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The bad news keeps coming for the Maori Party, with incumbent Labor Meka Whaitiri taking a strong lead in the polls on the Ikaroa-Rāwhiti seat.
A Māori Television-Curia Research voting poll of the Maori electorate gives Whaitiri a 27% advantage over her closest rival, Maori party candidate Heather Te Au-Skipworth.
Of the 499 respondents, 46% said they would vote for Whaitiri and 19% for Te Au-Skipworth. 21% were undecided.
The electorate stretches across the eastern North Island, from Gisborne to Wainuiomata.
Hagen Hopkins / Getty-Images
Labor’s Meka Whaitiri has a huge advantage over her closest rival.
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The news was a little better earlier in the week for the Maori Party, but only slightly.
A Māori Television-Curia Research voting poll of votes in the Te Tai Hauāuru Maori electorate, released Monday night, placed Labor’s Adrian Rurawhe far ahead of Maori party candidate Debbie Ngarewa-Packer.
Overall, Ngarewa-Packer has been considered the Maori Party’s best chance to re-enter Parliament, after the party was toppled in the 2017 elections.
Brody Dolan / Stuff
Co-leader of the Maori Party and iwi leader of South Taranaki, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer.
The poll, of 496 voters in Te Tai Hauāuru, showed that 38 percent intended to vote for Rurawhe and 20 percent for Ngarewa-Packer.
The saving grace for Ngarewa-Packer was that about 30 percent of voters were still undecided.
In Ikaroa-Rawhiti, Labor held a dominant advantage in the party’s vote, with 62 percent over 10 percent for the Maori party.
Housing was the top issue for people in the survey, at 9 percent, followed by leadership and party politics at 8 percent each.
More than half of the people surveyed, 51 percent, said they would vote in favor in the referendum on the legalization of cannabis. Of the remainder, 32 percent said they would vote against legalizing cannabis, and 16 percent were undecided.
Hikurangi Enterprises, with greenhouses in Ruatoria, won the first license in 2018 in New Zealand to grow medicinal cannabis.
Whaitiri has stated that he will vote yes on the legalization of cannabis.
The survey of eligible voters in Ikaroa-Rāwhiti was conducted from September 28 to 29.
