OPINION:
As a general rule, politicians should beware of being bewitched by polls.
The current polls are an invitation for National to get cocky – and for Labour to get despondent, or to panic.
The most recent Newshub Reid Research poll showing Labour had dropped even further and National and Act able to easily form a government will have put Labour on edge – but it should also have National asking questions of itself.
The immediate question for Labour was whether it was the first poll to pick up on a significant, new drop in its support – or if that poll had simply caught up with the more gradual seeping of its support over the last winter, given the long six-month gap between the Reid Research polls.
It will have almost come as a relief to Labour that the Curia Taxpayers’ Union poll out yesterday had both Labour and National on similar levels of support as it had them on last month. “Almost” is the operative way because it wasn’t great for Labour in either month. Its polling has been dropping at the same rate food prices have been going up.
Whatever the timeframe over which it has lost that support, it has still lost it. To some extent, individual polls can be people’s verdicts on the issue of the day but the trend for Labour has now become relentless and prolonged.
The question for National in that Reid Research poll was why it had barely budged, despite Labour’s big drop since May – it had not capitalised on those voters fleeing Labour.
It should be asking itself why it is struggling to do so. In most polls, it has been on a bit of a plateau in the mid to high 30s for some months now while Labour has been dropping.
Yes, its overall turnaround in its fortunes has been significant since Luxon took over almost a year ago – lifting it 10 points quickly, and now with a distinct advantage over the Labour-Greens grouping. But Labour has dropped by more than 15 and is facing into a strong headwind.
The other concern for National is the response to Luxon. The cautiously warm reception of his early days as leader pushed him into the 20s as preferred Prime Minister.
But he does not seem to have yet convinced them: his popularity has dipped as more voters make up their minds about him, and Act is holding fairly strongly on to those voters who sought refuge there during National’s time of woes.
Luxon’s primary job is to harness those voters who are leaving Labour.
He still has time to win them over, but his rival, Jacinda Ardern, also has time to convince voters to give her a third term – and that will be easier if voters are not fully convinced Luxon is a strong alternative to Ardern.
At the moment, Labour’s job seems harder than National’s. A strategy of waiting for voters to forget Covid and to decide Luxon isn’t so great is a risky one.
But the shifts also open opportunities for the smaller parties – and they will come in for increased scrutiny as the election nears. The bigger a smaller party, the more influence they can potentially have in a government.
After the most recent in a string of polls showed National and Act had overtaken their rivals on the left, Act’s leader David Seymour sent an email to its supporters warning of the green peril.
“On tonight’s numbers, National could still form a government with the Greens,” he said.
It then asked for donations to help avoid such a situation.
Seymour’s claim was based on his reckoning it was possible Luxon would seek governing deals with both Act and the Green Party, as Key had done with the Māori Party, giving National more than one route to a majority.
That would have the effect of diluting Act’s influence, he argues.
It is not the strongest theory, given it takes two to tango and the Green Party base would crucify their leaders for signing up with the National Party. It tried to do that with National under John Key, to work on very specific issues, but the ink hadn’t dried before they scotched it.
Of more concern to Act (and Labour and National) should be the black and white peril: NZ First.
One of the now consistent shifts in recent polls is that NZ First has ticked upward. It came in at near 4 per cent in the latest Taxpayers’ Union Curia poll on Friday. It is now at or closing in on 4 per cent in at least three polls: Reid Research, Curia and Talbot Mills.
That is the mark at which voters think you might have a chance, so casting their vote won’t necessarily be wasted – it brings the magical 5 per cent threshold within reach.
That will make Act very squeamish indeed. It has invested significant energy in trying to starve out NZ First by snaffling all their potential voters.
As a result, the two are increasingly mirror-images of each other in hot-button policy areas – co-governance, crime, and so on – as well as in their mutual dislike.
Their voter bases cross over to an extent but where NZ First has room to grow is with the voters who are abandoning Labour who do not have an appetite for Act or National.
As for Labour, it is not quite at panic-stations level yet, but the whites of the MPs’ eyes are starting to show.
A presentation by Talbot Mills to the Labour Party conference last weekend landed in the NZ Herald’s inbox soon after Ardern claimed on Monday morning that Labour’s internal polling had National and Labour on equal footing. The October poll did indeed have both at 35 per cent.
But the presentation would have made a good Halloween horror flick for the party faithful.
The longer-term trends showed the creeping horror of Labour’s gradual but relentless loss of its grip on power since mid-2021.
A graph showing the balance of power since the 2020 election showed Labour maintained majority support in polls until July of 2021. For six months after that, it could have governed with the Greens. Then in March 2022, it lost that advantage – over the long winter of 2022 it would have needed both the Greens and Te Pāti Māori to govern. Then it lost that too. From September National and Act have been in the box seat.
The Curia poll shows a very similar trend.
Another table highlighted what voters considered the biggest issues of the day in different election years. Housing, the economy, and poverty are the staples.
The cost of living was third in 2011 and did not feature at all in 2014, 2017 or 2020. It is now the top issue and the economy is second.
Attempts to ameliorate the pain by pointing out other countries are finding it even harder will have little impact – the voters live and vote here.
Given the cost of living and economy are the top issues for voters, the numbers that deliver the worst news for Labour as it faces the next election were in the graph showing which party was considered best at managing the economy. Labour took ascendency for a brief period in 2020 - but now almost twice as many people believe National is best at 47 per cent to Labour’s 24 per cent.
The bluntest lesson – or solution – for Labour came in the Reid Research poll, in which an overwhelming 85 per cent of people supported a tax-free income threshold.
Labour has not ruled out some tax cuts in its 2023 policy – and Ardern’s observation that a tax-free threshold did at least deliver the same to those on low incomes as high incomes may or may not be a hint about what it is looking at. It may be Labour’s only hope.
