Political polls provide a snapshot of voters’ views at a particular moment in time. While polls conducted months before an election cannot reliably predict the outcome – given the potential for unforeseen events – they nonetheless offer political parties a valuable guide as to how they are tracking with the electorate.
Last month’s Roy Morgan poll delivered a warning to National – and centre-right supporters. It showed support for National had dropped 4.5 points to 26.5 percent – its lowest level since the last election. ACT was up 2 to 10, and New Zealand First was up 1.5 to 11 – it’s highest since 2023.
Labour increased 4 to 34 percent, while the Greens fell 3.5 to 11, and the Maori Party rose 0.5 to 3.
On these results, a National-led Coalition with ACT and New Zealand First, and a Labour-led Coalition with the Greens and the Maori Party would be tied on 60 seats each.
National’s representation in Parliament would fall from 49 seats to just 33. That loss of 16 seats would take out all five list MPs – Nicola Willis, Paul Goldsmith, Gerry Brownlee, Melissa Lee and Nancy Lu – along with many of the MPs in the marginal seats they won from Labour in 2023 including Hutt South’s Chris Bishop with a slim 1,332 majority over Labour’s Ginny Anderson.
ACT would gain 2 seats to 13 and NZ First would gain 6 to 14.
For Opposition parties, Labour would increase 8 seats to 42, the Greens would lose one seat to 14, and the Maori Party would win four seats – down two.
This predicted party-vote scenario could create a significant overhang of Parliament. This occurs when parties win more electorate seats than their party vote allocation – as was the case at the last election when the Maori Party won two more seats than their party vote entitlement.
On these poll numbers, it’s conceivable that National could add to an overhang if their marginal electorate MPs were able to hold onto their seats.
Creating an overhang has long been a deliberate election strategy of the Maori Party – and one they are again promoting, according to a recent article by Maori Party Te Tai Tokerau MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi:
“This election will be a close one. The left bloc of Parliament is only two seats away from changing the Government. The pathway is clear. Maori have the choice to support the Greens or Labour with our party vote to create the numbers needed to form a left-wing Government. The candidate vote, on the other hand, can be used to strengthen Maori representation by backing a candidate who must win in Te Tai Tokerau in order to enter Parliament. If we split our votes with purpose, we can achieve greater Maori representation across parties and Parliament as a whole.”
By asking supporters to give them their electorate vote but their party vote to Labour or the Greens to shore up the left-wing bloc, the Maori Party wants to deliberately create an overhang in Parliament to add more MPs than their party vote entitles them to.
Choosing which Coalition they want to govern the country is clearly the key choice for voters at the 2026 election: either a centre-right Coalition of National, ACT and New Zealand First or a radical left-wing Coalition of Labour, the Greens, and the Maori Party.
And there’s no doubt, a future Labour-led Coalition would be the most extreme in New Zealand’s history: a toxic mix of ardent separatists would call the shots and dictate the future of our country.
Even Labour, a party built on representing workers, has moved to the extreme left thanks to Jacinda Ardern advancing her Marxist identity politics agenda, which shifts the struggle for social justice away from the working class to the so-called ‘oppressed’ groups in society centred on gender, race, and sexuality.
This alienation of workers by Labour, has been recognised by New Zealand First’s Leader Winston Peters, who is now repositioning his party to welcome them into the fold.
This week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator Dr Grant Duncan, a Research Associate at Auckland University’s Public Policy Institute, analysed Winston Peters’ recent ‘State of the Nation’ address and outlines New Zealand First’s strategy:
“‘Let’s give power back to the people’ was Winston’s new populist slogan as he sets his sights on voters who feel alienated from Labour and alarmed by Labour’s potential coalition partners.
“NZ First, he said, would welcome former Labour voters who feel abandoned. He also raised the spectre of Labour having to work with the Greens and Te Pati Maori, if they’re in a position to form the next government.
“The recruitment of Alfred Ngaro signifies that Pacific voters are a particular target. In 2005, Auckland’s Pacific communities boosted turnout and gave Labour, under Helen Clark, a narrow win over National. They were voting with their economic interests, but against their Christian conservatism. NZ First is now combining social conservatism with concern for the economic struggles of blue-collar workers, aiming to draw that constituency away from Labour.
“Winston’s strategy is textbook nationalist populism. Traditional mainstream parties, he says, have failed to serve the people. In particular, the left-wing socially progressive parties have lost touch with the concerns of ordinary common-sense hard-working folk. The plan is that disillusioned former Labour voters – fed up with, if not pushed aside by, identity politics and Tiriti obsession – will migrate across to NZ First, joining conservatives who are already there. Labour is the target because Winston would rather leave National alone for the time being.”
Dr Duncan explains how similar populist parties using similar tactics overseas are now humbling the traditional major parties on the left and on the right and, he suggests, there’s no reason to think New Zealand is any less ‘ripe’ for this kind of political shift.
