{"id":474430,"date":"2026-06-12T22:32:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T22:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/474430\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T22:32:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T22:32:11","slug":"opportunity-party-launches-campaign-for-labour-stronghold-auckland-electorate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/474430\/","title":{"rendered":"Opportunity Party launches campaign for Labour stronghold Auckland electorate\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u201cWe wouldn\u2019t be going for it if we didn\u2019t think it was winnable,\u201d Wong said. <\/p>\n
Opportunity reached 3.2% in the Taxpayers\u2019 Union Curia poll for June, and 3% for the April 1News Verian poll.<\/p>\n
Wong previously told Newstalk ZB that Opportunity would focus its campaign on getting above a 5% party vote, but now she has decided to change tack. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe had to think really carefully about it because obviously, as a small party with limited resources, we didn\u2019t want to distract from the nationwide campaign. We needed to make sure that if they were going to go for an electorate, we could really do it justice,\u201d Wong said. <\/p>\n
Former party leader Raf Manji launched an aggressive campaign for the Ilam electorate in 2023. <\/p>\n
Raf Manji was leader of the Opportunity Party at the 2023 election when it was known as The Opportunities Party. Photo \/ George Heard<\/p>\n
He lost to National Party MP Hamish Campbell by more than 8000 votes, and the party failed to make it to Parliament on 2.2% of the party vote. <\/p>\n
Wong said the difference between now and 2023 is the last campaign was all about winning the Ilam electorate. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis time we are going for both, Mt Albert and trying to get over that party vote threshold. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think it would be mutually reinforcing actually because people really do see that we have a shot at winning Mt Albert,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Troy Matich is a political reporter with Newstalk ZB, working from Parliament\u2019s press gallery. She joined NZME in 2025, previously working for RNZ as a producer for Morning Report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe wouldn\u2019t be going for it if we didn\u2019t think it was winnable,\u201d Wong said. Opportunity reached 3.2%…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":474431,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[51,1738,42678,2082,6721,1739,4479,13489,111,43,139,69,6452,4762,93584,32325,239146,93585],"class_list":["post-474430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-auckland","tag-campaign","tag-electorate","tag-for","tag-labour","tag-launches","tag-launching","tag-leader","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-opportunity","tag-party","tag-qiulae","tag-renowned","tag-stronghold","tag-wong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474430","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=474430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/474431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}