Two new polls taken in late August/early September have reversed the fall in the four-poll average driven by two polls published on Wednesday. National's latest four-poll average, adjusted for the New Zealand Herald DigiPoll and Fairfax Media's Ipsos polls, published at 5am on 5 September, was 48.9%, up from 47.5%.
(Explainer: The POLL of POLLS is an arithmetical average of the four most recent major polls since mid-June from among: TV1 Colmar Brunton, TV3 Reid Research, Fairfax Media-Ipsos, NZ Herald DigiPoll, Roy Morgan New Zealand and UMR Research, which is not published.*)
Judith Collins' resignation appears to have no effect on National's standing. Its polling is still trending down but the slope of the trend is very gentle.
Labour has clearly not troughed. Its latest average was 25.0%, down from 26.0%.
The Greens have continued up, to a 13.2% average. Since June, the Greens' trend has been upward.
Poll performance of National vs Labour vs Greens (2014). Graphic: RNZ
National's lead over Labour and the Greens combined reversed up to 10.7%.
Poll performance of National vs Labour and Greens (2014). Graphic: RNZ
The two winners from the dirty politics furore, New Zealand First and the Conservatives, held their averages, at 5.4% and 3.5% respectively. Internet Mana was down to 2.0% and the Maori party was 1.0%, ACT 0.6% and United Future 0.1%, a level at which Peter Dunne's seat would be an "overhang" and push the number of seats in Parliament to 121.
Poll performance of NZ First vs Internet-Mana vs Conservatives (2014). Graphic: RNZ
The country's mood has topped out and looks headed down in the latest Roy Morgan measure of whether the country is heading in the right or wrong direction. If the election had been at the normal time of late November the mood might have been less supportive of National.
Graphic: RNZ
(* The four polls included in the latest average were, in date order of the midpoint between the start and finish of voter interviews, Roy Morgan, TV3, New Zealand Herald and Fairfax. The poll on whether the country is going in the right or wrong direction is from Roy Morgan New Zealand. )
