National voters sit right of centre and say coalitions are worse than majority governments
Like ACT voters, they also call a capital gains tax an envy tax, and they reject calling the very rich selfish hoarders of wealth. Scroll down to see where they sit and why, one step at a time. Part 1 is what National voters think, and part 2 is how they choose a party.
This survey is not a poll. The people who took it are younger, more online and further left than New Zealand as a whole. A National voter here is a person who said they would vote for the National Party if there was an election today. Only 29 National voters have taken it so far, so this page has fewer steps and rounds their shares.
The live compass has changed since this page was built. The party dots show the latest positions, but the hexagons and the step text can lag behind them.
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Part 1 of 2: What National voters think
Step 1 of 11
Most people in this survey sit left of centre
Each hexagon is a small area of the compass. A brighter hexagon holds more people. An area with only a few people stays empty.
The crosshair is the political centre. It is the average of the party dots, weighted by each party's share of the 2023 vote. About four in five of the 854 people sit left of it, so this survey leans left.
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Step 2 of 11
National voters spread out, but most sit right of centre
29 of these people would vote National today. They are too spread out for any hexagon to hold enough of them, so one hexagon marks their average position instead.
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Step 3 of 11
The National dot sits close to the NZ First dot
The National dot starts from the average position of National voters. There are only 29 of them, so the dot is also pulled part of the way toward where National voters sat in an earlier, larger round of the survey.
The NZ First dot is so close that more National voters sit nearest it (about 40%) than nearest the National dot (about 30%). This is common: a party dot is an average, and only 42% of Labour voters sit nearest the Labour dot.
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Step 4 of 11
What sets National voters apart
These are the statements where National voters take a clear side, few of them take the other side, and their average answer is furthest from everyone else's. National voters say coalitions are worse than majority governments (about 70% agree); call a capital gains tax an envy tax (about 70% agree); reject calling the very rich selfish hoarders of wealth (about 80% disagree); doubt the government can build houses faster than developers (about 80% agree); and oppose a universal basic income (about 60% disagree).
Only on coalition government do they also go further than NZ First and ACT voters, whose dots sit nearest. On the others, ACT voters lean the same way, about as strongly or more.
Each arrow shows how far one of them moves the National voters' average away from everyone else's average.
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Step 5 of 11
No single statement puts National voters where they are
Start at the pale ring, where someone neutral on every statement sits, and add each statement's pull as one link, big ones first, with the ones that pull back fitted in along the way. The chain ends at the average of the National voters in this survey, not at the National dot (step 3 says why).
The longest link, on capitalism, makes about a tenth of the chain. The thick links are the statements from step 4. Together they make only about an eighth of it, so many small pulls make the rest.
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Step 6 of 11
On the third axis, National voters sit close to the middle
This axis compares a person's economic views with their culture views. For National voters, the two match the way they do for most people. Their bar overlaps everyone else's a lot.
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Step 7 of 11
More than half of National voters agree that New Zealand is on the right track
One question asks about the country today: is New Zealand on the right track? Each bar shows how a group answered, from strongly disagree on the left to strongly agree on the right.
About 60% of National voters agree. Everyone else mostly disagrees (83%).
Too few National voters disagree or strongly agree to show each answer on its own, so one dashed part of their bar holds three answers and the other two.
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Part 2 of 2: How National voters choose
Step 8 of 11
Three in five National voters also voted National in 2023
Each ribbon is a group of people. The left side is how they voted in 2023, and the right side is how they would vote today. We draw only the ribbons into or out of National.
About 60% of today's National voters also voted National in 2023.
Of the people who voted National in 2023, about 40% would vote National again. About 20% now pick Labour and about 20% pick ACT.
Many fewer people here say they voted National in 2023 than the real result shows.
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Step 9 of 11
Three in five National voters also rank ACT in their top three
The survey asks people to rank their top three parties. 29 National voters did this, and about 90% of them put National first.
The pale bar is the share who put a party anywhere in their top three. The solid bar is the share for whom that party is the next choice after National.
About 60% put ACT in their top three, and for about 50% ACT is the next choice. Labour, OPP and NZ First are each in the top three of about 40%. Labour is the next choice for about 20%, and OPP for about 20%.
Very few rank the New Conservative Party.
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Step 10 of 11
One in five people rank National in their top three, about five times as many as would vote for them
This step turns the last one around. It asks who puts National in their top three.
Each square is 1 in 100 people who ranked parties. 4 in 100 would vote for National today. 21 in 100 put National somewhere in their top three.
About 80% of ACT voters, about 50% of NZ First voters, 17% of Labour voters, 14% of OPP voters and 2% of Greens voters rank National in their top three.
This survey leans left, so 21% is far lower than New Zealand as a whole would give.
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Step 11 of 11
Where do you sit?
Answer the same 60 statements and see where your own dot lands among the party dots. It takes about ten minutes.
The numbers behind the diagram
The same information as the diagram, as tables. Positions come from the live compass. Everything else is an average or a share for a whole group.
Show the tables
The tables need JavaScript.
How we did this
Your answer to a statement, times that statement's weight on each axis, moves your dot. The party dots come from the live compass. The rest uses the answers as of the date at the top.
A statement counts in step 4 if National voters lean clearly one way on average, at most a quarter of them take the other side, and their average is clearly further their way than everyone else's (by at least 0.4 of a standard deviation). Those where they also go further than the voters of both nearest parties come first, then those where they go further than one. The step always shows five: where fewer clear that bar, it takes the next ones over a lower bar and says so. Each arrow is the gap between the two groups' average answers, times the weights. The chain in step 5 uses the National averages alone.
Steps 7 to 10 use the survey's other questions: the right-track question, the 2023 vote and the ranked top three.
We publish only group averages, shares and counts of whole groups, and we hide a share that rests on too few people. Where too few people gave an answer, we show it together with the answer next to it, or in "Other", and we leave out a group that is too small to compare. For the same reason, a group this small gets no steps on who its voters are, and no lists of the statements they agree or split on.
The methodology page has the rest.
KiwiValues is an independent survey and does not support or oppose any party. Where a party sits here describes how its voters answered, not how anyone should vote.