New Zealanders increasingly think the country is on the “wrong track”. The Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll reports a net 16% of New Zealanders thinking the country is on the wrong path, the lowest reading since the Government took office.
The metric has plunged since December last year. Half the country now thinks the country is on the “wrong track” and just 34% think the country is on the “right track”. In September last year, a net 8% of people thought the country was on the right track, with 39% of people thinking the country was on the wrong track compared to 47% thinking the country was on the right track.
Why that matters is the right track/wrong track is often treated as a leading indicator of a government’s party vote performance. If it is negative and trending negative, there’s a good chance the government’s popularity will continue to wane.
This in itself is not terminal. It is not unprecedented for a governing party to fall behind its rival in some polls. National outpolled Labour a number of times in 2018 and 2019. At the beginning of 2020 some polls even started to show a change of government.
At the time, Labour MPs were nervous but confident that in the heat of their campaign, their exceedingly popular leader, Dame Jacinda Ardern, would lift up the party vote, while National’s somewhat less popular leader, Simon Bridges, would be a drag on National’s.
We’ll never know.
Luxon cannot encourage the same confidence from his caucus. Ardern never once lost a Preferred Prime Minister poll in government. At the time she stepped down, she polled 35.3% in the Taxpayers’ Union-Curia Poll. Luxon, by contrast, is currently registering just 21%. His best performance in that poll was 35%, only slightly above Ardern’s worst (32.9%).
He still leads Hipkins, but not by much – and Hipkins has better “favourability” ratings, suggesting the race is closer than it looks.
National has a habit of getting jumpy during a polling downturn and questions will inevitably be asked about leadership when a Government begins to list. If the Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll reflected the eventual election outcome, National would lose 10 MPs – many of whom might be inclined to back a challenger if things began to look desperate. That’s enough of a voice to wound Luxon’s standing, but not enough to effect a change in leader. The ingredients of caucus instability are there, a likely change of government and a precipitous decline in party-vote support, but one key ingredient for a full-on coup is missing: MPs still know the transaction cost of an inevitably messy in-government leadership change outweighs any polling advantage that might be gained.
If the situation ever declines to the point where the gains outweigh the cost, then Luxon is in trouble. That day isn’t today.
Luxon has some reason to be hopeful, mainly the fact that he can expect an improving economy to lift the Government’s polling. Given how hard National campaigned on fixing the economic mess it alleged Labour created when the facts were more mixed, it’s hard to feel too sorry for the party when voters’ take out their current economic angst upon it - despite National being equally as culpable or inculpable for this malaise as Labour.
Nevertheless, as the economy improves this year and next, Luxon can reasonably expect that voters might soften their opinion on him and his Government.
Rising house prices, low interest rates and a growing economy tend to help an incumbent. All of these appear likely to reappear this year and – Donald Trump permitting – are likely to persist into 2026.
Unemployment, the indicator likely to continue worsening before it gets better, tends to have less of a correlation with the performance of the incumbent Government. The unemployment rate nudged 6% before Sir John Key’s first re-election victory in 2011 and was still higher than the current 5.1% rate when he won his second victory in 2014.
Luxon can also bank on voters beginning to tune into the opposition as an alternative government and all the challenges that will entail. We got a glimpse of that this week when Hipkins was forced to hose down Te Pāti Māori’s suggestion of a Te Tiriti Commissioner with the power to overrule Parliament on Treaty of Waitangi matters. Hipkins swiftly ruled it out, but he won’t be able to rule out everything Te Pāti Māori proposes.
Te Pāti Māori’s appetite for revolutionary constitutional change makes an inelegant fit with a more moderate Labour Party, but it’s hardly more inelegant than the daily Punch and Judy show between the three governing parties.
It’s all a bit 2014 – an election National memorably characterised as a competition between an unruly rabble flailing about in a barely floating rowboat versus a slick blue rowing crew, stroking ahead in beautiful synchronicity. The 2026 repeat might be illustrated by two sinking and unruly boats, the competition being who can stay afloat for longest. “Keep the team that’s working”, we were told in 2014. Ten years on, National may still be wondering where it lost itself.
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.
