David Seymour is proving himself as a competent politician as his ACT Party capitalises on Labour's downfall in the latest Newshub-Reid Research Poll, a political commentator says.
In the poll released on Sunday, ACT was up 4.2 percent while Labour fell 9.7 points - sitting on 43 percent and no longer governing alone.
ACT sits on 11.1 percent and political commentator Lara Greaves, from the University of Auckland, said leader Seymour is looking capable.
"In something like a pandemic, a lot of those voters and a lot of voters that swung to Labour want a safe pair of hands and David Seymour looked like he's fairly competent and got things together," she told Newshub.
"I think that no matter what, whether people like him or hate him, David Seymour is a good politician."
She said Seymour is in a strong position.
"There are people that are fundamentally, ideologically opposed to David Seymour but they still acknowledge that he's really good at this - he's really good at politics.
"He's kind of been hammering the issues that National potentially should be."
And the poll result showed Seymour knows what he's doing, Greaves said.
"He's been talking to farmers, talking to people in rural towns which is a good idea - and he's always been there as consistent Opposition.
"He also appears to be super competent because if you see for his End of Life Choice Act and his selection of MPs; we all expected with those MPs [that] there'd be scandals but there hasn't been any. He's showing that he's a really good leader."
Meanwhile, Jacinda Ardern's popularity stakes dived by nearly 10 percent in the latest poll while National leader Judith Collins fell below Seymour as preferred Prime Minister.
