has been approached for comment.