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Explainer: Can we actually trust political polls? episode artwork

Sep 15, 2026 13 min

Explainer: Can we actually trust political polls?

from Afternoons

We're going to start today's show by talking about political polls and whether they're reliable. This election is looking really close - and polls are consistently showing both National and Labour below the 30 percent mark. That means polls could take on an added importance .. helping shape narratives .. but how do we know we can trust them? Our next guest has concerns about who gets polled, how the numbers are calculated and who pays for the research. Ben Gray is an Associate Professor at University of Otago - for the past twenty years he has convened a course that covers appraisal of evidence, research ethics, cultural competence and health law. [picture id="4JPVS66_reid_poll_1_jpg" crop="16x10" layout="full"]

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Explainer: Can we actually trust political polls?

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This episode was published on September 15, 2026.

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