{"id":636035,"date":"2026-10-20T06:52:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T06:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/636035\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T06:52:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T06:52:11","slug":"election-2026-national-bounces-into-30s-as-labour-falls-to-2023-defeat-level-in-1news-verian-poll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/636035\/","title":{"rendered":"Election 2026: National bounces into 30s as Labour falls to 2023 defeat level in 1News-Verian poll"},"content":{"rendered":"

Converting those results into seats in the House, National would receive 38 seats and Labour 32, with 19 for the Greens, 13 for Act, nine for NZ First and eight for Opportunity. This poll assumes Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori wins four electorate seats and Te Tai Tokerau Party gets one.<\/p>\n

That means the right bloc of the current coalition parties would have 60 seats and the left bloc of Labour, the Greens, Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori and Te Tai Tokerau Party would have 56. Both sides would therefore need Opportunity to have a majority.<\/p>\n

The overall make-up of Parliament could be influenced by whether any parties create an overhang, extending the overall number of seats in the House. This also means more seats are needed to have a majority and therefore form a government.<\/p>\n

An overhang occurs when a party wins more electorates than the number of seats it is entitled to from the party vote.<\/p>\n

Under the scenario above, there is an overhang caused by Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori and Te Tai Tokerau Party.<\/p>\n

In the preferred Prime Minister rankings, National\u2019s Christopher Luxon is stable on 20%, Labour\u2019s Chris Hipkins is down three points to 17%, NZ First\u2019s Winston Peters is up a point to 8%, the Greens\u2019 Chl\u00f6e Swarbrick gains one point to 7% and Act\u2019s David Seymour is up a point to 5%.<\/p>\n

The poll was conducted between October 15 and 19, with 1003 people polled, about half by mobile phone and half online. It has a maximum margin of error of 3.1%.<\/p>\n

Last week\u2019s 1News-Verian poll had both Labour and National sitting at 28%<\/a>, while the Greens were at 15%, Act and NZ First were on 10%, Opportunity was at 8% and Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori was on 0.4%.<\/p>\n

A Post\/Freshwater Strategy poll released on Tuesday morning had Labour on 29.7% and National on 27.6%. The Greens were on 14.3%, NZ First was at 11.8%, Act on 9%, Opportunity at 5.4% and Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori at 2%.<\/p>\n

The recent polling has placed Opportunity in a kingmaker position, where its support would be needed by the left and right blocs in order to form a Government. The party has said it will negotiate first with the party with the most seats. <\/p>\n

The latest Herald-Motu Research Poll of Polls<\/a>, released on Monday and not including today\u2019s polls, showed National, NZ First and Act had a 30.6% probability of being able to form a government, down from more than 80% earlier this year.<\/p>\n

It was slightly higher than the probability of Labour, the Green Party and Opportunity being able to form a government, which the model said was 27.5%. Adding in Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori, the probability increased to 55.5%.<\/p>\n

Adding Opportunity to the current coalition parties took the probability of the four parties forming the Government to 99.9%. However, both National leader Christopher Luxon and NZ First leader Winston Peters have ruled out working with Opportunity, while Act leader David Seymour has said he would be open to it if it meant returning to government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Converting those results into seats in the House, National would receive 38 seats and Labour 32, with 19…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":636036,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[111637,17248,2246,122281,1443,806,107122,5506,5498,5903,15248,42,78,296,6721,27699,700,25449,3556,43,4762,18154,13027,12971,13418,1886,61,40,38,41,39,1316,540,6123],"class_list":["post-636035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-1newsverian","tag-17248","tag-2246","tag-30s","tag-about","tag-as","tag-bounces","tag-defeat","tag-defeated","tag-election","tag-falls","tag-headlines","tag-in","tag-into","tag-labour","tag-labours","tag-latest","tag-level","tag-national","tag-news","tag-party","tag-political","tag-poll","tag-returned","tag-slumped","tag-support","tag-to","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-when","tag-where","tag-while"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636035","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=636035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}