Centre-right surges as Hipkins desperate to prove he’s ‘in it for you’

ANALYSIS: Another poll, another fillip for the right of politics. The latest 1News Verian Poll shows the centre-right with a small but clear majority if the results were repeated on election day.

National and ACT would be able to govern with 61 seats under the poll.

Compared to the last poll in the series, then called the 1News Kantar Public Poll, it showed both National and Labour down by two points (to 35% and 33% respectively) while ACT (12%) and the Greens (10%) were both up by one point and three points respectively.

NZ First and Te Pāti Māori hit 3%, while The Opportunities Party clocked in at 2%.

Through several public polls the smaller parties are continuing to perform well off the back of a bit of grumpiness and dissatisfaction with the majors.

Significantly, 12% of those polled said that they were undecided or didn’t know. That’s a group that both major parties in particular will be chasing.

For the overall landscape leading into the election what matters is not the split between National/ACT or Labour/Greens/Te Pāti Māori, but which way those undecided voters go and which voters might move from Labour to National compared with 2020.

While 35% might not be great for National considering the strong hand of issues aligned with its brand the party has been dealt, 33% for Labour will be a real concern to Labour strategists. If that level of party vote were to hold it would be extremely unlikely the centre-left could get over the line in any scenario.

While Christopher Luxon rose two points as preferred prime minister to 20%, Hipkins fell one point, to 24%. They are pretty closely matched on that score and – based on that metric at least – verdicts on Luxon’s unpopularity have been exaggerated.

Voters may not have warmed to Luxon, but it’s not like Hipkins is massively preferred while Luxon is down in the dumps. National and ACT will be buoyed by these results

Hipkins, however, is having a red-hot crack at trying to prove he’s ‘in it for you’, Labour’s new campaign slogan. Last week he ruled out a capital gains tax and wealth tax while he is prime minister – which was amongst a list of policies his inherited finance minister Grant Robertson had been working on in the lead up to Budget 2023.

Then on Monday, he unleashed a new law and order policy much longer on consequences and punishment than Labour’s previous efforts. Under the announcement – the first of three on law and order expected this week – laws would be passed to try to add new aggravating factors to sentences for adults who encouraged young people to commit crimes, and the same for people posting videos of their crimes on social media.

Initially the Government said it was creating a new offence carrying up to 10 years in prison, which was corrected later in the evening to an “aggravation” that could be used in sentencing.

There will also be a boost of funding to hire another 78 police prosecutors.

It was a government announcement, but none of it will be passed into law prior to the election, meaning that it was more for campaign consumption.

Hipkins defended the timing saying that Government doesn’t stop just because an election is coming up. He also said he had a gutsful of it, as had New Zealanders.

This is a very belated admission of just how much of an Achilles heel law and order has become for Labour. In last month’s Ipsos Issues Monitor, law and order jumped to clear second on issues that voters care about.

For Labour, any moves in these areas are about, as much as possible, trying to cauterise it as a political issue. It has been fertile ground for National and ACT.

And it aligns with the “in it for you” slogan. Although that slogan faces real risks if Labour doesn’t live up to the tagline.

Hipkins has been mostly out of the country the past three weeks. Last week and this, three polls showed either National and ACT governing or a hung Parliament. Now he is back, Labour will sharpen up its campaigning chops. Plenty can happen between now and election day, but it will be an uphill battle for Labour and the left.