As preferred PM, Jacinda Ardern was on 54 per cent - holding her high popularity from July. Judith Collins had dropped slightly from 20 to 18 per cent.
David Seymour and Winston Peters were on 2 per cent.
Jacinda Ardern and Judith Collins. Photos / Mark Mitchell
Tonight's poll gives the state of play for the parties just before the TVNZ Leaders Debate.
Ardern told 1 News she was pleased with the result.
"Regardless we will not be complacent."
Collins had refused to be interviewed for the poll.
National's campaign chairman and deputy leader Gerry Brownlee said Collins was busy preparing for the TVNZ leaders debate.
He said Collins was getting a good reception from the public in the campaign.
The poll ran from Thursday until Monday night - taking in National's tax cuts announcement on Friday.
It shows while Labour has dropped from 53 to 48 per cent, its support is still holding strong. The second wave of Covid-19 hitting Auckland had come between the last poll and this.
The Green Party had also not suffered from the controversy over co-leader James Shaw's advocacy for a grant to the Green School, a private school in Taranaki.
Shaw said the result would mean a Labour-Green Government, which was what he hoped for.
NZ First leader Winston Peters said polls were "rubbish".
The result will disappoint National, which had hoped to get some traction out of the tax cuts policy.
That policy will give workers between $8 and $58 a week more for a period of 16 months from December – at a cost of $4.7 billion to the Government in foregone revenue.
Although Labour's Grant Robertson revealed a $4 billion miscalculation in National's fiscal plan, that did not happen until Sunday at the tail end of the polling period.
Nor has Collins been able to capitalise on her start in the job, when she got 20 per cent as preferred PM in the July poll.
That was the highest any National leader had got since former Prime Minister Bill English took over.
It is also the first poll since more detailed information on the economic impact of Covid-19 has come out.
That included the news of a 12.2 per cent drop in GDP for the second quarter of the year and forecasts of high deficits and debt levels for a decade in the Pre-Election Fiscal Update.
The last 1 News Colmar Brunton poll was at the end of July – a fortnight after Collins took over the leadership of National and before a second outbreak of Covid-19 in Auckland on August 11.
That resulted in a return to a level 3 lockdown for Auckland and level 2 restrictions for the rest of New Zealand.
In that poll, Labour was on 53 per cent and National was down at 32 per cent while the Green Party and Act were at 5 per cent and NZ First at 2 per cent.
As preferred Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was on 54 per cent, and Judith Collins on 20 per cent.
