Responding to the August poll, Hipkins said his party was “not focused on rogue polls” and was “busy fighting for a country where everyone has the chance to build a better future”.
However, responding to today’s poll, Hipkins did not describe the results as “rogue” and instead said, “polls move around”.
“I’m focused on Labour’s plan to invest in what matters so Kiwis can get ahead.
“There’s a lot of work to do between now and the election, and we’re getting on with it. We’ve announced some great policy focused on supporting Kiwis with the cost of living and investing in our health system.”
Today’s poll had National with the largest share of support but still below 30%, dropping two percentage points from last month’s poll to 29%.
The Green Party had received a significant boost of 3.8 points to reach 13.9%. Act had also jumped 3.2 points to 10.5%. New Zealand First had dropped by 0.7 points to 8.4% while Te Pāti Māori had gained 0.5 points to 2%.
Opportunity, which had surpassed 5% in several recent mainstream polls, had fallen below that threshold to 4.5%, a drop of 1.6 points.
Those numbers translated to National losing one seat in the House to 39 seats when compared to last month’s poll. Labour had also lost one seat to 35.
The Green Party had gained five to reach 18 seats, Act was up five to 14, NZ First was down one to 11 and Te Pāti Māori up one to three seats.
Given Opportunity had not met the 5% threshold, the eight seats the party had in last month’s poll were gone.
That seat allocation meant the current coalition parties had 64 seats between them, up three from last month and enough to hold a majority in the House.
The “Opposition bloc”, a combination of Labour, the Greens, Te Pāti Māori and Opportunity, had dropped three seats to 56.
In the preferred Prime Minister ratings, both the National and Labour leaders had fallen with Christopher Luxon dropping two points to 21.2% but still ahead of Chris Hipkins, who had dropped 2.9 points to 16.9%.
Adam Pearse is the Deputy Political Editor and part of the NZ Herald’s Press Gallery team based at Parliament in Wellington. He has worked for NZME since 2018, reporting for the Northern Advocate in Whangārei and the Herald in Auckland.