Support for National dropped 3 points to 34% in tonight’s 1News-Verian poll.
The ACT party had a 1 point bump to 9% while New Zealand First dropped one point to 5%.
Labour is up 4 points to 33%, the Greens are steady on 10% and Te Pāti Māori is down 3 points to 4%.
On these results, the left bloc would have 61 seats, the minimum level of support required to form a government.
The results also surveyed economic optimisim, finding it dropped 5 points to 36%, compared to Verian’s December poll.
Economic pessimism rose 3 points to 25%.
Of those polled, 39% said the government was heading in the right direction and 50% said the government was going in the wrong direction.
The remaining 11% did not know or preferred not to say.
On the preferred prime minister stakes, National’s Christopher Luxon dropped 2 points to 22% – his lowest result since taking the top job.
Labour’s Chris Hipkins rose 2 points to 17%.
The rest of the leaders were steady with David Seymour and Chlöe Swarbrick on 6%, and Winston Peters on 5%.
Tonight’s 1News Verian poll, taken between 3 and 7 February, surveyed 1000 eligible voters with a margin of error of +/- 3.1%.
It follows a Taxpayers’ Union-Curia Poll out this afternoon, which also showed the left bloc is in a position to hold power if an election was held today.
The poll, conducted between 2 and 4 February, had National ever so slightly ahead of Labour – up 2.3 points to 31.9%, while Labour is up 0.4 points to 31.3%.
The Greens have done the heavy-lifting getting the centre-bloc into a position to govern for the first time since March 2022, up 3.7% to 13.2%.
ACT and New Zealand First were both down to 10 and 6.4% respectively, while Te Pāti Māori had a slight dip to 4.4 percentage points.
The Curia poll surveyed 1000 adults with a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percent.
Curia is a longstanding polling company but is no longer a member of the Research Association NZ body.
