Ipsos urges National to withdraw inaccurate claim about its polling on tax

'We take the accurate reporting of our research and survey data seriously.’

National has removed the “no new taxes” mantra from an online ad after a polling company wrote to the party saying the claim did not accurately reflect its survey on how people feel about the tax they pay. 

The social media post, published by the National Party and shared by Simeon Brown, a senior MP and chair of the party’s 2026 campaign, declared: “Breaking: Poll shows no desire for new taxes”, enumerating the response as 44% “less tax”, 45% “no new taxes” and 4% “more taxes”, festooned with pictures of the Labour, Green, Māori and Opportunity party leaders. 

A note read: “Source: Ipsos polling for The Spinoff, Sept 3-11 2026.”

The polling, which was undertaken for The Spinoff by Ipsos as part of its Issues Monitor, in fact asked, as The Spinoff originally reported, for “individuals’ views about their personal tax contributions”, with the options given as “I should pay less tax”, “I pay about the right amount of tax”, “I should pay more tax”, or “Don't know”.

In a message to the National Party on Saturday, Carin Hercock, country manager for Ipsos NZ, wrote: “While Ipsos is happy for any of our published research to be quoted, we take the accurate reporting of our research and survey data seriously.”

Hercock, who provided links to the publicly available polling report on its website, added: “We do not consider the statement ‘No new taxes’ to be equivalent to the survey question wording. Can you please ensure that when quoting Ipsos research you use our data accurately. I would appreciate the posts in question that source Ipsos are either updated with the correct wording or removed.”

In a statement to The Spinoff, Hercock said: “We were disappointed to see the Ipsos findings represented in a way that does not reflect the question respondents were actually asked and have asked the National Party to update or remove the posts.”

The Ipsos correspondence followed a fact-check by the Australian Associated Press, which concluded the post had “misrepresented” the findings. It noted that in fact the same Ipsos survey “showed more respondents supported than opposed a number of new taxes, including a significant majority in favour of a wealth tax”.

When asked to substantiate the claim by AAP, a National Party spokesperson said the 45% who said they pay "about the right amount of tax" believed the status quo was correct. "Therefore, we changed the poll question to 'No New Taxes' in the social media post. This keeps the same intent as the poll question.”

In response to questions from The Spinoff, a National Party spokesperson said that they stood by the wording but had nevertheless agreed to change it. 

“National is campaigning on no new taxes. Labour and their potential coalition partners are campaigning on at least nine new taxes. If voters believe that they pay the right amount in tax, it is fair to say they want no new taxes,” said the spokesperson.

“However, Ipsos has asked us to retain the original wording which we have now done in an updated post. We’ve asked MPs who posted the original graphic to take it down.”

On Sunday afternoon, a new post with corrected wording was shared on National Party social media and the image on Brown’s Facebook page updated to reflect the questions as asked.

At Labour’s campaign launch last Sunday, leader Chris Hipkins called National’s “nine new taxes” attack lines “outright lies” and “bullshit”. His party insists they will not agree to any new taxes beyond the pledged capital gains tax.  

Last month, the Advertising Standards Authority partly upheld a complaint about National’s characterisation of Labour’s proposed capital gains tax.