Coalition back on track in polling after months behind Labour

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Labour leader Chris Hipkins. Photo / Mark Mitchell

The coalition is back in front in the Taxpayers’ Union-Curia Poll after several polls placed it behind the Opposition.

The change is mostly due to Labour falling 4.3 points to 29.8% after a difficult week in which Leader Chris Hipkins was forced to distance himself from the anti-Police comments of Green MP Tamatha Paul.

Those remarks did not harm the Greens, however, who rose 1 point to 11%. Te Pāti Māori fell 2.2 points to 4.3%.

On the Government side, the big winners were minor parties New Zealand First, up 2.3 points to 7.4% and Act, up 2.3 points to 10%. The poll was taken a week after NZ First leader Winston Peters tore strips of Labour in his State of the Nation speech and launched a renewed attack on all things “woke”.

National was down slightly, falling 0.1 points to 33.5%.

The combined tally of seats for the centre-right would be 64 on those numbers, compared to 57 for the centre-left. On these numbers, National and Act could form a government with the support of NZ First.

Voters are sending a slightly conflicting message in the two measures of personal popularity.

In the preferred Prime Minister poll, National leader Christopher Luxon is up 1.6 points to 21.9%, overtaking Hipkins, who fell 1.8 points to 18.9%.

Peters rose a massive 4.2 points to 12.8% – the first time he has polled over 8%. Act leader David Seymour was also up, rising 3 points to 8%. Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick was on 4.2%, falling -0.6 points.

Luxon’s net favourability was -6%, lower than Hipkins’, which was 2%, meaning Hipkins is still more liked by this measure than Luxon. Luxon is both less liked and more disliked than Hipkins in this poll.

However, the direction of this measure moved in the same direction as the preferred Prime Minister poll, with Hipkins falling 2 points and Luxon rising 4 points.

The coalition has been punished in most polls conducted in 2025, most of which have shown it losing office. This is the second recent poll to show a reversal, the first, an RNZ-Reid Research Poll, was published earlier this week.

The sample size was 1000 and the poll was conducted over landlines, mobile phones and online from March 29 to April 1. It has a maximum margin of error of +/- 3.1%.

Thomas Coughlan is deputy political editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018.