A vote for new leadership in New Zealand has not translated into widespread confidence that the incoming three-party government will work constructively together, while a growing number of people feel unsure as to whether the country is on the right track, a new Guardian Essential New Zealand poll has found.
The poll tracked just under 1,200 New Zealanders in November after the final election count, which revealed that the centre-right National party would require both the libertarian Act and populist New Zealand First parties to form a government.
One month on from the election, the country remains in the dark over what shape the government will take as coalition talks between incoming prime minister and National leader Christopher Luxon, Act leader David Seymour and NZ First leader Winston Peters drag on.
In the latest Guardian Essential New Zealand poll, 37% of respondents said they were not confident the three parties could work constructively together, while 31% believed they could and 32% reported not feeling strongly either way.
The poll also recorded a rise in the number of people who were unsure whether the country was heading in the right direction – 23%, up from 14% in October. Nearly half – 48% – felt the country was on the wrong track, down from 57% the previous month; 29% felt that it was on the right track, unchanged from the October poll.
While National and Act are traditional coalition partners, NZ First, led by veteran MP Peters, could frustrate the other parties’ ambitions over some of their core policies, including National’s plan to allow foreign buyers back into the housing market and National and Act’s hopes to instigate major cuts to public services.
Poll respondents were divided over whether the National party would get the balance right over its plan to cut public service employees in order to reduce government spending – 43% believed it would not strike the right balance, 42% believed it would and another 15% were unsure.
Similarly to previous poll results, the cost of living, the economy, health, ensuring fair tax and addressing crime were the top five issues respondents felt it was “very important” that political parties address.
When polled on what sort of impact the National-led government was likely to have on these issues, most felt it would make things better for the economy, crime, tax and cost-of-living pressures, but respondents believed National was less likely to improve health, the housing crisis and protect at-risk children.
Meanwhile, just 16% of respondents felt the incoming government would reduce the gap between rich and poor, while 35% felt it would deepen the divide. On climate change, 17% thought it would improve action on the issue, with 23% believing it would make things worse.
There was an increase in the number of those polled who felt that overall, neither a Labour-led nor National-led government would make a real difference to the cost-of-living crisis – up to 53% in November compared with 43% in August’s results.
The Labour party experienced the worst defeat of a sitting government since the introduction of the country’s mixed member proportional system in 1996, going from 65 seats in the 2020 election to 34 in 2023. Despite this, respondents were nearly evenly split in opinion over how much it had achieved during its time in office – 47% agreed it had achieved a lot or a fair amount, while 50% disagreed.
But the desire for a change of leadership was underscored by how respondents felt about party leaders. Of the parties voted into parliament, Chris Hipkins was the only leader to see a dip in popularity: 39% thought of him positively compared with 44% in October. Meanwhile, Luxon’s popularity slightly increased from 33% prior to the election to 37% afterwards.
• This poll was conducted by Essential Research – a signatory to the New Zealand Political Polling Code – and has a sample size of 1,193, 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 questions. Weighting is applied to the data using factors of age, gender and location from Statistics New Zealand, and 2023 party vote from New Zealand Electoral Commission data. The poll was conducted through online panels between 9 and 12 of November 2023, has a maximum margin of error of +/- 2.8%, a weighting efficiency of 90%. The full results are available at the Essential Report New Zealand.
