I don’t know why Newshub have done a poll this late in the election campaign. They will probably say something like ‘if an election was held today’, but- somewhere around 2 million people are likely to have voted by over the last two weeks. Perhaps they are trying to get as close to the election result as possible for poll bragging rights.
Labour 45.8% (down 4.3)
National 31.1% (up 1.5)
ACT 7.4% (up 1.1)
Greens 6.3% (down 0.2)
NZ First 3.5% (up 1.6)
New Conservatives 1.7% (down 0.4)
TOP 1.3% (up 0.4)
Maori Party 0.6% (down 0.9)
Advance NZ 0.3% (down 0.3)
Polling was done up until yesterday. The last Reid Research poll was done 16-23 September.
Again not a lot of movement or difference from other recent polls.
It still looks like a Labour + Green government, with or without a Labour majority.
NZ First are up a bit but probably too far from the threshold.
The latest Colmar Brunton polling was done this week (10-14 October) and with regular recent polling gives us the best idea of support levels and trends, but one of the most notable aspects is there is little change from their last poll.
It clearly confirmed that National+ACT are a long way from challenging, with their combined total 39% – on last night’s debate Judith Collins looked worn out and her body language conceded a demoralising defeat, while Jacinda Ardern looked happy and positive (most of the time).
Labour Party: 46% (down 1%)
National Party: 31% (down 1%)
ACT: 8% (no change)
Green Party: 8% (up 2%)
New Zealand First:3% (up 1%)
New Conservative:2% (up 1%)
The Opportunities Party:1% (down 1%)
Advance New Zealand: 1% (no change)
Māori Party:1% (up 1%)
Don’t know: 7% (down 1%)
Refused: 8% (up 3%)
The movements are insignificant, apart perhaps from the Green rise.
Labour is borderline for being able to rule with a majority. It depends on how many small party wasted votes there are – on these numbers about 8% will fail to reach the threshold so 46% is about half of the votes that will count.
It’s really annoying that 1 News only publish results rounded to the nearest whole number (about two days after 1 News publish Colmar Brunton posts more accurate results). This can distort movements of the smaller parties in their news coverage.
NZ First up 1% may look promising for them, but they apparently rose from 2.4% to 2.7%, which statistically is an insignificant change.
It’s worth looking at the last four Colmar Brunton results for the main parties. They have polled weekly 17-21 September, 23-27 September, 3-7 October and 10-14 October.
Labour 48, 47, 47, 46
National 31, 33, 32, 31
ACT 7, 8, 8, 8
Greens 6, 7, 6, 8
NZ First 2.4, 1.4, 2.4, 2.7
Preferred Prime Minister:
Jacinda Ardern 55% (up 5%)
Judith Collins 20% (down 3%
David Seymour 3% (up 1%)
Winston Peters 1%
That suggests the Ardern versus Collins aspect of the campaign has worked better for Ardern.
For some reaason Roy Morgan have just released their poll done through September so in the context of an election campaign it is a bit out of date but may be of interest on the eve of election day (note that about 1.7 million people have already voted).
Labour 47.5% (August 48%)
National 28.5% (August 28.5%)
Greens 9.5% (August 11.5%)
ACT 7% (August 6%)
NZ First 2.5% (August 2.5%)
TOP 1.5% (August 1%)
Maori Party 0.5% (August 0.5%)
Other 3% (August 2%)
Those results aren’t a lot different to other recent polls, although they have National a bit lower and Greens a bit higher.
Trends seem quite steady (also like other polls):
Government confidence is also quite stable.
This latest New Zealand Roy Morgan Poll on voting intention was conducted by telephone – both landline and mobile – with a NZ-wide cross-section of 911 electors during September. Of all electors surveyed 6% (up 0.5%) didn’t name a party. Electors were asked: “If a New Zealand Election were held today which party would receive your party vote?”
I can’t find any reference to the polling period, but a UMR poll is being circulated. It is quite similar to the most recent UMR poll 25 August – 2 September on Opinion polling for the 2020 New Zealand general election (result in brackets):
Labour 50% (53%)
National 29% (29%)
Act 7% (6.2%)
Greens 6% (3.2%)
NZ First 2.7% (3.9%)
The only significant change (upwards) is for the Greens.
