Election 2026: Michael Wood likely to return to Parliament - poll

Former Labour MP Michael Wood is likely on his way back to Parliament according to new polling.

A poll by Community Engagement commissioned by Wood’s campaign and obtained by the Herald showed Wood had about 47% support in the Mt Roskill electorate.

His nearest challenger, National’s Carlos Cheung was on 29.9%. The Greens’ Anjana Iyer was distant third on 4.2% followed by Act’s candidate Yang Qu who was on 3.6%. Opportunity’s Jamie Attenborough was on 2.8%. Twelve and a half per cent of voters told the poll they were unsure who to vote for.

The poll sampled 520 people aged 18 and over in Mt Roskill using landline and phone numbers. The effective sample size following weighting is 274 meaning the effective margin of error is +/-5.9%. The polling period was October 1-12. Electorates are notoriously difficult to poll.

Wood represented the electorate since winning a byelection in 2016, but was knocked out of Parliament last election by Cheung.

Wood announced his intention to return to Parliament and is running an electorate-only campaign, meaning if he loses the seat, he will not enter Parliament on the list.

Labour is winning the party vote in the electorate, according to the poll. It has 36.7% support compared to 21.6% for National, 16.7% for the Greens, 5.7% for NZ First, 7.2% for Act, 5.4% for Opportunity and 5.4% for Te Pāti Māori.

At the last election, National won 43.1% of the party vote compared to Labour’s 29.8%.

Although regarded as a safe Labour seat, Labour began losing the party vote to National in 2014. Since then, Labour has only won the party vote once, in 2020, during a massive nationwide swing to Labour.