On justice the parties split left from right. On surveillance, every party splits within itself
Whether the justice system discriminates against minorities is the widest split in this
topic, and it runs along the usual left and right lines. The surveillance statements do
not sort by party at all: on nothing to hide, nothing to fear, the middle half of a
party’s own answers is twice as wide as the whole gap between party means.
4 October 2026n = 250 Greens, 199 OPP, 159 Labour, 44 NZ First, 43 ACT, 28 National
This is the fifth in the series that looks at one policy topic at a time instead of
putting two parties side by side, after
housing and cities,
tax and wealth,
welfare and work and
climate and environment. Crime, justice
and surveillance holds six statements, on a discriminatory justice system, rehabilitation
over punishment, owning a firearm, nothing to hide meaning nothing to fear, monitoring
online activity, and government itself as a threat to liberty. It is the first topic in
the series that sits mainly on the compass’s second axis, authoritarian at the top
and libertarian at the bottom, rather than on left and right, and that changes the shape
of the findings.
The numbers below come from 723 responses split across six parties’ voters: 250
Greens, 199 OPP, 159 Labour, 44 NZ First, 43 ACT and 28 National. All six statements have
been in the survey from the start, so every party is plotted on each.
The sample leans left out of all proportion. Among respondents who named which party they
voted for at the last election, Greens, Labour and Te Pāti Māori together make
up 54% of the answers, against about 42% of the actual 2023 party vote, and OPP another
26% against about 2%. National voters are badly under-represented, about 7% of named
votes here against 38% of the real result, so read the ACT, NZ First and National dots below as the answers of a few
dozen people, a direction rather than a settled position. The
sample composition page charts the skew against the
Electoral Commission’s result and updates as responses arrive.
On justice the parties split left from right. On surveillance, every party splits within itself.
Each dot is a party's mean answer on the nine-point agreement scale. Rows run from the narrowest party spread to the widest. n = 250 Greens, 199 OPP, 159 Labour, 44 NZ First, 43 ACT, 28 National.
As with every piece in this series, this is a self-selected sample that skews younger
and more online than the country as a whole, so treat it as directional, not a poll.
ACT, NZ First and National are the smallest groups here, at 43, 44 and 28
respondents, so read their numbers as direction rather than exact position. You can
see exactly who has answered so far.
Section 1 of 7
Where the parties split hardest: justice
The widest gap in the topic is over whether the justice system discriminates against
ethnic and cultural minorities. Greens voters agree firmly, 80% of them for a mean of
+0.54; Labour (+0.25) and OPP (+0.17) are on the agree side but less sure, with about a
quarter of each disagreeing. The three right-bloc parties all disagree, NZ First most
clearly with 93% of its voters on that side, then ACT, then National more mildly. The
middle-half bars are short on both sides: this is the familiar left-right split, as clean
here as anywhere in the series.
Our justice system discriminates against ethnic and cultural minorities.
The dot is the party's mean answer; the line spans the middle half of the party's answers, lightly smoothed. n = 723 respondents across 6 parties.
Rehabilitation over punishment splits almost the same way, with one difference. Greens
(+0.69) and OPP (+0.61) are near unanimous and Labour (+0.40) a step behind. ACT disagrees
and NZ First leans against, but National sits on the neutral line, half its voters
agreeing and 43% disagreeing. On a few dozen people that is a direction, not a position,
but it is the first sign here that the right does not move as one.
We should focus more on rehabilitating criminals, rather than focusing on punishing them.
The dot is the party's mean answer; the line spans the middle half of the party's answers, lightly smoothed. n = 723 respondents across 6 parties.Section 2 of 7
Where the split runs inside every party: surveillance
Now the statement behind the headline. Asked whether someone with nothing to hide has
nothing to fear, the six party means land within half a point of each other, Greens at
-0.52 and National at -0.02. That is not agreement. Look at the middle-half bars:
Labour’s runs from -0.71 to +0.46, NZ First’s from -0.69 to +0.56,
ACT’s from -0.75 to +0.55, each crossing neutral by a wide margin. Averaged over the
six parties the middle half is about a point wide, twice the distance between the highest
and lowest party mean. Only Greens and OPP voters give something like a party answer.
If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.
The dot is the party's mean answer; the line spans the middle half of the party's answers, lightly smoothed. n = 723 respondents across 6 parties.
In shares: Labour voters split 51% disagree to 37% agree, NZ First 55% to 34%, ACT 47% to
40% and National 36% to 43%, the rest neutral. Knowing someone’s party vote tells
you very little about how they answered this.
How each party divides within itself: nothing to hide, nothing to fear
Each bar is 100% of that party's voters who answered this statement, split into those who disagree (any strength), sit neutral, or agree (any strength). n = 723 respondents across 6 parties.
The other surveillance statement, whether the government should monitor online activity
to protect against terrorism, behaves the same way. ACT and NZ First voters lean clearly
against, about 80% of each, and every other party sits near neutral with a middle half
that crosses it: a third of Greens, OPP and Labour voters agree, half disagree, and
National splits evenly. ACT and NZ First are the closest to a settled view here, though
that is a direction from a few dozen people, not a position.
