{"id":621608,"date":"2026-10-05T20:34:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T20:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/621608\/"},"modified":"2026-10-05T20:34:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T20:34:09","slug":"rnz-reid-research-poll-national-crashes-greens-surge-opportunity-kingmaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/621608\/","title":{"rendered":"RNZ-Reid Research poll: National crashes, Greens surge, Opportunity kingmaker"},"content":{"rendered":"

Labour has also lost ground<\/a>, falling 1.4 points to 30.8% in its third consecutive decline.<\/p>\n

The poll was conducted as both National and Labour launched their election campaigns<\/a> and Treasury delivered a brighter forecast for the Government\u2019s finances.<\/p>\n

Together, the two major parties now attract just 56.7% support, down from 61.3% in August and 64.9% at the 2023 election.<\/p>\n

The Green Party has made the biggest gain, jumping 4.6 points to 14.8%, its strongest showing this term.<\/p>\n

Opportunity has edged up 0.2% to 5.5%, clearing the 5% party-vote threshold for a second RNZ-Reid Research poll in a row.<\/p>\n

New Zealand First has fallen 1.3% to 10.6%, while Act has climbed 1.3 points to 9%. Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori has dropped one point to 2%.<\/p>\n

If the results were replicated at the election, neither the existing coalition nor a Labour-Greens-Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori combination would have a majority in a 120-seat Parliament.<\/p>\n

Opportunity\u2019s seven projected MPs could give either bloc the numbers to govern, although Luxon has previously ruled out working with the party in any capacity.<\/p>\n

The basic seat projection assumes Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori would win at least one electorate, but that no party creates an overhang by winning more electorates than it would otherwise be allocated according to its party vote.<\/p>\n

Under that scenario, National would return 32 MPs, New Zealand First 13 and Act 11. Their combined 56 seats would leave the coalition five short of the 61 needed for a majority.<\/p>\n

Labour would have 37 MPs, the Greens 18 and Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori two, giving them 57 seats.<\/p>\n

Opportunity\u2019s support would lift the existing coalition to 63 seats or the Labour-Greens-Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori bloc to 64.<\/p>\n

Labour and the Greens could also reach a majority with Opportunity alone, holding 62 seats between them.<\/p>\n

However, Opportunity is only just above the threshold. Falling below 5% would leave it outside Parliament unless it won an electorate, significantly changing the calculations.<\/p>\n

An overhang could also upset the calculations. On these figures, Parliament would expand beyond 120 MPs if National won more than 32 electorates, or Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori won more than two.<\/p>\n

Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori has openly promoted split-voting to engineer such an outcome, as have prominent figures on the right, including Don Brash and Harry Mowbray.<\/p>\n

National has resisted the push, warning it could shut senior list MPs out of Parliament. Luxon has called the idea \u201cinsanely stupid\u201d, while former leader Sir John Key said it was \u201cthe opposite of clever\u201d.<\/p>\n

The poll also delivers another poor result for Luxon personally.<\/p>\n

His preferred Prime Minister rating has fallen 2.8% to 17.1%, while Labour leader Chris Hipkins has edged up 0.6% to 21.9%.<\/p>\n

Winston Peters remains third on 11.2%. Green co-leader Chl\u00f6e Swarbrick has risen 1.3% to 8.7%, her highest result in the series.<\/p>\n

Another 14.4% of respondents selected no preferred Prime Minister or said they did not know.<\/p>\n

More than half, 53.3%, rate Luxon\u2019s personal performance as Prime Minister poorly, against 29.6% who say he is performing well.<\/p>\n

His net performance rating of -23.7 is his worst under his leadership, though only 0.8 points below August\u2019s result.<\/p>\n

Hipkins also remains in negative territory, with 38.7% rating his performance as Opposition leader poorly and 35.1% well. His net rating is -3.6.<\/p>\n

The wider mood remains sour. About 53.1% say New Zealand is heading in the wrong direction under the current Government, compared with 31.6% who say it is heading in the right direction.<\/p>\n

Another 13.5% say neither right nor wrong, while 1.8% do not know.<\/p>\n

Reid Research surveyed 1000 eligible voters online between September 24 and October 1, 2026, using quota sampling and weighting by age, gender and geography. The poll had a reported maximum margin of error of +\/- 3.1 percentage points at a 95% confidence level. Party-vote figures excluded the 3% who were undecided or did not know and the 2.6% who said they would not vote.<\/p>\n

– RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Labour has also lost ground, falling 1.4 points to 30.8% in its third consecutive decline. The poll was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":621609,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6650,29422,23746,305944,26478,3556,111,43,139,69,6452,13027,1518,147163,1515],"class_list":["post-621608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-craig","tag-crashes","tag-greens","tag-kingmaker","tag-mcculloch","tag-national","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-opportunity","tag-poll","tag-research","tag-rnzreid","tag-surge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621608","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=621608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}