National one year on: Ratings riding high

According to the Herald-Digipoll survey, New Zealanders prefer John Key as Prime Minister. Photo / Herald Graphic

The Government's popularity remains undented in the latest Herald-DigiPoll survey despite a series of controversial issues during the polling period including its messy handling of the television rights to the Rugby World Cup, moves to open ACC to competition, and cuts in the health sector.

The first DigiPoll survey since the election has the National Party on 57 per cent support - 12 points higher than its actual election result of 45 per cent. The result would give it 73 seats in Parliament, well clear of the 60 it would need to govern.

Labour continues to struggle and is 20 points behind National on 32 per cent, slightly lower than its election-night result (34 per cent).

Prime Minister John Key's personal popularity has also endured - 55 per cent chose him as preferred Prime Minister.

However, Labour leader Phil Goff is still fighting for traction almost a year after taking over from former Prime Minister Helen Clark. He attracted just 6.2 per cent of support as preferred Prime Minister, despite almost half of the respondents in the poll also saying he had done a good job as Labour's leader over the past year.

When asked how Mr Goff had performed, 37 per cent rated him good, and 11 per cent said either very good or excellent. However, the shadow of his predecessor remained - just over 10 per cent still hankered for Helen Clark to be leading the country, although she now heads the UN Development Programme in New York.

Mr Key attributed the "pleasing" results to the Government's focus "on the issues that matter to New Zealanders". The poll of 750 respondents was taken from October 15 to 28, a period which included several issues that would usually be controversial for a Government, including job cuts in the health workforce and steps to allow private insurers to compete with state corporation ACC.

It followed Mr Key's introduction of measures to clamp down on the drug P - a package which included making pseudoephedrine-based cold pills prescription only.

The polling period was dominated by the Government's messy handling of the use of public money for Maori Television's bid for Rugby World Cup rights. Other major issues included the announcement of the MMP referendum and the launch of national standards tests for primary school children - an event boycotted by teachers' unions.

The period ended soon after Mr Key had signed a free-trade agreement with Malaysia.

None of the smaller parties reached the 5 per cent threshold required to get seats in Parliament without an electorate seat.

Despite Act leader Rodney Hide's high profile as the minister leading the Auckland Super City changes, his party has dropped to just 1 per cent, equal to the support levels of NZ First and a result which would reduce Act's current allocation of five MPs to one - himself - if he held the Epsom electorate.

Backing for the Government's other support party, the Maori Party, was slightly up on previous polls at 3 per cent.

The Green Party slipped to 4.6 per cent support, down on its election result of 7 per cent.