Labour has dropped to a new low in the latest Talbot Mills Corporate Poll, falling to 30 per cent, down from 32 last month, one of its worst scores in that poll since it went into government in 2017.
National is on 36 per cent, up one point. The Greens are also up, rising by two points to hit 12 per cent.
Act has fallen one point to 10 per cent.
Based on these figures NZ First would be back in Parliament on 5.4 per cent.
Te Pāti Māori is on 2.4 per cent and TOP is on 1.5 per cent.
Chris Hipkins’ ranking as preferred prime minister has plummeted from 34 per cent in the last poll to 28 per cent this month.
Christopher Luxon is now hot on his heels on 26 per cent. Act leader David Seymour also polled well, hitting 11 per cent; Green co-leaders Marama Davidson and James Shaw scored 4 each.
On those numbers, National would have 45 seats, and Act would have 13. They would need NZ First’s seven seats to govern.
Labour would have 37 seats, the Greens would get 15, and Te Pāti Māori would have three.
The poll was taken between August 24 and 30, a period that covered Hipkins’ ruling-out governing with NZ First but missed the fallout from National’s tax plan which was released on August 30.
It is the second bad poll for Labour today. The Post-Freshwater Strategy poll had Labour on 26 per cent, well behind National on 36 per cent.
The Greens were on 12 per cent, Act was on 11 per cent and Te Pāti Māori was on 3 per cent.
While the poll was bad news for Labour, it showed a hung Parliament overall.
Hipkins said that poll was “taken a few weeks ago before the campaign had even launched”.
“The campaign’s just getting under way. A poll is a poll and nobody’s voted yet. So we’ve still got plenty to do over the next five and a half weeks,” he said.
Thomas Coughlan is Deputy Political Editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018.
It follows concerns about use-of-force powers being given to staff.