National, ACT and NZ First have moved closer to securing a coalition for a second term in power without needing Opportunity's help, the latest 1News Verian poll suggests.
Tonight’s results show National is down on last week, but Labour is stuck on 27%, and Christopher Luxon is pulling clear as preferred prime minister
Luxon’s party drops three points to 29% in this poll, however its current coalition partners moved up - ACT up one to a term high of 12%, and NZ First up two to 10%.
Opportunity, which National has ruled out working with, dropped one to 6%.
Crunch time: New 1News Verian poll reveals two paths to power - Watch on TVNZ+
National has dropped back from last week but Labour has failed to gain. (Source: 1News)
Labour was unchanged on 27% despite a week of damaging headlines on gangs, including the resignation of its Tāmaki Makaurau candidate. The result marks five polls in a row stuck in the upper-20s for Chris Hipkins’ party, which was as high as 37% in April.
The Greens, whose candidates were at the centre of the gang-meeting controversy alongside Te Pāti Māori’s, slipped one point to 15%.
Luxon also pulled clear of Hipkins as preferred prime minister, rising four points to 24%.
The Labour leader edged up one point to 18%.
Luxon brushed off National’s drop, speaking to 1News today. “The only poll that matters is November 7th, and the message is very simple to New Zealanders - don’t put it at risk."
Coalition maths gets complicated
On these figures, the right coalition bloc has 61 seats, which could be sufficient to govern depending on the outcome in Māori electorates. If Te Pāti Māori falls to one seat, Parliament would be composed of 121 MPs, making 61 enough.
But, under another seat calculation, if Te Pāti Māori holds four seats and Te Tai Tokerau MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi keeps her seat, the total in Parliament goes to 125 MPs.
The right bloc coalition would then be two short of the 63 needed, and Opportunity’s eight MPs would again hold the balance of power as with previous polls this campaign.
National’s own low support causes further complexity because it could win more electorates than its party vote entitles it to, again leading to extra seats in Parliament.
ACT’s received their strongest result in a long time. (Source: 1News)
On today’s poll, National earns 34 seats, but it won 44 electorates at the last election, and any electorate it wins beyond 34 is a bonus seat – part of the overhang.
ACT leader David Seymour put his party’s term-high result down to its policies. “We’ve laid out positive, practical solutions, and we’re grateful for the support,” he told 1News.
NZ First leader Winston Peters, whose party recorded the biggest week-to-week rise of any in the poll, dismissed the result. “We don’t believe in these polls. We pack halls all round this country, day in, day out, and those are the major polls for us,” he said.
What's Labour’s position?
Hipkins told 1News the gangs controversy had not cut through with voters. “It’s not something that’s coming through at all in the conversations we’re having with voters."
He also hinted at messaging that the polls wouldn't reflect the situation on the ground.
“This is going to be a very close election. That’s been clear for some time now, and it’s all going to come down to turnout," Hipkins said.
"The groundswell of support that we are seeing on the ground suggests that we're going to pick up a number of seats from the National Party.
"It suggests that our party vote is going to be higher than what the polls are indicating. We're going to be campaigning hard for the next 11 days to make sure that happens."
Labour campaign chairperson Kieran McAnulty had predicted in response to last week's 1News poll that today's results would show “a correction”. National did fall back from 32%, but McAnulty's party gained none of that support – remaining stubbornly stuck on 27%.
The coalition maths complexity continues here, with Labour’s only path to power depending on both Te Pāti Māori’s electorates and Opportunity.
In one scenario, Labour, the Greens, Te Pāti Māori and Kapa-Kingi would hold 56 seats in a 125-seat Parliament. With Opportunity’s eight MPs, that would reach 64, one more than the 63 needed to govern.
In the second scenario, if Te Pāti Māori falls to one seat, the left bloc drops to 52 in a 121-seat Parliament. Opportunity’s support would then take it to only 60.
Te Pāti Māori’s party vote fell to 0.1% in the latest poll.
Luxon pulls ahead as preferred leader
Among the party leaders in the preferred prime minister stakes, Luxon again goes up this week – rising four points to 24%. Labour’s Hipkins is up one point to 18%.
Luxon’s 24% as preferred prime minister is his best result of the campaign, with him and Hipkins tied on 20% only two weeks ago. The six-point gap between the two is notably the widest in 1News' polling this year. In April, Hipkins led Luxon 19% to 16%.
The Labour leader told 1News he read nothing into the widening gap.
Winston Peters was on 7%, down one point, and Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick held steady on 7%. David Seymour rose one point to 6%, and Opportunity's Qiulae Wong slipped one point to 1%.
Wong said the party was confident of clearing the 5% threshold.
“Our average is well over the 5%,” she said. "The big question is how many of our amazing MPs we'll be able to have representating Opportunity in Parliament."
Fewer voters were also undecided on who should lead the country. The share who did not know who they wanted as prime minister fell to 24%, down from 36% in August.
But those same voters were less settled on who they would be giving their party vote to.
Some 11% were undecided or refused to say which party they would vote for, up one point from last week. That figure has stayed between 10% and 14% since June.
See the full poll results and methodology
Party vote results to one decimal place were: National 28.9%, Labour 27.3%, Greens 14.8%, ACT 12.4%, NZ First 10.0%, Opportunity 6.3% and Te Pāti Māori 0.1%.
Between October 21 and October 25 2026, 1000 eligible voters were polled by mobile phone (500) and online using online panels (500). 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.
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