The Labour Party has taken the lead in the Taxpayers' Union political poll for the first time since March last year as Chris Hipkins' favorability ratings soar.
The survey, conducted by Curia Market Research, has Labour up 1.1 points on last month at 35.5%, while the National Party increased just 0.4 points to 34.8%.
Act and the Greens each dropped a little over 2 points to 9.3% and 5.7%, respectively.
These results would give Labour the most seats in parliament but would likely see the right-learning coalition forming a government.
The National Party and Act would have 61 seats, while the other three parties would have just 59 between them — assuming all electorate seats were held, which is not likely.
The smaller parties were NZ First on 4.2%, New Conservatives on 2.5%, TOP on 1.7%, Māori Party 1.4%, Vision NZ 0.8%, and Democracy NZ 0.5%.
Jacinda Ardern’s replacement appears to be winning some support back to Labour
Newly minted Prime Minister Chris Hipkins' appears to be winning back some support for the Labour Party. His net favorability has soared to 33% and he even has a positive rating of 13% among National voters.
It appears his promise to focus on “bread and butter issues” and cut some projects, such as the RNZ/TVNZ merger, has resonated with voters. The public’s assessment of the party’s ability to manage issues such as inflation and the economy has increased steadily since January.
Opposition leader Christopher Luxon’s net favorability increased by 3 points, but he remains underwater at minus 2%.
An earlier poll showed Labour’s numbers were improving even prior to Ardern’s resignation in late January.
A Roy Morgan survey released Monday showed support for the governing party up 2.5 points in January at 30%.
The polling firm said as 80% of the survey had been done before Hipkins was sworn into the top job, there was “not enough data yet available to draw any early conclusions on his leadership”.
The Taxpayers’ Union’s Curia Poll was conducted from March 2 to March 7. The sample size was 1000 eligible New Zealand voters – 800 by phone and 200 by online panel – weighted to reflect the overall voting adult population in terms of gender, age, and area.
125 Comments
National have no chance. It doesnt matter so much what policies they have as how they sell them, cost them and if we believe them.
People dont trust or like luxon. The more he sells to us.. is the lower national will fall in polls.
Best way to win.. is to fire luxon a month out and put willis in charge.
Ps. Also they need to sell all their private bloody investment houses.. else it would be like electing someone who would take us backwards.
Best way to win.. is to fire luxon a month out and put willis in charge.
Anyone thinking Willis can pull off Jacindamania is misguided. Willis is not nearly as likeable, but crucially Jacinda didn't really change Labour's 2017 election policy platform or party machine at all - she was just a fresh face to sell their vision, against a clapped-out and dull National party under English.
If we agree that National's policies are an incoherent mess, only changing the leader at the top will not be sufficient to turn their chances around, especially up against a popular leader such as Hipkins (presuming he stays popular). It'll also look very desperate.
Jacinda was actually an astute political operative, she was across all details and hardly ever put a foot wrong - her biggest 'scandal' was calling David Seymour a prick, sentiment that most people agree with. And then she was able to turn that into a way to donate money to charity.
Contrast that to Hipkins, who we have seen tell at least 3-4 significant porkies and refuse to properly acknowledge / apologise for them.
Contrast that to both Luxon and Willis, who in the last week have gotten the Ministry of Health mixed up with Te Whatu Ora - they aren't across the details.
She led a party that dreamed up totally unachievable policies, to help suck in voters, and then unsurprisingly almost completely failed on delivery.
What does that suggest, choose from the list:
- lack of brains
- lying, or at the very least being economical with the truth
- lack of leadership and party cohesion
- all of the above
She unexpectedly won in 2017 after being in the leadership spot for 6 weeks, dramatically turning the party's fate around.
She was then saddled with Winston Peters, who directly stopped them from achieving many of their promises.
She led a world-leading, science-based response to the global pandemic.
She achieved the highest vote of any party since 1954 (50.01%), including the first majority government in MMP.
The majority of this term was still dominated by the pandemic, sucking up huge amounts of time and money, both in the executive and across the public sector at large.
All of this in a political environment where raising tax revenues is heresy, having to build back a public sector that had been starved under the previous National government.
She achieved a blood-less hand over of power to her nominated successor, who has revived Labour's popularity in the polls and set them on a strong path to win the next election.
