Poll shows 30 point gap between Labour and National

Labour's dream run in the polls continued today with a new poll showing another gain, while National's fortunes continued to spiral downwards.

The National Business Review-HP Invent poll put Labour up two percentage points to 55 per cent while National was down four points to 25 per cent.

This was Labour's highest level of support and National's lowest since UMR Research began the poll more than 10 years ago.

The poll was taken over several days, at a time when the two main parties officially launched their election campaigns.

With just three weeks until the election, the Greens were down slightly from 7.2 per cent support to 6.4 per cent in today's poll. ACT was on 6.1 per cent, New Zealand First was on 4.4 per cent, Jim Anderton's Progressive Coalition was on 1.4 per cent while the Alliance barely registered on 0.3 per cent.

The poll results would allow Labour to govern alone with 67 seats. National would have 31 seats, the Greens eight, ACT seven, NZ First five, Jim Anderton's Progressive Coalition two and United Future one seat. This was based on NZ First leader Winston Peters winning Tauranga, Mr Anderton winning Wigram and United Future leader Peter Dunne keeping his Ohariu-Belmont electorate.

The poll, of 750 voters, had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 per cent.

It also found 61 per cent of people felt the country was heading in the right direction (down one point) while 28 per cent said the country was on the wrong track (up one point).

A poll yesterday showed National was failing to increase its support despite Labour's lead being trimmed.

Last night's TV3/NFO poll had National gaining 24 per cent of the party vote -- virtually unchanged since the same poll was last conducted a fortnight ago.

Labour saw its record support in this particular poll trimmed from 56 per cent to 51 per cent -- still enough to govern alone if the result reflects how people vote on July 27.

This poll had the Greens hitting, and going over, their target of 10 per cent support on election day. It gained 2 percentage points to 11 per cent support. This was the first time the Greens had recorded double digit support in any poll.

NZ First went from 3.2 per cent to 5.7 per cent and ACT from 3.9 per cent to 5 per cent, according to the TV3 poll.

Mr Anderton's new party registered 1.1 per cent support while the Alliance, now led by Laila Harre, also had 1.1 per cent support.

- NZPA

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