Latest poll puts coalition ahead as TOP slips below threshold

The governing coalition of National, ACT and NZ First would hold power on the latest Taxpayers' Union–Curia poll, conducted 1–3 September 2026. The poll projects 64 seats for the coalition against 56 for the opposition bloc of Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori.

The same poll marks a reversal for The Opportunities Party (TOP), which dropped from 6.1 percent to 4.5 percent — below the 5 percent threshold a party needs under MMP to get into Parliament without winning an electorate seat. That result would cost TOP all its parliamentary seats. It comes after a run of polls through July and August had shown the party either crossing or approaching the threshold, fuelling speculation it could act as kingmaker after the election.

National fell two points to 29 percent, while 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 electorates, keeping it in Parliament despite being well short of the threshold on the party vote.

Christopher Luxon remained the preferred prime minister at 21.2 percent, down 2 points. Chris Hipkins was at 16.9 percent, down 2.9 points. Both major-party leaders saw their standing erode as smaller parties gained ground.

Curia Market Research conducted the poll for the Taxpayers' Union as a random survey of 1000 adult New Zealanders, weighted to the overall adult population, by phone and online. The maximum margin of error was ±3.1 percent, with 4.1 percent of respondents undecided on the party vote question. The minor-party remainder comprised 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 decline in this poll breaks what had been a steady upward trajectory tracked across multiple pollsters through the middle of the year. A Curia/Taxpayers' Union poll in early August was the first major poll to put the party above the 5 percent threshold, at 6.1 percent. An RNZ–Reid Research poll subsequently tipped TOP over the line for the first time in that series, shifting the seat calculations and the make-up of the House.

Before that, TOP had been consistently 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 shy of entry. A 1News/Verian poll around the same time put the party at 4.6 percent. A separate Stuff-reported poll in late July showed 4.7 percent, up 1.4 points. The Guardian reported in late August that polls in the run-up to the election showed TOP clearing the threshold.

The NZ Herald's Poll of Polls, published 24 August, gave The Opportunities Party a 91.8 percent probability of achieving the 5 percent threshold. That same poll of polls put the probability of a re-elected coalition below 50 percent — a contrast with the latest Curia result, which puts the coalition at 64 seats.

A separate Roy Morgan poll for August 2026, published 30 August, showed the National-led Government unchanged at 49 percent support, broadly consistent with the coalition maintaining a governing majority, though not directly comparable given methodological differences and the different treatment of minor parties.

The broader question raised by these competing signals is whether the September Curia result reflects a genuine softening in TOP support as election day approaches, or whether it sits within the margin of error and the normal volatility that surrounds small parties polling near the threshold. At 4.5 percent with a maximum margin of error of ±3.1 points, TOP's true support could plausibly sit anywhere from roughly 1.4 to 7.6 percent — a range that spans both total exclusion from Parliament and a meaningful parliamentary presence. For a party with no electorate seat to fall back on, that distinction is the entire ballgame under MMP.

The seat projections underline the stakes. With TOP below the threshold and its potential seats distributed to the larger parties, the coalition secures its 64-seat majority. If TOP were to clear 5 percent, those seats would likely come largely from the coalition side. The Herald's poll of probabilities had placed the re-election odds below even money.

Te Pāti Māori's strategy adds another layer. The party has signalled it hopes to use MMP's overhang mechanism — where a party wins more electorate seats than its party vote share would entitle it to — to increase the total number of seats in Parliament and thereby reduce the number of seats the coalition needs to govern. At 2 percent on the party vote with three projected electorates, Te Pāti Māori's approach depends entirely on holding those seats.

What the polling trajectory through 2026 does show is a fluid electorate in which both major parties are bleeding support to smaller players on either flank. National and Labour between them account for 54.9 percent of the party vote in this poll, a figure that would have been considered strikingly low in either of the previous two election cycles. The Greens and ACT have been the principal beneficiaries, together accounting for 24.4 percent. Whether that fragmentation holds through to election day, or consolidates back toward the major parties as it has in previous campaigns, is the central question the remaining polls will need to answer.

For the coalition, the headline is straightforward: the numbers hold, for now. For The Opportunities Party, the task is equally clear. A party polling at 4.5 percent in early September has weeks to convince voters it can clear the line, or risk the kind of result that consigns a campaign to the category of near-misses that MMP has produced before.