With New Zealanders heading to the polls tomorrow, the final NewsHub poll has the election result too close to call:
The final poll is in, and it shows either side could take power on Saturday.
National has dropped back slightly to 45.8 percent. It is still the largest single party, but is teetering in the danger zone.
Labour is back a bit too, sitting on 37.3 percent.
The Greens are back to safety. They are on 7.1 percent. In Newshub’s last poll they were below the 5 percent threshold needed to enter Parliament without an electorate seat.
NZ First is up to 7.1 percent too.
The crucial number in this poll is the combined Labour-Greens vote. At 44.4 percent, it’s oh-so-close to National’s 45.8 percent.
That makes Winston Peters crucial to both of them…
Sixty-two seats would be needed to form a Government.
National, with 56, would not get there, even with its current governing partners (ACT and the Māori Party would bring it to 59).
Labour and the Greens with 54 seats would also be short.
In this scenario, Winston Peters would be kingmaker. His nine seats would be needed to push National or Labour across the line.
We said months ago that New Zealand First’s Winston Peters looked like becoming the kingmaker that decides the next government. This still looks to be the case.
Meanwhile, Interest.co.nz’s Gareth Vaughan laments that housing and excessive levels of immigration have not received greater focus in the election campaign:
I thought this was going to be the housing election. But it hasn’t quite transpired that way… as the campaign unfolded housing has not received the airtime it deserved…
There are ongoing land supply and council consenting issues to be overcome, and greater densification is required. But also demand must be acknowledged as an issue too. The August year net migration gain of 72,072 is equivalent to about 1.5% of NZ’s population. With the lion’s share settling in Auckland, that’s a whole lot of new people who need somewhere to live, arriving in a city that’s already bursting at the seams…
Yet, like housing, immigration also hasn’t received the airtime it should have during the election campaign. That’s even though it has been broadly acknowledged that our housing, health system, schools and roads are struggling to cope due to population growth and in some cases under-funding. (There’s also the issue of the quality of skills many migrants are bringing to NZ as David Hargreaves covered here, and Wellington economist and former Reserve Bank staffer Michael Reddell covers in his Croaking Cassandra blog).
We feel your pain Gareth. Politicians on both side of the pond have squibbed the major issues.
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness.
Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.
