National has taken the lead for the first time since the Taxpayers’ Union Curia Polls began.
However, much of National’s gain appears to have come at ACT’s expense. Labour holds steady with a slight bump, the Greens drop and the Māori Party rises.
Here is how these results would translate to seats in Parliament:
The shifts in party support result in National gaining three seats, ACT losing four, the Māori Party gaining four, the Greens losing four, and no change for the Labour Party. This means the gap between the centre-right and the centre-left blocs has shrunk from nine seats in January to just one seat in April. Both blocs would not receive enough seats to govern, thus, the Māori Party would be the ‘kingmaker.’
The eighth Taxpayers’ Union Curia Poll reveals National is up 2.5 per cent from last month to 37.8 per cent; Labour is up 0.6 per cent to 36.8 per cent; Greens down 3 per cent to 9.4 per cent; ACT is down 2.8 per cent to 8.4 per cent, the Māori Party is up 3.5 per cent to 3.6 per cent; NZ First down 0.1 per cent to 1.7 per cent and Other is down 0.7 per cent to 2.3 per cent.
Jordan Williams, executive director of the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union said, “Just like the TV polls, our pollsters do not read out options to participants to choose their preferred Prime Minister – we just include those who are named as preferred by more than a few people in the random sample of one thousand voters.
Here are the updated preferred Prime Minister ratings, shown over time:
Luxon and Seymour are up. Ardern is slightly down, while support for Peters has dropped.
New Zealanders are now almost evenly split on whether the country is heading in the “right” or “wrong” direction. There are slightly more New Zealanders that believe the country is heading in the wrong direction.
Opposition leader and Botany MP Christopher Luxon told the Times, “It’s encouraging but I don’t look too much into any single poll. Our focus is on the things that matter to Kiwis and right now that’s the cost of living crisis and keeping our communities safe.”
The polling period was held between April 7 – April 13.