As I said, she was an astute political operative. Look at what she did, rather than what she didn't. Also realise that being PM / government doesn't give you unlimited powers to achieve what you set out to achieve - you have to work with the systems, institutions and people who are in place when you come into power and make the best of them.
Another way to look at it is - what cards was she dealt, and then how well did she play them? She got dealt absolutely shit cards (repeatedly), but managed to win anyway.
Being astute is not being practical and certainly not "transparent". The hatred and death threats to Jacinda may be an indication that voters neither have trust in Hipkins or Labour and traditional Labour voters may not vote or worse vote green. For the intelligent and those with voter regret should pragmatically electorate vote National, Party vote ACT being the least worse option. Luxon has improved as has National but trust in both is still fragile and other centre right parties may benefit, hopefully not including NZfirst.
Ardern didn't "win" in 2017, Winston anointed her.
That's what winning an election is. Becoming prime minister. Bill English didn't win the election because he didn't become prime minister.
Any other silly word games you want to play are a waste of time - the facts are the facts. Labour and Jacinda won.
As I already said, Jacinda was an astute political operator. That is how she won the 2017 election. Bill English was not, and so he lost.
Sorry reality upsets you.
A dead dog in power would have won the Covid election with a massive majority.
Had National actually won the 2017 election, all evidence shows they would have handled COVID much differently - and worse - than Labour did. As we were coming out of the first lockdown, Stephen Joyce (who would have been Finance minister and thus very powerful in cabinet) said that lockdowns were "a scam" and would not prevent COVID from spreading but that they would create huge financial cost for no gain. History shows he was wrong. It is thus entirely reasonable to infer that had National been in power, they would not have pursued the lockdown approach that Labour did. They likely would have let COVID back into the country in late 2020, before vaccines were available.
Right now NZ enjoys a world-leading response - the only country for whom deaths over 2020-2022 are lower than would have otherwise been predicted, had the pandemic not occurred.
It's VERY difficult to improve on such a result as that. But VERY easy to do worse than that - as evidenced by every other country on the planet doing worse.
On the other hand, now that Jacinda is gone, all Labour has to do to pick up more votes is let National trot the dead fish Luxon out in front of cameras and let his lack of personality and charisma scare swing voters back to Chippy. Lack of policy from National doesn;t help, but with the quality of our electors thats only a secondary consideration.
Bludgers like these childcare ones.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/300814789/the-jugglenaut-how…
Criminals like this.
https://www.ird.govt.nz/media-releases/2023/former-manhattan-developer-…
Chuckle. Despite the numerous rants on this forum about Labour, they are still most definitely in with a shout come election time.
I personally would like to see ACT's policies forensically dissected - their libertarian nastiness cannot remain hidden for too much longer one hopes........
Keep grasping at straws.
As I have now said several times, I am not a member of any political party, have never been, and I work in private industry in IT.
But thanks for comparing me to the very successful Gareth Morgan (even if he was a totally crap politician).
An observation only, couldn't care less one way or the other! And you can take it anyway you like, but trust me, it's no compliment as Gareth lost the plot!
As for your self professed debating skills, you don"t debate you lecture. You apparently have a very high regard for your own intelligence. You stopped commenting for quite a while and the site was much better for it!
i could not follow ACT in particularly the hypocrisy of the leader when he complains which is almost daily over what others say about himself or his party while he himself does the same back to other people or parties. this is supposed to be the most liberal party when it comes to free speech and debate yet he acts like a little cheeky kid that can give it but not take it so runs to mum when someone says something mean back to him.
i watched the ACT member last night stand up and say ACT will vote against the taxing of GST to airbnb and urber even though he himself thinks they have an unfair advantage on local business whom do have to pay GST and pleaded with national that when they come into power to in fact support the measure
That's classic political rhetoric when you are ideologue. You will say one thing but do another. Guarantee if they get to decide housing policy it will be to give people with batches some sort of tax write off while making housing more expensive. Bought to you by their donors.
Jim Bolger said “bugger the polls.” Not one to utter much more than clichés, he was nonetheless not wide of the mark with that remark. There wasn’t then either the turbulence that is looming for New Zealand this election year. It would be widely premature to read anything of substance into polls at this stage of proceedings but that won’t prevent the to be expected partisanship on here, shrilling into insults and bragging.
Er, why? She is very likely to win her electorate, and won't need to be a party leader to do it.
There's a reasonably strong chance that she'll run for Auckland mayor in 2025 and defeat Wayne Brown, or whomever his lame duck successor is if he's had the uncharacteristic good sense to resign by then.
