Written By:
- Date published:
9:45 am, April 17th, 2026 - 48 comments
Categories: chris hipkins, election 2026, labour, polls -
Tags: how change happens
We all have our favourite notions of what a left wing or progressive government should look like. Meanwhile, voters are limited to choosing those that stand, and elections are won on pragmatics. Who gets to govern is determined by swing voters, but also by mainstream and social media coverage. Narratives matter.
There are those who think Chris Hipkins is a problem. But there is a significant risk to rolling a leader when the party is increasing in the polls. 2017 worked because Andrew Little stepped aside voluntarily and Jacinda Ardern was an extraordinary leader waiting in the wings. There’s no guarantee it would work again, who would replace Hipkins? In the absence of extraordinary leaders, parties function from good and competent MPs working as a team within the larger party.
The time for replacing a Labour leader has passed for this election. Party leadership coups can signal instability and incompetence and drop the vote, something Labour is particularly sensitive to historically.
There’s a strong case to be made now to stop slagging off Hipkins and Labour. If we want a change of government, they have to be presented as competent and credible. We can still critique policy and strategy, but the how matters. What we say at work, to friends and family, and on social media affects how people think about voting, and in an election year where it might be a tight race, every vote should matter. No-one wants to vote for a loser, we need to talk up the people who we want to govern next.
Opinion polling for the 2026 New Zealand general election
reminder that,
Single polls are less important than trends. Someone who understands polling needs to look at undecideds and margins of error in individual polls.
NZF is a real problem. The Greens haven't hit their stride yet. The election campaign hasn't started.
Even if the war ends today, there is a long tail to the recovery (recovery won't be a matter of weeks or a handful of months), the left needs to be presenting very strong narratives of resilience for New Zealand.
Labour and Hipkins are doing just fine.
2014 Labour got 25%. Lost.
2017 Labour got 36.9% Government. And we're well on the way to beating that already
2020 Labour got 50%. Government. But that was an big outlier
2023 Labour got 26.9%
2026 Labour are 35-36% and still rising
The risk this year isn't from Labour.
The risk this election is the Greens don't get enough to form the coalition with Labour.
Greens have to maximize their performance and TPM have to get their act's together and stop squabbling with each other and everyone else, and convince the NZ Public they are mature enough, and credible enough, to form a rational Coalition Government with the Greens & Labour. Winston and Seymour will do anything to discredit TPM, from now until the Election on 7th November 2026. It's going to be a Humdinger in the Lead Up to the 2026 Election Day.
The Greens will be fine. That 10–11% looks more like a floor than a ceiling at this point.
The issue isn’t their survival, it’s the composition of the vote. Genuine teal voters exist, but not in numbers large enough to radically change the shape of the electorate, and we also lack the conditions that drove the Teal wave in Australia.
So most additional Green support tends to come off Labour, which doesn’t necessarily change the path to government.
Barring some major event, it's extremely unlikely that the Greens won't be in parliament. The issue then becomes where do they get their votes from. They have their core vote (around 7 – 8%) and the L/G swing vote (the other 3 or 4%). To form a centre left government it doesn't actually matter where that swing vote goes, so long as the people vote, and vote on the left.
To have enough seats to form government Labour needs to get some of the left/right swing vote, and that comes from NZF and National.
If the Greens get more votes and get say 12% or even 15%, most of those extra votes are coming from Labour. That doesn't win us the election (although it's easy to make the case that a centre left government is better with a strong Green presence).
this is an example of how votes move. It's not some generic pool that the Greens can tap into.
I think that’s broadly right, but it’s a bit more constrained than that if NZ First is effectively off the table for Labour.
If NZF isn’t a viable partner, then Labour’s path can't just be “grow the left bloc overall.” It has to be the anchor of a credible government, which probably pushes it toward a more competence-and-stability pitch and trying to win back some of that left/right swing from National or NZF.
In that context, you’re right that a stronger Green result mostly comes at Labour’s expense and doesn’t change the overall numbers. But Labour can’t just chase those votes directly either, because the voters it needs to win back to form a government may be in a different part of the spectrum.
So you end up in a slightly awkward position where Labour holds the centre-left and tries to raid across, while some of the more progressive vote consolidates with the Greens.
The catch is that this only works if voters actually buy it.
Labour has to look both safe enough to trust and different enough to be worth electing. Too much emphasis on safety and it looks like drift. Too much emphasis on change and it risks spooking the voters it needs back.