With Nigel Farage’s Reform Party hoovering up Labour and Conservative Party votes in England, and Pauline Hansen’s One Nation Party doing the same in Australia, New Zealand First could be onto a winner. By targeting workers, they are clearly after voters who were previously loyal to Labour to build support for the current Coalition.
A second poll recently released by the Taxpayer’ Union, had better news for the Coalition: National was up 1.4 points to 29.8 percent, New Zealand First increased 3.9 to 13.6, and ACT rose 1.5 to 9 giving them a total of 65 seats – enough to govern.
With Labour down 1 to 33.4 percent, the Greens down 2.7 to 7.8, and the Maori Party down 0.6 to 2.6, Opposition parties would secure 55 seats.
But the big question in all of this, is why isn’t National doing better?
Part of the reason is that they had a single-minded focus on economic recovery and while they might have gained widespread support this year if their policies had delivered the growth they’d hoped for, international events have put paid to that.
Another key point goes back to the sheer scale of the disaster that Labour left behind in 2023, and the massive challenge the Coalition has faced in trying to fix it.
It wasn’t just Labour’s reckless economic management and catastrophic incompetence that covered all areas of governance, that concerned voters, it was their attack on democracy through the unmandated embedding of He Puapua throughout the public sector.
Few New Zealanders really understood the extent to which this radical agenda – aimed at replacing democracy with tribal rule by 2040 – had been entrenched in our regulatory framework. In fact, many of the almost 20,000 new employees hired during Labour’s time in office, were activists committed to identity politics and He Puapua. They are the ones who’ve been fighting all attempts by the Coalition to remove Labour’s agenda.
Signs of the race-based takeover are now everywhere – from the revelation that bicultural ideology was being embedded within our Defence Force; to the cultural takeover of the Medical Council – that intends imposing on doctors the same race-based requirements forced onto nurses and pharmacists; to the failure of government agencies to the uphold the Coalition directive to prioritise English in their names and public communications – with public broadcasters deliberately flouting the policy in their reporting and government agencies like the Public Service Commission still displaying their Maori name first on their website; to local body Councils that are being taken over by iwi activists appointed onto councils as advisors and given voting rights… the list goes on and on.
And the problem for National is that while a number of “fixes” are in the pipeline, they have not delivered results.
A requirement to remove Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies – which include biculturalism – from the public service is sitting in a Public Sector Amendment Bill that’s languishing on Parliament’s Order Paper. Once that’s passed, a directive could be issued across the entire State Sector – including the Defence Force – to eliminate all such initiatives as part of the Coalition’s “back to basics” agenda.
And while Cabinet has approved changes to ensure that professional health standards focus on “clinical competence” not “cultural ideology”, the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act has not as yet been amendment with such guidelines for the Medical Council, Nurses Council and Pharmacists’ Council.
Instead of an all‑of‑government directive instructing public service departments to prioritise English in their names and public communications, Cabinet left it to individual Ministers to ensure compliance – surely, it’s time negligent Ministers and Chief Executives were held to account.
And with a Local Government (System Improvements) Amendment Bill to require councils to stick to their knitting ready to be passed into law, the Minister could prevent the iwi takeover of councils by issuing a Supplementary Order Paper during the Committee stages of the Bill amending Schedule 7 to the effect that no-one can be appointed as a member of a committee or subcommittee of a local authority unless they are a democratically elected member of that local authority.
The failure to ‘fix’ such problems are attributed to National with accusations they are either deaf to public concerns – or lacking the backbone to deal with the problems head on. As a result, they are losing support, not only to their Coalition partners – who are much more attuned to the problems and are promising to ‘fix’ them once and for all in a new Government – but to Labour as well.
On their website, the ACT Party clearly states, “Eliminate race-based policies across all areas of Government: Wherever policies divide New Zealanders based on ethnicity, ACT will challenge and remove them. That includes reviewing remaining regulations and legislation that embed race-based considerations into law and public funding decisions.”
That’s exactly what’s needed given the extent to which resistance to Coalition policies is now embedded within the state sector workforce.
When it comes to New Zealand First, the Herald’s Senior Political Correspondent Audrey Young shared this insight from the Taxpayer Union poll: “Curia pollster David Farrar has broken down NZ First’s support in a Patreon post and says that 52% of its current supporters voted National in 2023, while only 3% voted Labour. That will be a huge worry for National, which would lose 11 MPs on current polling. NZ First would more than double its caucus from 8 to 17.”
The move of National voters towards New Zealand First is simply following the same trend that’s underway overseas, where the disillusioned major party supporters are no longer prepared to stay loyal but are switching allegiance to minor parties that are promising to address their concerns.
And with an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 swing voters who move between left and right and ultimately decide elections — many of whom backed reform — National must not only get its message right but clearly demonstrate it’s upheld its Coalition commitments.
It really is time for National MPs to wake up – or many will be looking for a new job on November 7.
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THIS WEEK’S POLL ASKS:
*Do you feel that the major political parties are addressing the concerns of ordinary working New Zealanders, or have they become out of touch?
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