A long summer ahead for National after a cold Christmas poll
Thursday, 18 December 2025
ANALYSIS: The end-of-year The Post/Freshwater Strategy Poll with Infrastructure New Zealand is further bad news for the National Party, worrying news for the Coalition, and unabashedly good news for Labour.
This will send Chris Hipkins into the Christmas break with a spring in his step, while for Christopher Luxon it highlights the very large challenge ahead in the new year. Luxon’s personal ratings have risen somewhat — which will be pleasing for National strategists — but they remain very low.
Also concerning for the Government is its continued slide on key economic indicators.
The high cost of living environment that propelled the Coalition into government remains the number one issue, although it has lessened in importance since October. Healthcare and hospitals remain the second most important issue to voters.
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The overall trend on these issues is what must be most concerning. Since the election, the Government has fallen a staggering 30 points on “reducing taxation and government spending”, leaving it with no net advantage over a Labour opposition in this area. On national debt, it still holds an advantage, but that has shrunk from a net 32 points to net 9. Relieving cost of living pressures is now a significant net negative. It is also now at -13 on creating jobs.
The downward trend has occurred across virtually every policy area, but it is most surprising in the economic space — long considered a key strength of the National Party. And these are big drops. It isn’t that Labour now holds an advantage across many of these issues; rather, it is that National’s - and the Government’s - often locked-in advantage on some of these areas has been smashed.
Headline popularity numbers bounce around and matter for both momentum and morale. But trends on key issues reveal the underlying mood that parties watch most closely and then try to understand through qualitative focus group work.
Understanding this will be key. Given Labour’s shellacking in 2023 and the Government’s ambitious reform agenda, many senior National ministers and caucus MPs cannot quite account for why the polling remains so poor.
While Luxon’s net approval has lifted from -24 to -11, Chris Hipkins’ net approval also rose, to +7. Luxon’s preferred prime minister rating climbed to 39%, but he still trails Hipkins at 45%.
For a first-term PM this is historically low.
This is not the first poll to have Labour on 38%, and it is one of many that have had National at or about 30%. In this poll, those numbers appear to be firming.
Labour ends the year on 38%, a clear 8 points ahead of the National Party, which is languishing on 30%. New Zealand First sits on 9%, ACT on 8%, the Green Party on 8%, and Te Pāti Māori on 2%. Four percent of those polled said “other”. Once again, New Zealand First is polling among the strongest of the smaller parties.
Translated into seats in Parliament — assuming each current party with an electorate seat wins at least one MP and there is no overhang (that is, the vote is fully proportional) — this would deliver 61 seats to the left bloc in a 120-seat Parliament.
That would leave Labour with 48 seats, National with 38, New Zealand First with 11, ACT and the Green Party with 10 each, and Te Pāti Māori with three seats.
In other words, National would lose 11 MPs from Parliament, while Labour would gain 14 seats.
It would mean a narrow Labour-led Government were these results replicated on election day. But a shift of just a couple of points either way could change the bloc.
What will — and should — be of greater concern to the National Party is a party vote hovering around the 30% mark. Even if that number were to move slightly and the current Coalition were retained, it would represent a far weaker centre-right party. If these numbers were to hold, it could even encourage drift away from National as voters move towards a government dominated to a much greater degree by a single party.
That, of course, understates the perennial and continued influence of Winston Peters’ New Zealand First. He is polling strongly, and if any government is reliant on him, his influence will remain far greater than his numbers alone would suggest.
Note: Freshwater Strategy interviewed n=1,031 eligible voters in New Zealand, aged 18+ online, between 5-10 December 2025. Margin of Error +/- 3%. Data are weighted to be representative of New Zealand voters. The Post/Freshwater Strategy poll is funded by Infrastructure NZ to encourage debate about issues that are important to the future of New Zealand