Late last month, National decided to rule out working with Opportunity after the election due to Opportunity’s tax plan. Had the coalition’s parties been willing to work with Opportunity, they’d have a 95.6% probability of being able to form a Government.
These results take into account recent polls, including last Friday’s Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll showing Labour taking 3.7-point hit, falling to 27.8%. Labour has questioned the credibility of this result, saying its not focused on “rogue polls”.
In that same poll, Opportunity overcame the 5% threshold, jumping 2.8 to 6.1%. It has been flirting with the 5% threshold in numerous other polls, like Verian and Reid Research, while is above it in several Roy Morgan polls.
The Poll of Polls now has National in the lead, with its average predicted party vote at 30.6%, above Labour on 29.4%. NZ First followed on 12.8%, then the Greens on 10.7%, Act on 6.8%, Opportunity on 6.2%, and Te Pati Māori at 2.2%.
Converting that into seats, National gains 37, Labour 36, NZ First 16, the Greens 13, Act gets eight, Opportunity receives seven, and Te Pati Māori has three. This seat calculation assumes there is no overhang and that Te Pati Māori receives at least one electorate seat.
The model considers the probability of different combinations of parties being able to form a Government.
It found the probability of National, Act and NZ First again having the numbers to retain office sat at 61%. This is slightly below the 64.8% probability the model gave when it was run in late July.
The chance of a Labour, Greens, Te Pati Māori Government – those left-leaning parties currently in Opposition – is 3.2%. That’s down from 5.7% in the last Poll of Polls.
Interestingly, the model shows the chances of National and NZ First being able to form a Government together is slightly higher than Labour, Greens, Te Pati Māori. National and NZ First has a probability of 5.1%.
In part due to Opportunity’s increased support, the probability of a left-leaning group that includes it taking power has risen.
In the last Poll of Polls, the probability of a Labour, Greens, Te Pati Māori, Opportunity Government was 26.6%. It’s now 30.8%. The probability of a Labour, Greens, Opportunity Government has risen from 9.9% to 12.9%.
The NZ Herald-Motu Research Poll of Polls uses data from public polls and other private or less frequent polls and inputs them into a computer model using polling data going back to 2014 and is weighted for past performance.
It uses this data to run 4000 election simulations, which are used to form probabilities of various election outcomes.
Jamie Ensor is the NZ Herald’s chief political reporter, based in the press gallery at Parliament. He was previously a TV reporter and digital producer in the Newshub press gallery office. He was a finalist in 2025 for Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards.