No One Can Govern Without This Small Party
Labour and the Greens could form the next government on the numbers in Monday's 1News-Verian poll, but only with help from the Opportunity Party. RNZ
The poll turns party votes into seats in Parliament. National and Labour would each get 34 seats. ACT would get 14 seats and New Zealand First would get 11 seats. 1News The Greens would get 19 seats, their highest result, after a lift of four points. Opportunity would get seven seats. Both main groups would need those seven seats to get more than half.
On party vote, ACT was up two points to 11 percent. New Zealand First was up one point to 9 percent. 1News The Greens were up four points on August. Opportunity was down two points to 6 percent.
Think of the 5 percent threshold as a pass mark. A party must get at least 5 percent, or win an electorate seat, to get into Parliament. Opportunity has no electorate seat. At 6 percent it is only one point above that pass mark.
Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick gained two points to come third as preferred prime minister. She is six points behind Labour leader Chris Hipkins. ACT leader David Seymour was also up two points, in party vote and as preferred prime minister.
Opportunity scored 4.6 percent in the 23 June 1News-Verian poll. It then rose three points to 8 percent in the 13 August poll. That was the first time it cleared the 5 percent pass mark. The September result is its second poll above the mark, but lower than August.
RNZ reported on 15 September that Parliament could be hung, with no clear group able to govern, as Labour and National fell. The Greens were at 14 percent, up four points, and New Zealand First was at 13 percent. ACT, the Greens and New Zealand First were all up. Opportunity was above 5 percent in that poll. The September Taxpayers' Union-Curia poll put the Labour-Greens group on 53 seats and the National-ACT group on 53 seats.
Swarbrick told RNZ the Greens would work with "whomever we have values alignment" with, which was true of Opportunity in some areas. Seymour told RNZ ACT was grateful for supporters but had "a long way to go" and had to keep working to earn votes. He said it was "very hard to know what you're getting" with the Opportunity Party. National has ruled out working with Opportunity. RNZ said it had sought comment from the Opportunity Party.
The broader context here is simple maths at the Beehive. Neither big party can govern with its usual partner alone. National on 34 and ACT on 14 cannot do it, even with New Zealand First on 11. Labour on 34 and the Greens on 19 cannot do it either. A fourth party would decide who governs.
In my view, the limits matter more than the headline. The Greens are open to working with Opportunity. National has ruled it out. ACT is doubtful about it. If that holds through the campaign, the right group has no path on this poll and the left group has one narrow path.
One last point to keep in mind is the pass-mark risk. At 6 percent, Opportunity is in Parliament. Below 5 percent, its seven seats go away and all the seats are worked out again. Staff in all four parliamentary parties will have planned for both outcomes. The difference is who forms the government.
