For the first time since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Jacinda Ardern-led Labour party has slipped from being New Zealand’s most popular and been overtaken by the right.
A new TVNZ/Kantar Public poll found the centre-right National party had surged by seven points to 39%, compared with Labour’s 37% – making it Labour’s lowest result in the poll since it was elected in 2017.
The result follows a turbulent month in New Zealand, with Covid cases spiking, violent protests outside parliament and steeply rising living costs. The country has been dealing with widespread Covid-19 for the first time in the pandemic, recording more than 20,000 cases a day and 773 people in hospital.
Polling was conducted in the days when police broke up a weeks-long anti-vaccine-mandate occupation of parliament grounds. The protest descended into scenes without recent precedent in New Zealand: protesters lit large fires around parliament, allegedly attempted to burn down the local law school, and hurled chairs, bricks, tables and bottles at police. Forty police officers were injured.
The country is also reckoning with rising cost of living: the annual inflation rate is now at 5.9% and ASB economists have forecast it may hit 7% in the first half of the year. Already-rising petrol prices have spiked amid Russia’s war on Ukraine, with the price at many petrol stations hitting $3 a litre. According to the poll, economic optimism in New Zealand was slipping: 28% were optimistic about the economy and 53% pessimistic.
Current polling would place traditional left and right coalition partnerships neck and neck: if National combined with the libertarian Act party, they would hold 59 seats, compared with the left Labour-Greens bloc of 58. The balance of power would fall to the Māori party, which holds three seats and has previously formed coalitions with both Labour and National.
In the preferred prime minister stakes, Ardern still held an edge: polling at 34% against the relative newcomer National leader Christopher Luxon’s 25%. But that result still marked a significant drop for Ardern, down from 58% at the close of 2020. Luxon, meanwhile, has climbed from 17% in January – the first Kantar poll after he took the party’s leadership in November. When participants were asked to choose directly between the two, there was only one point between them: 46% chose Ardern and 45% Luxon.
