A new poll is painting a merrier picture for Labour with a burst of support for the governing party just days before New Zealand's general election.
The Guardian Essential poll, which was released on Wednesday, has Labour on 30.3 percent up 3.4 points from 26.9 percent in September.
Watch Newshub live at 6pm tonight for the latest Newshub Reid Research poll results
But despite support stalling for National, the centre-right party is still ahead of Labour on 34 percent- down 0.5 points since the previous poll.
Likely National coalition partner ACT also saw support dropping 2.4 points from 10.3 percent to 7.9 percent.
But National's other likely coalition partner New Zealand First saw a spike in support. NZ First is on 8.2 percent, up 2.2 points from 6 percent in the previous poll.
And while Labour might finally be seeing support increase, its likely coalition partners the Greens and Te Pāti Māori both recorded drops.
The Greens were down 0.4 points to 10.6 percent from 11 percent in the previous poll, while Te Pāti Māori dropped 0.6 points from 2.5 percent to 1.9 percent.
Undecided voters made up 3.8 percent of the 1200 eligible voters who were polled from October 4-8. The poll, which has a 2.8 percent margin of error, showed 3.4 percent of respondents were voting for other parties.
Based on the results, both National and Labour would be well short of the 61 seats needed to govern. The leftwing coalition had 55 seats (up 2 from the previous polls), while the right-wing bloc had 54 (down 5). NZ First meanwhile holds 11 seats and based on the poll would likely hold the balance of power.
The latest Newshub Reid Research poll showed the right bloc of National-ACT would only get 60 seats – one short of the number needed to form a government. This means they would need New Zealand First who would have six seats based on the Newshub poll.
But a National-ACT-NZ First coalition has been contentious in the lead-up to the election, with National warning this week a second election may be needed if it cannot reach a coalition agreement with NZ First.
ACT meanwhile has repeated threats of a supply-only agreement if it can't get certain policies across the line.
On Monday leader David Seymour repeated his threat that if National did not agree to ACT's top demands, the party would not form a coalition and would instead vote for every piece of legislation on a bill-by-bill basis.
"What we're going to be doing is saying, of course, if you don't want to work properly together, that's okay. You will still be Prime Minister, but we'll work more distantly, and we'll have to work through vote by vote to do it," he told Politik.
It would mean ACT would have a veto over every single Government bill.
Labour meanwhile has already ruled out working with NZ First.
The election is on October 14.
