NZ First voters sit right of centre, lean authoritarian and say immigration is too high
More than everyone else in this survey, they also oppose more international unions like the EU, and they reject the idea that the justice system discriminates against minorities. Scroll down to see where they sit and why, one step at a time. Part 1 is what NZ First 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. An NZ First voter here is a person who said they would vote for the New Zealand First Party if there was an election today. Only 44 NZ First 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 NZ First 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
NZ First voters spread out, but nearly all sit right of centre
44 of these people would vote NZ First 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 NZ First dot sits close to the National dot
The NZ First dot starts from the average position of NZ First voters. There are only 44 of them, so the dot is also pulled part of the way toward where NZ First voters sat in an earlier, larger round of the survey.
About 50% of NZ First voters sit nearest the NZ First dot, and the rest sit nearer another party's dot.
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Step 4 of 11
What sets NZ First voters apart
These are the statements where NZ First voters take a clear side, few of them take the other side, and their average answer is furthest from everyone else's. NZ First voters say immigration is too high (about 90% agree); oppose more international unions like the EU (about 70% disagree); reject the idea that the justice system discriminates against minorities (about 90% disagree); want immigrants to integrate and adopt our values (over 90% agree); and oppose legal protection for gender identity (about 90% disagree).
On immigration levels, international unions, justice and immigrants' values, they also go further than National and ACT voters, whose dots sit nearest. On the other, ACT voters lean the same way, about as strongly or more.
Each arrow shows how far one of them moves the NZ First voters' average away from everyone else's average.
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Step 5 of 11
No single statement puts NZ First 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 NZ First voters in this survey, not at the NZ First dot (step 3 says why).
The longest link, on whether Māori should get preferential treatment, makes less than a tenth of the chain. The thick links are the statements from step 4. Together they make only about a quarter of it, so many small pulls make the rest.
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Step 6 of 11
On the third axis, NZ First voters lean toward "more left on economy"
This axis compares a person's economic views with their culture views. Compared with most people, NZ First voters' economic views are further left, or less far right, than their culture views. Their bar overlaps everyone else's only in part.
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Step 7 of 11
Two in three NZ First voters disagree 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 70% of NZ First voters disagree, and about 30% disagree strongly. Everyone else mostly disagrees too (81%), and more strongly: 37% strongly disagree, and 6% agree.
Too few NZ First voters strongly agree to show each answer on its own, so the dashed part of their bar holds both.
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Part 2 of 2: How NZ First voters choose
Step 8 of 11
Almost half of NZ First voters also voted NZ First 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 NZ First.
About 50% of today's NZ First voters also voted NZ First in 2023. About half of the rest voted ACT (about 10%) or did not vote (about 10%).
Of the people who voted NZ First in 2023, about 60% would vote NZ First again. About 20% now pick Labour.
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Step 9 of 11
About half of NZ First voters also rank National and ACT in their top three
The survey asks people to rank their top three parties. 40 NZ First voters did this, and about 90% of them put NZ First 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 NZ First.
About 50% put National and ACT in their top three. National is the next choice for about 30%, and ACT for about 20%. OPP and Labour are each in the top three of about 30%. OPP is the next choice for about 20%.
Very few rank the Greens.
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Step 10 of 11
One in six people rank NZ First in their top three, about three times as many as would vote for them
This step turns the last one around. It asks who puts NZ First in their top three.
Each square is 1 in 100 people who ranked parties. 5 in 100 would vote for NZ First today. 16 in 100 put NZ First somewhere in their top three.
About 70% of ACT voters, about 40% of National voters, 10% of Labour voters, 8% of OPP voters and 2% of Greens voters rank NZ First in their top three.
This survey leans left, so 16% may differ from what 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 NZ First 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 NZ First 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.