A good poll result for National, Luxon

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

The first political poll of the year has shown growing support for National and new Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, and a slump in support for Labour leader Chris Hipkins.

National was on 41 percent support, up from 36.5 percent in a poll by the same firm in December, while Labour was steady on 28.4 percent. In the preferred prime minister stakes, Luxon had the backing of 31 percent of the 1000 people surveyed, up 1 point, while Hipkins slumped nine points to 13 percent.

Curia Market Research, which also conducts National’s internal polling, has done three of the four polls carried out since the October 14 election — of which this latest is the first one where National has surpassed its official election result of 38.1 percent.

Labour has registered 28.3-28.8 percent in the three Curia polls, ahead of its 26.9 percent in the election. However, it garnered just 21 percent in a Roy Morgan poll in November; National was on 37.5 percent in that poll, with Act and the Greens accounting for most of the poor showing by Labour, both strong on 12.5 percent.

The latest Curia poll was conducted from January 8-10 — the final day of which was when the first allegation of shoplifting by Green MP Golriz Ghahraman surfaced and she stood aside from her portfolios.

Support for the Green Party was 9.5 percent, down 1 point from December and its worst polling number since a record election result of 11.6 percent.

Act was on 7.8 percent, up 1.6 points from December but still below its election result of 8.6 percent.

The third member of the coalition Government, NZ First, was down 2.5 points on 5.6 percent — just below its 6.1 percent in the election.

Te Pāti Māori recorded 3.6 percent support, down from one of its best ever polling results of 5 percent in December.

For the first time since February 2022 — and in a big turnaround on just a month ago — Curia found that more people think New Zealand is on the right track than the wrong one. A net 4 percent  said the country was heading in the right direction; in December a net 19 percent believed it was heading in the wrong direction.

Favourability stakes for the coalition  party leaders and Hipkins are also of interest. Luxon moved past the Labour leader with a net favourability of 5 percent against Hipkins’ 3 percent, but still had more people viewing him unfavourably. Forty-two percent viewed Luxon favourably against 37 percent who see him unfavourably; the numbers for Hipkins were 37 percent and 34 percent.

Act leader David Seymour had a net favourability of -14 percent, up from -19 percent in December; NZ First’s Winston Peters rated -24 percent, up from -36 percent.