Support for Labour has registered a burst of energy in a Guardian Essential poll days before the New Zealand election – but not enough to overcome an advance by the populist group New Zealand First, which is expected to propel a rightwing coalition to power.
The minor party’s steady climb in recent surveys threatens to vex what once appeared an easy route to victory for the right in Saturday’s election, after months of polls showed governing Labour languishing. Led by the maverick, veteran lawmaker Winston Peters, New Zealand First recorded 8.2% in October’s poll – which includes undecided voters in its total – up 2.2 points from September’s survey, and the party’s strongest showing of any major poll this year.
Since September’s poll, support stalled for centre-right National, the main opposition party, which recorded 34% of the vote, 0.5 points down from last month. Its support partner, the minor libertarian group Act, slid 2.4 points to 7.9%.
The centre-left Labour party lifted 3.4 points to 30.3%, an 11th-hour boost after months of persistent slumps in the polls. Support for Labour’s leftwing support parties was steady; the Greens recorded 10.6% of the vote (down 0.4 points from last month) and Te Pāti Māori registered 1.9% (down 0.6 points).
Undecided voters made up 3.8% of the tally in the poll of 1,200 eligible voters, which was conducted from 4-8 October – including a period when the Labour prime minister, Chris Hipkins, was isolating with the coronavirus – and had a 2.8% margin of error.
The results left both Labour and National’s blocs well short of claiming the 61 of parliament’s 120 seats needed to govern, with a leftwing coalition holding 55 seats (up two from September) and the right 54 (down five). While most analysts and all major polls have suggested voters will abandon the Labour-led government in Saturday’s vote – consistent with a depleted national mood fuelled by high inflation and a cost-of-living crisis – National has not capitalised on the dissatisfaction.
Instead, according to the figures, the climate has proved leverage for NZ First, which would hold 11 seats and the balance of power, with a more sweeping mandate for Peters to exact concessions in a governing deal than the major party leaders would prefer. The party has held the balance of power after elections before, twice propelling Labour to government and once choosing National.
But in 2023, only National has expressed willingness to work with NZ First; Hipkins – who has governed with Peters before – in August vehemently rejected the prospect of doing so again. This week, the Labour leader said he would rather send the country to a second election than change his mind if no governing coalition could be formed after the vote.
National’s leader, Christopher Luxon, this month announced he would deal with Peters if he had no other choice; his reluctance to work with NZ First was underscored by remarks last week from National’s campaign chair, who warned that a deal between National, Act and New Zealand First might not be possible, prompting the possibility of a hung parliament and a fresh election.
Such influence for New Zealand First would be a dramatic reversal from the party’s apparent electoral oblivion at the 2020 election, when it failed to return to parliament after a dismal result. But after four decades in politics, Peters, 78, and known simply as “Winston” to most New Zealanders, is an expert at rallying a grassroots base.
His platform has leveraged discontent with the Labour government and political and media “elites” – figures long decried by Peters, although he has held some of New Zealand’s highest elected offices himself and selected Labour and Jacinda Ardern to govern after the 2017 election.
Along with the party’s traditional pledge to curb immigration, Peters has in 2023 adopted anti-transgender stances and opposition to vaccine mandates, and deepened his scorn for policies of shared decision-making with Māori, New Zealand’s Indigenous people. Peters, who is Māori, prompted widespread rebuke in September when he claimed Māori were not Indigenous to New Zealand.
When asked their view of NZ First holding the balance of power after Saturday’s vote, 48% of respondents said it would be bad for New Zealand; 26% said it would be a good thing. On Peters, 20% felt strongly positive, while 47% were strongly negative.
Hipkins, a career politician, recorded 44% strongly positive sentiment and 27% strongly negative; the results were 33% strongly positive for Luxon, a former airline chief executive, with 40% strongly negative.
But respondents again showed a lack of enthusiasm – as in previous Guardian Essential NZ Polls – for the major party leaders, with 42% saying none of the current options for prime minister really appealed to them.
The uncertainty about who New Zealanders want to govern was underscored by the 27% of those surveyed who said what they had seen or heard during the election campaign had changed how they intended to vote.
This poll was conducted by Essential – a signatory to the New Zealand Political Polling Code – and has a sample size of 1,200, 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 4 and 8 October 2023, has a maximum margin of error of +/- 2.8%, a weighting efficiency of 97%, and 3.8% 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. Full results are available at the Essential Report, New Zealand.
