page_title: 2008 New Zealand general election
section_title: Opinion polling
hierarchical_section_title: 2008 New Zealand general election / Opinion polling
caption_attribution_description: English: Graph showing support for political parties in New Zealand since the 2005 election, according to various political polls. Data is obtained from the Wikipedia page, Opinion_polling_for_the_New_Zealand_general_election,_2008
context_page_description: The 2008 New Zealand general election was held on 8 November 2008 to determine the composition of the 49th New Zealand Parliament. The liberal-conservative National Party, headed by its parliamentary leader John Key, won the largest share of votes and seats, ending nine years of government by the social-democratic Labour Party, led by Helen Clark. Key announced a week later that he would lead a National minority government with confidence-and-supply support from the ACT, United Future and Māori parties. The Governor-General swore Key in as New Zealand's 38th Prime Minister on 19 November 2008. This marked an end to nine years of Labour Party government, and the beginning of the Fifth National Government which governed for the next nine years, until its loss to the Labour Party in the 2017 general election.
  The Green Party became the third-largest party in Parliament, with nine seats. The ACT Party came joint-fourth, increasing their number of seats from two to five, and reversing some of their losses from the 2005 election. The Māori Party also won five seats – out of the seven Māori seats – creating an overhang of two seats.
context_section_description: Having come first in the party vote at the 2005 election by just two percentage points, Labour held a slender lead in aggregate polling through the first half of 2006; a two-point lead in the first half of the year turned into a two-point deficit by May. Polling for a preferred Prime Minister showed Helen Clark nearly twice as popular as then National Party leader Don Brash.
  Things changed in early 2007, with new National leader John Key improving on Brash's preferred Prime Minister rating by ten points, and overtaking Clark as preferred Prime Minister in May; at the same time National jumped out to a sizeable lead over Labour ranging from between eight and eighteen points, spending most of 2007 and 2008 with support from around fifty percent of the electorate. Labour's popularity slumped, hitting its lowest point in the winter of 2008, before beginning a slow climb into the high thirties in August and September.
  Leading up to the election, polls indicated a range of possible outcomes on election day; some suggested Labour could form a coalition government, while others predicted National in control. Of the "minor" parties, only the Green Party consistently polled over the five-percent threshold, and United Future and the Progressive Party frequently failed to register a mention. Both ACT's and the Māori Party's popularity since 2005 remained steady at around two percent, while New Zealand First failed to poll over the threshold after December 2006. The polls gave varied results for preferred Prime Minister, with some giving Clark a slight lead, and others giving Key a sturdy margin.
caption: Poll results for all political parties that exceeded the 5% mixed-member proportional (MMP) representation threshold between the 2005 and 2008 elections.
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