The Facts has a summary of 10 polls on Three Waters. It seems that the Government simply isn’t listening to the people. All polls point to a significant majority dismissing the Government’s insistence on ramming through their anti-democratic Three Waters.

Key insights

  • Four nationwide polls = 2:1 Kiwis oppose Three Waters
  • All 10 polls  = 3.6:1 Kiwis oppose Three Waters

Is the Government listening to its people?

Do you know of other Three Waters polls that we can add to this summary? If so, please contact us. 

Make sure you also explore the source links below, as the polling results provide many other insights beyond what a single graph can present, e.g. the Horizon Research asked how Three Waters will impact political party voting.

Notes

  • Each poll asked the question in a slightly different way with, sometimes, slightly different answer options. We have done our best to create a consistent and fair summary. All questions and sources are provided in the sources section below so that you can see these for yourself.
  • Originally, the Three Waters proposal was optional, and councils were allowed to opt-in or opt-out which is why some of the earlier council polling asked this question of their ratepayers/constituents. More recently, the Government has removed this opt-in option and has proposed making Three Waters mandatory for all councils.
  • Submissions on the Three Waters Services Entity bill closed on Friday 22nd July 2022. You can follow the Bill’s progress via this link https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/sc/make-a-submission/document/53SCFE_SCF_BILL_124081/water-services-entities-bill.
  • Polls were discovered by looking at all 9 pages of Google search results for “three waters poll nz” under the All results tab. We also checked the News tab but didn’t find any more. And we also checked https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Waters_reform_programme but only two polls were cited on there. If you know of other credible polls we missed, please contact us so that we can add them.
  • We have displayed the averages at the top of the graph, followed by the individual poll results in chronological order from most to least recent. Where polls were conducted in the same month, we have displayed them in alphabetical order from the bottom-up.
  • We felt it was important to break out an average for the four nationwide polls as they are more likely to be reflective of all New Zealanders. Councils can vary greatly in their ratepayer mix, e.g. urban, suburban, rural, industrial, and also their geographic proximity to Wellington’s decision makers, so can have very strong feelings one way or the other, e.g. Hutt City Council with 38% support vs Waimakariri District Council with just 4% support.
  • We left the smaller Gisborne Herald Webpoll in as it was the most recent polling publicly available and we felt it was important to represent all voices and towns/cities. There is bias with all polls of course, and often more so with online newspaper polls.
  • We also left in the smaller Rangitikei District Council (n=268) and Queenstown Lakes District Council (n=232) polls so that all voices and towns/cities could be heard. n=1000 is generally considered best practice for local or central government polls.
  • Apologies for the text alignment in the vertical axis. Excel is amazing, but not perfect. If you can help us take the graphic design up a notch, please let us know.
  • All numbers are provisional and subject to revision.

Ommissions
In chronological order from oldest to newest.

Sources
In chronological order from oldest to newest, and chronological. 

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A contribution from The BFD staff.