A new poll shows Labour on 28% and National on 27% — the second time this month both major parties have sat below 30%, writes Henry Oliver in today’s excerpt from The Bulletin.

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Support for both major parties continues to drop, with Labour and National both sitting under 30% for the second time this month, according to The Post/Freshwater Strategy poll released this morning.

Labour leads this one at 28% – a slight gain on its 2023 election result but seven point drop since June. National has fallen to 27%, down 11% since the election, the equivalent of losing more than 300,000 votes. Those appear to be flowing largely to its coalition partners.

The Greens are on 14%, up four points since June, while NZ First is on 13% and Act on 9%, both up one point. Te Pāti Māori remains steady at 2%. Opportunity registered 6%, putting it within the poll’s margin of error (3%) of Parliament.

Chris Hipkins has widened his lead as preferred prime minister, sitting on 45% to Christopher Luxoen’s 35%. A majority of voters, 56%, believe New Zealand is headed in the wrong direction, while only 27% feel it is moving in the right direction.

Has Labour been ‘too cute’?

In an editorial for The Post this morning, Matthew Hooton calls the decline of National’s support “the defining polling story of this Parliament” – but notes a second story has emerged since earlier in the year. Of the 300,000-plus voters National appears to have shed, roughly half have redistributed between Act and NZ First, with the remainder crossing the centre-line to Labour. Yet Hooton argues Hipkins’ “small-target strategy” may have been “too cute” – Labour has lost just as many supporters on its own wing, to the Greens and (if you consider them to the left) to Opportunity.

Hooton points out that while the combined Labour-National vote has dipped below 60% before, that has always reflected one party’s particularly bad period. September 2026 is the first time both have been so unpopular at once since the two-party system took shape in the 1930s.

While not positive, voters’ views of whether the country is on the right track are “stable”. “That is, voters’ confidence in New Zealand hasn’t changed much,” he wrote. “It is confidence in National, Labour, Luxon or Hipkins being capable or even willing to do something to improve things that has collapsed.”

Poll of Polls paints a similar picture

The Herald-Motu Research Poll of Polls, updated last week, put Labour on 27.9% and National on 30.3%, with NZ First on 11.8%, the Greens on 11.1%, Opportunity on 8.1%, Act on 7.5% and Te Pāti Māori on 2.2%.

The model predicts a 47.3% probability that the National-NZ First-Act coalition can form a government again, while giving the current Opposition just a 1.3% chance. That low figure is likely because Opportunity appears to be taking more votes from the left bloc than the right. The model gives a four-party coalition of the Opposition plus Opportunity a 41.9% chance of getting over the line, and predicts a 95.2% probability that Opportunity clears the 5% threshold.

Shall we call it Jacinda Day?

In the Herald this morning, Jamie Ensor wrote that today – September 15 – marks 53 days out from the election, exactly the same point at which Ardern replaced Andrew Little in 2017. (I’m officially floating calling this milestone “Jacinda Day” for at least the next two elections.)

The parallels are interesting. Little was polling around 24%, struggling for cut-through, with minor parties gaining. He resigned, handed the leadership to his deputy, and Labour famously surged to eventually form a government with the help of Winston Peters. But Ensor argues the conditions for a repeat are missing. In 2017, Ardern was already registering in preferred prime minister rankings before taking the top job, polling above Little. “There is no one in the Labour Party today who clearly fits that mould,” Ensor wrote.

Kieran McAnulty is often discussed as a future leader but sits at 2% in the latest 1News-Verian preferred prime minister poll, has made clear he doesn’t want the job, and is chairing a campaign lacking momentum. Others sometimes touted, such as Arena Williams, lack Ardern’s profile.

For National, potential successors – Nicola Willis, Erica Stanford, Chris Bishop – are better known, but voters already have opinions on them. And Luxon has twice put his leadership to a confidence vote, showing, if nothing else, that he really wants to stay in the job.

Ensor notes that what made 2017 work was a peaceful transfer of power. And either a Hipkins or Luxon resignation seems implausible. “But there is also a lesson from August 1, 2017,” Ensor wrote. “Change may not seem possible – until it does.”