So it’s not just where the Greens get their votes from. It’s whether Labour can thread that needle at the same time.
Exactly. In response to Ad's comment, the only path to winning the election for Labour is to gain votes from to the right of Labour and from the non-vote. I wanted to point out to Ad that the Greens increasing their vote will affect Labour's vote, it doesn't make sense to say Labour are alright, it's the Greens who need to win the election.
One million missing voters at the last Election and I am guessing most would be from the Lower Socio-Economic Groups who do not vote purely out of apathy and disengagement with Society. Right Wing Voters tend to get off their arse's and get to the Voting Booth.
That might be true, but it’s not that simple.
Political identity isn’t just poor = Labour and rich = National anymore. It’s a lot more fluid than that, especially with parties like NZF in the mix.
Higher turnout can favour the left, but only if those voters actually see something worth turning out for. You can’t assume disengaged voters will automatically break your way.
So the answer isn’t just mobilisation for its own sake, or trashing the right. It’s giving people something to vote for and a reason to believe it will make a difference.
And under MMP, that means building a coalition that reaches beyond your own base, not just turning it out.
I think this is a point a lot of people get wrong or exaggerate. At the last election turnout was circa 78%, so it is about 800k people.
But the big point that always seems to escape consideration is that we have a huge international diaspora (circa 1 million) and of those eligble to vote only 80,000 voted in the last election (link below). It is estimated this was 15% of the enrolled overseas voter population. And as a side point overseas voters tend to be both younger and higher Socio-Economic groups.
SunLive – Preliminary results for the 2023 General Election – The Bay's News First
829,396 to be precise, and the number of people enrolled was 3,688,292.
https://elections.nz/democracy-in-nz/historical-events/2023-general-election/voter-turnout-statistics
Because 94.7% eligible people enrolled, you should include the number of non-enrolled non-voters, and then the number of missing voters increases to just over 1 million.
Agree with this too. The criticism I would make of Labour is that it has a choice between safe centrism and creative, progresssive safety, and they have a history of choosing the former (obv example Ardern's later years).
The wild card this year is the oil crisis. How bad will it get before the election? What will happen politically if we start to have fuel, or even food/goods shortages in the spring? I hope Labour are thinking hard about this because it looks to me like an adaptable approach is particularly needed this year.
At the moment, it would make sense for Labour to speak about electrification as a response to the cost of living crisis as well as making NZ more resilient. Let the Greens reinforce that with stronger policy, and a L/G government would settle on something more mainstream than the Greens' policy, but still useful and in the right direction and that can be built on.
But as you say, what will the voters buy into? Lots of slagging off of Labour going to get worse by the right (Incog has been writing about this).
It’s not even so much that they’re being slagged off. That’s a given in any election cycle.
The harder part is maintaining the discipline and clarity to still look like a viable governing option despite it. That means not just message discipline, but being consistent enough in positioning that voters can actually understand what they’re offering and trust it.
Because once that starts to wobble, the attacks don’t just bounce off: they start to stick. Luxon is learning in real time about what happens when a narrative takes hold and starts hanging around.
There’s a major difference here; where’s the anti-Luxon narrative coming from, mainly, and who’s been manufacturing & magnifying the anti-Luxon sentiments?
The Left would rather have a contest of ideas but the Right insists on having a contest of feels & vibes, and negative ones for that. The Left could and perhaps should stick to more constructive/positive messaging such as fuel/energy security & resilience, economic resilience (related to previous point and also to AI), and infrastructure resilience (related to previous point and climate change), for example. The typical bread & butter stuff you’d expect from the (progressive) Left but framed in a new way – the oil crisis is an excellent pivot for changing the narrative whilst pushing more or less the same topics & solutions. I see this as a no-brainer.
The Greens have a solid 10% base vote. The Left can only win if the Greens poll well.**
NZF is the problem, not the Greens, because the polls show that NZF are currently taking some Labour votes.
**The 2020 "Covid" election was a freak, and even then the Greens got 8%.
It's entirely possible for a L/G coalition with GP on 6%. The Greens don't have to poll well for the left to win. It would be bad if their vote did drop but it's not necessary for a win unless the Greens can pick up the non-vote.
I'm not sure the Greens have a solid 10%. Election results suggest otherwise. They do well in years where they don't fuck up, but in the years where they do blunder or Labour are aon a roll, their vote drops
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Party_of_Aotearoa_New_Zealand#Electoral_performance
Weka-In the last 5 elections the Greens have averaged 9.5%.
