Election 2020: New Poll Shows Maori Party’s John Tamihere Running For Tāmaki Makaurau

A new poll shows Maori Party co-leader John Tamihere at a surprising distance from Labor Peeni Henare in the race for Tāmaki Makaurau.

It is one of three seats held by Labor, the others being Te Tai Hauāuru and Waiariki, which Tamihere says could fall to the Māori Party.

The poll, conducted by Curia for Māori Television, places Henare in the lead with 35% and Tamihere with 29%.

Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is third with 14 percent.

Tamihere ranks seventh on the Maori Party’s list, which essentially means that her only way back to Parliament is to win the seat.

His strategy includes telling voters that MPs from the Maori Labor Party electorate will return to Parliament even if they lose their seats due to their positions on the list; The lowest ranked is Waiariki MP Tamati Coffey in 37th place.

In 2017, MPs from the Labor Maori electorate were not on the party’s list in an effort to shore up the electorate’s votes.

On other issues, more than half (55 percent) of those surveyed said they supported the Cannabis Control and Legalization Bill, while 29 percent were against it.

That could be a response to how the law is disproportionately applied to Maori, who are three times more likely to be arrested and convicted of a cannabis-related crime.

A new drug law that took effect last year hasn’t changed that, according to Herald research.

A panel of cannabis experts, led by the Prime Minister’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Dr. Juliet Gerrard, describes the way cannabis laws are applied as “systemic racism.”

Half of the respondents supported the End-of-Life Choice Act, while a third were against it.

More than half (57 percent) said they would vote for the Labor Party if Election Day were today, with 9 percent supporting the Maori Party, 7 percent for the Greens, 5 percent for NZ First and 3 percent to the National Party.

If Labor formed the next government in coalition with another party, 54 percent wanted the Greens to be the Labor partner, while 42 percent wanted the Maori party.

The economy (11 percent) and housing (11 percent) topped voters’ priority list, followed by politics (8 percent), Covid-19 (7 percent), and leaders (7 percent).

About one in five had someone in their home who lost their job due to Covid-19.

The poll was conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week and had 500 respondents. It has a margin of error of 4.4 percent.