{"id":253800,"date":"2026-01-27T07:48:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T07:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/253800\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T07:48:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T07:48:07","slug":"as-it-happened-parliament-returns-for-2026-first-poll-shows-boost-for-nz-first-labour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/253800\/","title":{"rendered":"As it happened: Parliament returns for 2026, first poll shows boost for NZ First, Labour"},"content":{"rendered":"

Politicians returned to Parliament on Tuesday, in the aftermath of the deadly weather event that caused flooding and landslides in the upper North Island last week.<\/p>\n

This morning also marked the first political poll of the year with the RNZ-Reid Research poll showing New Zealand First has climbed into third place, recording its strongest result in the Reid Research series in more than eight years.<\/p>\n

The poll also showed NZ First’s Winston Peters leaping up the preferred prime minister ranks, closing the gap on the Labour and National leaders.<\/p>\n

The results, if replicated on polling day, would return the coalition government to power with a narrow majority of 61 seats.<\/p>\n

Follow the politics liveblog as it happened below: <\/p>\n

Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Politicians returned to Parliament on Tuesday, in the aftermath of the deadly weather event that caused flooding and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-253800","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-podcasts","15":"tag-public-radio","16":"tag-radio-new-zealand","17":"tag-rnz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}