Sex poll brings out ugly truth of politics

Jacinda Ardern. Photo / Norrie Montgomery

Nikki Kaye and Jacinda Ardern are leading a "sexiest politician" poll - but poor old Bill English has no admirers.

But the popularity of the online survey by a Whitireia New Zealand journalism class has some asking if anyone has been stuffing the ballot box.

At 9pm yesterday the "babes" of Parliament led the survey titled "Which politician would you go to bed with?", with Paula Bennett and Melissa Lee following close behind.

John Key is the most "popular" male but his party wingman, Bill English, has no votes.

Surprisingly, Don Brash, the balding, septuagenarian Act leader, is also among the most fancied.

Jim Tucker, who runs the journalism course, wrote on Facebook: "Some people are actually taking it seriously - especially a lot of politicians who appear to have ordered their staff and friends to vote for them."

He then told the Herald the poll started as a "p*ss take".

"We had a long discussion in class about putting up some sort of poll, our first of the election.

"The usual discussions were - will you vote, who are you going to vote for and so on. But the class decided to do something different, and see what people would actually vote about.

"It actually grew from 'which politician would you spend time on a desert island with'."

Mr Tucker said people could vote as many times as they liked and while he was not sure if the politicians on the list were "venal" enough to pick themselves, he was suspicious.

"It was done pretty tongue in cheek but within a very short time it's become quite viral and we've politicians go from one or no vote to many.

"John Key had one vote for most of the day and then suddenly jumped to 30. Melissa Lee went from three to 46 in 10 minutes."

Hot and not

* Nikki Kaye 206 votes
* Jacinda Ardern 112
* Paula Bennett 104
* Melissa Lee 46
* John Key 33
* Judith Collins 21
* Don Brash 16
* Helen Clark, Metiria Turei 8
* Gareth Hughes, Hekia Parata 7
* Peter Dunne, Kris Faafoi 3
* Katrina Shanks, Russel Norman, Winston Peters 2
* Hone Harawira, Charles Chauvel, Phil Goff, Pita Sharples, Annette King, Tariana Turia 1
* Bill English 0.