The left bloc would still form the next government and the two biggest parties have sunk to their lowest combined support since the first MMP election in 1996, according to the latest 1News Verian poll released on Monday.
The poll has Labour falling 5 points to 32 percent and National slipping 1 point to 29 percent. Together the two parties that have traded power for nearly three decades now command just 61 percent of the vote between them. That is the weakest showing for the big two since voters first cast a party vote under the mixed member proportional system in 1996, a result that points to a Parliament where the smaller parties hold more sway than at any time in the MMP era.
Even with Labour going backwards, the wider left still ends up in front. On these numbers Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori would hold 64 of the 120 seats, against 60 for National, ACT and New Zealand First. The Greens are the main reason. They climbed 2 points to 13 percent and would take 17 seats, their strongest position in the poll so far this campaign. Labour would have 41 seats and National 37.
New Zealand First continues its steady run, up 1 point to 11 percent for 15 seats, while ACT dropped a point to 6 percent and 8 seats. Te Pāti Māori sit at about 2 percent in the party vote but are projected to win six seats on the strength of their electorate support, which is how the left bloc keeps its edge despite Labour’s slide.
The other story sits just below the line that decides who gets into Parliament at all. The Opportunities Party rose to 4.6 percent, leaving it only 0.4 of a point short of the 5 percent threshold a party must clear to bring in list MPs without first winning an electorate seat. A party stuck on the wrong side of that line takes no seats and effectively wastes the votes cast for it, so the next few weeks of campaigning matter enormously for the minor party and for the blocs counting on where its support lands if it falls short.
The preferred prime minister numbers tell their own story about a public that is cooling on both main contenders. Christopher Luxon edged up 2 points to 18 percent and now sits ahead of Labour leader Chris Hipkins, who fell 3 points to 16 percent. New Zealand First leader Winston Peters was on 10 percent, Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick on 6 percent and ACT leader David Seymour on 4 percent. None of them can claim anything close to majority backing, and the field is unusually flat for a campaign that is meant to be sharpening voters’ choices.
What may worry both Labour and National most is how many people have stopped picking a side. The share of those surveyed who said they did not know how they would vote or refused to answer jumped 5 points to 14 percent. That is a large pool of undecided voters with the election now only months away, and it suggests the campaign is yet to settle in a way that locks people in behind a party.
The poll was conducted between 13 and 17 June using a mix of mobile phone calls and online panels, with a sample of 1,001 eligible voters and a margin of error of 3.1 percent at the 95 percent confidence level. As always with a single poll, the headline gaps between the blocs are within or close to that margin, so the seat projections should be read as a snapshot rather than a forecast.
The result lands in the middle of a fierce policy fight over tax and retirement savings. National has been campaigning on a plan to automatically enrol newborns in KiwiSaver with a $1500 contribution and to make employer and employee contributions compulsory, while the Greens have pitched what they call a tax system “for all of us” that they say would cut tax for 96 percent of New Zealanders. Both blocs are also wrestling with the politics of a fuel supply squeeze that has pushed prices up and put cost of living back at the centre of the contest.
For National, the figures extend a run of polls that have left the party stranded below 30 percent and unable to pull clear of Labour even as Labour itself loses ground. For Labour, a 5-point drop in a single poll is a sharp reminder that leading the left bloc is not the same as leading the country, and that much of the bloc’s strength now rests on the Greens and on Te Pāti Māori holding their electorate seats. For the smaller parties, the message is that the centre is hollowing out and there is room to grow.
With the November election drawing closer, polls like this one will increasingly drive the strategy of every party in Parliament. If you want to see where you sit across the policies on offer this election, you can work through Newswire’s voting tool to compare the parties on the issues that matter most to you.
What do you make of the big two parties hitting a 30-year low while the left bloc holds on? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
Leave a Reply