Second poll gives Peters commanding lead in Northland

With just two days of campaigning left, the poll had Mr Peters on 54 per cent - well ahead of National's Mark Osborne on 36 per cent. Photo / Nick Reed

A second poll has NZ First leader Winston Peters with a commanding lead in the Northland byelection just a day out from polling day.

The One News Colmar Brunton poll has Mr Peters on 54 per cent support while National's Mark Osborne was back on 36 per cent - similar results to the 3News Reid Research poll on Wednesday.

The Colmar Brunton results also showed Mr Peters' high results were courtesy largely of Labour voters - 69 per cent of Labour supporters polled said they would vote for Mr Peters in the byelection. However, Mr Peters had also picked up 15 per cent of National's supporters. Eighty per cent of National supporters said they would vote for Mr Osborne.

Despite the candidate result, National's support in the poll was still high at 49 per cent, while Labour and NZ First were both on 20 per cent. The Green Party got 8 per cent.

The One News Colmar Brunton poll of 501 eligible Northland voters was taken from March 22 to March 25 and has a margin of error of +/- 4.4 per cent.

Prime Minister John Key flew up to Northland this afternoon in an effort to stop that National vote slipping Mr Peters' way. During his visit to Dargaville, Mr Key denied his trip up north was a desperate last minute attempt to hold the seat.

"I think the risk would be if we didn't come back people would say, well we're just taking things for granted." He said the challenge would be ensuring National voters went to the polls.

Mr Key was greeted by another candidate, Bruce Rogan, who is an advocate for the Mangawhai ratepayers concerned about Kaipara District Council's debt and the sting to ratepayers. Mr Rogan was carried a poster promoting Mr Peters' for the MP.

A handful of anti-Trans Pacific Partnership protesters were also there, as well as veteran protesters Penny Bright with a poster about former MP Mike Sabin.