The Post/Freshwater Strategy Poll: The Coalition clings, but National is bleeding seats

Wednesday, 15 October 2025

ANALYSIS: The latest The Post/Freshwater Strategy Poll with Infrastructure NZ has good news for the Coalition, bad news for the National Party and great news for NZ First.

First the good news for the Coalition: with a combined total of 51% of the vote, it would be returned to the Treasury benches. The bad for National: National is down at 31% and it is outpolled by Labour at 34%, a 7 point drop since the election. This is barely in the territory of viability. And the great news for Wnston Peters: NZ First is up to 11%.

The Greens and ACT are both on 9%, Te Pāti Māori on 3%.

While this should come as some relief for the Coalition as it shows it back in Government, it should not be viewed as such. A couple of points in the other direction and it would lose the election to a first term Labour, Greens, Te Pāti Māori Coalition. They are up against a denuded and weak Labour Party but one which leader Chris Hipkins has managed to hold together and keep pretty focused on the prize.

When it comes to leadership, the picture is no better. In a two way preferred prime minister race, Christopher Luxon is behind Chris Hipkins by a margin of 36% to 45%.

For the PM to be lagging the leader of a party that only got a bit over a quarter of the vote in the last election is unprecedented. Mind you, Luxon is wont to say that he is doing things differently.

In this poll, the ACT Party has given a better showing than other published polls, which explains the majority. Together, the two centre-right parties are on 40%. Or, put another way, together ACT and NZ First have two-thirds of the vote of National.

Put slightly differently again, they would command almost half the jobs in cabinet.

It is true that polls move around and the 1 News Kantar Poll had National on a generous 34%. But it is understood that the National Party’s internal polling have the party much closer to the 30% level - 31% on a good week and in the 20’s on a bad one. The Taxpayers’ Union Curia Research Poll had National on 29% last week. Curia also does the Natioal Party’s polling, so no surprises there.

These numbers should be of extreme concern to the National Party caucus. If National stays around the 31% level or goes lower, it means a loss of about 11 seats in the house. The number goes from 49 seats to 38. It would bleed seats.

There are a whole pile of close electorates that would almost certainly fall to Labour (or someone else) in the swing.

These include seats such as Mt Roskill, Banks Peninsula and possibly East Coast, West Coast, New Lynn. Rangitikei is now much more marginal now that it includes hold Levin. Others like Hamilton East, Hutt South and Wairarapa look more marginal. Even seats like Northcote and Whanganui become more dicey. There are others.

Currently National holds 43 electorates. So on those numbers it would have to lose six of those seats before anyone on its list can get into Parliament.

Any winnable places will be reserved for high-ranking list-only Cabinet members such as Nicola Willis, Paul Goldsmith and probably Chris Bishop in the Hutt. And even then it could be tight.

Depending on the make up of the rest of the list and any attempts from the party to use it as a way to bring fresh or more diverse talent into Parliament, that’s a whole pile of current MPs losing their jobs.

And if National electorate MPs were to outperform the swing then the number of list MPs coming in would be extremely low.

More worrying for the National Party, a bunch of the names in those seats are among the next generation of MPs who will in time be ministers and leaders within the party.

Luxon would remain atop the Government and would still be prime minister, but preside over a seriously and generationally weakened National Party with fewer colleagues and in a governing arrangement over which he had even less control.

Luxon’s personal approval ratings continue to be extremely challenged. His net favourability rating (favourability minus unfavourability) is minus 24% compared with Hipkins who is on zero.

Both leaders had record falls in this latest poll compared to the one run in June.

On any reasonable reading of the numbers, Luxon appears to be a drag on the National Party’s vote.

For Labour and Greens (and Te Pāti Māori) they fall short of the line in this poll, but they will be happy all things being considered. Labour appears across multiple polls to have grown and stabilised its vote at around the 34% mark, while the strong branding of the Greens appears impervious to sunshine, rain or resignation.

But the biggest winner is NZ First. Now polling at 11% Winston Peters is looking well on track to strengthen his hand come the next election.

* The Post/Freshwater Strategy poll with Infrastructure NZ interviewed n=1,050 eligible voters in New Zealand, aged 18+ online, between 3-8 October 2025. The margin of error is +/- 3%. Data are weighted to be representative of New Zealand voters.

Correction: A previous version said the Greens and ACT were both on 7%. They are both on 9%. Updated 6.38am 15 October 2025.