Opportunity Voters Lean Labour, But Party Says It ‘Doesn’t Drive Our Decision Making’

Russell
Palmer Political reporter

With
Opportunity on the rise, new polling from RNZ shows the
party’s supporters are far more keen on a Labour-led
government than a National-led one.

But leader Qiulae
Wong says that preference would not “drive” the
decision-making of the leadership group who would make the
call.

Instead, that choice – and the governing
arrangement used – would depend more on the parties and
policies at the negotiating table.

Opportunity knocks
at 5% threshold

The headline figure for Opportunity
from the latest RNZ-Reid Research poll is their party vote
at 4.7 percent, just shy of the 5 percent needed to enter
Parliament on party vote numbers alone, and the second poll
to do so after the 4.6 in the 1News-Verian result last
month.

Wong told RNZ it showed that people were
wanting to see an “alternative coalition partner that is
there to be constructive and bring people
together”.

“That’s certainly what we’re hearing on the
ground, and so I think it’s really encouraging to see it
show up in the polls as well.”

The RNZ poll figure is
a doubling of support since the last edition, is
Opportunity’s highest result in the series on record, and
puts the party’s likelihood of reaching the 5 percent
threshold within margin-of-error territory.

Seeing
similar results across multiple polls adds validity to the
claim the party’s rise is a genuine effect being recorded
rather than just an outlying, rogue number.

With
months of campaigning still to go, the trajectory is
undeniably promising for the party – with the proviso that
others parties will be doing all they can to shore up their
own support and erode that of opponents, including
Opportunity.

“We’ve still got a wee way to go, but
given that this is reflected now across multiple polls, and
we’ve obviously seen this trend going up over the past eight
months, we’re feeling like we’re in a good position,” Wong
said.

“We’re still we’re very conscious of the fact
that the next four months is going to be very intense and a
lot of hard work, so definitely not taking our eyes off
that, got to keep our foot on the
accelerator.”

Opportunity voters leaning towards
Labour

The
RNZ-Reid Research survey asked specifically if voters would
prefer a government led by Labour or
National.

Overall, voters were more likely – at 43.4
percent – to want a Labour-led government, while 37.7
percent preferred National.

When looking just at those
saying they would vote for Opportunity, the split was far
more stark: slightly lower support for a Labour-led
government at 41.1 percent, but support for a National-led
one much lower at just 21.3 percent.

Wong has made an
explicit
pitch to be an alternative kingmaker – snatching the
proverbial crown from New Zealand First – but pushed back on
whether the party would take its supporters clear preference
for a Labour government into account.

“That doesn’t
drive our decision making,” Wong said.

“Our
approach… is to negotiate with the largest party first,
see where we can find that common ground, and if we feel
like we have to compromise too much on our values or the
policies that we want to see enacted, we would then go to
the second-largest.”

Opportunity’s supporters also had
a higher-than-average undecided response to the question
with 22 percent preferring ‘neither’ party, and 15.6 percent
‘don’t know’ compared to the 12.8 percent and 6.1 percent
baseline of the wider electorate.

“You could interpret
those as a possible ‘don’t mind’ as well which also shows, I
think, there are a large bunch of New Zealanders who just
want to see good progress and honest politicking moving
forward… and that’s what Opportunity is
offering.”

Wong said Opportunity’s “leadership group”
including elected MPs (the caucus) and the board – elected
by the wider party membership – would make the final
call.

“It’s not put out to a vote to the whole
membership,” she said, drawing a contrast to the approach
taken by the Greens.

The party was also “open to all
the possibilities” of governing arrangements – a full
coalition or confidence-and-supply deal – and would depend
on which other parties were in the mix and the policies they
were putting forward.

“If we feel that we have to
compromise too much on what we want to achieve, then we
would we would walk away from that and pursue other
options,” Wong said.

“Previously, we have talked about
sitting on the cross benches as well, that’s an option
that’s still there,” Wong said.

“We get one shot at
our first term in Parliament and we want to make a really
good impression both for voters and for our colleagues there
in Parliament too.”

She said the party would explain
its decision if it had the chance to make one, and would set
out bottom lines for negotiations ahead of the
election.

“We want to be transparent, because this is
one of the things that New Zealanders are really frustrated
by and are losing trust in our politicians with that lack of
transparency.”

National, Labour voters both
optimistic Opportunity would back their party

Survey
respondents were also asked which party Opportunity would
likely side with if it ended up as kingmaker.

Overall,
expectations leaned towards Labour at 34.4 percent, with
National coming in at 22.4 percent.

However, ‘don’t
know’ accounted for 34.1 percent of responses – eclipsing
expectations of a National pair-up, and nearly surpassing
those for Labour too, with another 9.1 percent saying
‘neither’.

By comparison, Opportunity supporters were
slightly less likely to think the party would side with
Labour (33.7 percent), slightly more likely to think it
would side with National (25 percent), and slightly less
likely to say “don’t know” (32.2 percent), while 9.1 percent
said “neither”, compared with the wider
public.

National and Te Pāti Māori supporters were
the only ones who thought Opportunity were more likely to go
with National than with Labour.

That suggests National
party faithful are not taking Prime
Minister Christopher Luxon’s messaging – that voting for
Opportunity “looks like a vote for Labour and the Greens” at
face value.

“It’s really great to see that National
voters see that we we could be a good partner as well,” Wong
told RNZ.

“Perhaps the rhetoric coming from some of
the leaders is just that – old school, playing into tribal
politics, trying to put us in a box rather than try and find
the common ground.”

Labour supporters were also
optimistic about Opportunity siding with them, with nearly
half (47 percent) believing that to be the case compared to
just an eighth (12.5 percent) thinking the
opposite.

Wong said Opportunity “do feel we can align
with National or Labour” and pointed to the party’s
policies as evidence of that.

“Our breakthrough
economy policy which is all about investing in innovation
and growth I think would be very appealing to National
voters, and we have very similar KiwiSaver policies as
well,” she
said.

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