Bob Edlin: Roy Morgan Poll

If that’s what a haka and a hikoi can do to shift voter support – well, Maori Party leaders will know what do do next…

Your delight or dismay will depend on where you sit on the left-right political spectrum.

But the latest Roy Morgan poll results suggest the Maori Party has plenty to celebrate. Its mounting a hikoi to boost its political support has been a triumph.

The haka in Parliament which disrupted the counting of party votes after the first reading of the Treaty Principles Bill probably helped, too.

The data show:

National 28.5%
Labour 28%
Greens 13.5%
ACT 9%
NZ First 6.5%
Maori Party 9%

The pollsters report:

Roy Morgan’s New Zealand Poll for November 2024 shows the Labour-Greens-Maori Party Parliamentary Opposition on 50.5% (up 2.5% points) consolidating their lead over the National-led Government (National, ACT & NZ First) on 44% (down 3% points).

For the National-led Government it was a decline in support for National, down 2.5% points to 28.5% that drove the overall fall in support. This is the lowest level of support for National since Christopher Luxon became National leader three years ago in late November 2021. Support for ACT was unchanged at 9% and support for NZ First was down 0.5% points at 6.5%.

For the Parliamentary Opposition, support for Labour was down 1% point to 28%, support for the Greens was down 0.5% points at 13.5% and support for the Maori Party was up 4% points to 9% – a record high level of support for the Maori Party.

Those are measures of change from the previous monthly poll.

But let’s recall how we voted at the general election last year:



Yep. The Maori Party mustered only 3 per cent of the vote – but it won six of the country’s race-based Maori seats.

The Roy Morgan poll points to two big shifts from the election-day data;

• National has slumped from 38 per cent to 28.5 per cent.
• The Maori Party has surged from 3 per cent to 9 per cent.

Martyn Bradbury has reported on this on the Daily Blog under the heading

New Roy Morgan Poll – Māori Party soar to 9% Government sinks further

He provides a table showing the latest data, then says:

Yes – you read that right – Māori Party at 9%

Following the Talbot Poll that shows Labour ahead of National, following the Stuff Poll that shows National tumbling, now comes the latest Roy Morgan showing Labour + Green + Māori Party would be the Government and that the Māori Party have finally cracked the code and are now bringing in previous nonvoters.

The danger of the right adopting such controversial race baiting legislation is that it generates a backlash amongst Māori, and the Māori Party surging to a near before seen 9% is that backlash in motion.

Then he enthuses:

The Left have surged because young men are coming back to the fold…

In support of this, Bradbury quotes from the Roy Morgan press statement:

… younger men aged 18-49, have swung behind the opposition and now 56.5% support the Opposition Labour/ Greens/ Maori Party compared to only 36.5% supporting the National/ ACT/ NZ First governing coalition.

Nevertheless, the governing coalition partner ACT, on 14.5%, has its highest support from this gender and age group as does the Maori Party on 18%.

Bradbury contends:

…THIS is the way the Left wins the 2026 election, they stop alienating 18-49 men and bring them back to the fold, after the Trump victory, we need to dump the alienating woke dogma that drove those men off in the first place.

But the critical data, overall, are that

• National’s support has shrunk by 9.5 per cent since the election;
• The Maori Party’s support has increased by 6 per cent.

The remaining 3 per cent shed by the Nats has been shared among…

• The Greens (up 2 per cent)
• Labour (up 1 per cent)
• Act (up 0.5 per cent)
• New Zealand First (up 0.5 per cent)_.

The No Minister blog has headed its report:

National Take A Pummeling In Latest Roy Morgan Poll.

The writer comments:

Christopher Luxon and his acolytes have some serious thinking to do as the November Poll confirms what we have seen from Talbot Mills and the new Dom Post one released a couple of days ago.

I would put the following in the UNBELIEVABLE category had it not been for two other recent polls, no matter who the pollsters were serving, saying virtually the same thing. Given the good things being done by the Coalition overall their can only be one logical explanation for this hammering:

CHRISTOPHER LUXON’S WISHY/WASHY APPROACH TO ALL THINGS MAORI AND HIS FAILURE TO SUPPORT THE TREATY PRINCIPLES BILL.

Maybe this poll will sit him firmly on his arse and change his attitude as it finally sinks in regarding what the majority of New Zealanders voted for on 17 October 2023.

The writer regards the Maori Party poll support figure of 9% as “pie in the sky” stuff and ventures:

I would like to think the latest polls are a one off but there is a trend developing that I see as being very frightening at best and predicating economic ruin for New Zealand in the extreme.

Plenty of Point of Order readers are likely to be hoping it’s a one-off too.

But they can’t afford to ignore the Maori Party’s electoral objectives and the implications of its urging Maori voters to exercise their right to switch from the general roll to the Maori roll:

Those objectives were spelled out in Parliament by co-leader Rawiri Waititi:

The kōhanga reo generation has arrived—70 percent of our people are 40 years and younger.

If we are 20 per cent of the population, that would translate into more seats in this House if all of our people were on the Māori roll—18 to 20 seats. But because we have people still on the general roll—Māori people on the general roll—we get half of what we should be getting, which is seven Māori seats, and, in actual fact, should be 14 if all Māori were on the Māori roll. That was at 16 percent. Now we’re at 20 percent, it will increase.

The 2023 election results show the electoral advantage afforded by the seven Maori seats.

ACT, the party which is promoting the Treaty Principles Bill, won almost three times more party votes than the Maori Party. But it won only five more seats than the Maori Party, which won six of the Maori seats.

Bob Edlin is a veteran journalist and editor for the Point of Order blog HERE. - where this article was sourced.