Summarised by Centrist
New polling from Curia, quietly buried in mainstream coverage, reveals that more New Zealanders support mining expansion than oppose it — but the devil is in the demographic detail.
Overall, the poll found more support than opposition to mining across all voters. But men were nearly twice as likely to support it as oppose it (1.8 to 1), while support is well under half among women (0.6 to 1).
The urban-rural split was also telling: rural voters showed strong support, while major centres like Wellington were more ambivalent.
And support among younger voters was tepid at best.
By party, NZ First voters showed the strongest pro-mining stance, followed by National and ACT. Green and TPM voters were more divided than expected, with TPM voters in particular showing soft support in several regions despite their party’s official position against new extraction. Notably, the mining sector has a high rate of participation by those who identify as Māori.
Christchurch voters backed tourism over all other sectors, but even there, support for mining outweighed opposition.
