Barry Soper: ZB senior political correspondent on the results of the latest Roy Morgan political poll

Roy Morgan’s New Zealand Poll for August 2024 shows support for the coalition Government has gone up in August.

National's approval rating has jumped 3.5 points to 36 percent and support for NZ First increased 1 point to 7.5 percent - but support for ACT dropped 1.5 points to 9.5 percent.

ZB senior political correspondent Barry Soper says the poll shows the coalition has generated more support by male voters than female voters.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Barry so Per, senior political correspondent with US Hallo, Barry.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Good afternoon.

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Okay, there's a Royal Morgan opinion poll out run us
through it.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Well, yes, the National Party, it's increased three and a
half percent. It's up to thirty six percent, nowhere near,
of course, the forty five percent that Simon Bridges commanded
all through his leadership and opposition. Nevertheless, that you have it,
the support for Act that dropped one and a half percent,
down to nine and a half percent. And New Zealand

(00:27):
first it was up just one percent to seven and
a half. Support for Labor that was down two and
a half percent. Essentially, what it's heres is that the government,
the coalition government that got the treasury bentions at the
moment they would comfortably go back. But the thing that
interested me is the gender gap between the support for

(00:50):
the coalition government and for the other side. Well, if
you look at the coalition support, sixty three percent more
than men are behind.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
So it's predominantly males. Males like the Coalition government and
females like the opposition.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Is that basically is oh totally. In fact, I said
sixty three sixty six percent of men aged over fifty
they support the coalition government. And if you look at
women of the same age, well, they're supporting the other
way under sixty percent, but they're supporting the other way.
What's the condition fifty seven fifty seven point five. Yeah, yeah,

(01:34):
so really there is a big gender gap. But if
you look at younger men that's under fifty eighteen to
forty nine, the edge for the governing coalition is sixty
one percent in support of and thirty percent the other way,
which is a gap of what thirty one percent? So

(01:55):
you know how.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Many women in the general coalition government.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
With women the stronger younger women eighteen to forty nine
are there on fifty seven point five percent supporting the
coalition as opposed to thirty nine point five supporting the
coalition government. So yeah, the gender gap runs all the
way through from the younger to the older. And I

(02:19):
guess now you'll you'll get the pundits looking at the
National Party and saying, how can we improve our image
for women?

Speaker 3 (02:28):
Because yeah, and the thing is, women are actually more
important arguably than men in terms of no no, no, no, listen,
hear me out on this, in terms of voting intentions
because often the women in the house influence, what the influences,
what everybody else does.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
This is a thing you go and have a look
at it.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
This is why you'll see a lot of the campaigns
will actively target the female voter because she is an influencer.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
So you reckon when it comes down to the vote
going into the ballot box, that things might change, that
these statistics won't be quite the same. No, I.

Speaker 3 (03:00):
Don't know.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (03:00):
But the only way that I think that you can
target the female voter if you're the coalition government is
by softening up your policies and by becoming less hard
and well then if you do that, then you just
become you become another government that does nothing right. Yeah,
because you're not prepared to be bold about it. So
I'm not really sure that they can take that risk anyway.
Grocery Commission is not happy with the supermarkets. I get

(03:22):
the feeling that he may actually be lining up to
do something here based on the retric.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
Well absolutely well. I don't know whether the Grosser Commissioner will,
but certainly the government looks set to do something that
they found that all three major supermarket groups have increased
their margins over the past year and that profitability has
either been maintained or increased. Now the suppliers, it's not

(03:49):
increasing money to the suppliers as much as the costs
on the consumer, and that's the big concern. Now, that
was the first grocery report from the you're going to
be talking to the Grocery Commissioner, Peer van Herden. But
Andrew Bailey, the Commerce Minister, he says that essentially it's

(04:10):
a concerning picture and it's a twenty five billion dollar
industry you're talking about here, and most people, well everyone
has a dealing with the supermarket at some stage, and
he said clearly there needs to be stronger regulatory action
coupled with an ambitious and an economy wide meeting schedule

(04:33):
with these groups. But look, this comes at a time
when the Commerce Commissioners looking at the foodstuffs merging their
North Island operation with their South Island and the key
to the merger will be competition. Well, when you have
a merger, you don't have competition. So you know there's

(04:53):
two I guess too many groceries in the hands of
too few.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
Yeah, I can't see that they're going to wave that
one through. Look like it have very quickly.

Speaker 3 (05:01):
Barry, the fact that Christopher Luxon hasn't raised the canceled
Fairy project while being in South Korea suggests the South
Koreans are annoyed with us.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
Well, you know, they are annoyed, of course. Hyonda the
people that are carrying out well, we're carrying out the
contract was a big contract with New Zealand. They are
obviously very annoyed. And the Maritime Union here says it's
disgusted and angry that he had no plans to meet
with this company whilst he was there. But his spokespeople say, well,

(05:34):
you know, he's leading a trade mission and as such,
the trade mission, you know, it doesn't cover this sort
of thing. And they are at Philly critical stages. I
would imagine in the negotiations on how they haven't been
told yet how they're going to pay to get out
of this contract.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
Yeah, good point, Barry, Thank you very much. Barry Soper,
Senior Political Correspondence.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
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Speaker 3 (06:00):
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