{"id":566556,"date":"2026-08-12T08:14:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T08:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/566556\/"},"modified":"2026-08-12T08:14:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T08:14:10","slug":"the-opportunity-party-could-decide-next-government-new-poll-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/566556\/","title":{"rendered":"The Opportunity Party could decide next government, new poll shows"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Opportunity Party has the numbers to enter Parliament – and act as kingmaker – according to the latest 1News Verian poll.<\/p>\n

The poll, which was taken in the days leading up to the prime minister’s confidence vote, has Labour in the lead, and National riding steady.<\/p>\n

It suggests a left bloc that includes Opportunity could form a government, after Christopher Luxon ruled out working with the party<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Labour: 30 percent, down 2 (38 seats)National: 29 percent, no change (36 seats)Green Party: 12 percent, down 1 (15 seats)ACT: 9 percent, up 3 (11 seats)New Zealand First: 8 percent, down 3 (10 seats)Opportunity: 9 percent, up 3 (9 seats)Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori: 1 percent, down 1 point (6 seats)<\/p>\n

11 percent of people said they did not know, or refused to answer.<\/p>\n

The 1News Verian poll assumes the current M\u0101ori electorate incumbents hold their seats, meaning the poll has a 125-seat Parliament.<\/p>\n

It means neither current bloc would have enough seats to form a majority, with Labour, the Greens, and Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori on 59, and National, ACT and New Zealand First on 57.<\/p>\n

With Opportunity, the left bloc would have 68 seats – enough to govern. If Luxon changed his mind about working with Opportunity, the right bloc would have 66 seats.<\/p>\n

Luxon ruled out working with Opportunity near the end of July, while Chris Hipkins officially ruled out New Zealand First earlier this week – earning a rebuke from Winston Peters.<\/p>\n

\"Prime<\/p>\n

The new poll comes after a bruising day for Christopher Luxon’s premiership.<\/p>\n

RNZ \/ Zach Cornelisen<\/p>\n

The poll was conducted from August 8 to 11, with a sample size of 847.<\/p>\n

Earlier on Wednesday, the poll revealed a further 1 point drop for Luxon in the preferred prime minister ratings, putting him on 17 percent.<\/p>\n

That was still ahead of Chris Hipkins, who was on 15 percent, also down one point.<\/p>\n

Rounding out the top three, Winston Peters was on 7 percent, down 3 points.<\/p>\n

Chl\u00f6e Swarbrick was steady on 6 percent, David Seymour was up 1 point to 5 percent, Erica Stanford was up 1 point to 2 percent, and Kieran McAnulty was also up 1 point to 2 percent.<\/p>\n

Another difficult day for Luxon<\/p>\n

The new poll comes just hours after Christopher Luxon survived the second attempt to oust him in the past few months<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Luxon held an abrupt press conference on Wednesday afternoon, where he confirmed he had survived that confidence vote.<\/p>\n

He said he had the “full support” of the National Party caucus, and was focused on the election.<\/p>\n

Later on Wednesday, Luxon confirmed he had removed MP Chris Penk’s ministerial portfolios<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Chris Penk launched a leadership challenge this week, which resulted in today’s confidence vote. This makes his role untenable and as such I have removed his portfolios,” Luxon said earlier on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Paul Goldsmith is taking up the Defence, Veterans, Space, GCSB, and NZSIS portfolios.<\/p>\n

Simon Watts will become Minister for Building and Construction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Opportunity Party has the numbers to enter Parliament – and act as kingmaker – according to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":566557,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-566556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566556","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=566556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}