Social Unity

AKA: social cohesion, social division, race relations, racism, racial division

What this graph shows

• % who responded to the question = ‘Do you think New Zealand is....?’
  • …becoming much less divided
  • …becoming a little less divided
  • …staying about the same
  • …becoming a little more divided
  • …becoming much more divided
• September 2023 poll by Essential Research as it is the best and last known data on the issue.

Key notes

• Social cohesion/division is not a well-researched metric by the New Zealand research community, and we can not find any time series that show how this has shifted over time. However, Essential Research has polled a sample of 1,154 New Zealanders on the issue just before the 2023 election which is why we have a current view for that time.
• Unlike most KPIs which are harder quantitative data sets, social unity/division is based on polling human feelings.
• Remember that each Labour-led or National-led government has had coalition and support partners that share the successes, and the failures, with them. A full list of governments for this time range is at the bottom of this page.

Data sources

• https://essentialreport.co.nz/questions/new-zealand-becoming-more-or-less-divided/ (the website has been recently pulled down, but we extracted the data before then, and it is likely still available through website archive services)

Data timing

• Frequency: Was monthly, but ended in September 2023
• Updated: Was mid-month
• Last update: 13 Sep 2023
• Next update: ? It depends on when the various research companies decide to ask this again. We have encouraged all of them to measure this ongoing.

Why this KPI?

• As mentioned above, this issue is not measured very well by the research industry in their issues rankings.
• However, 3 different questions from 3 different pollsters (Essential, 1News Verian, and NZ Herald Dynata) have all shown that ⅔ to ¾ of New Zealanders felt we’ve become more divided leading into the 2023 election, and ~½ believed race relations were getting worse.
• With ⅔ of those researchers asking a very similar question, we have gone with social division as the KPI for measuring social unity.
• We are conscious that using the wording ‘divided’ in the answer options could have produced a more negative result, however, a) using a term like ‘united’ could have produced the reverse bias b) they did lead with ‘much less divided’ first and c) we have not seen any better data.
• Because this issue and KPI is not well researched over time, we have put it on our homepage, but not with a ranked number. We have encouraged all research companies to include this question in their future issues lists so that we can get a more accurate read on how it sits against other issues over time.

Related facts

Current

• Crime

Older

• Poll on social unity/division by age group
• Poll on race relations
• Poll on transgender men and women by country
• Marriage and divorce rates
• Population growth by year (net migration and net births)

Wishlist

With support, we’ll be able to add multiple KPIs for each issue:

• Updates on many of the KPIs listed above.
• Trust scores:
  • Government
  • Media
  • Corporate businesses
  • Academics
  • Scientists
  • Health professionals

Government’s over the timeframe shown

• 2017 = Labour/NZ First+Green
  2020 = Labour+Green

• 2023 = National/ACT/NZ First

/ = Coalition partners
+ = Other formal governing agreements, including confidence and supply, support and cooperation.

Sources:1,2 (table 5).

© Copyright

© Essential
Republished with permission

Analysis and graphics © KPI.nz 2026. Please share widely! You're welcome to reproduce our work with attribution and a link to the original post.

Corrections & suggestions

If you spot a typo, mistake, or improvement opportunity for this page, please let us know.