A few weeks ago, I wrote that Christopher Luxon and the National Party were likely in a stronger political position than they appeared to be in headline voter polls.
My assessment was that while party support hadn’t changed significantly since the election, Luxon’s favorability had improved and his party had an upper hand on voters’ top issues.
This undercurrent of support may eventually translate into some stronger poll performances, particularly as interest rates come down — or so I thought.
Well, on Friday an updated Taxpayers’ Union–Curia poll threw cold water on my hot take, with the National Party’s worst result in that particular poll since August 2023.
The result hasn’t dramatically changed Interest.co.nz’s own polling average. This is partly because the last six public polls have had widely differing results for the Labour Party.
A Roy Morgan poll published earlier this week put them at just 23% support, while a Talbot Mills survey from a similar period put the party at 32%. This demonstrates the need for an average.
Our average still shows an eight point gap between the left and right coalitions, but it doesn’t include Labour’s internal polling, which The Post reported as having just a two point gap.
Are these poor polls early signs of dissatisfaction with the Coalition ahead of its one-year anniversary next month? It is too early to say, but it will be worth watching the next polls.
While individual polls do move around, National’s 4.1% decline in the TPU–Curia poll was larger than the margin of error, which does suggest at least some voters abandoning them.
The Act and New Zealand First parties picked up about 1.5% of this lost support, while Labour seemingly scooped up the other 2.5% — plus some Green and Te Pāti Māori voters to boot.
Poor health
As to what could be driving a shift in the polls, one of the better theories is that a series of problems in the health portfolios have rubbed New Zealanders the wrong way.
There has been ongoing controversy over Casey Costello’s smoking policies, a broken promise and sudden U-turn from Nicola Willis over funding for cancer drugs, and then Shane Reti sent a Commissioner to crack down on hospital costs after Health NZ hired too many nurses.
And if that wasn’t enough, the Coalition broke another promise and cancelled construction of the long-awaited Dunedin Hospital due to an alleged billion-dollar cost blow out.
These may or may not be sensible decisions made by competent ministers who are balancing competing priorities in difficult circumstances, but they look bad on television and in news headlines regardless.
An estimated 35,000 people protested the Dunedin Hospital decision, which would be somewhere in the ballpark of a quarter of the city’s entire population.
TPU–Curia poll also asked voters about their top issues. Health had climbed into second place in their October poll, at 35.5% and up 4.2% points. It now ranks above Cost of Living which has been the top issue for years, but has dropped to third place with Economy on top.
It could be speculated that some voters’ attention has shifted from inflation and high interest rates, to employment and healthcare. This would mean moving from Labour’s weakest issues, to some of its strongest ones.
Ipsos NZ’s issue polling for August already showed healthcare/hospitals jumping into second place, surpassing crime, housing, and the economy. Concerns about unemployment had also doubled, albeit from very low levels.
That survey also reported Labour as being seen as the party most capable of managing healthcare and unemployment, although National was ahead on almost everything else.
A previous TPU–Curia poll report, which was released in full, also showed health as being one of Labour’s stronger issues, although National was still ahead.
Playing defence
Finance Minister Nicola Willis, an adept politician, was seemingly conscious of her party’s vulnerability when discussing the Crown’s financial accounts on Thursday.
“I know that New Zealanders put a huge priority on the health services that a government delivers, and that is why we put significant funding in and why we view those frontline services as critical,” she said.
“But we also need to make sure the resources we put in are well-managed and that we have targets that we are accountable for meeting them.”
She complained that media reports on Health NZ didn’t acknowledge the Coalition had increased the budget by $1.4 billion this financial year, just as other governments had done.
Health NZ had also been told it would be the “first port of call” for future funding and had been guaranteed increases of more than $1.3 billion in each of the next years.
But that didn’t mean it could exceed that budget in any given year, which was why the Commission had been sent in to ensure the agency manages its finances responsibly.
“That doesn't mean there won't be more resources for health, there will be,” she said.
If National’s internal polls look anything like these ones, we can expect some big health related announcements in Budgets 2025 and 2026.