For Labour to scrape in to form a government with the Greens on 6 and TPM on 2, Labour would have to get 41-42%.
That is a tall order.
Problem was Labour didn't capitalise on the Landslide and sat on their hands with NO Policy.
They hadn't expected it, and when it happened they were like a timid youngster handling a great big chainsaw for the first time.
All the changes they could have made with a bit more resolution, and what did they actually do? Ponced around for a couple of years trying to decide whether or how to merge TVNZ and RNZ. Floated the Three Waters idea, then sat back and watched as opponents successfully framed it as an asset-grab; their communication was pathetically bad. Didn't even handle the later Covid business very well, and ended up simply p***ing off Auckland.
"because the polls show that NZF are currently taking some Labour votes."
What do you reckon is the nature or politics of those voters?
My hunch is economic nationalists. From my point of view, Labour are vulnerable in areas such as the Free Trade Agreement with India. (What's free about something that has dairy ruled out at the start?)
Luxon's other folly, the trade deal, seems like there are more positives for India than NZ. Lot's of big negatives for local workers with the on-going suppression of wages and conditions.
TBF there may be a few Labour voters that aren't down with some aspects of the culture wars too.
There should be little mystery in the rise of NZ First. They're the only party that has talked about the cost of living by saying they will reign in our out of control gentailers, or harnesses widespread disquiet at unchecked migration. They have a broad coalition and are gaining strength in the provinces (See Taine Randall).
The Greens by contrast are way, way underperforming. They're invisible and are utterly irrelevant to the concerns of the civitas. The government is bungling an oil crisis and the opportunity for an associated climate debate around resilience has found the Green party missing in action. I get so damn sick of it's whiny loser supporters who continually make excuses for the Green parties indolence, failure to perform and lack of work ethic. The plight and potential consequences of New Zealand's Greens depoliticization since the early 2000s is perfectly captured by this piece from Vlad Vexler and Rupert Read –
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2026-04-14/without-pluralism-within-the-climate-movement-we-risk-handing-the-future-to-the-far-right/
"…a curious spectacle in which, as the world burns, activists devote themselves to enforcing inward-looking ideological conformity rather than building broad coalitions required for political change…"
If NZ First is thriving on right wing exclusionist populism and disaster nationalism, we desperately need a vigorous Green party offering a program of inclusive left populism and life boat socialism in a broad Green coalition.
With a Labour party recruited largely from the complacent lanyard class, still completely captured by zombie neoliberalism and clinging to an ever extreme centre with timid policy offerings and with a leader whom hardly gets the heart racing, the Greens ought to be doing as at least as well as Polanski's UK Greens.
I don’t particularly love the Greens’ current political strategy either, but I think you’re being a bit unfair to them and letting NZ First off too lightly.
Yes, NZF has tapped into real frustration around cost of living, a lack of "common sense" solutions, and migration. But it’s not as if that sentiment just existed independently and the left somehow failed to notice it. It’s been actively shaped, amplified, and channelled in a particular direction.
NZF isn’t just reflecting public mood, it’s helping construct it.
And that matters, because it means the problem isn’t simply “the Greens aren’t speaking to people’s concerns.” It’s that they’re competing in an environment where those concerns are already being framed in ways that favour NZF’s politics.
You can criticise the Greens for not cutting through, but that’s a different argument from saying the ground they’re standing on is neutral. Could they try to do the same? Sure. But they’d be doing it on terrain that’s already been shaped against them, and without the same level of strategic discipline NZF has shown in exploiting it.
If we start legitimising that style of politics, we risk repeating a mistake others have made.
Part of what happened in the US and MAGA wasn’t just some spontaneous eruption of public feeling. A lot of it was cultivated and amplified into something that looked organic. In other words: astroturfed.
Treating that as a neutral reflection of voter sentiment gave it a legitimacy it probably didn’t deserve.
Winston and NZF has hardly done anything except for the Gold Card, he is a fair weather sailor who flows with the wind. His main concern is the Covid Enquiry and the difference between a Man and a Women – still seeking clarification – wanting a Select Committee to determine it.
NZ1’s polling is artificially high. Probably made up of disaffected national lite voters who want somewhere else to go. Once Labour starts coming out with solid, well thought out, and budgeted policy, after the budget, they will climb even higher, at the expense of NZ1.