Hipkins seems to have done "an Ardern" on Ardern (viz Ardren on Little). That's politics I guess!
This poll shows even National supporters appreciate a guy you can trust not just like the his politics. We are in uncertain times still. Chippy will do his best for the country.
"...a guy you can trust..."
Doesn't matter because he is cool and a certified chill dude and Luxon is not.
I couldn't vote for Chippy because of just how many times he's been caught out lying now - Northland prostitutes, Charlotte Bellis, claiming the tax take is lower than when Labour took over, he just can't help himself. I'd love someone to pull a Matt Hancock on him and let us see the contents of his text messages, I suspect there would be some zingers.
I like my politicians to be a bit more subtle in their dishonesty, but I'm jaded enough to know that is all irrelevant because most people would rather sit next to him on a plane, myself included, and that worked for John Key and it will work for Chippy.
This is not an endorsement for Luxon, the man put on Earth to reinflate the NZ housing market. I don't like him either.
At this point, nobody really takes my fancy.
I am deeply skeptical of any content coming out of David Farrar's political machine. People I knew at university worked in his call centre factory for public opinion polling and largely felt he was always selectively biasing his sample results to create bandwagon effects.
Private polls and public polls often have very different results apparently.
How do you access the Exchange and what are they offering for the ABs to not win the Cup?
For mind the ABs are far too flaky and the forwards average at best. Defence wins cups and ours is weak. And throw in a mediocre coach and lots of uncertainty around the future.
national announced today they would remove the hurdle for overseas parties to build to rent apartment blocks and return depreciation and interest deductibly, on the face of it seems like a good idea but remember that horrible thing called the accommodation supplement which now runs at 2 billion per year, so we as the taxpayer would be boosting some overseas funds return to house people in NZ, if they said yes you can build here and rent but your tenants cannot collect an accommodation supplement the policy would get a yes tick from me. these would also be heavily leveraged investments to take advantage of our tax rules and most likely run at zero profit with the end game of capital gain when sold after 20 years
The economy hasn't properly sh*t itself yet and they're getting positive exposure from the recent crisis and Wayne Brown being a jackass.
Give it a few months. Builders will be going under, the weather will be crap and they will be reducing roading funding to make cycleways.
Yes, and when the economy does shit itself, who do you think is going to be more credible to managing it?
The party giving tax cuts to the rich? The party that says they want to help with the cost of living crisis, but opposes giving pay rises to those paid least in society?
"they will be reducing roading funding to make cycleways"
That isn't the plan at all. The plan is to make sure that if a cycleways is supposed to be built on a road it is built at the same time as they do the maintenance to save money on having to dig up a newly refurbished road. It is sensible and will save money both in the short term and long term.
Also newsflash - cycleways are minimal maintenance compared to roads as people on bikes don't weigh one ton and therefore they cause less wear an tear. If you get more people cycling (No I don't mean force everyone to cycle, I just mean those that want to but cannot because the roads are too dangerous for them) then we all save money on road maintenance and people in cars face less traffic as it's getting other cars off the road.
What is it with people getting triggered by cycling??? It's completely bizarre.
Yeah, it's really weird. Cycle and pedestrian infrastructure has been something like <2% of the national budget for roads for like 50 years and people talk about it like they are 80% or something. Cyclists are also 1m wide and about 1000 of them fit into the same space as around 40 people in cars. And those 40 cars have increased in weight by around 30% and their average width has increased significantly as well, over the past 50 years (check here). But you won't hear drivers talking about how they are sorry for taking up ever more space on the public infrastructure. Instead a single occupant 2 tonne Ford Ranger with a 11.5 sqm footprint will pull up next to a cyclist with a 1.5 sqm footprint and yell out the window at them for taking up a lane and "acting entitled". It's hilariously idiotic.
You're buying into the Fire & Fury mockumentary take there. Most of the people who were at those protests weren't nutjobs, they were ordinary folk who'd lost their jobs for refusing to have their universal human rights infringed. Most of them also voted Labour/Green the election before...
\They seem to want to vote Act, but he keeps shutting them down in public debates/facebook comments section lol
There were a heck of a lot of protestors there, and they were mostly traditional labour supporters. The actual turnout would have only been a tiny fraction of those who held those opinions. The evidence that's come out since then has only reinforced how correct the protestors were, but the media just keeps gaslighting them. Labour's going to have their ass handed to them on a plate this election.
