The poll showed that a year after National won its third term in office its support remains steady on 47 per cent - level with its 2014 election results. Prime Minister John Key also remained streets ahead as preferred Prime Minister with 39.5 per cent support, up by 1.2 per cent since the last poll in July.
However, there was some encouragement for Labour which rose two points to 33 per cent - eight points higher than the 25 per cent it got in last year's election. Mr Little has also inched up slightly to almost 11 per cent support - and has overtaken Mr Peters (8.7 per cent) in the preferred Prime Minister stakes after the humiliation of dropping behind him in July's poll.
In the same interview, while he would not give himself the title of "leader of the Opposition", Mr Peters said NZ First had led the Opposition on many issues, including the flag and foreign land sales.
In the Reid Research poll NZ First was down slightly on 8 per cent and the Greens had dropped 1.4 points to 10 per cent.
Under those results, National would need NZ First to reclaim the government benches. Act was on 0.6 per cent, the Maori Party 0.5 per cent, the Conservative Party 0.5 per cent and United Future on zero.
Mr Peters could not be contacted yesterday - he is in the UK as "media liaison" with the Parliamentary Rugby team.
Meanwhile, National celebrated the anniversary by releasing a brag list of key policy achievements - from hopes of a return to surplus right down to "declared war on weeds" and a fund to promote Asian language teaching. But the three-page document was mysteriously silent on significant but controversial policies such as charter schools, "agri-hubs" in Saudi Arabia, privately run prisons and even Northland's promised bridges.
Mr Little asked if the war on weeds was an internal caucus issue. It is also silent on the prospect of restarting contributions to the Super Fund as a "next step", something Finance Minister Bill English said the Government would look at once the books were back in surplus. Instead it sets out National's plan to deliver tax cuts after 2017 and to use the surplus to pay off debt.
A spokeswoman for Mr Key said the list was a snapshot of accomplishments and not intended to be exhaustive.
Shortlisted designs fail to inspire
A new poll shows the four flags shortlisted for a referendum on a flag change have so far failed to win the public over - only one in four voters want a change.
The 3 News Reid Research poll shows just 25 per cent of people want to change the flag after seeing the four shortlisted options while almost 70 per cent said no. Six per cent did not know.
The shortlist was released by the Flag Consideration Panel at the start of September and the poll began a week later. Labour leader Andrew Little said the poll results showed people believed the process was "tainted" while Prime Minister John Key told 3 News he knew it was going to be a hard slog but was still hopeful. Belated efforts to add the Red Peak design to the shortlist have stalled after a standoff between Mr Key and Mr Little last week.
Yesterday Mr Little said Labour would likely support the change if Mr Key put it before Parliament without coming to a deal with Labour - but would also put in its own amendment to try to force the change in referendum questions.
In a Herald-DigiPoll survey, about 26 per cent of voters said their decision on the flag would depend on what the alternative was, while about 52 per cent were opposed to change in principle.
