The Opportunity Party has reached 4.7 percent support in the latest RNZ-Reid Research poll. This is the highest the party has recorded in this poll series — roughly double what it got in the previous one.

That figure sits just within the margin of error of the 5 percent threshold needed to enter Parliament on party vote alone. A party needs either 5 percent of the nationwide vote, or to win an electorate seat, to qualify for Parliament under New Zealand's MMP system. A second major poll — a 1News-Verian survey — put Opportunity at 4.6 percent, so two different polling houses now have the party hovering right around that threshold.

The polls also asked voters which type of government they would prefer after the next election. Across all respondents, 43.4 percent wanted a Labour-led government and 37.7 percent wanted a National-led one. Among Opportunity's own supporters, the gap widened: 41.1 percent preferred Labour, while just 21.3 percent preferred National.

There is something worth noting in those Opportunity voter numbers. A much larger share of them declined to pick a side. Twenty-two percent said 'neither' and 15.6 percent said 'don't know', compared to the wider population where those figures were 12.8 percent and 6.1 percent respectively.

Opportunity's leader, Qiulae Wong, has said that what the party's voters prefer "won't drive" how the leadership makes its coalition choices after the election. RNZ Instead, Wong has set out a procedural approach: Opportunity would open talks with whichever party wins the most seats, and only turn to the second-largest party if that negotiation demanded too much compromise on Opportunity's core values or policy.

The tension here is real. The polling shows that many Opportunity voters lean left and assume the party will work with Labour. But Wong is deliberately signalling that Opportunity will not be automatically paired with Labour — it will negotiate with whoever has the numbers. This is a hedge against being typecast as a de facto Labour support partner.

There is a practical risk embedded in that position. Opportunity's voter base is more ambivalent than average about both major parties. If the campaign narrows to a straight Labour-versus-National contest, voters who feel uncommitted to either option are more likely to drift away or not vote at all. For a party this close to the 5 percent threshold, that turnout risk matters.

Opportunity has existed for roughly a decade and has gone through five leaders in that time. The party was previously known as The Opportunities Party before changing its name. Wong, 38, has been framed as the face of a "refreshed" version — one that has turned what was once a minor-party curiosity into a genuine contender with real implications for how seats might be divided after the election. RNZ RNZ

The RNZ-Reid Research result is not an outlier. Roy Morgan's New Zealand poll for June 2026 put Opportunity at 6 percent — a level the pollster calculated would be sufficient for eight seats in Parliament. Roy Morgan Two different polling houses, using different methods, now have Opportunity consistently around or above the 5 percent threshold rather than buried in the low single digits where minor parties usually sit before fading away.

For anyone following MMP numbers, this consistency across polls matters more than any single result. A party polling at 4 to 6 percent that actually reaches 5 percent on election night changes how government gets formed. It adds a genuinely uncommitted bloc of seats — votes that are not locked into either Labour or National — to whoever can meet that party's demands. A party that falls just under 5 percent, by contrast, sees its vote wasted unless it has also won an electorate seat, the safety net that has kept minor parties like ACT and the Greens in Parliament during leaner periods.

Wong and other Opportunity leaders are not unique in saying the party will make coalition decisions based on policy substance rather than pre-committing to Labour or National. New Zealand First and the Greens have made similar statements. But whether that discipline holds in actual post-election negotiations remains untested. Opportunity has never previously been in a position where the number of seats it holds might actually decide who forms government.

That shift — from a marginal party to a prospective power broker, however narrow the margin — is the larger story. It matters more than what individual Opportunity voters tell pollsters about their preferences. The polls are telling us two things at once: Opportunity voters lean left, but many of them are not yet locked in. That combination is both the party's opportunity and its vulnerability.