50 Comments
They will be fine. NZers need to take their medicine. Collectively we voted in a bunch of losers in 2017 and they have left the country broke. Projects are being cancelled left right and centre, and NZers are rightly not happy, but it’s a bit like when you divorce because your previous partner spent/gambled/drunk the family fortune away. You can be angry about it, but you can’t really blame your new partner for the stupidity of the old one. The polls will come back that is for sure. The pain is temporary.
It will be interesting. Much of 2025 will be hard for the government too. But it should get better for them later in the year as the economy and housing market improves.
2025 is the year that Labour need to act and get a new leader in place. They need to be effectively prosecuting the government at its weakest in 2025.
Luxon tried to lose the election when in fact he should have smashed them to bits. His lack of popular appeal let Winston rise from the dead. Being short he has the first prerequisite to be a political leader. Following Putin, Macron and alike. His recent comments about being financially sorted were stupid to say the least when so many New Zealanders are struggling financially.
averagejoe,
"The pain is temporary". I wish I could believe that. Yes, the last lot redefined the meaning of incompetence, but our structural deficit long predates them. Every large piece of infrastructure we undertake ends up costing a lot more than anticipated and I think the cancellation of the ferry contract will turn out to be a major mistake, based on ideology rather than economics. The cancellation costs are already at some $500m and will go much higher.
This lot will be no more successful in sorting out our long-standing productivity problems than their predecessors, so we will stumble on becoming progressively poorer as a country. I won't be around long enough to find out, but I suspect that my grandchildren may well have to go elsewhere to prosper. I shudder to think what the state of our health service will be in 10 years from now. I chose to live here over 20 years ago and don't regret it, but I almost certainly wouldn't come here now. Then-2003-I was able to buy a 4 bed house in Mount Maunganui for under $400,000.
@ Linklater - Agreed. Voting every three years for the lesser of two perceived evils between red & blue spanning back decades is counterproductive.
Would a successful business continue to re hire ex employees that lied to the company, ran the company further backwards and then got fired? Absolutely not. So why do we continue to accept it as a country from our politicians? Red or blue, doesn't matter. They fail to deliver, they should rightly be fired, and not re hired, ever. This should be the end of the red vs blue debate right there. For neither have what is required and what it will take. Instead, we need a new party, a party from the people, for the people.
Don't get me wrong, health outcomes are the issue, but spending is necessary for this to occur. The spending has to be done right ie not creating a bloated beurocracy that gets dismantled and reassembled every 3 years. Funding needs to be increased on all 3 levels (primary, secondary and tertiary) on clinical staff and modern facilities.
The 11b Health Restructure in 2022 without a single cent going to nurses, doctors, primary health or hospitals has to be the biggest waste of taxpayer resource in the name of a fixup. Check out some of the bold promises made - Link
Not sure if the previous Labour government was delusional enough to think this cash splash would actually help improve health outcomes or did they just exploit the opportunity to spray money around on bureaucrats and minority interest groups.
The entire programme was dreamt up and managed by EY for tens of millions in fees. Who would know better about fixing the health system than a bunch of business consultants and accountants, eh?
there is enough money in the system -- its just very poorly allocated and spent these reforms -creating one health system/dhb should have saved a lot of duplicated management and administration roles -- instead it created a heap more at a National and Regional level -- all very high paid roles needing new infrastructure . offices support staff etc - To add to the insult -- the MOH ( the previous national level body that should have been streamlined and merged into a National health service - instead created masses of jobs and recruited with great gusto and salaries -- in order to retain its power and role -- take all this wasted money and put it into front line services .....
MOH was significantly bloated 2020-2023 but not sure about today. They had to hire plenty to get the legislation ready prior to the cannabis referendum which in hindsight was foolish given it was all for nothing, add covid teams, and a lack of financial restraint by the previous government. The work culture through covid times was insipid as they put significant pressure on staff around mandates, and there had been multiple personal grievances successful as a result.
