Poll puts National in power with Act
The National Party has hit a potentially election-winning lead in the latest 1 NEWS Colmar Brunton Poll.
The National Party rose two percentage points to 47 per cent, while Labour fell 3 points to 40 per cent, after a protracted sexual assault scandal and continuing failures over its KiwiBuild policy.
Labour’s coalition partner NZ First polled at 4 per cent, an increase of 1 point but still below the 5 per cent threshold required to return to Parliament without an electorate MP.
The Greens held steady at 7 per cent, while ACT, the Maori Party and the Opportunities Party polled at 1 per cent.
ACT would be the only party polling below 5 per cent with representation in Parliament, courtesy of David Seymour’s electorate seat of Epsom.
If an election was held today – based on this poll – the National Party would narrowly be able to form a Government, with its own 60 seats and ACT’s 1 putting it over the 61-seat threshold.
The Labour-Green bloc would fall one seat short with 60 seats between them.
The result means that all eyes fall on NZ First as its goes into its weekend party conference fighting for political survival.
This is the highest National has been in a poll since the last election.
Because NZ First scored a high 4 per cent, but not enough to return to government, their vote would get stripped out, boosting the other parties’ votes and pushing National close to 50 per cent. This would all change if NZ First managed to win an electorate seat.
The poll was conducted between October 5 and 9.
Ardern also declined another 3 percentage points in the preferred prime minister stakes, after dropping by 4 percentage points in the previous poll in July.
She still has a commanding lead over all of her opponents at 38 per cent.
National Party leader Simon Bridges has climbed 3 points to 9 per cent, well above his front bench colleague and former leadership contender Judith Collins who fell one point to 5 per cent.
By comparison, the lowest preferred Prime Minister rating former prime minister John Key ever received in the same poll was 36 per cent after almost a decade in government in November 2016.
In the last 1 News Colmar Brunton Poll, conducted from 20 to 24 July, National polled at 45 per cent, Labour hit 43 per cent, the Greens 6 per cent, NZ First 3 per cent, Maori Party 1 per cent, ACT, 1 per cent and New Conservatives 1 per cent.
The poll contrasts with the Newshub/Reid Research poll conducted between October 2 and 9, which had National on 43.9 per cent and Labour on 41.6 per cent and the Greens on 6.3 per cent, while it also put NZ First at 4 per cent.
On those numbers Labour and the Greens would be in government while National would have no path to power.