National takes big hit in latest Roy Morgan NZ poll

Friday 17th July 2015

The National Party has lost more than 10 percent of its support in two months, as measured by the New Zealand arm of Australian pollster Roy Morgan, to run neck and neck at 45 percent support, with its coalition partners, against a combination of the Labour and Green parties for the first time since five months before last September's general election.

Labour and the Greens at 45 percent lead National at 43.5 percent, although 1.5 percentage points of combined support for National's four seat parliamentary partnership with the Maori, Act and United Future parties puts the two blocs at an equal 45 percent. In its May poll, which showed much higher support for National than other publicly available polls, Roy Morgan NZ had National at 54 percent support. The same poll had National at 46.5 percent in March.

If an election were held today, the New Zealand First party of Winston Peters would determine who forms a government, with 7 percent support, up 0.5 percentage points since Roy Morgan NZ's last political poll, in June. The same agency released polling showing a marked increase in concern about the economy among New Zealanders earlier this week.

The poll of 886 people was taken in the early days of this month, before this week's Labour Party attack on the level of foreign, especially mainland Chinese ownership, of Auckland residential real estate and the very low prices for dairy products in the global auction held overnight on Wednesday.

The latest poll shows Labour and the Greens command 45 percent of the vote, compared to the National Party's 43.5 percent support, bolstered to 45 percent support by 1.5 percentage points of support for the Maori (1.5 percent) and Act (0.5 percent), with the United Party, holding one territorial seat in the 121 seat Parliament, registering zero again.

Most encouraging for Labour is that it gained 6 of the 6.5 percentage point gain to record 32 percent support, while the Greens were unchanged at 13 percent after changing last month from male co-leader Russel Norman to James Shaw.

Despite covering a period in which the Conservative Party appeared to implode, with the ousting of founder and financial backer Colin Craig, its support touched 1.5 percent, up on 1 percent on a month earlier, although below the statistical margin of error for significance.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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