Poll: Coalition maintains lead as Labour leader Chris Hipkins’ favourability crashes

Chris Hipkins's (left) popularity has tumbled and he remains behind PM Chris Luxon (right). Photo / Mark MItchell

The coalition has tightened its grip on power according to the latest Taxpayers’ Union-Curia Poll, which showed the three parties of Government gaining a seat while the Opposition lost two.

National was on 39% up 1.4 points from the last poll, which was taken in July, while coalition partner Act was on 8.8% down 0.3 points, and NZ First was on 6.8% down 0.5 points.

Labour polled 26.7%, up 0.8 points, while the Greens fell 1.5 points to 11% and Te Pāti Māori was up 1.5 points to 5%.

That translates to 48 seats for National, 11 for Act and eight for NZ First. National and Act would need NZ First’s eight seats to govern. The three parties would have a combined tally of 67 seats.

On the Opposition side, Labour would have 33 seats, the Greens would have 14, and Te Pāti Māori would have six seats - 53 in total, and down from last month. Te Pāti Māori’s strong party vote performance has eliminated the overhang created by the party winning several electorate seats, but not performing as well in the party vote.

National leader Christopher Luxon has fallen 1.8 points in the Preferred Prime Minister Poll to to 32.7% while Chris Hipkins slumped 6.1 points to 12.6%.

Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick is in third place at 7.2%, down 3.7 points, followed by Winston Peters, who was up 1.1 point to 6.75%.

Fifth place did not go to a sitting MP, but to former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who polled 6.4% just beating Act leader David Seymour who was on 5.2%.

Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi polled just 2.5% while his fellow co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer was even lower at 1.1%.

The most dramatic change in the poll was in the net favourability poll, which asks people whether they like or dislike a leader and creates a net favourability score based on subtracting the number of people who say they like a leader from the number who say they dislike them.

Hipkins’ net favourability suffered a large fall of 16 points to -10%. Luxon’s rose just 1 point to +7%..

These numbers mean Hipkins is now both less liked and more disliked than Luxon.

Just 31% of respondents said they had a positive view of Hipkins, compared to 41% for Luxon, while 41% said they had an unfavourable view of Hipkins compared to 34% for Luxon.

A net 8% of people believe the country is on the “right track” - a key leading polling indicator which is often a good proxy for the future direction of party vote preferences. This shows a marked recovery from last year when a net -36% thought thought the country was on the “right rack”.

National retained its lead in issues polling as the party most trusted to deal with the economy, health, inflation, education, taxes, safety, spending, housing, and even the environment.

Labour eked out a victory in one policy area: poverty, where it was ahead by 0.9 points.

Curia Market Research, which conducts the poll has recently resigned from the Research Association of New Zealand, the peak body and effective regulator of polling companies in New Zealand. Curia still abides by the association’s polling code, which sets out best practice for political polling.

It polled a random sample of 1000 adult New Zealanders and is weighted to the overall adult population. It was conducted by phone (landlines and mobile) and online between Monday, September 8 and Wednesday, September 10 and has a maximum margin of error of +/- 3.1%. 3.4% were undecided on the party vote question.

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.