National Party president says horror poll result ‘disappointing’
Tuesday, 10 March 2026
Education Minister Erica Stanford and National Party president Sylvia Wood said on Tuesday morning that the party’s 28.4% result in the latest public poll is not good enough.
Wood said the result was disappointing, but she fully backed Christopher Luxon as leader.
Wood was on her way into Parliament ahead of National’s caucus meeting on Tuesday morning ‒ the first since the horror poll from the Taxpayers’ Union/Curia on Friday.
She said Luxon was doing a “fantastic job as leader” but she always wanted the polling to be better. Asked if it was disappointing to be polling this low at this point in the electoral cycle, Wood said “it is”.
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Education Minister Erica Stanford said: “We've got to do a lot better as a party”.
“You know, we've got to respect what voters are telling us, they're telling us they want us to be better,” she said.
“I think we have to work harder. We're in a really tough spot at the moment. We're climbing our way out of a really difficult situation post-Covid, and people want us to be focused on them.“
She said last week had been a poor week for the party.
“I would say it's a bad week for the National Party and for our caucus, and we've got to do better, all of us together, pull together and remember that our focus is on the New Zealand people, and in my case, raising student achievement.”
Other National MPs put on a brave face in response to the poll, uniformly telling media that they backed Luxon as leader.
Greg Fleming, from the potentially marginal Auckland seat of Maungakiekie, said he was not worried about losing his job.
“I’m pretty solid actually. I was out doing street corner meetings on the weekend and overwhelmingly the comments people are making to me is: ‘stay the course, you guys are doing good work, and keep on it’.”
Cameron Brewer said the caucus was unified despite what would be “difficult times” for any Government.
“Well, the caucus is unified. We respect the guy. We're tight, we're disciplined, and you can see that with all our answers in the last 72 hours,” Brewer said.
“He's unified the caucus, you know, something that we didn't see for a number of years. And he's just come in out of the private sector, into the public sector to do the best he can, and we think he's terrific,” Brewer said.
He said he agreed with Finance Minister Nicola Willis that the poll was not what they wanted to see on election day.
Rima Nakhle said National had “inherited a mess” and she was behind Luxon “123%”.
“We are focused on fixing the basics and building the future, and Christopher Luxon is an amazing leader.”
She walked into the caucus room carrying a sign reading “Luxon is amazing”.
Veteran National MP and speaker Gerry Brownlee said the sooner New Zealand got away from “personality politics” the better.