Support for New Zealand’s Labour party has dropped to its lowest level since it came into power in 2017, new polling shows, amid growing frustrations over high cost of living, rising interest rates and concerns about crime.
A Kantar One News Poll released on Tuesday night found Labour, down 1% to 33%, would not be able to form a government alongside likely coalition partners the Green party, which remained steady on 9%, and the Māori party, steady on 2%.
The right bloc, made up of the centre-right National party, increased its lead by 1% to 38%, while the Libertarian Act party, jumped 2% to 11%, putting the two parties in a comfortable position to form a government without needing additional coalition partners.
Prime minister Jacinda Ardern is still the most popular choice for prime minister, but her approval rating dropped slightly – by 1% to 29% – her lowest result since August 2017, just before she became prime minister.
National party leader Christopher Luxon’s popularity rose by 2% to 23% – marking the closest gap between the two since Luxon was appointed leader last November.
Labour reached stratospherically high popularity during the Covid pandemic, when New Zealanders were broadly impressed with its crisis leadership. In December 2020, it polled at 53%, a highly unusual result for any single party in New Zealand’s coalition-based electoral politics.
Since then the party’s popularity has been waning, aside from a brief blip in September that showed Labour had halted its steady decline. The initial decline in popularity was slow, but it has become more pronounced as the country grapples with high living costs and deepening social inequality, and after the opposition National party appeared to conclude its years of internal chaos with the selection of a new leader.
The recent polling was conducted over the last week of November. In the lead up to this period, New Zealand’s reserve bank forecasted that the country will tip into recession in 2023, and lifted the official cash rate by an unprecedented 75 basis points, to 4.25%, putting further strain on mortgage-holders, who have watched interest rates rise at the same time their property values have dropped. Inflation is at a near 30-year high at 7.2% and the costs of rent, food and petrol remain stubbornly high.
Meanwhile, a high-profile story of the stabbing of an Auckland dairy worker that prompted nationwide protests, has come to symbolise increasing concerns about crime and inequality.
Responding to the polls, Luxon told One News that the result indicated “New Zealanders feel the country’s going in the wrong direction”.
Ardern said it was a difficult time to be in government, but that she, and Labour, had “experience of tough times”.
“You see us as a government coming forward with ideas and proposals to take on those challenges. Contrast that to the alternative – the opposition has not produced those ideas.”
