NZ prime minister on course for election victory
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is poised to retain power at next month's election, a widely watched poll showed on Sunday, though it said a recently available COVID-19 outbreak has dented her support slightly.
A Newshub-Reid Research Poll released on Sunday showed support for Ardern's Labour Party at to 50.1%, though that is down from the record 60.9% recorded earlier this season when New Zealand was widely lauded as a world leader in battling COVID-19. Support for the key opposition National Party was at 29.6%, up 4.5 percentage points. Should the poll findings materialize, Ardern would govern without relying on any coalition partners.
New Zealand was COVID-free for 102 days until a second wave hit Auckland last month. Ardern became the country's youngest leader in a lot more than 150 years in 2017 following the kingmaker nationalist New Zealand First Party agreed to form a government with her Labour Party, ending the National Party's decade in power. Ardern, 40, also holds huge global appeal because of her response to last year's attack by a white supremacist on two mosques, a fatal volcanic eruption and her success with the COVID-19 outbreak.
