Could Winston change his mind about Chris Hipkins?
Sunday, 1 February 2026
Vernon Small is a former journalist and ex Labour Government advisor.
OPINION: On the surface, political polls since Christmas have been spinning pretty much the same yarn as in 2025.
The left and right “blocs” are neck and neck – just a seat or two between them. While Labour has a meaningful edge over National, the ruling coalition looks better placed to win.
Rising support for NZ First is weakening National and strengthening Winston Peters’ arm in end-of-year government-forming negotiations.
The bloc-by-bloc analysis is fair enough. Public statements from party leaders have indicated no other options, although Labour is looking askance at a formal deal with Te Pāti Māori.
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There is no way the Greens or Te Pāti Māori will opt for a National-led Government any more than ACT would install Labour over National. Furthermore, the animosity between Labour and NZ First, and more specifically Peters’ ruling out of a deal with Labour while Chris Hipkins is its leader, puts NZ First firmly in the right bloc.
But with the right (National and ACT) shrinking, the left stable or rising and NZ First on the up, these gradual trends are easing the door ajar to at a third option – a Labour-NZ First deal.
At this stage it is more politico-tea-leaf-reading than solid prediction and it would clearly require a major change of rhetoric from Peters. But the numbers are intriguing and the economic factors driving further potential changes tell an interesting story.
Current support levels show how much the electoral pendulum has swung since the 2023 election.
Based on the latest RNZ-Reid Research poll, the parties of the left command about 47.5% and the right around 49%, delivering a narrow 61-59 seat majority for the incumbents.
Labour and NZ First combined are just under 45%.
Peters’ stance on Hipkins is limiting his own negotiating strength. His ability to wring more wins from National and ACT would clearly be greater if he had an alternative route to power – a tactic he has used successfully in the past.
But there are other factors that could be in play.
One is the simplicity of government formation; the other is the strength and stability of that government.
In the first MMP election in 1996 one factor that swung Peters to National was the simplicity of a two-party deal versus a Labour-Alliance-NZ First arrangement – especially since Peters baulked at what he read as equivocal support from Jim Anderton’s Alliance. In 2017 he was happy to do a deal with Labour but left Labour to talk separately with the Greens.
In politics two can be a coalition, but three’s a crowd. A two-party deal is cleaner, involves fewer friction points and less sharing of the baubles of office.
On the current numbers a choice between National and Labour for Peters is a choice between a narrow – perhaps only one seat - majority with National and ACT (leaving the government the proverbial heartbeat away from losing power) or a 55 seat minority government with Labour but with another 16 seats out to the left that are vanishingly unlikely to pull down the government and install National.
If the numbers continue to trend towards Labour and NZ First those calculations become more compelling – and a tactical flight to Peters by centrists National and Labour voters is always a possibility closer to the election.
If there comes a point where Labour and NZ First could command a majority, then the alarm bells will ring on the ninth floor of the Beehive. Because there is always that nagging doubt; would Peters swallow his rhetoric and do a deal with Labour to cut out Te Pāti Māori and the Greens “in the interests of the country”?
And if you look inside the qualitative surveys, it is NZ First voters who are chaffing at the current government’s direction - in the RNZ-Reid Research survey, a net 9.9% were disaffected with the direction of the Government, compared with a net positive 65.8% among National supporters and a net positive 28.2% for ACT voters.
Of course, while Labour and NZ First have many things in common, including a more interventionist economic agenda, number-shuffling doesn’t bring their big picture pitches any closer.
Peters’ Trumpo-Faragian stances on immigration and trade (both salient in his opposition to the India trade deal, which is driving deep divisions with National ministers) as well as his attacks on the WHO – and his common political cause with vaccine sceptics - make him very problematic for Labour, and vice versa.
However, the economic environment may be peeling NZ First further away from National. The signals are already there in the RNZ poll’s “government direction” numbers, and Peters has publicly criticised the pace of economic growth.
While Prime Minister Christopher Luxon talks up the economic recovery, there are signs here, as around the world, that households and consumers are not spending as freely as you might expect in the face of an improving economy. In other words, as former president Joe Biden and the Democrats found in the US, the macro-numbers may be positive, but they don’t do the trick if workers and shoppers aren’t feeling it.
Making matters worse, global inflation seems to be on the march again, and the annual 3.1% here (and 3.8% in Australia reported this week) is an early warning of mortgage rate increases ahead.
The markets expect - to the point of certainty – that the major central banks will soon raise interest rates. In New Zealand the market is pricing cash rate increases late this year, with at least one likely before the November 7 election. Traders are toying with the possibility of more, perhaps starting in May.
It’s early days in 2026, and growth is the Government's big electoral hope.
But the trends in the polls and the economy are not the Government’s friend.
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