National has slipped in the latest polling, but its coalition partners gained enough to put coalition reelection within reach, Henry Oliver writes in today\u2019s excerpt from The Bulletin.<\/p>\n
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National dropped three points to 29% in Tuesday\u2019s 1News-Verian poll, 1News reports<\/a>, while Act rose one to a term-high 12% and NZ First gained two to 10%. Opportunity, which National has (again and again) ruled out working with, fell one to 6%. The Greens slipped one to 15%, and Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori fell to 0.1%, though it is campaigning for electorate votes only. Labour was unchanged on 27% \u2013 the party’s fifth consecutive poll in the upper twenties, down from 37% in April.<\/p>\n Luxon pulled clear as preferred prime minister, rising four to 24% (his best of the campaign so far) while Hipkins edged up one to 18%. The six-point gap is the widest in 1News polling this year.<\/p>\n The overhang\u00a0<\/p>\n This morning, the Herald launched an electorate model mapping the Herald-Motu poll of polls<\/a> onto individual races, and with the possibility of an overhang essentially deciding the election in either direction, its projections are potentially as important as the party vote. National currently holds 49 seats (44 electorates and five on the list). On a party vote of 28.6% (according to the poll of polls), that would correspond to 34 seats in total. But the electorate model picks National losing only three electorates: 44 down to 41.<\/p>\n That would produce a seven-seat overhang, taking Parliament to 128 seats and giving the National-ACT-NZ First coalition 66 seats, comfortably past the 65 needed to govern the expanded parliament. The Labour-Greens-Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori bloc would hold 51.<\/p>\n The Herald\u2019s Chris Knox notes this would be New Zealand\u2019s first major party overhang. It is more likely now than when MMP began: there are 71 electorates today compared to 65 in 1996, five added for North Island population growth and one for the M\u0101ori electoral population.<\/p>\n Motu’s Stuart Donovan cautions the model is \u201cvery much a starting point.\u201d Several seats are excluded because of unique local dynamics \u2013 Te Tai Tokerau, where Mariameno Kapa-Kingi is standing for a different party and a shock poll last week put the Greens’ H\u016bhana Lyndon in contention; and Te Tai Tonga and T\u0101maki Makaurau, where independents are standing. Hutt South has the smallest predicted margin at 0.4 percentage points, down from 3.1 in 2023 \u2013 with Chris Bishop defending a 1,332-vote margin against Ginny Andersen for the fourth time. Knox notes the model still has National returning in T\u0101maki despite Brooke van Velden\u2019s 2023 win there, but readers can override individual seats to see the effect.<\/p>\n Even if Opportunity falls below the 5% threshold, the model\u2019s outcome is unchanged: National no longer has an overhang, but the same coalition still governs.<\/p>\n In other news<\/p>\n Winston Peters is defending a party ad blaming the sinking of HMNZS Manawanui on \u201cwoke b******t,\u201d RNZ reports<\/a> (the censoring is NZ First\u2019s not ours or RNZ\u2019s). The ad shows Ron Mark, a former defence minister, saying DEI had gone \u201ctoo far\u201d and the sinking was \u201cevidence of that.\u201d Peters said it was \u201cclear as daylight\u201d Commander Yvonne Gray was hired through a DEI programme: \u201cWe are not against the promotion of seriously qualified women \u2013 never have been \u2013 but in this case, she was not qualified.\u201d Christopher Luxon said Mark appeared to be trying to \u201ccosplay Pete Hegseth\u201d but did not rule out appointing him defence minister.\u00a0<\/p>\n In other NZ First news, social media posts by two Upper Harbour candidates show both attacking political leaders, The Post\u2019s Amelia Wade reports<\/a>. NZ First\u2019s Bernadette Soares wrote in 2024 that \u201cWinston has turned out to be a slimy traitor,\u201d replied to a post calling for a ban on Palestinian refugees with \u201cNo immigration from terrorist nations,\u201d and in 2025 invited British far-right activist Tommy Robinson to New Zealand. Act\u2019s Panos Patros thanked someone who called Dame Jacinda Ardern a \u201cfascist witch,\u201d and wrote that Labour had been \u201copenly pro terrorist.\u201d NZ First called the questions “some sort of pathetic joke” and said candidates had changed their views. Seymour said some comments \u201cmight seem intemperate\u201d but \u201cwe shouldn’t rush to judge.\u201d<\/p>\n Nicola Willis has called on Chris Hipkins to say \u201chow many of the Green Party’s new taxes he is willing to adopt,\u201d the Herald\u2019s Jamie Ensor reports<\/a>, arguing the only way he forms a government by Christmas is \u201cmaking serious concessions\u201d to Chl\u00f6e Swarbrick. Asked what National would concede to Act and NZ First, Luxon said the situation \u201cis quite different,\u201d citing three budgets within operating allowances.<\/p>\n More than 200 turned out at Rippon Vineyard for an election forum in Wanaka, RNZ reports<\/a>. Opportunity\u2019s Kayla Kingdon-Bebb said councils had been \u201ca bit of a punching bag\u201d and called for an end to unfunded mandates. NZ First\u2019s Michael Laws was booed for saying there was \u201cnothing wrong with extractive mining at all.\u201d Labour\u2019s Damien O’Connor said 80% of new health money had gone to the private sector; Seymour called ideology \u201cthe biggest impediment\u201d to fixing healthcare in New Zealand. Michael Laws pitched NZ First as \u201cthe conscience and the heart of a centre-right coalition\u201d \u2013 Seymour offered Act as \u201cthe brain.\u201d<\/p>\n Documents obtained under the OIA show associate housing minister Tama Potaka originally planned no maximum repayment timeframe, instead requiring interest after six months \u2013 a proposal seniors minister Casey Costello agreed with, Stuff reports<\/a>. The policy changed after a meeting with Chris Bishop, leading to last month\u2019s nine-month limit. Peters said last week he never agreed with the reforms, a month after they were announced. Labour is promising a three-month period for all existing residents, about 56,000 people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"National has slipped in the latest polling, but its coalition partners gained enough to put coalition reelection within…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":643096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[112585,111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-643095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-election-2026","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643095","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=643095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}