New poll results show closer fight between Chris Hipkins, Christopher Luxon for preferred Prime Minister

A new poll presents a rosier picture of Kiwis’ views of Labour leader Chris Hipkins than the Taxpayer Union-Curia results earlier this week that showed his popularity plummeting.

The Herald has obtained a Talbot Mills poll which shows Hipkins sitting at 22% (down 1 point) in the Preferred Prime Minister stakes. That’s significantly better than the 12.6% he received in the Curia poll, down 6 points from its previous poll.

In the Talbot Mills poll, National leader Christopher Luxon is at 26% (down 1 point), compared to 32.7% in the Curia poll.

The Talbot Mills survey, which isn’t normally released publicly, was carried out between September 1 and 10. Talbot Mills is Labour’s pollster, but this poll was conducted for the company’s corporate clients. The Curia poll was conducted between September 8 and 10.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins. Photo / Alex Cairns

In terms of the party vote, this poll shows National up 1 point to 37% and Labour steady on 32%. The Greens have fallen 1 point to 10%, while Act remains on 8%, NZ First has inched up 0.1 to 6.1%, and Te Pāti Māori is up 0.3 to 3.9%

On those results, the current governing parties would have enough seats to retain power.

But the poll also finds New Zealanders think the country is heading in the wrong direction. The results show 47% believe New Zealand is on the wrong track, while 42% think it is heading in the right direction.

There’s only been one month during this Government’s reign where the Talbot Mills poll has shown Kiwis believing the country is heading in the right direction. That was in February. Prior to that, the last time New Zealanders saw the country going the right way was in July 2022.

The poll shows 48% of New Zealanders either strongly or somewhat disapprove of the Government, while 46% either strongly or somewhat approve, and 6% are unsure.

Unsurprisingly, New Zealanders overwhelmingly still think economic conditions in New Zealand are “poor” or “not so good”. Those options were the choice of 78% of respondents – down 2 points – while the “good” and “excellent” options were up 1 point to 20%. New Zealanders haven’t had a favourable view of the economic conditions in the Talbot Mills poll since late 2021.

Asked what the three most important issues facing New Zealanders were, the cost of living/inflation was clearly the top pick, followed by health, crime, housing, and the economy.

Hipkins this week put his poor Curia poll result down to having a “lower profile” this year.

“We knew that the first 18 months of being in Opposition was going to be the most difficult to keep our profile up and to keep our numbers up. We’re not polling below where we were polling on election day.”

Hipkins said it was just one poll and more negative than others. He said he had the “full support” of his caucus.

The Talbot Mills poll’s sample was nationally representative of 1015 respondents. The maximum sampling error for a sample size of 1015 at the 95% confidence level is ± 3.1%.

Jamie Ensor is a political reporter in the NZ Herald Press Gallery team based at Parliament. He was previously a TV reporter and digital producer in the Newshub Press Gallery office.