WP is already getting ready to go against national once he is no longer deputy PM, they are pushing for two rail enabled ferries as a bottom line (ironically, he approved the build of the two cancelled ones)
that and super age again in the firing line it could be an early election at the first available date
13. Considers a policy that the important national railway system is always connected with at least two rail-enabled interisland ferries between North and South Islands WON
The ideas New Zealand First will ponder at its conference (1news.co.nz)
reliable bluebridge you are joking, they break down just as much as interislander and they only cherry pick the best cargo so any government would have to supply a subsidy to make sure certain and enough cargo went across to the SI
the problem on cost and return was never the ferries but the wharf infrastructure and should NZ rail own and operate that NO, no shipping line runs the wharfs that is a problem for centreport and Malbrough and the government to sort and should not have been put on kiwirail
Look no further than the ultimate parent of Bluebridge - Morgan Stanley Investments.
Back in 2022 when MSI was acquiring the assets, Michael Wood (then MoT) expressed hus excitement on the news stating that a global company with deep pockets would help invest capital to rebuild and improve critical transport infrastructure in NZ.
Yeah, that's exactly how hedge funds operate. Nation building and long-term customer welfare at the core!
Philip Morris First a bit muddled on this. He says we need 2 rail enabled ferries , and the current ferries can last ano
ther 20 years. But we currently only have one rail enabled ferry left, and none are avaliable to buy. Yes, they could be made to last for 20 years, but at a cost way above the cost of new ferries, and requiring long dry dock visits, during which we would have no rail ferries at all.
He is 10 months to late, the time to make a stand was when Willis first cracked her billion dollar corolla joke.
Now, he is just providing national an excuse to do nothing, and a decent donation from the road donors will shut him up eventually.
Telling people how to live their lives.....the nanny state.
If people can't figure out that drinking to excess, doing 120k in a 50k area, swimming in dangerous areas, being massively overweight or loading their cups of tea with sugar is bad, there's not much chance they're going to take any notice...is there?
It's been bad enough the last 6 years with Comrade Ardern and Chippy telling me how to live my life to the nth degree.
NZ is too gutless to make the necessary changes eg sugar tax.
PWC in a recent report estimated the cost of type 2 diabetes as 0.7% of GDP. This will grow massively by 2040 with projected costs up 65% using current dollars. With few exceptions it is a lifestyle disease reflecting choices made by the patient. Unfortunately this is now deemed unpalatable and demeaning to patients.
Nothing will change, pressure will simply increase in the health environment. I’m glad to be out.
A few days ago on here there was a photo of a group of people celebrating the end of the war. Compare that with any photo of people today and you can see one big fat reason why health costs are increasing.
Everyone eventually dies, but modern medicine keeps prolonging the inevitable at a price we don't want to pay. I struggle with the ethics of propping up bodies past their use-by date while young people are stuck on a waiting list for lack of funding and resources.
@ Earl? An upwards trend for Labour? I doubt that very much.
Just because the country feels that under Nationals 11 months governing that the country ain't recovering fast enough from Labours last 6 years of damage, doesn't mean that all of a sudden wads of people are flocking to support Labour once again.
You clearly have a short term memory of the absolute carnage Labour left behind. At the end of Labours last reign there wasn't an entity in sight that Labour hadn't have angered, from drs, nurses & healthcare workers, teachers, tenants, landlords, home owners, farmers, freedom activists the lot. Not one entity stood united for Labour. Labours time is done. They won't be governing for years. Too many people angered, they sealed their own fate.
Labours decieved voter base are too quick to cast doubt on Nationals 11 months governing, yet still makes excuses for Labours 6 years of constant failures. Cannot have it one way and not the other.
The independent Roy Morgan poll that also came out last week continued this years trend that support for the opposition rests on child bearing age women and the majority of the rest support the Coalition - who need to ask themselves the hard question on why that demographic split is.
https://www.roymorgan.com/findings/9693-nz-national-voting-intention-se…
RM polls over full months whereas the rest have narrow windows so more impacted by immediate events.
Talbot Mills are also Labours internal polling group.
The trouble is spending on healthcare is a bottomless pit. At some stage it has to stop or it will bankrupt us.
