Brown beating Banks in race for Aucklanders' hearts

Aucklanders are more likely to have positive feelings about Mayoral candidate Len Brown than his main rival John Banks, according to the first research probing super city voters’ feelings.

Brown leads Banks by 12% among decided voters in the latest HorizonPoll survey of 1025 super city residents, though 7% more think Banks is likely to win. Brown has the support of 29% of decided voters, Banks 17%.

Brown’s lead could be driven by voter feelings. In the first research to probe this, voters are likely to feel twice as positive about Brown as Banks:

• 30% have positive feelings towards Banks, 43% feel positively about Brown

• 35% feel negatively about Banks, 15% feel negatively about Brown.

Asked because of the kind of person they are, or because of something they have done, have they made you feel any of the following, voters consistently rank Brown as giving them more positive feelings:

Banks makes more voters feel angry, afraid, nervous and concerned than Brown.

Brown makes more voters feel more hopeful, proud, excited and comfortable than Banks.

The survey, taken between August 21 and September 14, 2010, and weighted by age, gender, personal income, employment, ethnicity and party vote 2008, has a maximum margin of error of +/- 3.1%.

Main area voting

Within the seven main areas making up the new super city, the Brown leads Banks in all but the North Shore. In the Auckland central city area the two are even, Brown with 21% and Banks with 20%.

Brown has a 12% lead over Banks among both men and women.

The candidates are appealing evenly to high income voters, but Brown has large leads among middle to lower income earners.

Brown appeals more than Banks to all age groups, except those 65+, where Banks has a 1% lead among 65-74 year-olds and 6% among those 75 and older.

Ethnic groups

Among ethnic groups, the two are even among Asians (Brown 16%, Banks 15%), but Brown has a 6% lead among those who define their ethnicity as European-Pakeha (Brown 25%, Banks 19%).

Among Maori, Brown has a 44% lead over Banks (53% to 9%). Brown has nearly all the decided Pacific Islander vote – 58% to Banks’ 1%.

Some 37% say they are still undecided.

Of undecided voters 46% are women.

By age group, 48% of 18-24 year olds  are undecided, 43% of 25-34 year-olds, 40% of 35-44 year-olds.

Respondents are members of a panel representing the national population at the 2006 census.