Cannabis referendum: New poll shows dead heat in legalise dope vote

The race to decide whether New Zealand will legalise cannabis sits on a knife’s edge, with New Zealanders tied in a dead heat over whether to make growing, selling and smoking dope legal, a new poll shows.

A Horizon Research survey, commissioned for Helius Therapeutics and provided exclusively to Stuff, shows that the forces of legalisation and prohibition are neck and neck at 49.5 per cent each, with one per cent of those surveyed saying that they didn’t know.

However, when the poll was limited to voters who are both registered, and 100 per cent certain they will vote, the “no” vote edged ahead, with 48.4 per cent in favour of the change and 50.8 per cent favouring the status quo.

The tight result suggests that decisive interventions in the campaign from either camp could tilt the vote in their favour.

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The vote is being held during the general election because NZ First said it would support the Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill being passed only if it would go to a referendum. The Labour Party, Green Party and NZ First have all said they would abide by the result of the referendum. The National Party has made no such commitment.

To date, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has refused to be drawn over whether or not she will support the change. She has said she wished to facilitate the public debate, and wanted to be sure she could objectively act on the country’s decision if in power after October.

“I don't believe that my one vote will tip the decision, no,” she said on Tuesday.

National leader Judith Collins has said that the entire party caucus would be voting “No” in the referendum. The Greens support the change, ACT would support the legislation through its first reading, while NZ First has been less clear but talks of favouring the public’s will.

The poll is the latest in a series of surveys of the issue by Horizon and was commissioned by Helius Therapeutics, a biotechnology company focused on cannabis research, which could benefit from the change. Stuff has published various other issue polls conducted by Horizon this year.

“For nearly two years we’ve tracked public opinion, and this is an incredible result given early voting starts in just over four weeks. It’s increasingly clear that it will come down to voter registration and election turnout, particularly if younger adults lift their intention to vote,” chief executive of Helius Therapeutics Paul Manning said.

When respondents were given a “not sure” option, 12 per cent took it, leaving 44 per cent in favour and 41 per cent against. The poll then gave people a binary yes/no choice to replicate the choice that people will face when they walk in to vote from October 3. That figure is a dead heat.

The poll also showed that general support for the change has slipped from 56 per cent in favour to 43 per cent against in June. When Horizon last conducted the survey in June, all respondents aged 18 to 64 years old supported the change. Now only 18 to 44-year-olds support the change by a majority.

The vote is also split along party lines. National voters remain strongly opposed with 83 per cent against the bill, while 58 per cent of ACT voters are now also against the change – possibly reflecting their higher polling. Green Party voters continue to strengthen their support with 94 per cent in favour; 61 per cent of Labour voters are in favour, as are 58 per cent of NZ First voters.

The poll found that 70 per cent of people who have tried cannabis would vote in favour of legalisation.

Conducted between August 20 and 25, the survey sampled over 1300 New Zealanders, and has a margin of error of 2.7 per cent.

The referendum options are “Yes, I support the proposed Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill.” and “No, I do not support the proposed Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill”.

“This could be the closest vote since 1919, when alcohol prohibition was defeated by just 10,362 votes. As this survey shows, cannabis is already widely accessible, and so next month’s decision is fundamentally about who we want to control it: Government or the gangs,” Manning said.

The Say No To Dope anti-legalisation campaign, backed by various lobby groups including Smart Approaches to Marijuana NZ and Family First, has been buoyed by previous polling which showed greater support for the “no” vote.

Campaign spokesman Aaron Ironside, a broadcaster and counsellor, said campaigning was yet to begin in earnest, and he was confident that anyone that was undecided would be convinced to vote “no”.

“The polling is the primary indication of where the population is moving ... All indications are that the difficult position to maintain is the ‘yes’ position.

“Increasingly people are losing interest when they realise that we’re really just talking about people’s right to get high on their spare time, and we’re not talking about medicinal.”

He said the “yes” campaign was ideological and would fail to convince people in the coming weeks.