Opportunity out of Parliament in latest poll, as coalition retains power on back of ACT surge
ACT leader David Seymour and The Opportunity Party's Qiulae Wong.
Christopher Luxon remains ahead of Chris Hipkins as preferred prime minister.
The current coalition government would be returned to power based on the results of a new poll, with Opportunity unable to breach the threshold and become kingmaker.
The Quilae Wong-led upstarts have fallen from 6.1 to 4.5 per cent in the latest Taxpayers' Union-Curia Poll, bucking the trend found in other polls.
National was down two percentage points to 29 per cent, and Labour down 1.9 to 25.9 per cent.
ACT and the Greens were the main beneficiaries. The Greens were up 3.8 percentage points to 13.9 per cent, and ACT up 3.2 to 10.5 per cent.
New Zealand First was down 0.7 to 8.4 per cent.
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Te Pāti Māori gained 0.5 points to 2 per cent. The party this year hopes to use MMP's overhang to boost the chance of removing the coalition.
Rounding out the party vote results were NZ Loyal (1.5 percent), Animal Justice (1.2), Women's Rights (0.7), Vision NZ (0.5) and the New Conservatives (0.5).
When it came to seats, the coalition - National, ACT and NZ First - would get 64 compared to the opposition - Labour, Greens and Te Pāti Māori - on 56. The right-leaning Taxpayers' Union's analysis assumes Te Pāti Māori would win three seats.
Opportunity would get zero on these results, being below the 5 percent threshold.
Christopher Luxon remained ahead of Chris Hipkins as preferred prime minister, down 2 percentage points to 21.2 per cent. Hipkins fell 2.9 to 16.9 per cent.
The poll was conducted by Curia Market Research for the Taxpayers' Union. It is a random poll of 1000 adult New Zealanders and is weighted to the overall adult population.
It was conducted by phone (landlines and mobile) and online between Tuesday 01 September and Thursday 03 September 2026, has a maximum margin of error of +/- 3.1 per cent and 4.1 per cent were undecided on the party vote question.
(This story was first published on rnz.co.nz)
