Labour’s support drops in latest Taxpayers' Union poll

Friday, 12 July 2024

Support for the Labour Party has dropped in the latest monthly Taxpayers’ Union poll, as the National-coalition Government holds its ground more than six months after the election.

The poll, part of a regular series run for the lobby group by pollster Curia Research, shows political parties have largely retained the levels of support afforded to them by the public at the October 2023 election.

The coalition parties, National, ACT, and NZ First, would retain their 67 seats in Parliament if an election were to produce the poll result. The centre-left bloc would similarly retain its 55 seats - however within both loose coalitions there were marginal shifts in seats held by each party.

Accounting for monthly shifts in sentiment, Labour has seen a decrease in support from 29.4% in the June poll. It has dropped by 3.5 percentage points to 25.9% in July.

NZ First has also increased its support in the past month, from 5.6% to 7.3%. At this result it would gain 9 seats in the House, one more than election night. National’s support, rising 2.2 percentage points in the month to 37.6%, would mean the party obtained one less seat in the House than it currently has.

Support for ACT was comparable with the month before at 9.1%, as was the Green Party’s at 12.5%. Te Pāti Māori continued to return a result beneath the 5% threshold to enter Parliament, at 3.5%, requiring it win electorate seats - as it did at the October election.

The poll was taken between Thursday and Sunday in the past week, and many of the shifts in support were within the maximum margin of error of 3.1%.

Encouraging for Prime Minister Christopher Luxon would be the “preferred prime minister” and “net favourability” rating provided by the July poll.

Luxon’s rating for preferred prime minister rose by 9.1 percentage points to being the choice of 34.5% of those polled, whereas Labour leader Chris Hipkins was down 1.5 percentage points to 18.7%.

Luxon’s net favourability has improved to match Hipkins, rising 11 percentage points to a 6% net favourability.

Net favourability is calculate by subtracting the percentage of people who find a leader “unfavourable” from those who find them “favourable”.

The favourability rating for both ACT leader David Seymour and NZ First leader Winston Peters also improved, rising 14 percentage points for Seymour to -4%, and six percentage points for Peters to -13%.

The cost of living, economy, poverty, law and order, and health were the most important issues for voters, in that order.