Looks like around half voted for the left, correct on the gaslighting, hope you are right about the election.
I went down personally to check it out and had a chat to quite a few people. A lot of people there on sickness benefits and unemployed. A lot of people there with agendas other than anti mandate, most of them on either side of the extreme political spectrum - super leftist hippy types and ultra right nationalists - this seemed to be only 5% of the crowd, but main instigators/angry people. Quite a few Maori protesting land/society grievances.
Really it was a motley mob who didn't have any coherent message except they were all "anti government" for one reason or the other. Probably wouldn't have mattered who was in power as red or blue their response would have almost certainly been identical.
You're wrong. The coherent message was very clear to "End the Mandate!". We all suffer from confirmation bias. I viewed the covid years digging into the scientific literature myself, and also listening to experts like Tess Lawrie, Peter McCullough, Jay Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff, Sunetra Gupta, Simon Thornley and many others. I donated money to VFF and still read their material along with that of NZDSOS. My view of the media and political landscape has completely changed. But hey - I thought Dan Andrews was the Australian reincarnation of Joseph Stalin but he got re-elected so maybe there's hope for you labour supporters.
Here's some reaction to luxon in rangiora
People are sick of the bullshit from national.....time to get real! could they lose it from here....hell yeah
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yDxYvRHuH8
Thanks for sharing. The last comment is telling. Luxon does go over and over the same things, and people have stopped listening to him because he bores them. I remember Muller, Collins and Luxon all sounding quite credible and fresh in their first few days of leadership, but it soon wore off and they slipped back into only speaking to the party faithful and losing the swing voters. Is this down to the advisors within National? They seem to be unable to broaden their appeal beyond the base. We deserve an effective alternative to Labour, where is the talent in the National Caucus?
It's not their advisers, it's their general policy platform. They are running 1990's / early 2000s policies for a demographic base that has moved on.
It's kind of amusing really, John Key got into power by filing all sharp edges off of National's traditional policy platform, being aspirational and a friendly approachable guy. English lost his 2nd election in 2017 because he couldn't fill those shoes.
Luxon is has a very thin veneer of Key's charm covering up their 20th century policy platform. It isn't going to work. The tories in the UK are doing similar under Rishi - Labour there have about a 20-30 point polling advantage over them.
Actually English polled very well in the 2017 election. You seem to constantly brush over the fact that Winston annointed Jacinda in 2017 because he had a score to settle with the National Party and Labour was so desperate to get into power they gave into all Winnie's demands. Provincial Growth Fund for example, yeah that did a lot of good for the country.
You can twist and spin it anyway you want with your word soup but Labour were handed power and were woefully lacking the ability to govern.
5 years later and every metric for being a first world country is in decline. Possibly terminally.
It seems somewhat more than ironic that the case is being argued for 16yo to have the vote at the same time as the judiciary is accepting arguments for reductions in criminal responsibility & sentencing on the basis that juvenile brains don't fully develop until 25.
I hope labour do get back in, I hope interest rates climb to 9%, I hope when you are sick you can't get in to see a doctor or get surgery for a live threatening condition, I hope you lose our job to get the inflation target back under 3, I hope the countries debt blows out to such an amount that their is little to no hope of ever paying it back and your children and grandchildren will get taxed 50% to pay it back, I hope that the teacher shortage means you have 1 to 60 class ratios and NZ literacy and education system is the leading 3rd world system it is turning out to be. I also hope if they get back in, then if you voted for them, you don't moan you are struggling to eat or pay the bills, or you have just been assaulted outside the supermarket carpark for some $ or food.
I hope National/Act get back in, I hope interest rates climb to 9%, I hope when you are sick you can't get in to see a doctor or get surgery for a live threatening condition, I hope you lose our job to get the inflation target back under 3, I hope the countries debt blows out to such an amount that their is little to no hope of ever paying it back and your children and grandchildren will get taxed 50% to pay it back, I hope that the teacher shortage means you have 1 to 60 class ratios and NZ literacy and education system is the leading 3rd world system it is turning out to be. I also hope if they get in, then if you voted for them, you don't moan you are struggling to eat or pay the bills, or you have just been assaulted outside the supermarket carpark for some $ or food.
Matthew Hooton: Polls all point in the wrong direction for National
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/matthew-hooton-polls-all-point-in-t…
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