National's Christopher Luxon denies his leadership is holding his party back in the polls and says he's confident he will win Kiwis over before the October 14 election.
The latest Newshub-Reid Research poll was released on Sunday night, showing Labour and National neck and neck. Labour was down 2.1 points to 35.9 percent, while National was down 1.3 points to 35.3 percent.
Prior to Luxon taking the leadership in November 2021, National was polling in the mid-20s. The party jumped after he took the top job, reaching 40.7 percent in the Newshub-Reid Research poll in November. But since then, National has slid back down into the mid-30s with Labour.
Meanwhile, Luxon's preferred Prime Minister rankings have gone south in the latest poll. He was the preferred Prime Minister of 16.4 percent of voters, down 2.4 points, compared to Labour leader Chris Hipkins' 23.4 percent, up 3.8 points.
Luxon is seen as out of touch by 47 percent of New Zealanders, while Hipkins is seen as out of touch by 35.6 percent, the results reveal.
The poll results also show 35.5 percent of New Zealanders believe Luxon is performing well and 34.7 percent believe he is performing poorly. That compares to 55.6 percent of voters thinking Hipkins is performing well and 18.2 percent thinking he is performing poorly.
Asked on Monday whether his leadership was holding National back from doing better, Luxon responded: "Absolutely not".
"We have got a lot of work to do over the next five months, but we're making our case to the New Zealand people. I think we've been coming forward with really practical ideas about how we can govern after October 14 and I'm really looking forward to doing that over the next five months."
Luxon said he was confident he could win Kiwis over prior to the election and pointed to the fact Labour's support is down over the last year and a half, while National's is up.
"We've made great progress. We know we've got a lot more to do. But we've got the ideas. We've got the focus, and we're going to take our case to the New Zealand people.
"I'm up and down and around this country each and every week getting a chance to meet with everyday Kiwis and they tell me their concerns and they know they can trust me to be able to get things done for them to get this country turned around and get it back on track."
He said he had the full support of his caucus.
On Monday morning, Newshub Political Editor Jenna Lynch said Luxon's performance numbers were "bad news".
"Those performing well numbers are not high enough for Christopher Luxon and it is a theme that we are seeing with his results."
Lynch said this isn't "crisis territory" for Luxon, but "it just feels like the public isn't that into him".
Luxon's preferred Prime Minister result is lower than what former leader Judith Collins secured on Newshub's poll the night before the 2020 election.
The National leader told Newshub on Sunday he was the right person to lead the party and he hadn't considered standing down.
"I don't think I am [out of touch]. I think for me, I'm really in touch with what's going on in New Zealand," Luxon said.
