Gareth Morgan says polls showing he won't make it into Parliament are wrong because they rely on the opinions of voters with landlines.
"When I ask the question in the town hall shows I do every night, ' Hands up those who've got a landline, it's 10 or 15 percent," the Opportunities Party (TOP) leader told The AM Show on Thursday.
"What's wrong with these polling companies? I think we'll be somewhere between 5 and 10 percent. I've said it from day one."
TOP polled at 1.6 percent in the latest Newshub-Reid Research poll, and 2 percent in the most recent Colmar Brunton poll.
"You've got to have a landline to feature in those polls," he claimed.
But he's not entirely correct. A quarter of the Newshub- Reid Research poll is based on internet users, and all major polling companies weight responses to ensure different demographics are represented fairly.
And some pollsters - Roy Morgan, for example - do phone mobiles.
Also, despite claims excluding mobile phones leaves a large youth demographic out of polling figures, the Greens - who do extremely well with younger voters - usually do better in polls than they do on election day.
Dr Morgan says this time could be different. When he started doing town hall rallies, most of the crowd were "silver tops - they knew me from a previous life".
"They're all young ones now... and they don't even know what a landline is."
As for who he'll side with if his mission of replacing Winston Peters as king-maker is successful, Dr Morgan says it'll be whoever gives TOP the most concessions - but that's likely to be Labour, because they're more likely to swap income taxes for wealth taxes than National.
"[Former National Prime Minister] John Key didn't need to be paid as Prime Minister. He made $1.5 million a year from just his house. Is a guy like that going to impose wealth taxes? Of course he's not."
Labour's full tax plans won't be known until after a working group reports back following the election. National has criticised the policy of using a tax working group instead of making concrete promises, despite doing the same when it came to power in 2008 - and then raising GST, breaking an election promise.
Newshub.
