It was the clearest message yet that the Wellington protest that consumed news bulletins for three wild weeks spoke for a minority of New Zealanders. Not an insignificant minority, but most Kiwis do not seem to be with them on the closest thing the protesters had to a common cause: Ending vaccine mandates.
The same poll - which began the day police cleared the protest - found 72 per cent of voters opposed the protest. The rest were nearly evenly split between supporters and people with no strong view either way.
The 23-day occupation sucked up a lot of public-discourse oxygen in its contradiction-filled (peace and love or hang 'em high?, 'Doing this for NZ Police too' or pelting officers with bricks?) illegal tenancy of Parliament's lawn and surrounding streets.
And yet, maybe a few hearts and minds in the public were swayed.
Support for mandates is waning.
A November 1 News Colmar Brunton poll measured support for mandates at 70 per cent, with 20 per cent opposition.
There is an argument that now is not the right time to be dropping mandates as the country battles the virulent Omicron strain at or near its peak, with cases rising daily, along with hospitalisations and, tragically, deaths.
Asked on Thursday whether mandates were justified, Bloomfield said that, like other public health measures such as masks requirements for some settings, mandates were being looked at as part of the overall response package.
He said New Zealand had relatively high booster rates and there was no doubt mandates and the vaccine certificates had played a role in achieving high vaccination rates.
That plays into the argument that mandates - particularly the ones on the periphery of the health response - have now done their biggest job in getting reluctant people to participate in this collective as well as individual protection.
The carrot-and-stick options to encourage vaccination have been exhausted, jobs have been lost, there seems little gain left to have in an environment where avoiding catching Omicron feels like playing minesweeper.
It's easy to say the mandate era is running out of juice. It's hard to pick a date to start dropping them, but that is now what the Government must try to do.
The poll will be of little help - there was no far-and-away winner in the answers to the question of what needed to happen before mandates were dropped.
Once Covid-19 was widespread and when hospitals could handle a surge were the two most popular answers (but not by much), and it could be argued that with active cases over 200,000 and hitting a pandemic-wide New Zealand record for new cases yesterday, we are there.
In my view, highly restrictive measures such as vaccine mandates require high levels of public support.
We're starting to lose that, so we need to see the exit strategy.
