National Party leader John Key

A new poll out today shows National holding a large lead over Labour.

The New Zealand Herald/DigiPoll said National support was up 2.2 percentage points to 52.1 percent, while Labour was down 2.1 points to 37.2 percent.

The same poll four weeks ago had the gap between the two main parties reduced to 10 points.

National Party leader John Key was the preferred prime minister of 48 percent of those polled while Prime Minister Helen Clark recorded 45.3 percent support.

The Greens were the only minor party to get past the 5 percent party vote barrier with 5.2 percent support.

While minor parties traditionally fail to register in the polls between general elections, at the moment they are struggling to get any support.

New Zealand First failed to get a boost from a month of heavy publicity about free trade, strategic assets and immigration, and remained on 1.5 percent.

Of the voters polled in the DigiPoll survey, 22.1 percent rated tax cuts as the issue most likely to influence their vote at this year's election.

The Government has said that there will be tax cuts in the May 22 budget, but their size and shape has yet to be revealed.

Further evidence that people's wallets may decide the election came from the economy's 18.5 percent rating, making it the second most important issue.

The poll of 769 respondents was conducted between April 5 and 26, and has a margin of error of 3.5 percent.

The results are from decided voters only.

Undecided voters totalled 6.3 percent of those polled.