A fight for the voters on the right could be National's number one weakness come election time as the party risks losing votes to ACT, a senior journalist has warned.
It has been a tumultuous few months for the Labour Government with scandal after scandal involving their MPs.
Despite this, election polling remains close - pointing to an interesting competition come October.
Appearing on Newshub Nation's political panel, NZ Herald senior writer Simon Wilson said he believes the reason National isn't polling higher is due to its fellow right-bloc party ACT, warning it could steal the party's right-wing voters.
In the space of two electoral cycles, ACT leader David Seymour has grown his party's caucus from one to double-digits.
The latest Newshub-Reid Research poll had ACT at 10.8 percent, while TVNZ-Kantar had the Party at 11 percent. Whereas National was at 35.3 percent and 37 percent respectively.
Despite the election shaping up to be a very tight race between National and Labour, Chris Hipkins remains Kiwis' preferred Prime Minister as Luxon continues to poll badly with the public.
However, the National Party continues to back its leader.
Earlier in the programme, National deputy leader Nicola Willis was forced to defend Luxon, saying he resonated with many women after the "have more babies" joke and contraception debacle.
But when asked how Luxon resonates with women, Auckland University of Technology professor Ella Henry told Newshub Nation's political panel there's "difficulty" in her community.
"Certainly the Māori women I speak to have not been attracted, necessarily, to some of the messaging coming out of Luxon's camp."
This is despite Stuart Nash, Kiri Allan, Meka Whaitiri, Jan Tinetti and, now, Michael Wood's dramas in the forefront of the Labour Party which should have translated to political capital for National.
But Wilson believes that's because ACT is the reason National isn't polling higher, not Labour.
"I am not sure National's relative weakness, considering everything going on, is because of Labour. National has a real issue with ACT on the right," Wilson said.
He said National is at a real risk of losing votes to ACT, particularly in rural and provincial New Zealand.
"The conventional wisdom is usually you fight the election in the middle but National has this other issue where they've got to fight it on the right before they can get to fighting it in the middle."
Former ACT MP Heather Roy partially agreed but said the two parties should be working together to focus heavily on winning the fight in the middle.
"What an opposition needs to do is show that it is a Government in waiting," she told host Simon Shepherd.
"So it's not National or ACT, it's how do they work together, and they need to be having some really robust conversations."
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