A new poll shows the National Party stuck below the 30% mark while Winston Peters closes in on Christopher Luxon in the preferred Prime Minister rankings.

A poll from Talbot Mills Research for its corporate clients had National on 29%, the same result as Talbot Mills’ last poll for its clients last month.

Labour was unchanged on 36%. Talbot Mills also produces internal polls for the Labour Party.

New Zealand First had dropped one percentage point to 14%. The Green Party had increased two points to 9% while Act had dropped one point to 7% since the April poll.

Te Pāti Māori remained steady on 2%.

Asked to name who they would prefer to be Prime Minister, respondents favoured Chris Hipkins over others with 23% naming the Labour leader.

However, the rise of NZ First leader Winston Peters in the preferred PM rankings in this poll has continued, reaching 17% and only three points behind National leader Christopher Luxon, who is on 20%.

In Talbot Mills’ December poll for clients, Peters was on 10% and has risen steadily since then. In December, Hipkins was on 27% while Luxon was on 21%

Other responses included Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick (10%), Act leader David Seymour (7%) and Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi (3%). Twelve percent of respondents didn’t name anyone.

The poll was conducted between May 1-10.

NZ First leader Winston Peters has steadily risen in preferred PM rankings in the poll. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Immediately before the polling period, the Herald revealed Peters, also the Foreign Minister, had released emails under the Official Information Act showing PM Christopher Luxon wanted to express “explicit public support” for the US-led war in Iran.

Luxon, who had addressed the matter with Peters in-person, claimed Peters had put politics above the national interests and believed his position on the war had been mischaracterised. Peters later admitted his office had erred in not informing Luxon’s office the emails were being released.

During the polling period, Act unveiled its immigration policy, which National later criticised as “kneejerk” and “populist”.

Luxon also made a short visit to Singapore to secure a deal that would ensure New Zealand’s fuel supply from Singapore in exchange for similar guarantees of New Zealand food exports to Singapore.

Towards the end of the polling period, Luxon said National would campaign on changing the age of superannuation and Peters revealed Budget 26 would include scrapping the initiative offering the final year of university study for free.

According to the latest NZ Herald-Motu Research Poll of Polls, which doesn’t take today’s poll into account, the probability of the coalition winning a second term after the November 7 election is 89.6%.

The Poll of Polls uses data from public polls and other private or less frequent polls and inputs them into a computer model using polling data going back to 2014. It then runs 4000 election simulations, which are used to form probabilities of various election outcomes.

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.