New Zealand’s governing Labour coalition has pulled ahead in a new poll, putting it closer to staying in government after the upcoming election than it has been in a year.
It is the second poll this month to show strong results for Labour or the Greens, with support for the coalition parties rallying after the government coordinated national disaster responses, grappled with extreme weather events, and announced that it would be abandoning parts of its policy agenda to focus on economic issues.
The 1News Kantar released on Monday evening pushed the left bloc – made up of Labour and traditional coalition partner the Greens – ahead of the right. Labour fell 2 points to 36%, while the Green party gained 4 points, to 11%. The centre-right National party was down 3 points to 34%, with coalition partners the libertarian-right Act party up one point at 11%.
That result would make a National-Act coalition unable to form a government. The Māori party, which has previously ruled out working with Act, would hold a “kingmaker” position in government, polling at 3%.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins had also surged in the preferred prime minister rankings, rising 4 percentage points, to 27%. National’s Christopher Luxon, was at 17%, down 5 percentage points.
The results came in the aftermath of a series of “policy bonfires” from Labour, as the party’s new leader announced he would scrap a range of legislative work to focus the government of “bread and butter issues,” particularly high cost of living and inflationary pressures. Among the reforms scrapped or delayed this year are emissions-reduction policies, hate speech laws, some large-scale public transport projects, biofuel mandates, clean car incentives, a merger of public media, and legislation to lower the voting age. While some of those decisions will fall outside the poll’s surveying period, it would capture the broader re-orientation of the Labour party toward a core focus on economic relief.
The shift in support also came in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle, and could indicate positive attitudes toward the government’s disaster response so far. The rise in support for the Greens may indicate that the climate crisis is increasingly a priority for voters as they witnessed the devastating damage of extreme weather events.
Polling by Curia earlier in March also showed a strong result for Labour and Hipkins, with Labour taking the lead over National for the first time in close to a year. Hipkins’ personal favourability rating was also strong, at 33%, compared to his counterpart Luxon’s -2%.
