In the final week before New Zealanders go to the polls this Saturday, the opposition Labour/Greens alliance holding a slight lead over the incumbent National-led coalition, according to Roy Morgan Research polling:
Final Roy Morgan New Zealand Poll shows Labour/Greens (60 seats) with Maori Party support favoured to win knife-edge election over National/NZ First/Act NZ (58 seats).
In September support for a potential Labour/Greens coalition has increased to 48.5% (up 7% from mid-August 2017) now well ahead of incumbent National on 40% (down 2.5%).
National remains (just) the most popular party with support of 40%, however this is a large drop of 7% since the 2014 Election which looks set to cost the party a chance of leading a new Government after next week’s election.
Labour’s support has surged on the back of new Leader Jacinda Ardern to 39.5% – up 14.4% since the 2014 Election, and up 7% since mid-August just after Ardern became Leader.
Greens support of 9% is down 1.7% since the Election, but unchanged on a month ago, just after former Leader Metiria Turei resigned her job in late July.
The surge in support for Labour has come at the expense of New Zealand First with support down 2.7% from the election to 6% and now just above the 5% threshold for winning list seats. Support for New Zealand First has plunged by 5.5% from last month.
Overall support for the governing National-led coalition was down 6.8% from the election to 42.5% with support for National’s coalition partners virtually unchanged: Maori Party on 2% (up 0.7%), Act NZ on 0.5% (down 0.2%) and United Future on 0% (down 0.2%) with long-time party leader Peter Dunne not recontesting his seat at this year’s election.
Support for the parties currently outside Parliament was 3% led by new party The Opportunities Party (T.O.P.) unchanged on 2% with the Conservatives on 0.5% – down a significant 3.5% since the 2014 New Zealand Election.
I have long backed Labour to unseat the National Government due to voter concerns surrounding housing and excessive levels of immigration eroding livability.
Interest.co.nz’s Alex Tarrant, however, believes that the election remains on a knife-edge, although the scales are tipped slightly in Labour’s favour:
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With under a week to go, it’s looking advantage Labour.
Potential news flow, those eleventh-hour GDP and immigration figures, and a focus less on policy and more on visions and personality have the final week tipping in Jacinda Ardern’s favour…
For National, it’s looking like they’re increasingly relying on the actions of a few thousand voters. Bill English’s chances could hinge on those people who are tossing up whether to vote for the Greens or not…
Push the Greens below the threshold to 4.9% and Labour and National (54 each, now) could form a government with NZF (9). So, English’s chances are greatly improved if the Greens miss out.
With the Greens currently on 5.5%, it could be a matter of 14,000 votes which give English that chance or not of forming a government with NZ First (assuming an 80% turn-out from 3.5 million eligible voters)…
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.
