Voters want foreign buyer ban – but LAB doesn’t benefit

• Colonial Viper
• 9 years ago
• Categories: Andrew Little, john key, polls

The latest 3News/Reid Research poll is out. Considering the margin of error (+/- 3.1%), there is no change whatsoever in the standings of any of the main parties:

National – 47 percent, up 0.6 percent (on last poll in May)

Labour – 31.1 percent, up 0.7 percent

Greens – 11.4 percent, up 0.3 percent

NZ First – 8.4 percent, up 0.3 percent

A large majority (61%) of those polled want foreign buyers banned from the NZ property market. Even a majority of National supporters want a ban (54% to 43%).

Gower’s write up of the poll results is typically one eyed and superficial, as he says “Labour was looking for an Orewa moment, where racial division turns into political popularity, but it hasn’t come, although public opinion is on its side.”

So despite wall to wall media coverage of Labour’s ‘wealthy Chinese buyers’ strategy over days, and voters (even National ones) mostly siding with a foreign ownership ban, Labour’s Chinese focussed tactics have failed to gain it additional polling support. I’d previously predicted that Labour would see nothing more than a short term populist bump of 0% to 3% from their finger pointing at Chinese buyers.

Key’s popularity drops to 38% however. This is a very significant result. Air is definitely leaking from National’s best tyre still on the road.

I’ll be watching the next couple of polls carefully to see what the full effects of Labour’s slant on foreign investors in the Auckland property market are.