Vote Compass data reveals the most unlikeable political leader

Both Chris Hipkins and Christopher Luxon are less likeable compared to their party predecessors, according to analysis of 1News Vote Compass data, but it appears the National leader has his work cut out for him.

On average, out of nine current political leaders, Hipkins is the most likeable out of all of them — but he remains well behind ratings for former Labour leader Jacinda Ardern.

Meanwhile, Luxon was the least likeable political leader from either of the two major parties since David Cunliffe in 2014, according to the Vote Compass data.

Despite that, National as a party remains riding high and set to enter government under the numbers from the latest 1News Verian Poll. Hipkins has also suffered in his approval ratings as prime minister in the past six months since taking on the role.

The Vote Compass questionnaire has been presented to well over 100,000 Kiwis, which the likeability ratings have been compiled from.

Data from the 2020, 2017, and 2014 general elections has been retained, where Vote Compass users were asked the same question about political leaders. Users have been asked to rate leaders on how likeable they found them on a scale from 1-to-10.

The numbers assigned to the leaders represent an average of user responses.

The most likeable leader this year was Hipkins, on a 4.9 out of 10, followed by Luxon on 3.8, and closely behind the two Chrises were the Greens’ James Shaw and ACT’s David Seymour.

New Zealand First’s Winston Peters and the Greens’ Marama Davidson were both on around three. The three least-likeable leaders were all below three, including both of Te Pati Māori’s co-leaders, Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, and TOP’s Raf Manji.

The Labour leader is the most likeable overall in the Vote Compass survey — topping every age group, income bracket, and in every region across the country.

He’s also well-liked by women, where the gap between Hipkins and Luxon widens.

‘Shocking’ result for Luxon

University of Auckland associate professor Jennifer Lees-Marshment told Breakfast that Luxon’s apparent likeability – or lack thereof – was a “chink” in National’s armour.

“If we look historically, he’s actually got the lowest score of any National Party leader since we’ve been doing Vote Compass – since 2014,” she said.

“That is a really quite shocking result.”

Just a week and a half out from election day, the electoral academic said it would be normal to expect Luxon to be at the “height of his popularity”. Lees-Marshment added that she thought the gender gap for Luxon was particularly notable.

“With men, it’s not so different. But with women and gender diverse voters, it’s it’s quite stark, and it’s quite strong. It seems to be that Christopher Luxon has a gender problem.”

She opined Luxon’s unlikeability could’ve related to his personal abortion beliefs “which were very clearly put on the media agenda when he first took over as National leader.”

“I suppose he just hasn’t managed to offer any policies that appeal to women voters.”

In the past, Luxon has repeatedly affirmed a committment to not changing abortion laws if his party was elected, after earlier comments that he believed abortion was tantamount to murder as he held a personal pro-life position.

Lees-Marshment added: “If he does win and he starts off as prime minister, not that likeable in office, all sorts of challenges come up and then you become less likeable. So it could cause problems for them securing re-election or even just governing and going through difficult circumstances in power.”

Historical comparison

As compared to past prime ministers and opposition leaders, both Hipkins and Luxon come in as weaker leaders as compared to their own party predecessors.

In 2017, Jacinda Ardern held a likeability average of 6.2 out of 10.

Three years later, amid the first year of the pandemic, her likeability rose to 8.2 — the highest of any leader for data collected as part of TVNZ’s Vote Compass.

Her ratings were followed by John Key’s rating in 2014, where he attracted a 5.7 average, and then Bill English in 2017, who wielded a 5.1 average.

This year, Hipkins took out a 4.9, which was a full point above Christopher Luxon, who secured a 3.8 average. By comparison in 2020, then-National leader Judith Collins managed a 4.4 average likeability rating.

Luxon’s scores marked the worst for a major party leader since Labour’s David Cunliffe in 2014 — who led his party to a crushing defeat in that year’s election.

He only managed an average of 3.7 out of 10 in Vote Compass results.

What is Vote Compass?

By using Vote Compass, New Zealanders can find out which political parties they are with on the key issues facing the country

You can choose to agree or disagree with 30 statements about issues like health, education, the environment, and tax. Vote Compass will then analyse your answers with the policies of different parties and show you how similar they are to your own views.

Where do you sit? Find out here at: 1News.co.nz/VoteCompass

Lees-Marshment said the results from the tool also serve as a way to gauge the public’s insights on hot topics, as they are tabulated by researchers every few days.

The academic said the results on key issues reported from Vote Compass would help “elevate” the voice of the public for how politicians and the media discussed the election.

Developed by a team of social and statistical scientists from Vox Pop Labs, Vote Compass is a civic engagement application offered in New Zealand exclusively by 1News/TVNZ. The findings are based on 136,443 respondents who participated in Vote Compass from September 10 to September 28, 2023.

Unlike online opinion polls, respondents to Vote Compass are not pre-selected. Similar to opinion polls, however, the data are a non-random sample from the population and have been weighted in order to approximate a representative sample. Vote Compass data have been weighted by gender, age, education, language, region and past vote to ensure the sample’s composition reflects that of the actual population of New Zealand according to census data and other population estimates.

We asked respondents to rate the party leader’s competence and trustworthiness on a scale of 0 to 10. All results provided in this report are averages. As expected, most variation is driven by political preferences.