Here’s the latest trend chart that doesn’t include this poll (but it will make little difference):
So it looks very good for Labour and Act, borderline for Greens, bad for National and terminal for NZ First.
Up until Monday 1,282,478 people had voted so it would take a massive disaster or miracle to change things much now.
Advance NZ, the umbrella party set up by independent MP Jami-Lee Ross to try to benefit from social media popularity of Billy Te Kahika, looks like it has fizzled well short of the 5% threshold, and Te Kahika looks to be a long way from challenging in the Te Tai Tokerau electorate.
The party has only featured in three party poll results – 0.8, 0.6 and 1 (rounded). If they won an electorate at those levels they would get no more seats off the list, but there chances of winning an electorate look very slim.
Following the pattern of the other Māori electorate polls so far, the incumbent is leading as the preferred candidate for Te Tai Tokerau electorate.
Curia Market Research polled 500 people…
Kelvin Davis (Labour) 36%
Mariameno KapaKingi (Māori Party) 18%
Undecided 32%
Other 7%
Billy Te Kahika 1%
As is common Advance NZ are banking on all undecideds voting for them, but this rarely happens. The voter turnout in 2017 was 69.4%, so about 30% didn’t decide then.
Ross chose to not stand in Botany where he is the current MP (he was elected as a National candidate), so Te Tai Tokerau and the threshold are the only chances for Advance NZ, but they look a long way from either.
Te Kahika has excited a few thousand enthusiastic supporters but it takes at least 130,000 to make the 5% threshold and they look nowhere near that level of support.
A 1 News/Colmar Brunton poll (with the previous two polls from 17-21 September and 23-27 September in brackets):
Labour 47% (48, 47)
National 32% (31, 33)
ACT 8% (7, 8)
Greens 6% (6, 7)
NZ First 2.4% (2.4, 1.4)
TOP 2% (1.1, 1.0)
New Conservatives 1% (1.6, 1.4)
Advance NZ 1% (0.8, 0.6)
Maori Party 0.2 (0.9, 0.8)
Polling period 3-7 October 2020.
Very little change there from two weeks ago. Party support seems to have set in with little moving it.
National+Act on 40% still well short of challenging Labour or Labour+Greens.
Greens look ok but will still be worried about the threshold, especially if they underperform polling as they have done in some elections. And Labour may stop them picking up as many overseas votes.
NZ First still look to have failed to fire this time. Today’s news of the NZ First foundation in court again won’t help.
New Conservatives claimed to be polling around 4 but no published poll comes anywhere near that.
Advance NZ aren’t \making much progress.
Don’t know or refused 13% (up 2) – but these tend to not change the numbers much.
Poll question: ‘Do you support the proposed Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill?’ (the same question that will be asked as a referendum at the election).
Support the bill:
November 2019 – 43%
February 2020 – 39%
June 2020 – 40%
September 2020 – 35%
Oppose the bill:
February 2020 – 51%
June 2020 – 49%
September 2020 – 53%
11% did not know or refused to answer.
1 NEWS Colmar Brunton Poll: Between September 17 and 21, 2020, 1008 eligible voters were polled by landline (405) and mobile phone (603). The maximum sampling error is approximately ±3.1%-points at the 95% confidence level. Results higher and lower than 50% have a smaller sampling error. The data has been weighted to align with Stats NZ population counts for age, gender, region, ethnic identification and mobile or landline access.
A new poll released by the Helen Clark Foundation and the New Zealand Drug Foundation shows that cannabis legalisation would pass if the referendum were held today.
It doesn’t show that, it just suggests that it is currently possible a majority might support the the referendum ‘if held today’ (voting started last Saturday and runs for two weeks).
What these different poll resultss suggest is we will have to wait for the referendum result to see what those who are motivated enough to vote actually think.
Both poor poll results and also a lack of traction in media are pointing increasingly towards NZ First being dumped from Parliament this year, and with the lack of energy and lack of success for Peters this campaign that would likely mean the end of his long political career.
Peters first stood (unsuccessfully) for Parliament in 1975, and became a National MP in 1978 after winning a High Court electoral petition that overturned the election night result.
He left National in 1993 and retained his Tauranga seat as an Independent MP in a by-election, after which he established the NZ First Party.
