Poll shows Labour sliding and government bloc holding — but the campaign hasn't started yet
Labour leader Chris Hipkins has dismissed the latest Taxpayers' Union-Curia poll putting his party on 25.9 percent, down 1.9 points, saying the only poll that matters is the election result.
Hipkins told media he would not comment on every individual poll between now and election day. "There'll be increasing numbers of them and the one that we're focused on happens on election day," he said. He would not address questions on Labour's internal polling or what may have caused the drop.
The result is Labour's lowest in the 1News Verian poll since July 2024, according to 1News, which published matching figures on the same day showing Labour at 25.9 percent and Hipkins down 2.9 points to 16.9 percent on the preferred prime minister question (1News).
National fell to 29 percent in the Taxpayers' Union-Curia poll. On those numbers, the governing bloc (National, ACT and NZ First together) would hold 64 seats against the opposition's 56 if replicated at an election. The result echoes a separate RNZ-Reid Research poll published 6 September, which also found the governing coalition would be returned to government (RNZ). In that poll, Christopher Luxon remained ahead of Hipkins as preferred prime minister on 21.2 percent after dropping 2 points, while Hipkins fell 2.9 points.
Under New Zealand's MMP system, a party needs to reach 5 percent of the vote to get into Parliament unless it wins an electorate seat outright. When smaller parties fall below that line, their share of the vote effectively redistributes — it doesn't translate into seats. That makes the 5 percent mark a critical threshold for minor parties.
Hipkins notably refrained from repeating earlier criticism of the Taxpayers' Union-Curia poll methodology. In August, he had dismissed a poll as being funded by a "right-wing" group (RNZ). This time, according to the New Zealand Herald, he accepted that "polls move around" (NZ Herald).
Despite the numbers, Hipkins said the Labour team was feeling "buoyant" and had deliberately been holding back policy announcements to release during the campaign. He also accused National of being "desperate" with its tax attacks, saying the party could not campaign on the truth or its own track record and was "making things up about the Labour Party."
Hipkins does retain one data point in his favour: he had the highest net favourability rating of any party leader, with 37 percent of New Zealanders holding a favourable view versus 41 percent unfavourable (The Post).
The poll brought a major shift for the Green Party, which rose 3.8 points to 13.9 percent, a result that would deliver a record 18 seats in the House. Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said the polls and commentary seemed to change every other week and that "every possible future is on the table for New Zealanders." She also pointed to a broader trend, saying people were moving away from the two legacy or institutional parties and looking for alternatives.
The Opportunity Party fell from 6.1 percent to 4.5 percent, dropping below the 5 percent threshold needed to enter Parliament without an electorate seat. That is a notable shift from late August, when a separate RNZ-Reid Research poll placed Opportunity in a kingmaker position — meaning its seats could decide which major party forms government (RNZ). The 6 September RNZ-Reid Research poll found Opportunity had lost that kingmaker spot.
Opportunity leader Qiulae Wong pointed to the party's ten months of gains across polls and said the party was focusing on the overall trend. Wong also noted that ACT and the Greens could be beneficiaries of Opportunity's polling result, should support bleed away from the party.
The broader context here is a sustained compression of the major-party vote. Both Labour and National now sit under 30 percent. In the 1News Verian poll, Hipkins drew level with Luxon as preferred prime minister at 20 percent each in February, but the latest 1News figures have Luxon well ahead on 21.2 percent versus Hipkins on 16.9 percent. A 1News poll in August had Luxon on 23.2 percent and Hipkins on 19.8 percent. The trajectory for both leaders has been downward, but Hipkins' slide has been steeper in recent months.
For Labour strategists, the question is whether the held-back policy announcements Hipkins referenced can shift the dial during the formal campaign period. The party's vote has been drifting since mid-year, when a July poll had Labour at 27.8 percent, down 3.7 points from the previous cycle. The latest 25.9 percent is a further drop rather than a levelling off. Meanwhile, the Green Party's surge poses a strategic question for the left bloc: Greens gaining 18 seats largely at the expense of Labour still produces a viable opposition coalition in raw seat totals, but the shift in votes from Labour to Greens complicates the leadership dynamics and messaging across the campaign.
On the government side, National at 29 percent is also historically low, but the coalition maths holds. The 64-seat governing bloc, if these numbers were to hold, would survive even with Opportunity dropping out of Parliament. That may be the single most consequential finding for government strategists: their position is strengthening not because National is gaining, but because the non-National opposition vote is fragmenting across Labour, the Greens, and a now-sub-threshold Opportunity Party.
