Lessons From The Reactor - Things The Worm Told Us

Friday, 8 August 2014, 8:24 pm
Article: NZ Election Reactor

Voters like politicians talking positively, Kim Dotcom is a highly divisive influence, those on lower incomes and women do not like GST.

These are just three of the observations which have been made clear after an initial run of four weeks of the Roy Morgan Scoop Reactor.

Working with Roy Morgan Research Scoop is using their famous video rating tool, the Reactor (the original Worm), which records how strongly you agree or disagree with what you are seeing and hearing, second by second, as you watch a video.

To help ensure that the accuracy of the results across the spectrum of New Zealand electors, Roy Morgan supplements the crowd-sourced data with the responses of a selected panel of respondents taken from its 12,000 strong market leading Single Source Survey Panel.

In the first reactor Labour Leader David Cunliffe’s “apology” over male violence polarised many voters, but the response was largely negative across the spectrum.

The Reactor showed a strong negative reaction from males and those identifying as National supporters and a more positive response from women and those identifying as Labour supporters. However across all groups measured - including Labour supporters and women - the overall reaction was negative if more mildly so.

There was a mildly positive response to John Key’s comments on Cunliffe’s apology with a negative reaction to the Prime Minister’s thoughts on possible election deals. Though it appeared from reaction to others those taking part are unhappy to hear any talk of election deals.

The results for the first Reactor are available here: Reactor One

The second Roy Morgan/Scoop Reactor showed environmental policies get a positive reaction, while Kim Dotcom is a polarising character.

There was a strongly negative reaction to Kim Dotcom from voters identified as National, neutral from Labour and positive from those saying they supported “Other Parties”. Though even labour voters were slightly negative over Dotcom’s “We have the Money” statements.

Kim Dotcom’s comments were also polarised across the helix groups with the “leading lifestylers” being largely negative, while the “battlers” were more positive. However all helix groups were more negative about the “We have the money” statement.

Labour voters were very positive towards the Greens policy on rivers, while across the helix sub-groups all four saw the policy as a positive.

While all the helix groups viewed the news about pest control on DoC land very highly with Nick Smith’s comments getting the most positive feedback of any clip. Across age groups over 50s were more positive than younger groups over the DoC pest control campaign though all were positive. Interestingly over 50s were less positive over the Green’s rivers policy than other groups, though all were positive.

The results from the second week can be seen here: Reactor Two

The results from third in the series show Kim Dotcom continues to be a polarising figure Labour and Green supporters were neutral on his comments, while National voters were overwhelmingly negative

Dividing the responses amongst the helix groups all were negative, but the leading lifestylers” most so towards Dotcom.

Women were more positive than men about Winston Peters talking about removing GST from groceries, but across the Helix groups the “battlers” viewed Peters on GST most positively.

The single most positively viewed clip was John Key strongly condemning events in the Ukraine

The results for the third reactor can be viewed here Reactor Three

John Key’s announcement that he won’t be helping the Conservatives into parliament was rated highly by New Zealanders last week.

The confirmation that Murray McCully will stand in East Coast Bays, the electorate he’s held since 1987, also sent the Worm soaring.

The lowest Reactor score this week goes to the Conservatives as Colin Craig Boasts he attracted more voters to his public meeting in ‘the South of the South’ than the leader of the Opposition.

John Key not only splits opinions along party lines but divides voters on Age and Gender, scoring well below the 50% line with women and electors under 35 years of age.

View the interactive Reactor results here for week four

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Once you’ve given us your reactions you might like to sign up to
react live to the Election Debate on TV3 at 8.40 pm on September 10.

View the video and React on your mobile now to this week’s Political Highs & Lows.

Simply install the Roy Morgan Reactor app for your iPhone, iPad or Android device.
Search your app store or scan the QR Code below for instant access. It’s free!

Reactor for iPhone	Reactor for Android

About the Reactor Highs & Lows of the Political Week

A cross section of 300 voters from all over New Zealand gave their reactions to video clips of politicians in the news
last week – continuously scoring their agreement & disagreement from 0 – 100. The results are displayed as graphs in the Reactor player (the original Roy Morgan Worm).

When you view the results in the Online
Reactor Player here, you’ll be able to analyse New Zealander’s reactions by Gender, Age, Voting Intention and Roy Morgan Helix Persona segments as well as access Metrics for even more detailed analysis.

What happens next - Subscribe To Join In

After completing your first reactor poll you will be given an opportunity to subscribe to receive notifications from Roy Morgan about future NZ Election Reactors.

You can also subscribe to receive Reactor announcements and results via Scoop's Newsagent service on the "NZ Election Reactor" homepage.

Why we are doing this

Scoop hopes its use of the Reactor during the 2014 election will help us better understand how and why voters change their voting intentions during the intensive media melee which leads up to an election.

The Reactor is ground-breaking as it enables crowd-sourced reactions to provide a precise picture of how specific developments, political promises and news events affect the public mood The art of political punditry is to interpret these things based on hunches and experience, The Reactor provides us pundits with data and evidence to back up our views.

As a media outlet with a strong lineage in digital innovation around election reporting, Scoop is delighted that in this our sixth NZ election we can innovate further and deliver a clearer understanding of just how NZ's democracy is working on the inside.

Roy Morgan Research
Roy Morgan Research is Australia’s best known and longest established market research and public opinion survey company. Roy Morgan Single Source is thorough, accurate, and provides comprehensive, directly applicable information about current and future customers. It is unique in that it directs all the questions to each individual from a base survey sample of around 55,000 interviews in Australia and 15,000 interviews in New Zealand annually - the largest Single Source databases in the world. The questions asked relate to lifestyle and attitudes, media consumption habits (including TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, cinema, catalogues, pay TV and the Internet), brand and product usage, purchase intentions, retail visitations, service provider preferences, financial information and recreation and leisure activities. This lead product is supported by a nationally networked, consultancy-orientated market research capability.

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NZ Election Reactor

Your reactions on the political highs & lows of the week

The NZ Election Reactor is an interactive project that records your reactions to the regular 'Political highs & lows of the week' video based on a positive or negative scale. Your reactions are compiled anonymously with many others that creates an insightful look at how our politicians and political candidates faired in media coverage moment-by-moment. Results and analysis will also be published for the record as we lead up to the 2014 General Election.

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