I don't get out much, but from what I have heard from repentant National voters of my acquaintance, the problem is they wanted the leopards to slowly and quietly eat other people's faces behind the scenes.
Instead the leopards are enthusiastically ripping off faces in public, and it's shaming them. Particularly the meals in schools for some reason.
Agree. Also in my experience with some of the right leaning olds I know, the smoking reversals in particular have come as a real shock. I think this is due to the fact that so many older people have had their parents and other family die from smoking related causes.
They're not useful for predicting the next parliament - and even very close to elections aren't particularly good at that either. But can be used to compare periods in a parliamentary term to see how one government is performing compared to others etc.
Eg maybe the better thought from the journos isn't "labour could form govt" but after 6 months do most governments go up, or down in polling; and what does it say if this poll shows a divergence or continuation of that trend etc.
Labour and National wouldn't be paying to run them constantly if they were useless. They're not crystal balling the next election but they have value as a snapshot of public sentiment