Peters and NZ First unexpectedly enabled the National Bolger government in 1996, but he broke off the coalition, and NZ First were punished in the 1999 election, failing to make the threshold (they got 4.4%). The party survived through Peters retaining his electorate.
NZ First formed another coalition in 2005, this time with Helen Clark’s Labour government.
In 2008, NZ First was again punished by voters, coming short of the threshold with 4.07% of the votes. Poll results were relatively flat:
Peters also lost his Tauranga electorate (to Simon Bridges) so NZ First failed to make it back into Parliament.
NZ First made it back into Parliament in 2011 after a late surge in support, after Peters, aided by the media, made the most of the ‘tea pot tapes’ controversy.
In the three months up to the election NZ First poll results ranged from 3.4 to 8.4% with most being over the threshold.
In 2017, up to when Andrew Little handed over the Labour leadership to Jacinda Ardern, NZ First were often polling over 10% and up to 13%, but they dropped off a bit ending up with 7.2%.
This time Peters keeps rubbishing the polls, but it’s unlikely they are all wrong. His big play last week, playing a well worn race card, failed to make much impression. That may have been his last chance to play a get into Parliament free card.
Splashing money around the provinces via the Provincial Growth Fund doesn’t seem to have helped. Money doesn’t seem to buy elections in New Zealand.
Shane Jones seems to have given up in the Northland electorate where a poll showed him trailing in third place. He has a reputation for not being a diligent campaigner anyway,.
So the campaign has been left to Peters. He has been busy touring the country but has just failed to fire.
National Party leader Judith Collins went on the offensive at a packed public meeting in Nelson, taking aim at the Government’s “tremendously stupid” decision-making.
The event was organised by Grey Power, with most of those in attendance belonging to the older demographic.
Since getting 3% in a Roy Morgan poll in March NZ First has been under that, and got only 1% in the latest Colmar Brunton poll, down from 2.4% last week. In between those polls they were 1.9% in a Reid Research poll.
It’s possible a miracle may happen but time is running out for Peters to find something to grab the limelight. And history is against NZ First, as they have done poorly after being in Government twice in the past.
Peters will have to try something a lot more positive than ‘we’ll stop Labour doing stuff’, but it looks like he simply can’t compete with Ardern’s popularity that he has in part enabled.
We are finally getting a few polls leading into the election, with 1 News/Colmar Brunton releasing another poll, this one with polling done following last week’s leaders debate. This may have slightly lifted National support.
And Labour have slipped enough to raise doubts they may be able to govern alone, especially with a bit more of a Green rise.
Labour 47% (down 1)
National 33% (up 2)
ACT 8% (up 1)
Greens 7% (up 1)
NZ First 1% (down 1)
New Conservatives 1% (down 1)
TOP 1%
Maori Party 1%
Advance NZ 1%
Refuse to answer – 3% Undecided – 8%
Polling was done from Wednesday 23 to Sunday 27 September.
These are well within margin of error shifts.
Greens are looking healthier but will need to keep fighting for every vote they can get. They sometimes do better in polls than elections.
Winston Peters won’t quite have to rename his party NZ Last, but this loos increasingly like his last stint in Parliament.
The other small parties look like they are getting little to no traction.
Preferred Prime Minister:
Jacinda Ardern 54% (no change)
Judith Collins 23% (up 5)
David Seymour 2% (no change)
Winston Peters 1% (no change)
That’s a semi significant rise for Collins but she is still a long way off the pace.
These are rounds they do for their initial results and will be updated when the more accurate results are available.
Their last poll was done 25-29 July.
Preferred Prime Minister:
Jacinda Ardern 54% (July 54%)
Judith Collins 18% (July 20%)
David Seymour 2% (July 1%)
Winston Peters 2% (July 1%)
So as expected Labour are still looking very comfortable despite dropping a bit, but if they come down much more and Greens survive, as looks more likely, it may be a two party Government.
Greens seem to be benefiting from the ‘not Labour on their own’ sentiment.
National are just not making up any ground 9althoughb are higher than on some other recent polls).
ACT will remain confident.
NZ First look like they are being largely dismissed by voters. It’s going to be very tough for Peters from here, with Jones seeming to have pretty much conceded Northland already.
New Conservatives are gaining ground but probably too little, too late.
Maori Party have to win an electorate to get back in.
Advance NZ make their first showing but are a long way from the threshold.
