Wellington: New Zealand Prime Minister John Key, who won a third term on Saturday, has achieved the rare feat of combining an everyman appeal with economic credibility and political pragmatism.

The 53-year-old’s popularity appears undimmed even after six years in power, with approval ratings close to 70 per cent translating into long-term support most Western democratic leaders can only dream of.

Even allegations of dirty tricks against members of his staff did not tarnish Key’s reputation, as his centre-right National Party based its successful re-election strategy squarely on the leader’s popularity, promoting itself as Team Key.

A light-hearted campaign poll in the Dominion Post underscored Key’s common touch, with 61 per cent of respondents rating him the leader they would prefer to have a beer with, compared to just 27 per cent for Labour’s David Cunliffe.

The business community is also enamoured of the former Merrill Lynch currency trader, with 97 per cent of chief executives backing him and his centre-right National Party in a New Zealand Herald survey.

“He exudes confidence and can defuse his opponents’ arguments in a way that does not come across as combative or aggressive,” veteran political commentator Barry Gustafson said. “It makes him a very hard person to dislike.”

It’s an ability that has frustrated Key’s opponents, including internet mogul Kim Dotcom, who created his own party for the election hoping to oust the man he blames for promoting the US-led online piracy case he faces.

“The prime minister could be photographed shooting little kittens in his garden with a shotgun and still be popular,” Dotcom tweeted recently.

Despite their egalitarian streak, New Zealanders also brush aside criticisms that Key’s personal fortune — an estimated NZ$50 million (Dh149 million) amassed in his time as a financier — means he is out of touch.

Key counters with the story of how he was brought up in government housing as the son of a poor, widowed Jewish refugee, characterising his career in high finance and rise to prime minister as an example of what hard work can achieve.

“I always wanted to be prime minister, I always wanted to go into business, I always wanted to do a few things — I didn’t want to die wondering,” he told school students during the campaign.

Key is married to wife Bronagh and has two children — daughter Stephanie and son Max.

He came into politics relatively late, entering parliament in 2002 and assuming leadership of the centre-right National Party four years later. By 2008 he had ended nine years of Labour Party rule, ousting then-prime minister Helen Clark.

Key won plaudits for his leadership during a string of crises in his first term, including a devastating earthquake in Christchurch in February 2011 which claimed 185 lives.

Gustafson recalled Key had also steadied the economy after the Global Financial Crisis without resorting to hard-line spending cuts, instead taking a steady, pragmatic approach that saw the budget return to surplus this year for the first time since 2008.

“He’s refrained from using the situation as an excuse to do really radical things that would hurt people and be intensely unpopular,” he said.

Key’s affable persona slipped at times during a bruising election run-up, which included allegations of government smear campaigns, based on hacked emails, and accusations of mass surveillance on the population.

He fired broadsides at the author who published the dirty tricks claims, Nicky Hager (“a screaming left-wing conspiracy theorist”), US journalist Glenn Greenwald (“a loser” for alleging mass spying) and Dotcom (“trying to save his relatively large butt”).

Ultimately, however, the allegations failed to dent Key’s popularity and Gustafson said that he could equal former prime minister Keith Holyoake’s New Zealand record of four terms in office if the opposition fails to present a creditable challenge by 2017.

“I know he’s read his history and I think he believes ‘I could easily do a Holyoake and have four terms’, he’s young enough, why not?”