KEY INSIGHTS
Based on this aggregation of 76 publically available polls from the 25th of January 2023 to the 4th of December 2024:
- National is trending down ↓ (but was under-polled before and after the election)
- ACT steady
- NZ First steady
- Overall, the Coalition is trending down ↓
- Labour is trending up ↑
- Greens down ↓ (and were over-polled before and after the election)
- Te Pāti Māori up ↑
- Overall, the Opposition is trending up ↑
The most notable shifts happened during:
- August 2023 up to the election on October 14th
- April 2024 (?)
- November 2024 (Treaty protests)
10 KEY QUESTIONS
- What happened in April 2024 that shifted polling so much?
- Why are National trending down? Is it due to their handling of the Treaty debate?
- Why are the Greens trending down? Is it solely due to their MP scandals?
- Why do pollsters typically under-poll National and overpoll the Greens?
- Why is Labour trending up?
- Why is Te Pāti Māori trending up? Is it solely due to their hikoi protest?
- Will ACT be disappointed that their prominence in media coverage has not translated to a vote spike so far?
- Will NZ First be concerned that some polls show Te Pāti Māori have overtaken them?
- Do the Other parties have a fair chance with the arbitrary 5% threshold rule, and not STV (Single Transferable Voting) to eliminate wasted votes?
- What will happen in 2025, and how much will that impact local council elections?
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HAVE YOUR SAY
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FULL DATA ANALYSIS
Please contact us if you would like the full data set and research.
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ADDITIONAL NOTES:
- We started the time series on the 25th of January as this is when Chris Hipkins was sworn in as Prime Minister. Labour received a bump after this announcement.
- We ended the time series on the 4th of December being the last available polling date before we posted this fact. The graph’s horizontal x-axis shows 27-Jan and 22-Dec simply because we don’t have full control over all dates shown and wanted to be sure that the election date of 14-Oct was showing
- We have shown all publically available polls over this timeframe (76 in total) with three exceptions:
- Roy Morgan January 2023 poll. This polling was mostly done before Chris Hipkins was sworn in, so is not a fair comparison against other polls.
- Talbot Mills March 2024 poll as it was leaked, but without a polling score for Te Pāti Māori.
- Talbot Mills Maypoll as it was leaked, but without a polling score for Greens, ACT, NZ First, or Te Pāti Māori.
- Because polling methodologies can vary so much, we chose to use a moving average trendline. We made this an average of the last 5 values for two reasons:
- There are 5 pollsters included in this research, so 5 values increases the probability that each are included in each data point
- 5 values roughly translates to 1 month in recent months of polling, and an average of the last month’s polling feels fair to keep the data current, but also smooth out anomalies from individual polls
- For the graph colours:
- We chose political party colours based on brand logos and colour palettes.
- We put Other voters in purple being a different colour, and a mix of blue and red combined.
- We’ve shown the Coalition in blue and the Opposition in red, to reflect that they are a National-led Coalition and a Labour-led Opposition as the biggest parties in each block.
- We could not rely on the Wikipedia graphs as they are not updated when the polling data is, and their trendline methodology is not explained.
- All numbers are provisional and subject to revision.
Thank you to the Factors who helped pull this together.
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SOURCES:
Pre-election = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2023_New_Zealand_general_election
Post-election = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_New_Zealand_general_election
2023 election results = https://archive.electionresults.govt.nz/electionresults_2023/
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Did we make a mistake, or have you got smarter data? Let us know.
