Voters reject Luxon, but National has decided we’re stuck with him

Thursday, 12 March 2026

Janet Wilson is a regular opinion contributor and a freelance journalist who has also worked in communications, including with the National Party at the 2020 election.

OPINION: If last week’s political narrative was all about the prime minister’s incoherent inability to define New Zealand’s position on the Middle East, then this week was all about the caucus’ unconditional support of its leader, marked by a flurry of adjectives.

Behind all the grandiose descriptors National’s MPs used for Christopher Luxon as they traipsed into Tuesday’s caucus meeting – “wonderful”, “amazing”, “great”, “awesome” – they have for the moment set their course, if not until the election, then at least until the next few rounds of polls are released.

It’s easy to dismiss one poll that has the party below 30% but it becomes much harder if others reinforce National’s slide into a pattern. And even if subsequent polls have the party hovering back to between 30% - 34%, MPs will celebrate those mediocre numbers because the caucus has formed a Faustian pact with the leader.

MPs know that they’ve been saddled with a muddled middle-manager who on the Great Prime Minister Scale would be lucky to be a 3/10 but, right now, they’re collectively afflicted by the disease, the Ghost of Elections Past.

Read more:

• Luxon under fire: majority of voters want National leader out

• Christopher Luxon faces crunch week as Iran crisis continues

• National Party president says horror poll result ‘disappointing’

All too many of them wear the scars of losing not two but three leaders in 2020 and the subsequent 25.6% drubbing National received at the polls. There’s simply no appetite for any of the party’s front bench to sacrifice their future now.

What’s more, even if the polls trend consistently into 20% territory, Luxon’s cocksureness means that he won’t make it easy by doing “the right thing” and stepping down, as Monday morning’s media round proved.

It’s tempting to attribute this speculation to just a media beat-up but the appearance of National Party president Sylvia Wood in Wellington on Tuesday to publicly back Luxon belies that.

Last week’s Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll represents a 10.4-point drop for National from its 2023 election results. As a National Party friend commented this week, it isn’t anger that people feel toward the Government; “it’s something quieter and heavier; disappointment”.

“The kind you feel when someone promised to do better and simply didn’t. Anger can fade quickly. Disappointment lingers.”

And that disappointment easily becomes entrenched in the middle of a war which is leading to wild swings in the markets and the oil price tipping US$110 a barrel.

If Monday morning encapsulated vigorous denial, then the post-Cabinet press conference was a chance to remind the electorate that an economic recovery was in train ahead of the real crisis, complete with Treasury figures showing the economy grew 1.7% in 2025 and was projected to grow 3% in 2026 and 27.

This meant Finance Minister Nicola Willis could ride shotgun with Luxon, which seemed sensible after his previous week’s incomprehensible “I can’t make myself clearer” effort.

Willis dominated for two-thirds of the 45 minutes, but when Luxon finally spoke he tried to make a virtue out of his bumbled ramblings.

He wasn’t a career politician, (“I’m not going to have the perfect soundbite”), he declared, but he knew how to get the best out of a team and “get the right ministers on the right assignments”.

With oil prices expected to rise to nearly $4 a litre in the coming weeks and food prices set to do the same, voters are increasingly rejecting Luxon’s leadership, but National has decided we’re stuck with him. At least until the election.

But there’s another reason why senior leaders wouldn’t have contemplated this now; National’s coalition agreement with Winston Peters and NZ First.

In an end-of-year interview, and in the wake of the last leadership fracas, Winston spoke of how “unwise” it would be to have a spill. He had signed an agreement with one person he said, “and you’d expect people who were behind that person at the time of shaking hands would respect that”.

But Peters has altogether more nefarious reasons as to why he wants the status quo; because in an election year with an electorate facing a global crisis, with voters broadly deciding against Luxon, increasing numbers are pinning their hopes on Winston.

While the prime minister dropped only one point in Curia’s preferred prime minister stakes, he was down a whopping 14 points from the previous month in The Post/Freshwater Strategy’s latest poll.

After years of suffering junior partner disease and being roundly ejected from Parliament, Winston and NZ First appear to have finally found the cure: partner with a major party beleaguered with a shaky leader, ride roughshod over him during your first term to show who’s boss and hey presto - you’re re-elected for another term, and back bigger than ever.

For National the risks of keeping the status quo have already begun to emerge in the polling trends. If it continues with no identifiable plan, it faces a hollowing out of its vote come November, with far fewer MPs.

It stands to emerge after the election as a much smaller party with stronger, more demanding coalition partners. Less a political dog in 2027, more its tail.