Labour leader Chris Hipkins is anticipating a "very, very close" election, following the release of a new poll showing another hit to National's numbers.
According to the latest RNZ-Reid Research poll, if an election were held today, the coalition would narrowly return to Government with 61 seats.
National sat at 28.7% with 36 seats, a fall of 2.1 points. It is the party's lowest rating in the poll since Luxon became leader.
Labour was the biggest party represented on 34% – 43 seats. That's despite a fall of 1.6 points.
NZ First sat at 11.5% (15 seats), its third consecutive rise in the Reid poll, the Greens at 10.3% (13 seats), and ACT at 7.8% (10 seats). Opportunity crept closer to the 5% threshold, registering 4.7%. Te Pāti Māori sat at 2.3%, with the poll anticipating it would pick up three electorate seats.
It was another poor result for National, who stood on 29% in June's 1News Verian poll.
Reacting to the poll, Hipkins told Breakfast that November's election would be tightly contested.
"If you look at the trend of all the polls together, it's telling us two things at the moment. One is that Labour is relatively consistently the biggest party of the parties that are in these polls.
"But the second is that the election is going to be very, very close, and anything can happen."
He said National's slump in the polls was because the party had made "big promises" but had "gone backwards".
"They said that everything would be solved if you elected a National Government. The cost of living would be fixed, unemployment would be fixed, the economy would grow.
"The road building program, that they said, 'Oh, you know, we're going to build all these big fancy roads. Everyone's going to have a new motorway'. They basically cancelled more than half of them last week.
"So I think Kiwis have looked at them and said, 'You didn't give us what you said you were going to give us'."
He said a Government where National was on 28% of seats would be "very unstable", with smaller parties like NZ First having more influence.
"That would lead to all sorts of unexpected outcomes. It would mean that Winston Peters would be calling the shots far more.
"Those on permanent residence could lose their right to vote. The India Free Trade Agreement could get vetoed. All sorts of things could happen if that were to eventuate."
Asked if Labour has spoken with Opportunity as their numbers crept up, Hipkins said it was still "very early days".
"We do see that the small party numbers move around a lot as you head towards an election campaign.
"I think they've still got a very, very steep hill ahead of them to climb to get over the 5% threshold in an actual election campaign."
He said that voters who ticked Opportunity on the ballot were also taking a "risk".
"One is that they could find that if the Opportunities Party get into Parliament, they support a National Government.
"But the second risk is that they won't get to the threshold, and that vote will be wasted, and that potentially helps the parties on the other side of the aisle get back into Government again."
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