I don't think they'll gain that many from Winston, there is a plenty of Covid lockdown resentment in Auckland and that vote won't go to Labour so long as Hipkin's leads.
The real fun will begin if Winston ends up close to 20% and the govt choices are a coalition with infighting Nat's and Act or a 2 Party coalition with Labour that has a 2-3 seat majority. Winston's many things but I do think he would prefer a nice and tidy two party arrangement than dealing with Nat's back stabbing each other to become leader or PM. I doubt he'd want to find himself in a similar position to 1998.
Its not changing the government as much it is changing the economic and political status quo.
As a people we need to start demanding real change not just replacing one corporate political party government with another and being lied to that it will somehow be better and will confront our most serious structural crises.
Its just not Hipkins its all the others who support the current direction.
" Chris Hipkins told Labour's Auckland Regional Conference that Labour is on the side of the wealthy. The revolution doesn't start here "
" all signs point to the Labour Party pursuing the same centrist course that significantly contributed to its defeat last time round. Given the conservative politics of leader Chris Hipkins its not surprising that Labour is preparing to go down this path to nowhere again. That Hipkins is getting away with it only serves to highlight that no-one in Labour is proposing anything different. Even Hipkins admitting that a Labour Government would not 'necessarily' roll back all the 'reforms' of the present government has not met with any protest "
" Chris Hipkins and Labour have not read the room. At a time of economic crisis and with a Government ideologically fixated with its austerity agenda regardless, the mood of the country is for a real change, not a mere tinkering with the policy settings.
"But instead of embracing the 'populist' left approach of people like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jeremy Corbyn, Hipkins has chosen to defend an unpopular status quo that is failing ordinary people. Incredibly, he thinks this is the recipe for election success. Perhaps he thinks he can repeat the election success of the Australian Labor Party, even though that had more to with the rejection of the hard right politics of 'Trumpism' rather than support for centrism "
Our left has spent recent years timidly managing a broken status quo. If there is one lesson from Zohran Mamdani’s New York victory – and from the broader resurgence of socialist politics abroad – it’s that boldness can be a virtue for parties that claim to represent ordinary people.
" To catch up with the zeitgeist, New Zealand’s Labour and Green parties will need to break out of their cautious mindset and actually fight for transformative change. That means making our next political battles about the “big guys” – the profiteering banks, the supermarket duopoly, the housing speculators – and about delivering tangible gains to the public. It means having the courage to propose taxing wealth, curbing corporate excess, and rebuilding a fairer economy, even if it upsets a few CEOs or lobbyists. In short, it means offering a clear alternative to “broken markets” and business-as-usual
https://nzagainstthecurrent.blogspot.com/2025/05/chris-hipkins-rich-are-people-too.html
https://nzagainstthecurrent.blogspot.com/2025/11/time-for-new-zealand-left-to-get-with.html
Just such silly flimsy commentary.
This is New Zealand not New York you idiot.
This is the most isolated developed country in the world, with low savings and low financial or economic resilience, going through its second massive crisis in 5 years.
Hipkins has taken the Labour Party back up to the high 30s and we still have 7 months to go.
Do you even know what Labour's tax policy is?
" This is New Zealand not New York you idiot.
Regardless of where anyone lives the issues are the same for working people everywhere and in similar western countries. Its how your country's political leaders and their parties respond. There is always an excuse why something can't be done.
As for denigrating me as an idiot that is beneath contempt coming from someone who posts on this blog that expects other writers to comply with the rules around how they write and respond even when they don't agree with the theme of their post. In other words reverting to personal insults in responding to contributions to your post shows everyone here how you handle other peoples opinions you don't agree with. Labeling a person as stupid, dumb, or ignorant is an attempt to devalue his or her ideas and erase them intellectually.
Read Res Publica’s reply on how to respond as a professional without using insults.
I wrote the post, not Ad.
Yes of course Weka. My error. Thanks for clarifying that Ad is a he. I always wondered. Makes sense now.
I don't Ad and I don't know what sex Ad is, that was a casual assumption on my part. Lots of people think I'm a bloke online too 😉
I have mixed feelings about TS' position on it's ok to call someone stupid so long as you make a political argument. In this case Ad's argument is kind of weak, but he did make two arguments, and what we like is for people to take those arguments and pull them apart if they can. It tests the argument and improves left wing thinking.
