National and Christopher Luxon surge as Labour tumbles - poll

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has been boosted by the latest Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll that shows his personal support and the National Party’s popularity is rising.

National was up 2.2 points on to 37.6% in July compared to last month’s poll, while Labour dropped 3.5 points to 25.9%.

The Greens and Act were both relatively static with the Greens on 12.5% (-0.2 points ) and Act on 9.1% (-0.6 points).

New Zealand First was up 1.7 points to 7.3% while Te Pāti Māori was down 0.5 points to 3.5%.

Those numbers give National 47 seats and Act 11 seats. They would need NZ First’s nine seats to form a government.

Labour would get 33 seats, the Greens would get 16, and Te Pāti Māori would get six seats, provided it holds its electorates.

A more detailed version of the poll shows Luxon surging 10 points as preferred Prime Minister, rising to 35% - his highest score in at least a year. Labour leader Chris Hipkins fell one point to 19%.

Luxon and Hipkins both had equal net favourability: 6%.

People are beginning to feel slightly more positive about the direction of the country. While in April a net -9% of people thought the country was on the wrong track, now a net 5% of people think it is on the right track.

The right track/wrong track metric is a key leading indicator of the performance of the Government.

Parliament has not sat regularly since the Budget was delivered in May, so it is not totally clear what has driven people’s rosier perceptions of the Government.

Significant events in the past month include the fallout from the Budget, the Government’s decision to fund new cancer medicines, and rolling out new literacy assessments in schools.

Voters still say the cost of living is the most important issue on their mind, with 39.5% of people polled listing it as one of their top three issues, followed by health on 32.2% and the economy on 25.1%.

Education was on 24%, followed by law and order on 21.8%.

The poll took a random sample of 1000 New Zealanders and was weighted for the overall adult population. It was conducted by phone and online between June 4 and 6 and has a maximum margin of error of +/- 3.1%.

Thomas Coughlan is Deputy Political Editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018.