Labour drops to 25.9% in new poll, Opportunity below 5%

Author: Adam Pearse,
Publish Date: Mon, 7 Sep 2026, 9:46am

Labour leader Chris Hipkins. Photo / Anna Heath

The Labour Party has dropped to its lowest level of support in a Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll since July 2024 with just 25.9%.

It comes alongside Opportunity dipping below the 5% threshold required to enter Parliament without winning an electorate.

Labour’s slide follows a persistent attack campaign from National regarding potential taxes a Labour-led coalition could implement despite the Labour leader’s insistence the party will only introduce a targeted capital gains tax.

This month’s Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll, which surveyed 1000 between September 1-3, had National with the largest share of support but still below 30%, dropping two percentage points from last month’s poll to 29%.

Labour had dropped 1.9 points to 25.9%, the party’s worst return in this poll since July 2024.

The Green Party had received a significant boost of 3.8 points to reach 13.9%. Act had also jumped 3.2 points to 10.5%. New Zealand First had dropped by 0.7 points to 8.4% while Te Pāti Māori had gained 0.5 points to 2%.

Opportunity, which had surpassed 5% in several recent mainstream polls, had fallen back below that threshold to 4.5%, a drop of 1.6 points.

Those numbers translated to National losing one seat in the House to 39 seats when compared to last month’s poll. Labour had also lost one seat to 35.

The Green Party had gained five to reach 18 seats, Act up five to 14, NZ First down one to 11 and Te Pāti Māori up one to three seats.

Given Opportunity had not met the 5% threshold, the eight seats the party was attributed in last month’s poll were reduced to zero.

That seat allocation meant the current coalition parties had 64 seats between them, up three from last month and enough to hold a majority in the House.

The “Opposition bloc”, a combination of Labour, the Greens Te Pāti Māori and Opportunity, had dropped three seats to 56.

In the preferred Prime Minister rankings, both the National and Labour leaders had fallen with Christopher Luxon dropping two points to 21.2% but still ahead of Chris Hipkins, who had dropped 2.9 points to 16.9%.

Adam Pearse is the Deputy Political Editor and part of the NZ Herald’s Press Gallery team based at Parliament in Wellington. He has worked for NZME since 2018, reporting for the Northern Advocate in Whangārei and the Herald in Auckland.