Has support for Donald Trump grown in New Zealand?
A recent poll indicates that the answer is Yes, significantly.
In August 2016, during the election campaign between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, a Newshub Reid Research poll found that 76 percent of New Zealanders supported Clinton, while only 9 percent supported Trump, and 15 percent didn’t know. Although Trump won fewer votes than Clinton in the November election that year, he won the Electoral College, and then spent four tumultuous years in the White House. But he would not have won in New Zealand in a two-horse race.
Going on that and other survey results, in 2020 I was estimating that “roughly one in ten New Zealanders is a Trump supporter” – a poll result that Winston Peters would be proud of. But, at that time, Peters was in coalition with Labour, so the Trump supporters weren’t concentrated among the NZ First supporters. In an online survey I did with Stuff.co.nz, the Kiwi Trumpers were much more likely to favour Judith Collins or David Seymour.
A recent poll of Kiwis by Talbot Mills, in contrast, finds that, while 55 percent would vote for Kamala Harris, if they were eligible, 21 percent are for Trump. (See NZ Herald not paywalled.)
According to a Curia poll, Kiwis’ support for Trump is at 25 percent.
Support for Trump in Aotearoa New Zealand seems to have doubled or more since his first term in office (2017–21).
There’s been a similar trend in Australia. A Lowy Institute survey reported in June on ABC showed that Australian Trump supporters grew from 11 percent in 2016 to 23 in 2020 to 29 in 2024.
Back in NZ, when split by party, NZ First supporters are now the most likely to support Trump, at 48 percent. These aren’t necessarily the same people, who’ve just changed their minds since 2020. The NZ First support base has shifted to the right as Winston Peters fished in the anti-vax pond ahead of the 2023 election.
Although my 2020 online survey wasn’t a representative sample, it found that 20 percent of National supporters overall said they hoped Trump would win the election against Joe Biden that year. He lost that election, in case you forgot.
The Talbot Mills results, however, now show that 26 percent of National supporters would vote for Trump, if they could. If we assume that National supporters are 38 percent of voters overall, then those who are supporting both National and Trump could, on their own, represent close to 10 percent of NZ’s voting population.
Talbot Mills also found that support for Trump is significantly higher among Kiwi men (31 percent) than women (11 percent). Although it’s clearly much more of a male thing, support for Trump has more or less doubled among both men and women over the last four or more years.
As I write, the Democratic National Convention is in session in Chicago. Kamala Harris has formally accepted nomination as the Democrats’ candidate for president. She talked about freedoms, notably reproductive freedom and the freedom to vote.
DNC speakers are attacking Trump while praising Harris. It could have made sense not to mention Trump much at all, but the strategy seems to be to provoke him into taking it personally, make him get nasty, and divert him from debating policy. The Democrats are trying rhetorically to capture control over themes such as “freedom” and “immigration”, on which Republicans would normally rate as stronger.
Moreover, they’re repeating the affective theme of “joy”, possibly influenced by Jacinda Ardern’s “kindness”. Ardern is assisting at the DNC.
Poll averages are showing Harris moving ahead of Trump on a national basis, but battleground states are finely balanced. It’s looking like a toss-up right now, just as Harris may be peaking.
But why is there a surge in support for Trump among Kiwis?
The 2023 election was evidently a swing to the right. Before that, the pandemic policies caused a lot of anger, and there’s been loud disaffection with left-wing policies and so-called '“wokeism”. For many men, there’s resentment of feminism and of women leaders. Many Kiwi Trumpers can probably see the Donald’s character flaws as clearly as others do. They may just have a stronger aversion to left-wingers, even more than they did in the 2017–20 period. Others may have positive feelings about his “alpha male” attitude.
The reactionism has always been there, the only real difference between Trump & his predecessors is the messaging. Namely swapping out the dog whistle for a megaphone.
ICYMI, the Research Association of NZ has publicly come out about Curia's departure:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240823060005/https://www.researchassociation.org.nz/Update
I suggest the causes of Trump's increased popularity in Australia and New Zealand include these. 1. He was president for four years, which stabilised his brand and made him seem a little less disreputable. Do you remember how his look became much smoother in the first months of his presidency? In particular I remember that his hair became less orange and more silvery. 2. Because the Republican Party has united behind him, he's now a major symbol of right-wing thinking globally. So supporting him is no longer just supporting a maverick populist (although he's still one of those), but is primarily support for a portfolio of right-wing views. Thus the right wing of parties like the Nationals, or here in Australia the Liberals, are feeling that supporting Trump is just part of their political position. But also, as you observe, Trump's overt sexism speaks to people who find feminism and LGTBQI+ rights threatening and so want to turn back the clock to the 1950s, when women were homemakers or Playboy bunnies, men ran the show, homosexuality was illegal and abortions were hard to get legally. I was intrigued that Trump's views (at least as reported) include a fondness for old brick public buildings, or white ones with a facade of pillars - 1950s small-town American architecture as opposed to modern and postmodern "art" buildings. (Weren't the 1950s great! - not.) So for these three reasons it's unsurprising that his polling popularity in Australia and NZ has risen substantially, particularly with male voters. I'm not sure the trend is that alarming. Those right wings of the major right-of-centre parties have been with us for a long time. And those parties tend to be the citadel of sexism. The repeated failures of the Australian Coalition to increase their proportion of female MPs are fascinating to watch, though I feel sorry for their senior women who keep being nobbled by the boys' club and end up leaving the party.