There is also a widespread belief that doctors can cure all ills so there really is no need to try and prevent illness. The immense resilience of the human body doesn't help either. You can drink, smoke and eat sugar all day long, year after year and be fine...until you're not. Such a lifestyle will kill a dog in a month or two. It is why the human is so successful, yet once you have passed the end of the natural grandparent age, around 50, poor lifestyle choices will bite hard.
Somehow we have to get it into people's heads that doctors will largely only treat symptoms. Considerable effort needs to go into maintaining health into middle and old age and you should start young when you are seemingly fit and well.
Even if you do leave it a little late there is still much you can do to correct the damage through sensible lifestyle choices. Sensible exercise, the elimination of toxic substances and the consumption of "species appropriate" food can do wonders. This will reduce healthcare cost immeasurably.
You can reverse diabetes 2, you can get slim and fit and improve cardiovascular health. All the information is there, just sitting on the Internet.
But, no, most people seem to be driving their bodies, like some drive their cars, like they are deliberately trying to break them. Consequently squandering our wealth on unnecessary healthcare. Sorry, a side effect of my own healthcare measures, gives me a very uncompromising attitude concerning this subject!
What ever happened to the $2 billion that was poured into mental healthcare?
https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/in-depth-special-projects/story/201891…
Putting them out in the community so they can terrorise the populace?..No thanks.
About 20 years ago I lived in a place where mental patients were accommodated nearby in one of the neighbours houses. Weird things were happening...one lay down on the street in front of cars, and another with a horrible case of BO was knocking on the neighbours doors.
The local MP got involved and had them evicted.
An innocent man in Henderson was murdered by one of them when he accepted him as a flatmate without being told he was a psycho.
Not spending money on hospitals is a symptom of austerity, an overall lack of spending to pay for things that need to be paid for. I'm not sure it's just health issues, more a lack of spending on long term needs and and lack of govt fiscal support for the economy in general.
Things are falling over all over the place and National doesn't seem to have a plan. Pulp mills are being closed because of high electricity prices but no sensible plans are being put in place to lower future energy costs.
I am never going to vote for Labour again because they have been captured by the bureaucratic class and are obsessed with spending on iwi to the exclusion of everyone else but I don't approve of the National party stupidity of small tax cuts for the rich that dry up the resources to spend on things that are needed for the nations future development.
National needs to understand that it is only 2 years until the next election and that austerity-lite isn't going to win it for them. If farmers and businesspeople want to avoid the return of the Labour led lunatics then they need to get some fiscal support going now for the economy.
Leaving it to Adrian Orr to get things going again is probably asking a bit too much.
An idea, probably an unpopular one - because nothing else looks like it is going to happen why not start the housing ponzi up again and get sooome spending in the economy going before the whole thing falls over. I believe NZ First is ok with a return of foreign buyers buying houses over $2 million, why not try accessing some of the foreign capital that is getting nervous with the increasing world geopolitical risk?
... who gives a stuff about the latest political polls when the next general election is still 2 years away ...
And if anyone thinks that Labour will benefit from the healthcare mess we are currently witnessing , remind them who greatly caused this shambles in the first place ... Ardern & her motley crew of fools ...
The polls are great to get people talking, but not much else. A survey of many polls may have some value but again, you need to remember that the output they tell us about is due to the input [questions] that they're not so forthcoming on sharing. Take them all with a few grains of salt. Health is a shambles. Labour spent like drunken sailors on more administration, which is all they know how to do. Actually fixing something, or worse, actually adding value to something is beyond them totally. It is now haunting the current govt. Yes, we have to eat & look after ourselves better, and we all need to take responsibility for our own health. I have spent the best part of the last 20 years in the gym trying to straighten myself out. It's a WIP. Hardly drink any more although do enjoy a whiskey in the winter. Anyhow, just like you, I'm getting older too. Such is life. We need to as individuals & as a collective [country] need to start making better quality decisions. Every day. It all adds up. Still undecided on the current lot. They look a little naive. But then, as a nation that is one of our issues. Ah well. Tomorrow is another day.
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