Location, Location, Location

What journos miss when interpreting polls.

Every so often someone stumbles across a poll showing a capital gains tax has more supporters than opponents and declares the political tide is turning.

This week it’s Tim Murphy’s turn. He’s looked at a narrow pro-CGT margin and decided Labour has an untapped electoral goldmine. It’s a tidy story if you ignore the parts of politics that actually matter.

Let’s start with the simplest point: the most stalwart CGT supporters are the people Labour and its allies already have: younger renters, left-leaning professionals and media people. They treat taxing capital gains as a moral imperative and they also tend not to be the voters who switch between National, Labour and NZ First.

CGT opposition isn’t scattered randomly. It’s strongest with middle-aged, middle-income provincial and suburban Auckland homeowners. They’re cautious by nature and even more cautious when it comes to anything touching the housing market. You don’t need to be a property baron to hear “capital gains tax” and feel a prickle of anxiety.

New Zealand doesn’t keep a formal landlord register, but let’s say there are 120,000 active landlords nationwide, of whom three-quarters own just one rental. Then there is the overlapping category of those who own a batch (say, 50,000). Now, these voters might be only a fraction of the population, but if they’re over-represented in the right places then we are talking about a fairly decisive voting bloc.