Neither a Labour nor a National coalition could form a government without the support of populist minor party New Zealand First after the October election, according to the latest Guardian Essential political poll – which showed respondents unwilling to give either major party a commanding victory.
Since August, the governing Labour party slumped 2.5 points to 26.9% in the survey, which also recorded unsure voters – 5.3% in September – in its final result. But the results showed apathy towards both of the biggest parties, with centre-right National failing to pick up any speed from August, despite remaining ahead on 34.5%.
In the Guardian Essential New Zealand poll of more than 1,100 eligible voters, the Greens experienced a surge in favour, up 2.5 points from August to 11%, while Te Pāti Māori remained at 2.5%. National’s traditional support party, the libertarian group Act, fell 1.3 points to 10.3%.
New Zealand First, a party led by the veteran politician Winston Peters, recorded a result above the 5% threshold to enter parliament for the second consecutive month in the Guardian Essential poll. The party, which was ejected from parliament at the 2020 election after falling below the threshold, was up 0.7 points to 6%.
New Zealand’s major political polls have showed a continued downward trend for Labour in the past month amid cost-of-living woes driven by ballooning inflation and interest rates in the past two years. The party that thundered to a resounding victory with 50% of the vote in 2020 – giving it an almost unprecedented ability to enact its policy agenda – is now languishing below 30% in the polls. In the Guardian Essential survey, Labour would take 35 seats in parliament on the latest figures, down from 62 now. Combined with the Green party’s 15 seats (up from nine ) and three for Te Pāti Māori (which now holds two), the leftwing coalition would hold 53 seats, well short of the 60 needed to govern.
But unlike some other surveys that record the National party bolstering its lead and establishing a comfortable 60-plus-seat majority in partnership with Act, the Guardian Essential poll registers National at the same level of support as in August, giving the party 45 seats on current figures (up from 34 now), with 14 for Act (up from 10) – leaving the block on 59 seats, just short of a majority.
The latest Guardian Essential numbers would give eight seats, and the balance of power, to New Zealand First, whose leader, Peters, relishes finding himself in a kingmaker role after elections. He has chosen to propel Labour and National into government when he has held the position before.
National’s leader, Christopher Luxon, would not say when asked again by reporters this week whether his party would work with New Zealand First after the election.
“I’m not worried about Winston Peters,” Luxon said, according to 1News. “He’s not in parliament. He’s below the threshold.”
Act’s leader, David Seymour, has categorically ruled out sharing a cabinet table with Peters, according to news outlet Stuff.
On the left, the prime minister, Chris Hipkins, the Labour party leader, in August ruled out a governing partnership with New Zealand First, saying Peters would provoke “instability and chaos” in government. Peters retorted that he had already ruled out a coalition with Labour, although he would not say whether he would support either major party outside a formal coalition deal, RNZ reported.
August’s Guardian Essential poll revealed that 45% of respondents “somewhat” or “strongly” agreed that none of the current options for prime minister appealed to them; the number increased to 46% in September. Hipkins recorded 40% strongly positive sentiment – down from 43% in August – and 27% strongly negative (up from 22%).
Luxon recorded 32% strongly positive and 35% strongly negative – unchanged from August.
The results overall paint a picture of voters seeking change – but unenthusiastic about who should provide it. The poll saw a lift in respondents registering that things in New Zealand were on the wrong track – 59%, up four points from August – with 25% reporting that the country was going in the right direction – down from 31% last month. The question is a standard one to assess the public mood in political polls worldwide. As at the 2020 election, polling companies had recorded years of positive sentiment about New Zealand’s direction – making the country for a time an outlier among western liberal democracies.
A new question in the September poll revealed 42% of respondents think New Zealand is becoming “much more divided”, with 35% responding that the country is “a little” more fractured. A total of 3% of those polled believed the country was becoming less divided.
This poll was conducted by Essential – a signatory to the New Zealand Political Polling Code – and has a sample size of 1,154, 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 6 and 10 September 2023, has a maximum margin of error of +/- 2.9%, a weighting efficiency of 96%, and 5.3% 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.
