Labour and National both under 30% in new poll

Latest Taxpayers’ Union polling also has Opportunity back below the 5% threshold.

Labour and National are both polling below 30% in a new poll that also has Opportunity short of the threshold needed for getting into government.

The Qiulae Wong-led upstarts have fallen from 6.1 to 4.5% in the latest Taxpayers’ Union-Curia Poll, bucking the trend found in other polls.

Labour has taken a big hit, down 1.9 to 25.9% – its lowest result in this poll since July 2024, and even lower than the 26.9 point thrashing it got at the 2023 election.

National has also taken a tumble, down two points, to 29% – also significantly lower than the 38% points it won at the last election.

The current coalition government would be returned to power based on this poll, with Opportunity unable to get above 5% and become kingmaker.

ACT and the Greens were the main beneficiaries of the major parties and Opportunity’s collapse. The Greens were up 3.8 percentage points to 13.9%, and ACT up 3.2 to 10.5%.

New Zealand First was down 0.7 to 8.4%.

Te Pāti Māori gained 0.5 points to 2%. The party this year hopes to use MMP’s overhang to boost the chance of removing the coalition.

Rounding out the party vote results were NZ Loyal (1.5%), Animal Justice (1.2%), Women’s Rights (0.7%), Vision NZ (0.5%) and the New Conservatives (0.5%).

When it came to seats, the coalition (National, ACT and NZ First) would get 64 compared to the opposition (Labour, Greens and Te Pāti Māori) on 56. The right-leaning Taxpayers’ Union’s analysis assumes Te Pāti Māori would win three seats.

Opportunity would get zero on these results, being below the 5% threshold.

Christopher Luxon remained ahead of Chris Hipkins as preferred prime minister, down 2 percentage points to 21.2%. Hipkins fell 2.9 to 16.9%.

The poll was conducted by Curia Market Research for the Taxpayers’ Union. It is a random poll of 1,000 adult New Zealanders and is weighted to the overall adult population. It was conducted by phone (landlines and mobile) and online between Tuesday September 1 and Thursday September 3 2026, has a maximum margin of error of +/- 3.1% and 4.1% were undecided on the party vote question.

This story was first published on rnz.co.nz