New poll says the government would win — but one small party is in trouble
The current government — National, ACT and NZ First together — would stay in power according to the latest Taxpayers' Union–Curia poll, run from 1 to 3 September 2026. The poll gives the government 64 seats in Parliament, against 56 for the opposition parties: Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori.
Under MMP, the voting system New Zealand uses, a party needs either to win a specific local electorate seat or to get at least 5 percent of the overall party vote to get into Parliament. The Opportunities Party, known as TOP, dropped from 6.1 percent to 4.5 percent in this poll. That puts it below the 5 percent line and means it would lose all its seats in Parliament. This comes after months of polling showed TOP getting close to or above the line, leading to talk it could play a decisive role after the election.
National fell two points to 29 percent. Labour dropped 1.9 points to 25.9 percent. The Greens rose 3.8 points to 13.9 percent and ACT was up 3.2 points to 10.5 percent. New Zealand First slipped 0.7 points to 8.4 percent. Te Pāti Māori gained 0.5 points to 2 percent. The poll assumed Te Pāti Māori would win three local electorate seats, which would keep it in Parliament even though its party vote is well below 5 percent.
Christopher Luxon stayed the preferred prime minister at 21.2 percent, down 2 points. Chris Hipkins was at 16.9 percent, down 2.9 points. Both leaders lost ground as smaller parties picked up support.
Curia Market Research ran the poll for the Taxpayers' Union, surveying 1000 adult New Zealanders by phone and online. The results were adjusted to match the wider adult population. The maximum margin of error was ±3.1 percent, meaning the real result for any party could be up to about 3 points higher or lower than what the poll shows. About 4.1 percent of people surveyed had not decided. The remaining small parties were NZ Loyal at 1.5 percent, Animal Justice at 1.2, Women's Rights at 0.7, Vision NZ at 0.5 and the New Conservatives at 0.5.
TOP's drop breaks a pattern of steady growth seen across several pollsters through the middle of the year. A Curia/Taxpayers' Union poll in early August was the first major poll to put TOP above 5 percent, at 6.1 percent. After that, an RNZ–Reid Research poll also put TOP over the line for the first time in that series, changing the picture of who would hold seats in Parliament.
Before that, TOP had been short of the threshold but climbing. An RNZ–Reid Research poll in mid-June had the party at 3.3 percent, up from 2.8. By mid-July, the same pollster had TOP at 4.7 percent, just 0.3 points short of getting in. A 1News/Verian poll around the same time put the party at 4.6 percent. A poll reported by Stuff in late July showed 4.7 percent, up 1.4 points. The Guardian reported in late August that pre-election polls showed TOP clearing the threshold.
The NZ Herald's Poll of Polls, published 24 August, gave TOP a 91.8 percent chance of reaching 5 percent. That same analysis put the government's chance of re-election below 50 percent, which sits in contrast with the latest Curia result giving the coalition 64 seats.
A separate Roy Morgan poll for August 2026, published 30 August, showed the National-led Government unchanged at 49 percent support. That figure broadly lines up with the coalition holding a majority, though the two polls use different methods and treat small parties differently, so they are not directly comparable.
The broader question is whether TOP's result in this poll reflects a real drop in support as election day nears, or whether it is just normal polling noise for a small party sitting close to the threshold. At 4.5 percent with a margin of error of ±3.1 points, TOP's actual support could be anywhere from about 1.4 to 7.6 percent. That range covers both missing out on Parliament entirely and winning a meaningful number of seats. For a party with no electorate seat to fall back on, that difference is everything under MMP.
The seat numbers show what is at stake. With TOP below the threshold, its would-be seats are shared among the larger parties, and the coalition gets its 64-seat majority. If TOP were to clear 5 percent, those seats would most likely come off the coalition's side. The Herald's analysis had put the government's re-election odds below 50/50.
Te Pāti Māori's approach adds another factor. The party has said it hopes to use a feature of MMP called the overhang, where a party wins more local electorate seats than its party vote share would normally give it. That increases the total number of seats in Parliament, which in turn means the coalition would need more seats to govern. At 2 percent on the party vote with three projected electorates, Te Pāti Māori's plan depends entirely on holding those seats.
What the polling through 2026 does show is an electorate where both major parties are losing support to smaller parties on either side. National and Labour together account for 54.9 percent of the party vote in this poll, a figure that would have been considered very low in the previous two election cycles. The Greens and ACT have been the main beneficiaries, together taking 24.4 percent. Whether that shift holds through to election day, or moves back toward the major parties as it has in previous campaigns, is the key question the remaining polls will need to answer.
For the coalition, the headline is simple: the numbers hold, for now. For The Opportunities Party, the task is just as clear. A party polling at 4.5 percent in early September has weeks to convince voters it can get over 5 percent, or risk the kind of near-miss that MMP has produced before.
