It also came amid Act announcing it would strengthen powers for teachers to remove disruptive children from class, NZ First proposing to pay people to have more children and revealing that Ron Mark was returning as a candidate. Labour did not announce policy over the polling period.
On Monday last week, Luxon ruled out working with Opportunity in government. Later that week, Opportunity revealed its party list.
Labour’s support took a significant hit compared to the July Taxpayers’ Union Curia poll, dropping 3.7 points from 31.5% to 27.8%. While National has polled regularly in the 20s, its lowest return this year was 28.7% in a poll last month.
The Green Party dropped 0.3 points to 10.1%. Te Pāti Māori fell 1.9 points to 1.5%.
For the coalition parties, National received a slight uptick of 0.5 points to 31%. New Zealand First dropped 1.7 points to 9.1%, while Act was up slightly by 0.4 points to 7.3%.
The revelation in today’s poll was Opportunity overcoming the 5% threshold by registering 6.1% support, having reached 4.6% and 4.7% in several polls last month.
The poll’s seat projection for the coalition parties dropped one to 61, just enough for a majority. National gained one seat on last month’s poll to reach 40, NZ First dropped two to 12, and Act was unchanged on nine.
The “Opposition bloc” of Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori would have 59 seats on those numbers. Labour dropped five to 36, the Greens were unchanged on 13, and Te Pāti Māori would have two seats, down from four.
On 6.1%, Opportunity would have eight seats.
Luxon had shot up in the preferred Prime Minister ratings, increasing 4.1 points to 23.2%. Despite his party’s decline, Labour leader Chris Hipkins increased 0.6 points to 19.8%.
NZ First leader Winston Peters dipped 1.3 points to 10.5%, while Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick and Act leader David Seymour were on 4.8% and 3.8% respectively.
Adam Pearse is the Deputy Political Editor and part of the NZ Herald’s Press Gallery team based at Parliament in Wellington. He has worked for NZME since 2018, reporting for the Northern Advocate in Whangārei and the Herald in Auckland.