New polling shows Wellington Central is going to be an extremely tight race with only 4 percent between the top three candidates.
The key takeaways are Labour's Ibrahim Omer is ahead in the candidate vote and National is ahead in the party vote but each only by the very slimmest of margins, and the Greens' Tamatha Paul is a hair's breadth behind.
Methodology
Interviews for Newshub Nation's Reid Research Poll were conducted between Sunday, September 3 and Thursday, September 14, with 50 percent of the interviews completed by the 12th.
Five-hundred eligible Wellington Central Electorate voters over the age of 18 were interviewed, 250 by phone and 250 online.
The telephone interviews were done by generating random telephone numbers and, unless a contact refused to participate, multiple calls were made to each phone number over different days before the number was substituted. Fifteen of the phone calls were to mobile phones and 235 to landlines.
Online interview respondents were sourced from several Online Research Companies' Panels which comply with the ESOMAR guidelines for online research.
There is a maximum margin of error of +/- 4.4 percent expressed at a 95 percent confidence level.
Candidate vote
When polled on which party candidate they would vote for if the election were held tomorrow, 30.6 percent of the 450 respondents who had an answer said they would vote for Labour's Ibrahim Omer.
This is the highest of any of the candidates but is still dramatically lower than the 57.7 percent Grant Robertson received in the 2020 general election.
Robertson pulled out of the race in January, deciding to instead only run on Labour's party list.
In second place is National's Scott Sheeran on 28 percent, which is higher than the 17.9 percent Nicola Willis received from the electorate in 2020.
The Green Party's Tamatha Paul is in third on 26.6 percent, again higher than James Shaw's 17.7 percent in 2020.
Following on from the three frontrunners, NZ First's Taylor Arneil polled at 5.1 percent, ACT (which has no candidate) polled at 3.5 percent, Legalise Cannabis' Michael Appleby received 2.9 percent, TOP's Natalia Albert received 2.8 percent and 0.6 percent chose other parties or candidates.
Of those surveyed, 10.1 percent said they either didn't know who they would vote for, weren't willing to share their candidate preferences or would not be voting in the election.
Interestingly, 24.4 percent of those who said they would be putting their party vote towards the Green Party said that they would be voting for Labour's Ibrahim Omer, while only 15.5 percent of Labour Party voters said they would be voting for the Greens' Tamatha Paul.
Party vote
When it came to the party vote in the Wellington Central electorate, excluding those who don't know who they'll vote for, won't vote, or refused to answer, National squeaked out ahead on 28 percent, up from the 14.4 percent they received in the 2020 election.
Labour was at 27.8 percent compared to the 43.4 percent they received in 2020 and the Green Party was at 26.5 percent compared to the 30.3 percent they received in 2020.
ACT polled at 5.7 percent, TOP received 4.9 percent, Te Pāti Māori received 3 percent and NZ First got 2.8 percent.
Gender and age
Of the male respondents, 19.2 percent said they would vote for the Greens' Tamatha Paul compared to 33.2 percent of female respondents.
A total of 34.6 percent of male respondents said they would vote for National's Scott Sheeran compared to 22 percent of female respondents.
For Labour's Ibrahim Omer, 29.9 percent of male respondents said they would vote for him against 31.3 percent of female respondents.
Tamatha Paul is dominating the youth vote with 44.2 percent of voters aged between 18-24 and 28.2 percent of voters between 25-34 saying they would vote for her.
Candidate responses
Considering the poll results, Newshub Nation asked the three frontrunners for their thoughts.
Omer said "the vibe on the ground is actually quite positive and there's a lot of support for us".
Sheeran said National has "come from behind in Wellington Central and I'm very proud of the number of peoples' minds we've already changed and I'm working very hard".
Paul said the Greens had door-knocked and called 30,000 so far and "we've still got a month to go so... we're taking nothing for granted".
Watch the full video for more.
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