The latest Vote Compass statistics have shown most Kiwis believe the wealthy should pay more tax.
Over 255,000 people have completed Vote Compass - 1 NEWS' online tool which lets you see how your views line up with the parties' policies.
Of 120,000 people sampled, 57 per cent believed wealthier people should pay more tax - with 35 per cent answering with "somewhat more" tax, and 22 per cent saying "much more".
Thirty-seven per cent thought the wealthy should pay "about the same as now" and only five per cent believed the wealthy should pay less.
Senior Research Fellow at AUT University Dr Lisa Chant said the results were interesting seeing as "both the two big parties", National and Labour, were out of step with the view of the majority of those completing the Vote Compass survey.
"You've got National and ACT saying less tax for the wealthy... and Labour indicating no change," Dr Chant said.
Another aspect of the results that was of interest to Dr Chant was the views of people earning between $60,000 and $100,000, of which 52 per cent thought the wealthy should pay more tax.
It surpassed the 43 per cent who thought it should stay the same or five per cent who thought it should be less.
"Those earning $60K-$100k are wealthy, but may not consider themselves wealthy," Dr Chant said.
"Inevitably those people are potentially including themselves [in increasing tax]."
Of those who earn over $100,000, a massive 58 per cent thought wealthy people should pay "about the same as now", moving away from ACT and National's policy of decreasing taxes.
More surprisingly, 21 per cent of those earning over $100,000 thought the wealthy should pay more tax.
The results could possibly impact the thinking of National and Labour on their tax policies, Dr Chant said, seeing as their current policies differ from the view of the majority of survey takers.
The policies of Labour and National differed starkly to those who say they intended to vote for one of those parties.
From those intending to vote National, 59 per cent wanted taxes for the wealthy to stay the same, 25 per cent wanted "somewhat more" and seven per cent wanted "much more".
Only seven per cent wanted less tax for the wealthy.
"That's huge" Dr Chant said. "Perhaps it's showing there is more National voters than we anticipateed who don't earn high amounts."
Labour's tax policy also did not match the majority of its intended voters, with 69 per cent wanting wealthier people to pay more taxes, and only 25 per cent wanting it to stay the same.
Those results weren't surprising for Dr Chant, who said: "Labour party voters tend to believe in staggered tax for the wealthier."
Developed by a team of social and statistical scientists from Vox Pop Labs, Vote Compass is a civic engagement application offered in New Zealand exclusively by TVNZ. The findings are based on 119,845 respondents who participated in Vote Compass from August 20, 2017 to August 30, 2017. Unlike online opinion polls, respondents to Vote Compass are not pre-selected. Similar to opinion polls, however, the data are a non-random sample from the population and have been weighted in order to approximate a representative sample. Vote Compass data have been weighted by gender, age, education, religion, occupation, and Maori descent to ensure the sample’s composition reflects that of the actual population of New Zealand according to census data and other population estimates.
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