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.
About 1.7 million votes have already been cast, which is half the total enrolled of 3,436,178