The latest Taxpayers’ Union/Curia poll is out and lacklustre National is again trailing Labour, while their hapless leader is getting slayed by Hipkins.

For the first time in a year, Labour has taken the lead on 35.5% up 1.1 points on last month while National is on 34.8% up 0.4 points on last month. 

ACT is down 2.4 points to 9.3% while the Greens have dropped 2.1 points to 5.7%. This is perilously close to the 5% threshold for getting seats in Parliament (unless Chlöe Swarbrick can hold onto her Auckland Central electorate).

New Zealand First, on the other hand, sees a boost of 1.3 points to 4.2% – within striking distance of re-entering Parliament. The Maori Party is on 1.4 per cent – down 0.7 points – and will again have to rely on holding at least one electorate to get any list seats.

Other smaller parties were the New Conservatives on 2.5% (+1.7 points), TOP on 1.7% (-0.3 points), Vision NZ on 0.8% (+0.6 points) and Democracy NZ on 0.5% (-0.4 points).

Taxpayers Uniomn

This is not good reading for National. They should be pulling in front of Labour but are struggling to gain traction, especially considering Act has been shedding votes that National has failed to purloin. In fact, NZ First has snaffled those votes.

If an election were held tomorrow it would be a close-run thing. The margins are so very tight, and Christopher Luxon is going to have to find a way to open that gap up.

But if NZ First gets over 5% then a three-way coalition with Act and National is looking more and more likely, especially as Winston Peters has said no deals with Labour.

The problem for Luxon though is he isn’t making any headway himself.

Chris Hipkins’s net favourability rating continues to soar and now sits at +33% up 6 points from last month (54% favourable versus 21% unfavourable). The prime minister also now has a positive net favourability rating with National voters of +13% up 17 points from -4% last month.
 
Christopher Luxon’s net favourability has increased by 3 points from -5% to -2% (35% favourable versus 37% unfavourable). ACT leader, David Seymour, sees a 12-point bounce to +1% (35.4% favourable versus 34.6% unfavourable). 

If Christopher Luxon isn’t in front on net favourables then he can kiss the election goodbye. The number of people with low favourability who win elections can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and all of those were special indeed. Luxon ain’t special.

National and Luxon better get a wriggle on; we are halfway through March and time is slipping away. And don’t come at me that they are keeping their powder dry. That is a foolish argument used by those who fail to understand that winning elections is about momentum and building that momentum. And that is where National is failing.

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As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news,...