A political pundit has floated the possibility of a change in the National Party leadership.
In his weekly interview with AM Early on Thursday, political commentator Bryce Edwards was analysing the most recent poll results that showed National leader Christopher Luxon had hit 23 percent in the preferred Prime Minister stakes - a new low.
The Talbot Mills poll, released on Tuesday, had incumbent Chris Hipkins at 39 percent as the preferred Prime Minister and his Labour Party (37 percent) was narrowly ahead of National (35 percent).
Edwards, a political scientist from Victoria University, told AM Early a leadership change could come if Luxon wasn't able to get National's message back on track.
"Increasingly, if Luxon isn't able to get the agenda back, there will be people that, in National, are wanting to have a change of leader because he's dragging down the National Party's own chances of Government," Edwards told host Michael O'Keefe.
"At the moment, the… vote for both ACT and National is pretty level with the Greens and Labour put together - that's a reason why National isn't panicking at this stage but, yes, I think National MPs are still hyper-aware of the fact that Christopher Luxon's own poling for preferred Prime Minister is dropping quite fast."
The latest Newshub-Reid Research Poll showed the right bloc National and ACT parties (60 seats) slightly ahead of a potential left-wing Labour-Greens coalition (58 seats). However, both of those are short of the 61-seat threshold needed to govern - indicating a hung Parliament.
Luxon's MPs have said as early as last week they believed he was still the man for the job.
