A new political poll has put New Zealand’s centre-right opposition solidly ahead of the ruling Labour party in the lead up to October’s election, with the National and ACT parties recording the majority support needed to form a coalition government.
Labour languished on 29% of the vote in the Guardian Essential poll New Zealand, which polled more than 1,100 eligible voters, with National recording 34.5%. ACT received 11.6% of the vote. Respondents unsure about how they would vote – 6.1% of those surveyed – were included in the final result.
The poll tipped New Zealand First – a populist party which has held the balance of power after elections before – for a return to parliament on 5.3% of the vote. It would be an abrupt reversal of fortunes for a group ejected from power at the 2020 election after falling well short of the 5% electoral threshold needed to enter parliament.
Labour’s traditional support partners, the Green party and Te Pāti Māori polled at 8.5% and 2.5% respectively.
The poll is the first in what will be a monthly New Zealand survey by Essential, an Australian research firm whose political polls Guardian Australia has published since 2017. It will contain various topical questions, including some that have been discussed with the Guardian. The results of the online panel had a margin for error of 2.9% and was weighted to align with New Zealand’s population.
The result would give 46 seats in parliament to National – which currently only has 33 – and 15 to the libertarian party ACT, up from 10 now. Together, the two groups would hold 61 seats – a one-seat majority.
On the left, Labour (38 seats), the Greens (11) and Te Pāti Māori (3) would hold a combined 52 places, well short of the 60 seats needed to form a government. Labour currently has 62 lawmakers in parliament after an almost unprecedented victory in 2020, at the height of former prime minister Jacinda Ardern’s popularity.
The Essential poll is among the first this year to record more than 5% of the party vote for New Zealand First, whose leader, Winston Peters, is a veteran – and at times maverick – politician. He first entered parliament more than four decades ago, and has held the balance of power following three New Zealand elections, selecting both Labour and National to lead the country in the past.
In the poll, New Zealand First won seven seats in the House. But predicting who Peters could align with in a coalition government is not simple: ACT, the traditional governing partner for National, has emphatically ruled out working with him. Peters, meanwhile, recently derided the prospect of forming a coalition with Labour.
The 14 October vote looms against the backdrop of a cost of living crisis in New Zealand, driven by rising food prices and interest rates. Chris Hipkins, the Labour prime minister, pledged after taking office in January as the party’s support flagged in the polls, that his government would concentrate on “bread and butter” matters including living costs – abandoning some more costly and complex policies.
The poll’s respondents ranked reducing the cost of living as the issue of greatest importance to them from a list of options, ahead of primary healthcare and addressing the crime rate. The poll also recorded that 70% were “finding it a bit difficult” or “struggling” to afford food and groceries, versus 29% who said they could “comfortably” afford those items. In response to a question about financial circumstances, 58% of those surveyed said they were “struggling a bit” or “in serious difficulty” with paying their bills.
In recent polls by New Zealand news outlets, National and ACT have taken the lead with flagging support for Labour, with the party’s leader Chris Hipkins slightly ahead as preferred prime minister.
Despite the Essential poll’s punishing result for Labour, Hipkins received a higher rating in a question that asked how voters felt about the two major party leaders. Christopher Luxon, the National leader, recorded a 32% positive rating (receiving a score of seven or more on a scale of 1-10), versus 43% for Hipkins.
In a later question, 45% of those polled strongly or somewhat agreed with the statement that “none of the current options for prime minister really appeal to me.”
The past week has seen the major parties sparring over spending on roads after National announcing a $24bn transport plan. When asked what was more important in terms of transport, 28% of respondents to the Essential poll selected building more roads, while 72% preferred improving “other options such as public transport, coastal shipping, and rail transport.”
The poll saw 55% of respondents register that things in New Zealand were on the wrong track, against 31% who said the country was going in the right direction. The question is a standard one in political polls worldwide. As at the 2020 election, polling companies had recorded years of positive sentiment about New Zealand’s direction – making the country for a time an outlier among western liberal democracies.
This poll was conducted by Essential Research and has a sample size of 1,163, using quotas set to be representative of the target population by age, gender and location. Respondents not eligible or not intending to vote are excluded from voting intention questions. Weighting is applied to the data using factors of age, gender, location and enrolment status, from Statistics New Zealand and New Zealand Electoral Commission data. The poll was conducted through online panels between 2-6 August 2023, has a maximum margin of error of +/- 2.9%, a weighting efficiency of 97%, and 6.1% were unsure on the party vote question. Unsure voters remain in the final result, but were removed for the purpose of calculating seats in Parliament. The full results are available at the Essential Report New Zealand.
