by Geoffrey Churchman
While NZ’s TV One News & Stuff-TV3 presenters last night were clearly overjoyed about the US Democrats taking control of Congress in the mid-term elections — something I predicted in May last year would happen — they were less enthusiastic about the NZ Taxpayers Union Curia poll which had only half a percent separating National and Labour; and the net country direction sentiment has jumped to a 19 month high.
National is up 0.4 points to 28.9 percent, while Labour is up 0.2 points to 28.4 percent. The Greens gain 1.1 points to 14.4 percent, while ACT gains 1.3 points to 10.5 percent. New Zealand First drops 2.2 points to 9.8 percent, while Te Pāti Māori drops 0.3 points to 1.1 percent. Opportunity is up 1.0 point to 5.8 percent, meaning they would enter Parliament on these numbers.
For the minor parties, Animal Justice is on 0.3 percent (+0.3 points), Free Palestine is on 0.2 percent (nc), Alliance is on 0.2 percent (+0.2 points), and Outdoors and Freedom is on 0.2 percent (+0.2 points). Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party is on 0.1 percent (+0.1 points) and New Conservatives are on 0.1 percent (-0.2 points).
National drops 2 seats from last month to 35, while Labour drops 2 seats to 34. The Greens gain 1 seat to 18 and ACT gain 1 seat to 13. New Zealand First gets 12 seats, while Opportunity gains 7 seats to 7. Te Pāti Māori drops 1 seat to 1.
The combined projected seats for the ‘Government Bloc’ (National, ACT, and New Zealand First) is down 5 seats to 60. The combined seats for the ‘Opposition Bloc’ (Labour, Greens, Te Pāti Māori, and Opportunity) is up 5 seats to 60. On these numbers, there would be a hung Parliament.
Luxon remains ahead of Chris Hipkins as preferred Prime Minister, up 2.6 points to 23.8 percent. Hipkins gains 1.6 points to 22.6 percent.
National leads on the Economy, Inflation, Education, Taxes, Safety, Spending, and the Environment. Labour leads on Health, Poverty, and Housing. The Net country direction rises 9.3 points to -3.2 percent, the highest since April 2025.
The Leftist media made a point of proclaiming the unemployment rate has gone up, but of course didn’t say it was only 0.1 point from 5.6% to 5.7%. The economic forecast is positive.
These last mentioned factors are more important than they may appear and indicate that the actual result will be a little more in support of the present government that the opinion poll figures would have it.
One thing that the Leftist Media don’t remark upon is that for Labour, the last few months have seen quite disappointing poll results, barely above the 27% Labour got in 2023 after the massive hemorage of votes from the 50% given to Comrade Jacinda and her cohorts in 2020.
As they have done constantly, the Leftist media were able to make their darling OP candidates their lead stories by seizing upon a rather silly comment by Michael Laws of NZ First from last week on a radio show and playing it up all they could. The Leftists don’t mention that they were OK with senior Stuffer Andrea Vance calling centre-right voting females c***s earlier this year. Hmm.
It seems at this stage that everyone will have to await special votes; this takes about two weeks, and then there will be about 4 weeks of horse-trading between the parties before a coalition agreement on either side is confirmed. Thus it will be mid-December before anything much will happen — but then a couple of weeks later it’s the Christmas holidays so in all we can look forward to a pleasant reprieve from government for a while.
Watch this space, as they say.