Chris Hipkins, Christopher Luxon neck and neck in preferred Prime Minister rankings

Author: Julia Gabel,
Publish Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2026, 2:44pm

Labour leader Chris Hipkins has inched ahead of Christopher Luxon as the preferred Prime Minister in the latest Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Vote 2026

Labour leader Chris Hipkins has inched above Christopher Luxon as the preferred Prime Minister in the latest Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll, despite the same poll indicating the coalition Government would be elected were an election held today.

Hipkins is up 2.1 percentage points to 19.2% based on June polling, just overtaking Luxon, who crept up 0.3 points to 19.1%.

NZ First leader Winston Peters is down one point to 11.8%. Act leader David Seymour is on 5.1%, down 1.2 points, and Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick is on 4.6%, a drop of 3.5 points.

Labour remains the largest party in Taxpayers’ Union-Curia polling, although dropping 0.7 points to 31.5%. National is up 0.4 points to 30.5%. The Greens have dropped 1.1 points to 10.4% while, Act is down 0.9 points to 6.9%.

New Zealand First is down 0.6 points to 10.8%, while Te Pāti Māori gained 0.3 points to 3.4%.

The Opportunity Party is up a marginal 0.1 points to 3.3%.

Both the Government and Opposition bloc have retained the same number of projected seats as they have had in other recent Taxpayers’ Union-Curia (TPU) polling.

The right bloc of National, Act and New Zealand First would remain on 62 seats – as they have had in the past two TPU polls. The left bloc of Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori also remain at 58.

On these numbers, the coalition Government would still be able to form a Government.

Less pessimism

There has been a 7-point decrease in the portion of people who think New Zealand is heading in the wrong direction, which now sits at 45.5%.

Yet this is still higher than those who think the country is heading in the right direction, which increased 5.5% to 39.2%.

The net country direction is -6.3% (+12.5 points), which the Taxpayers’ Union reports as the highest figure since November 2025.

Today’s results come after several policy-heavy few weeks, where both Labour and National released solar power plans, the Greens released an election tax package and clean water policy, NZ First revealed plans to campaign to give only citizens the right to vote, and Act unveiled plans to campaign on a new three strikes regime for burglary.

Earlier today, National updated its Roads of National Significance pipeline, casting uncertainty on the delivery timeframe for several of its key roading projects but insisting they would still be completed.

Transport Minister Chris Bishop insisted the Government remained committed to its roading projects, but accepted National’s 2023 election promises were “very ambitious”.

This poll – of 1000 adults – was conducted by phone between July 1 and 5. It was weighted to the overall population and has a maximum margin of error of +/- 3.1%.

Julia Gabel is a Wellington-based political reporter. She joined the Herald in 2020 and has most recently focused on data journalism.