Yeah… maybe don't look at any of my comments on Eugene Doyle's posts
"
HipkinsLuxon has taken the Labour Party back up to the high 30s …"FIFY
I mean, sure. But unless you’re talking about something outside democratic politics entirely, the left still has to win and hold power through the ballot box.
That means whatever programme you’re advocating, however necessary or justified, has to operate within some real constraints: democratic norms, public consent, and what voters are actually prepared to support.
It’s not just a question of how bold you can be in theory, it’s whether you can build a durable majority for it in practice.
It’s not impossible. Labour managed it for nearly two decades from the 1930s. But even then, Savage and Fraser had to walk a careful line, balancing more radical currents within the movement against political reality.
And that’s the tension. You can argue Labour should be more ambition (and I’d probably agree) but if you move too far ahead of where voters are, you don’t get transformative change.
You just lose.
do you think that was the driver for Ardern taking a conservative position in her later years? That there had been too much radical change already (albeit from crisis rather than policy)
I think so, at least in part.
By the end, there was obviously a real backlash building around Covid, mandates, and reforms like Three Waters, and Ardern seems by temperament to have been quite cautious anyway. So I suspect part of it was reading the public mood and not wanting to get too far ahead of it.
The other possible factor, of course, is caucus discipline and internal limits. We can’t really know from the outside how much that mattered, but I’d be surprised if it was irrelevant.
All the parties lack good solid policies to get NZ Moving.
This COC Government has been intent on attacking Maaoridom and the Lower Socio-Economic Sectors-while giving $3 Billion in Tax Cuts to Landlords ???
Taking GST off Fresh Fruit & Vegetables would be a good start, TPM Policy !!!
Incorrect !!!
This was never TPM policy, AFAIK, so I challenge you to provide a link, which you never do here.
It was Labour’s policy for the previous election in 2023.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/election-2023/495698/labour-promises-to-remove-gst-from-fruit-and-vegetables-boost-working-for-families
Don't know if it was in formal policy, nor what TPM's current policy is, but they were talking in 2023 about removing GST from all food.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/494612/removing-gst-from-food-radical-or-wrecking-ball
Yes, it was formal policy to remove GST from all kai (food).
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23888008/te-pati-maori_tax-policy.pdf
I have heard the Leader of TMP discussing in the Press, I have not read their manifesto lately so I will follow up, I have heard TMP discussing it recently.
Either way it's a rubbish policy. Adds compliance costs and part of the reduction will be swallowed up by increased margins to the Supermarkets and the rich who spend way more on food benefit the most .
Real change sits with Tax system reform not tinkering with it, a chunky tax free threshold paid for in the upper tax brackets would be a good start that actually leaves money in everyone on a low incomes pocket would be a great start I'd be look at the first 10-15K tax free for starters paid for by small upward adjustments at the upper tax bands.
BS, it works in Australia & the UK, simple to implement just change the settings on the products at the cash register/computer setting, we live in the modern world now CWood.
Should be first 20k Tax Free, $400 a week goes no where these days unless you are Christopher Luxon who only spends $60 per week on groceries ???
The polls indicate two contradictory things, the public want to move away from a National led government, but not towards a Labour-Green one yet.
Labour with a 36-29% lead.
NZF on 15%.
Probable re-election of the C of C (52-45% lead), but fear in the National Party caucus of so many lost seats.
A security first aspect, as in 2020, but a possible indication the public would accept a 2017 type negotiation.
The Green Party has to step up – as per stating a Labour-Green plan for economic security and resilience (look governance competent).
https://www.thepost.co.nz/politics/360987658/new-poll-shows-nz-first-continues-surge-national-still-under-30
Sadly I cant reply to Rakuraku on mobile but evidence is clear. In the UK when VAT was removed off food only around 30% of the VAT reduction was passed on at consumeelr level the rest went to increased margin in the supply chain and in both Aus and the UK there have been long running legal cases around what does and doesnt consitute fresh food. Its a garbage policy that sounds good.
If you spent $115 on fresh food a week now, and gst was removed from it evidence suggests that rather than paying $100 for the same items you would be paying $110 so only $5 per week saving… its tinkering a tax free threshold offers actual help. A tax free first $10000 would equate to $20 per week extra for example.
Or do you beleive our supermarket duopoloy would pass thecreduction om entirely? If so I have a nice bridge for sale if you’re keen.
In short, nothing ever trickles the whole way down.