Taxpayers' Union Curia Poll: March 2022

Exclusive to members and supporters, we can reveal the results of the seventh Taxpayers’ Union Curia Poll.

The polling period was 2–7 and 14–15 March (calling was interrupted for a few days due to Covid-19).

Here are the headline results:

National and Labour are both down, with Labour polling at its lowest ever in this term of Government. The major parties are now separated by just 0.9%. The Greens and ACT are up. Of the 'Other' vote, New Conservatives polled 0.6% and TOP 0.1%.

Here is how these results would translate to seats in Parliament:

The National-ACT bloc receives an extra seat, meaning just four seats now separate the centre-right and the centre-left. For comparison, the gap was 27 seats in September.

(For the purposes of this chart, the Māori Party is not included in the two major blocs.)

Just like the TV polls, our pollsters do not read out options to participants to choose their preferred Prime Minister – we just include those who are named as preferred by more than a few people in the random sample of one thousand voters. Here are the updated preferred Prime Minister ratings, shown over time:

Ardern remains ahead but Luxon is competitive. Winston Peters enjoys the largest increase in support, even if this hasn't translated to support for his party.

More New Zealanders say the country is heading in the wrong direction than in the right direction:

This is a key leading indicator for how the Government is likely to perform in an election.

New Zealanders were also asked to scale between 1 and 5 their favourability towards different politicians. “Very Favourable” (5) plus “Favourable” (4) are netted off against “Very Unfavourable (1) and “Unfavourable” (2) to come to a “Net Favourability” result. Those responses that are neither favourable nor unfavourable are disregarded.

We polled on six party leaders plus the Speaker of the House. The Speaker has some of the most unfavourable ratings we have ever seen in the wake of his response to anti-mandate protestors. Only 9% have a favourable view of Mallard and 63% an unfavourable view for a net favourability of -54%.  Even Labour voters have turned on Mallard with a -21% net favourability from Labour voters.

For the full polling report, covering the detailed insights the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition are used to receiving, join our Taxpayer Caucus – our club of most generous financial supporters who make our work possible.

The scientific poll was conducted by Curia Market Research and commissioned by the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union. The full polling report is being released exclusively to members of our Taxpayer Caucus. As is well known, but for full disclosure, David Farrar is a member of the Board of the Taxpayers' Union and also a Director of Curia Market Research Ltd.

The Taxpayers’ Union Curia Poll was conducted from 2-7 March and 14-15 March. Calling was interrupted by the closure of the call centre due to Covid-19 for a few days. The median response was collected on Mon 7 March 2022.

The sample size was 1,000 eligible New Zealand voters who are contactable on a landline or mobile phone selected at random from 20,000 nationwide phone numbers. The results are weighted to reflect the overall voting adult population in terms of gender, age, and area. Based on this sample of 1,000 respondents, the maximum sampling error (for a result of 50%) is +/- 3.1%, at the 95% confidence level. This poll should be formally referred to as the “Taxpayers’ Union Curia Poll”.