Cam Slater at The Good Oil writes
The latest Roy Morgan poll is out, covering July 28 to August 24, 2025, and it’s a doozy. Based on a sample of 873 electors quizzed by phone on their party vote if an election were held today, the numbers show a swing back towards the left. It’s as if New Zealanders are suffering from collective amnesia, with more and more favouring the gaslighting, non-delivery and eye-watering debt piled up by the last Labour-led Government. You know, the one that left us in a hole we’re still digging ourselves out of.
Here are the key results, including the shifts since the last Roy Morgan poll. This isn’t pretty for the current coalition.
- The Labour-Greens-Māori Party opposition bloc now sits at 50 per cent support, up four percentage points.
- The National-led Government (National, ACT, NZ First) is down to 46.5 per cent, a drop of 4.5 percentage points.
- National itself is at 29 per cent, down two percentage points.
- ACT holds steady at 10.5 per cent, no change.
- NZ First is at seven per cent, down 2.5 percentage points.
- Labour has climbed to 34 per cent, up three percentage points, their highest since September 2024.
- Greens are at 13.5 per cent, up two percentage points.
- Māori Party is at 2.5 per cent, down one percentage point.
- Minor parties outside parliament are at 3.5 per cent, up 0.5 percentage points, with The Opportunities Party (TOP) jumping to three per cent, up two percentage points and others at 0.5 per cent, down 1.5 percentage points.
In terms of seats in a 120-seat parliament, this translates to the opposition snagging 62 seats (up seven from the last election), while the government coalition would get 58 (down 10). Specifically, Labour would grab 42 seats (up eight), Greens 17 (up two), Maori Party three (down three), National 36 (down 13), ACT 13 (up two), and NZ First 9 (up one).
Government confidence? It’s flatlined at 83.5, with 37 per cent saying the country’s heading in the right direction (unchanged) and 53.5 per cent reckoning it’s going wrong (also unchanged). There’s a stark age and gender divide too. Younger women (18 to 49) are overwhelmingly backing the opposition at 76.5 per cent, while older women (50-plus) favour the government at 60.5 per cent. Similar splits for men, with the young leaning left and the old right.
This poll screams just how out of touch the National Party is right now, smugly thinking everything’s going swimmingly. Sure, if your metric for success is losing the election next year, then, yeah, mission accomplished. But a number starting with a two for National? That’s very bad news, plain and simple. Of course, they’ll brush it off with the usual ‘Oh, it’s just Roy Morgan.’ Fair enough, polls vary. But there’s no denying the negative sentiment swirling around National at the moment – and it all starts and ends with Christopher Luxon.
Luxon comes across as gauche, inauthentic and arrogant. He acts like he’s all that and a bag of chips, but his TikTok antics are turning people off faster than you can say ‘cringe’. And it’s not just me saying it. This criticism isn’t unwarranted and it’s a cry for the party to lift their game and be better. Still, I think it’s fair to say the Luxon experiment is coming to its natural end.
There are problems with the left’s path to victory, mind you. For Labour to actually win, they’d need to team up with the lunatics and economic vandals of the Green Party, plus the ethnofascists and racists of Te Pāti Māori to scrape across the line. That’s a coalition of chaos waiting to happen and Kiwis might wake up from their amnesia before it’s too late. But if National doesn’t sort itself out, and quick, that nightmare could become reality. Wake up, lads. The clock’s ticking.
