Ever wondered what to make of that political poll that just didn’t work for you? Are you losing the faith? Are you in crisis? Are you starting to think that your party’s fortunes are on the decline?

Don’t let it get you down, because help is at hand!

Below are some recommendations and observations to help you deal with an inconvenient political poll.

• Remember that it’s all about the trend, rather than any individual poll. The trend will show that your team is winning! Remember that the trend can be as long or as short as you need it to be in order to prove your point. For example, did you know that National has won fifteen of the last twenty-two general elections? That’s a winning trend! Labour won three of the last five. Trend!
• Is your team doing badly? Have you considered disregarding altogether some of the polls? Work out which poll is consistently the most unfavourable, and then create an argument to explain why that poll cannot be trusted. Make some claim about the poll’s over-reliance on landline polling, and don’t worry about anyone checking to see if the poll compensates for that bias. Nobody ever does check, apart from David Farrar, and, well, he would say that wouldn’t he?
• Remember that the rules are different if you’re a political journalist from an organisation that has its own poll. Yours is the only poll that exists. Ignore the other polls. They are worthless. Only your poll contains any truth. Your poll decides who will govern and who will die.
• There is no such thing as a negative trend as far as your party’s fortunes are concerned. Just a lot of rogue polls.
• There’s only one poll that matters. Don’t worry! One day the sheeple will open their eyes and see for themselves how terrible the other lot are. Sure, miracles can happen. Tell yourself that. Do you feel better now?
• So it’s a bad result, but what did you expect? Look how biased the media are against your party.
• We all know that polls are self-fulfilling, because people don’t want to be associated with the loser. The entire political polling circus is damaging to our democracy, except when your team is on top.
• Everyone in your party knows that these poll results would be different if only the media would focus on issues and wouldn’t always fixate on personality politics. No doubt that’s why none of the MPs in your party are ever fixated on personality politics, especially during debates in the House.
• People are stupid.