Bill English has nothing on his predecessor when it comes to popularity.

A Newshub-Reid Research poll released on Tuesday has found the new Prime Minister is 11 points behind where John Key ranked in the preferred Prime Minister rankings.

Mr English is on 25 percent in the preferred Prime Minister stakes, compared to John Key's result in August last year of 36.7 percent - which was also his worst.

John Key averaged more than 40 percent support in the poll for most of his time in office.