New Zealand Prime Minister Ardern’s ratings are sky-high before the election

WELLINGTON (Reuters) – New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s party beat her rivals in the latest opinion poll, setting the charismatic 40-year-old leader on the way to a comfortable victory in the September election.

A Newshub-Reid research poll released Sunday night showed that the popularity of the Ardern Labor Party rose to 60.9%, the highest in the poll’s history.

The popularity of the main opposition National Party, which has been embroiled in a series of scandals and leadership changes, fell to 25.1%.

According to the survey, the Labor Party, which is now in coalition with the Greens and New Zealand’s first nationalist party, would win 77 of the 120 seats in parliament. This means that Labor could govern without a coalition partner.

Ardern’s popularity as a preferred prime minister was outrageous, at 62%, while newly elected 61-year-old National Party leader Judith Collins stood at just 14.6%.

Ardern has consistently voted ahead of his rivals and his popularity has increased even further this year as he earned worldwide praise for his leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The country of 5 million people has had only 1,206 cases of COVID-19 so far, and 22 deaths.

Ardern’s stratospheric rise in 2017 to become New Zealand’s youngest Prime Minister and the third woman to hold the post has been dubbed “Jacinda-mania” by some.

“I would like to think that the message we can get from this is general support for the government’s COVID-19 recovery and response plan,” Ardern told Newshub Monday in response to the poll.

National Party campaign president Gerry Brownlee said the poll is a “rogue.”

Collins told Reuters last week that he was confident his party would form the next government.

Ardern, who turned 40 on Sunday, told Newshub that he celebrated with his partner and their two-year-old daughter by doing normal things like going to the beach.