Winston on the rise? Party leaders react to new 1News poll

He's not normally a fan of them, but Winston Peters may have cause to smile at the latest 1News poll — with NZ First doubling its support in a year to hit double digits.

The 1News Verian poll released tonight shows the coalition retaining a 65-seat majority, but with National down two points to 34% and leader Christopher Luxon on level-pegging with Labour leader Chris Hipkins as the preferred PM.

Luxon declined to engage with the numbers directly — repeatedly saying he did not comment on polls – when asked by 1News.

Asked about the neck-and-neck preferred PM result with Hipkins, Luxon opined only on what he thought would matter most to voters come November.

"Voters will make their decision at the end of the year, but what will matter most to them is who's best at managing the economy."

Peters – whose support has risen steadily from 5% a year ago to 10% today – declined to reveal his election-night party vote target but said his message had not changed.

"We're packing the halls, and it's resonating with ordinary Kiwis — forgotten New Zealanders who are sick and tired of all this globalist stuff," Peters said.

"They want their country to be put first and their interests put first."

He added the chief issue for voters was the cost of living and that "we can't do it with blind ideology. We got to do it the old fashioned, practical way."

The veteran politician credited a change in strategy for the turnaround, saying the party had moved to get ahead of its critics.

"Our change in approach is to get on top of our — what I might call — enemies, who just throw vile, defamatory statements and false accusations out there. We're getting in first and making sure they can't do that."

When pressed on who those enemies were, Peters was dismissive. "All those that go on Facebook — they lie like flatfish, and we're just gonna ignore them."

The NZ First leader suggested the party was part of a global shift. "Our message hasn't changed, but the world's catching up — that's the difference," he said.

"There's a great change going on internationally, and we've been part of it for 30 years."

But Peters' rivals are offering their own explanations for the surge over the past year.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins was less generous in his reading of the NZ First's rise, telling 1News that Peters appeared to be "playing both sides of the field."

"NZ First seems to be trying to pretend that they're not part of the Government that they're currently part of. All of the decisions this Government has taken, which New Zealand voters don't like, they've taken with the blessing of NZ First," he said.

"He's saying that if you vote for him, you're voting to re-elect the current Government — whilst he's trying to pretend to not be part of the current Government."

ACT leader David Seymour said the two parties appealed to different voters, but cautioned against reading too much into the numbers this far out.

"Generally, there's people looking for different things between those two parties," Seymour told 1News. "The race is long — there's nine months to go, and people who are up will be down, people who are down will be up. It's a long way to the end of the line."

Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick was circumspect about her own party's four-point rise in the latest poll, saying voters shouldn't simply watch the polls.

"We are the polls — we have a sense of agency to create the country that all of us deserve," she told 1News.

"We have been really, really proud of the last two years to not only hold this Government to account, but also put out really clear alternatives and solutions for the problems that New Zealanders are facing."

When asked, she took a swipe at Peters' brand of politics, saying Kiwis knew better.

"People are angry, people are upset — people every single day are feeling the cost of greed crisis. What that means is that people are looking for answers.

"I think that New Zealanders know instinctively that those answers are not in more division and attacking migrants or the rainbow community or tangata whenua. They are in coming together and working together to solve our problems."

Hipkins, whose Labour Party shed three points to sit at 32%, also acknowledged the Greens' gains might be a natural consequence of the climate conversation.

"We see that in the weather events. It's natural that people will be looking for environmentally friendly alternatives to the current Government," he said

Meanwhile, Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer pointed to a longer trend as evidence of the party's resilience, despite it sitting on 2%.

"This is double the percentage that we had in 2020 when we were predicted as never coming back," she said.

She also appeared to push back on the suggestion that the party – in the headlines for infighting – was struggling, saying the focus for 2026 was on mobilising supporters.

"If we really want this Government gone, we need to focus on enrolling, and on supporting Te Pāti Māori," Ngarewa-Packer said. "This is really about holding the line – holding the line for our whānau, holding the line for each other."

All four leaders were asked to rate the coalition Government's performance out of 10, and the verdicts could hardly have been more different.

Hipkins pulled no punches: "I think the Government's performance has been abysmal. They haven't tackled the big issues facing New Zealanders. They haven't got a vision or a plan for the future — they've just got blame and excuses."

Pressed for a number, he said: "It would be low single digits."

Swarbrick was similarly withering, saying the Government had done "an utterly poor performance" on the issues that mattered most to New Zealanders.

"They have continued to oversee massive corporate profiteering. They have changed the tax system so that it benefits those at the top. Meanwhile, they have cut funding for our frontline service," she said. "They're doing real long-term damage to our country."

Seymour, by contrast, gave his own Government a five — framing it not as a failing grade but as a marker of progress.

"If you ask me where we were two years ago, I would have struggled to say we're a one. We had a Labour government that really crashed this country.

"To be at five now is halfway to recovery — but we've got a bit more work to do, and we're going to ask Kiwis this year to trust us with our vote to keep doing it."

He did, however, draw a distinction between what the coalition had achieved and what ACT would have liked.

"The Government is cutting waste more than it would without ACT, but not as much as the ACT would like.

"That's why we have a different party — and an option for people who want a smaller, more efficient government to send their message through a party vote for ACT this year."

Peters declined to rate the Government at all. Luxon also declined to put a number on the Government's performance, again telling 1News he was "just very focused on growing the economy" and that New Zealanders would judge the coalition at the end of the year.

He had, however, pushed back on the suggestion that a Labour government would be the alternative, saying their approach of "increasing taxes, increasing debt and lots of wasteful spending" was "just not the answer".

See the full poll results here and the Government performance ratings here

Between February 7 and February 11 2026, 1003 eligible voters were polled by mobile phone (501) and online, using online panels (502). The maximum sampling error is approximately ±3.1%-points at the 95% confidence level. Party support percentages have been rounded up or down to whole numbers, except those less than 4.5%, which are reported to one decimal place. The data has been weighted to align with Stats NZ population counts for age, gender, region, ethnic identification and education level. The sample for mobile phones is selected by random dialling using probability sampling, and the online sample is collected using an online panel. Undecided voters, non-voters and those who refused to answer are excluded from the data on party support. The results are a snapshot in time of party support, and not a prediction.