Can Christopher Luxon credibly lead a Government from 30%?

Wednesday, 17 December 2025

Christopher Luxon’s National Party are at just 30% in our poll.

OPINION: At first blush, our new poll is fantastic news for Labour.

The Post/Freshwater Strategy poll with Infrastructure New Zealand has the party at 38% in the party vote, eight points clear of National on 30%.

But as ever in MMP the gap between the two parties can obscure how close things really are. Some of Labour’s gain has come from parties to its left, meaning the two “blocs” of parties are still very close.

If you assume Te Pāti Māori regain at least one electorate seat and there is no overhang, the left has a very narrow 61-seat majority. If Te Pāti Māori leaves Parliament altogether the three parties of the current coalition still lead the Government, with National on 39 seats, NZ First on 12, and ACT on 10. National might be down, but the relative strength of its coalition partners could save it.

It is the closeness of the blocs the Government can cling to as it goes into Christmas. The economy is likely to be somewhat better next year than it was this year, and growth numbers out on Thursday might show that the last few months we were actually pottering along quite well. Surely this means that one-seat majority for the left can be overturned?

But focusing solely on blocs ignores the reality of New Zealand political culture, which is less divorced from the bad old days of First Past the Post than one might think.

New Zealand has had 10 terms under MMP and for every one of them bar 2017-2020 the party with the largest share of the vote has led the Government. That one caused a real backlash - and Labour won 37% then, not 30%.

National has never led a Government without being the largest party in Parliament and it has only led two Governments from under 40% - the current one, which voters don’t seem to love, and the first ever MMP government, which fell apart in acrimony.

Is it really credible that National will lead a new Government from 30% while Labour edges up on 40%?

This is what worries many National MPs: How exactly will the public react if the polling looks like the only route to Government for National is through a far stronger ACT and NZ First party?

Will the soft National voters in the centre who remember the days of John Key dominating his coalition partners be willing to grin and bear it as NZ First and ACT inevitably ask for even more concessions than they managed last time? Or will the boring predictability of a Labour Party flirting with the 40s look like the safest bet for a stable Government, even if it perhaps has a bit of Green tinge to it?

National strategists are clearly keen to change this. The last few months have seen more activity on social media and in the policy space for National as National, not National as part the Government.

These big swings have clearly taken National towards the centre - indeed, they appear to be bolstering Helen Clark’s legacy far more than Key’s. First there was the KiwiSaver boost policy, essentially doubling both employee and employer contributions. Then this week Finance Minister Nicola Willis used Working For Families - once called “communism by stealth” by Key - as her key point of differentiation from the right-wing Taxpayers’ Union, saying she refused to consider the “human misery” that would come from abolishing it. These swings have the advantage of appealing to both soft Labour voters and some NZ First voters.

The question that remains for the party is not whether it needs to get a lot higher than 30%. The question is who can do it.

Freshwater Strategy interviewed n=1031 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 Poll is funded by Infrastructure NZ.