NZ Election Dead Heat: Two New Polls Name Two Winners

Two nationwide polls, fielded over the exact same five days, have given opposite answers about who will win the NZ election on 7 November. The Taxpayers' Union–Curia poll, which surveyed 1,000 voters between 1 and 5 October, put National on 28.5 per cent and Labour on 28.2 per cent, a gap of three-tenths of a point. With New Zealand First surging to 12 per cent, its seat projection handed the incumbent National–New Zealand First–ACT coalition 65 seats in a 122-seat Parliament: a working majority.

The 1News–Verian poll, conducted over the same 1–5 October window, told a different story. It had National on 29 per cent and Labour on 28, with the Greens on sixteen per cent, New Zealand First on 10 and ACT on nine. The decisive difference was the centrist Opportunity Party, which Verian put on 7 per cent, worth eight seats. On that maths, Labour, the Greens, Opportunity and Te Pāti Māori, on 0.6 per cent, would hold a narrow working majority in a 123-seat Parliament.

Why one small party decides the NZ election

The contradiction comes down to Opportunity, and whether it clears Parliament's entry threshold. The Curia poll put the party on 4.8 per cent, below the five per cent mark and therefore with no seats at all. That hinge is why the survey, published this week, drew so much attention. Stuff's write-up ran under the headline "New poll sees coalition back in power as Opportunity falls short of 5%", while RNZ's coverage led with the finding that a "NZ First surge extends coalition lead", according to the Democracy Project's election briefing of 9 October.

Under New Zealand's MMP electoral system, a party must clear the party-vote threshold (or win an electorate seat) to enter Parliament, and 61 of 120 seats are needed to govern. Overhang seats can push the total above 120, which is why the latest projections describe 122- and 123-seat houses. With neither major party anywhere near a majority on its own, the minor parties are not a sideshow to this NZ election but the government waiting to be assembled.

A week of whiplash polling

It capped a volatile stretch in the NZ election campaign. Days earlier, the RNZ–Reid Research poll, taken 24 September to 1 October among one thousand eligible voters and carrying a margin of error of 3.1 points, had National slumping to 25.9 per cent. RNZ described it as the party's worst result since its 2020 election defeat. Labour stood on 30.8 per cent, the Greens had jumped to 14.8, New Zealand First took 10.6, ACT 9, Opportunity 5.5 and Te Pāti Māori 2. The seat projection gave the Labour–Greens–Opportunity combination 62 seats, enough to govern together, as RNZ reported.

The same survey had Labour's Chris Hipkins leading Christopher Luxon as preferred prime minister, 21.9 per cent to 17.1, with Winston Peters on 11.2 and Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick on 8.7. More than half of respondents said the country was heading in the wrong direction.

National's campaign chair Simeon Brown, asked about the NZ election figures, told RNZ that "the election is going to be very close, and there's a lot of work to do between now and the 7th of November". Opportunity leader Qiulae Wong said her party would "bring stability" and work to "find common ground" with whichever side formed the government. ACT leader David Seymour, whose party has climbed in the latest surveys, said: "a week is a long time in politics and there's four of them to go", RNZ reported.

The debate that failed to settle it

The polls landed around the NZ election campaign's first televised leaders' debate on 6 October. The ninety-minute TVNZ debate, moderated by Q+A presenter Jack Tame, drew more than a million viewers across TVNZ's platforms, with over nine hundred thousand watching live on TVNZ 1, the second most-watched broadcast programme of the year according to Nielsen figures reported by TVNZ.

By the verdicts that followed, Hipkins got the better of the night. A Vote Compass survey of more than six thousand viewers had him ahead 44 per cent to 25, and a panel of a hundred undecided voters in TVNZ's atrium said Hipkins had won them over, 49 to 24, with 27 still undecided. One detail underlined the problem for National: while 86 per cent of Labour voters backed Hipkins, only 66 per cent of National supporters picked their own leader, according to the Democracy Project's debate analysis.

Tax and spending produced the sharpest exchanges of the NZ election debate. Luxon repeatedly attacked Labour's promises as unfunded, four times by RNZ's count, and pledged "no new taxes". Hipkins pressed the cost-of-living case, and when Luxon ruled out working with Opportunity because it wanted to "impose more taxes", Hipkins challenged the decision on the spot, AAP reported. Hipkins also accused Luxon of failing to confront racist comments about migrant communities from coalition partners, saying he would "sack them immediately" if his own ministers spoke that way. Afterwards Hipkins said he was "pretty happy" with his performance; Luxon called the debate "fun" and brushed off the audience verdict, RNZ reported.

The NZ election campaign has entered its final stretch. Parliament held its last sitting on 23 September. Luxon told MPs he was proud of a record of "economic growth, record exports and lower government debt", while Hipkins replied that the government was "out of ideas and they are now out of time", Reuters reported. The house was formally dissolved on 1 October. Luxon and Hipkins meet again in Stuff's leaders' debate on 20 October, days before advance voting opens on 26 October. Then, on 7 November, New Zealanders decide the NZ election, and the polls suggest many have not made up their minds yet.

More on genznewz: India by-elections: BJP and TVK sweep vote counting day and Camp David war meeting: Trump team maps Iran conflict's next phase.