Methodology

Essential Report NZ Methodology Disclosure Statement

The data gathered for this report is gathered from a monthly online omnibus with questions designed by Essential Research.  The survey is programmed and hosted by Dynata using sample from their online panel.  Dynata’s panel members are vetted and verified – real people with real opinions.

The online omnibus is active from the first Wednesday of each month and closes on the following Sunday.  The target population is all New Zealand residents aged 18+. Panel members are invited to complete the survey online without an interviewer present and incentives are offered for completion.

Weighting and poll details

Each month around 1100 surveys are completed over the fieldwork period.  Quotas are set to be representative of the target population by age, gender and location.

RIM and cell weighting are applied to the data using information sourced from Statistics New Zealand and the New Zealand Electoral Commission. The factors used in the weighting regime are age, gender, location, and enrolment status.

Information for the weighting efficiency, effective sample size and margin of error for each poll (from August 2023) can be found here.

Each month, the team at Essential Research discusses issues that are topical, and a series of questions are developed to put to the New Zealand public. Some questions are repeated each month (such as the mood of the nation, voting intention, and opinion of leaders), while others are unique to that month and reflect current issues. Besides demographic questions, no questions are asked prior to the mood, voting intention, and opinion of leaders.

Respondents not eligible to vote in the election (due to not being enrolled to vote or unlikely to be enrolled to vote) or who are not intending to vote, are excluded from the voting intention questions. Eligible respondents are able to select ‘Unsure’ for voting intention. They are then asked a ‘leaner’ question which also includes an ‘Unsure’ option. The percentage of respondents answering ‘Unsure’ are included in the published results.

Our team

Essential Research is a member of Research Association New Zealand (RANZ) and abides by:

• The RANZ Code of Practice (which can be found here) and,
• The New Zealand Political Polling code (which can be found here).

In addition, Essential Research employees hold Research Society membership and are bound by professional codes of behaviour. Our research is compliant with the Australian Polling Council Quality Mark standards (which can be found here).