Labour has lost five percentage points in the latest poll, falling to 32 percent according to RNZ, published on 23 June 2026. That is Labour's biggest single-poll drop in recent months.

Despite the fall, Labour's allies — the Green Party and Te Pāti Māori — have picked up enough support that the left bloc combined still has enough votes to form the next government.

The surprise here is that Labour's drop has not helped the government side. Instead, Green Party support has risen to absorb much of Labour's lost voters. An earlier Talbot Mills-Anacta poll on 15 June showed the same pattern — the Greens gaining while the left bloc stays ahead overall.

This shift matters inside Parliament and within the parties. When a Labour-led government reaches majority partly because the Greens are strong, not because Labour dominates, everything changes. Decisions about who gets which ministries, what policies happen, and which partner has the most say — all of that shifts depending on whether Labour or the Greens is doing the heavy lifting.

The numbers for the government side are harder to read. A Roy Morgan poll from October 2025 had National, ACT, and NZ First combined at 49.5 percent, but that is now eight months old. The 1News Verian result from this week is the clearest picture of how the blocs stand right now.

Polls have different methods and they can give different results. Verian polls online panels; another firm, Talbot Mills-Anacta, has been associated with Labour-friendly clients in the past. But what matters is the direction — and the two most recent polls point the same way: the left bloc is ahead overall.

Labour's 32 percent, if it holds, would be well below what Labour won in 2023 and would be among the party's weakest results ever. At that level, a Labour-led government would depend heavily on its coalition partners to pass laws and set budgets. That limits what a prime minister can do. The Greens and Te Pāti Māori will be thinking about how much they can ask for in return.

For the National-led government, the news is mixed. Labour's decline does not automatically help them if those voters are going to the Greens instead of the right. The key question is whether NZ First stays above five percent — the threshold needed to stay in Parliament — and whether ACT can hold its support as the election approaches.

As the 2026 election comes closer, these mid-year polls are the main signal of where things stand. Labour's five-point fall and the left bloc's majority, driven largely by Green growth, are the two facts that campaign teams on both sides are now working with.