The government should monitor our online activity to protect us from terrorist threats.
The dot is the party's mean answer; the line spans the middle half of the party's answers, lightly smoothed. n = 723 respondents across 6 parties.
The chart below puts the topic in one picture: for each statement, the gap between the
highest and lowest party mean next to the average width of a party’s own middle
half. On the two justice statements the gap between parties is about twice the width
inside one. On both surveillance statements, and on firearms, it is the other way round.
These are not statements the parties agree on. They are statements party vote does not
predict.
Justice divides the parties from each other. Surveillance divides each party inside itself.
The top bar in each row is the distance between the highest and lowest party mean. The bottom bar is how wide the middle half of a party's own answers is, averaged over the six parties, lightly smoothed. Rows run from the narrowest within-party middle half to the widest.Section 3 of 7
Firearms and the state itself
Owning a firearm is the one statement here that pulls toward the libertarian end of the
compass, and the one up-down statement where party still tells you something. ACT (+0.40)
and NZ First (+0.39) voters agree, roughly seven in ten of each, and National leans to
agree. Greens (-0.41) and Labour (-0.34) voters disagree. OPP voters sit exactly on
neutral, 44% agreeing and 35% disagreeing. Even so, every party’s middle half but
ACT’s and NZ First’s crosses neutral, so the within-party spread is wider
than the gap between parties here too.
I should be able to own and possess a firearm.
The dot is the party's mean answer; the line spans the middle half of the party's answers, lightly smoothed. n = 723 respondents across 6 parties.
The narrowest spread in the topic is on whether the very existence of government is a
threat to civil liberties. Five parties reject it by about the same margin, 82% to 87% of
their voters disagreeing. ACT voters are the exception: still against on average, but a
third agree and their middle half reaches past neutral.
The very existence of the government is a threat to my civil liberties.
The dot is the party's mean answer; the line spans the middle half of the party's answers, lightly smoothed. n = 723 respondents across 6 parties.Section 4 of 7
The two justice statements pull the parties furthest apart together
Of the fifteen possible pairs in this topic, the two justice statements separate the six
parties furthest when plotted together. The parties fall on a diagonal: Greens top right
agreeing with both, ACT and NZ First bottom left disagreeing with both, Labour and OPP a
little below the Greens and National between the two sides. The surveillance pairs do not
do this: plotting nothing to hide against online monitoring leaves all six dots within
about half a point of neutral, with every ellipse overlapping every other.
Dots are party means; the ellipse spans the middle half of each party's answers on both statements, lightly smoothed. Of the fifteen possible pairs in this topic, this one separates the six parties furthest together compared with either statement on its own. Across everyone plotted the two correlate at r = +0.55.Section 5 of 7
Which statements move together
The strongest correlation in the topic is between the two justice statements, r = +0.57:
people who think the system discriminates mostly also want rehabilitation over punishment.
The two surveillance statements correlate with each other only at +0.28, and the firearm
statement barely correlates with anything, its strongest link a weak -0.22 with seeing the
justice system as discriminatory. Several pairs run negative, the largest rehabilitation
against nothing to hide at -0.28. Unlike climate, this is not one coherent dimension but
two or three loosely related questions sharing a heading.
Within Greens voters alone the justice pair falls from +0.57 to +0.41, a smaller drop
than climate showed, and across all fifteen pairs the within-Greens correlations differ
from the whole-sample ones by only 0.11. The structure here is mostly real at the level
of individual voters, not an artefact of parties sitting far apart.
Each cell is the correlation between two statements over respondents who answered both. Diagonal cells are each statement against itself and carry no number.Section 6 of 7
Where crime, justice and surveillance sits on the compass
Here is why. The two justice statements load mainly left-right, which blends economic
and social views rather than being purely one or the other, so they sort the parties the
way most of the survey does. Nothing to hide and online monitoring load toward the
authoritarian, top end of the second axis, and the firearm statement toward the
libertarian, bottom end. The live party dots sit much closer together on that axis than
on the first, with ACT furthest toward the libertarian end, so a statement that mostly
moves a respondent up or down separates voters inside each party rather than the parties
from each other. The liberty statement loads weakly on both axes, which fits a statement
almost everyone rejects.
Each highlighted line is one statement's loading, direction and length; the faint lines are every other statement in the survey for context. The crosshair at the centre is the political centre; positive loadings on the second axis point toward the libertarian, bottom end of the live compass.Section 7 of 7
How sure are we
Three of these six groups are large enough that their averages are fairly settled: Greens
(250), OPP (199) and Labour (159). NZ First, ACT and National are much smaller, so read
those three as direction rather than exact distance throughout. The headline rests mainly
on the large groups: Labour’s even split on nothing to hide is 159 people. What a
few dozen voters cannot fix is the exact position of ACT, NZ First and National, and
National’s even splits on rehabilitation, nothing to hide and online monitoring
could go either way with more responses.
For how the compass and this kind of breakdown are built, see the
methodology page.
Want to see where your own answers land? Take the survey at
kiwivalues.nz.