The numbers say Luxon wins well. They also say he’s in deep trouble

Saturday, 18 April 2026

Luke Malpass is the Post’s politics, business and economics editor.

OPINION: Another Friday and another round of fevered speculation about the future of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. If this does, in fact, end up being a coup it is the most slow-motion one ever.

While there is clear unhappiness within a significant part of the National Party about the Prime Minister, his performance, and the party’s position, the current situation for Luxon is still fundamentally unchanged from where it was a few weeks ago.

But where it currently is is not good either for the current or would-be Prime Minister.

The latest Talbot Mills corporate poll showed a strong centre-right majority of 54%. That includes National on 29%, NZ First on 15% and ACT on 8%. Talbot Mills is also the Labour Party’s pollster.

It also showed a reasonably strong result for Labour at 36%. The Greens fell to 7% and Te Pāti Māori is languishing on 2%. On these numbers, the only path to power for Labour is with NZ First — and most probably NZ First alone.

In essence, the fuel crisis has been good for the current coalition — but it has not been good for the National Party or Christopher Luxon. It has been startlingly good for NZ First, and even pretty good for ACT, who were possibly in line to be hit the most from a credible government response to the crisis, which by its nature focuses on the large parties.

But there were a few other questions in the Talbot Mills poll that were not especially political and were extremely stark. About two-thirds of people think that petrol will reach $5 per litre, for example.

The number of people who think the economy will worsen has jumped from 29% to 51% in two months, while those who think it will be better has dropped from 31% to 19%. Twenty-five per cent think it will be much the same.

The right track/wrong track measure has widened to 49% wrong track compared with 39% right track.

As for the Government’s response to the fuel crisis, 48% approve and 31% disapprove. The temporary Working for Families relief garnered 63% support.

Meanwhile, an absolutely enormous majority think the war with Iran is going to affect New Zealand.

Ninety-three per cent think it will affect the economy, 88% think it will hit international travel plans, 77% think it will hit their KiwiSaver, investments or savings, 76% think it will have a big or moderate impact on their family, and 73% said it would affect domestic travel plans.

All of this suggests that the public understanding of the gravity of the situation is sound — and that the Government, Nicola Willis and Shane Jones especially, have done a very good job of making sure people know that it will almost certainly be big and bad for their future.

That has not translated into any tangible benefit for the National Party — but it has delivered a significant uplift for NZ First.

For Luxon the Prime Minister, this is not bad news at all. On current numbers, his Government would be returned with an increased majority.

“If there was an election held today, this coalition Government would be reinstated,” Luxon said more than once on Friday — while also acknowledging that the National Party he leads had work to do.

For Christopher Luxon as National Party leader, it would be a disaster.

Besides the large reduction in National MPs, and considering the engorged whip hand Peters would hold with 15% of the party vote, a dig into the numbers shows just how bad it is.

In 2023, the National Party won more than six times the number of votes NZ First did; now that is down to double. If those numbers were reflected in Government, the National Party would barely have a majority of ministers in Cabinet.

Whereas National currently has 14 to six ministers inside Cabinet, on the Talbot Mills numbers that would be more like 11 to nine if proportionality were maintained. If the National Party’s polling were to go down any further — even if it meant returning to government — it could get into government but lose its majority around the Cabinet table.

That is something that should be very carefully considered.

Numbers in Cabinet obviously don’t mean everything. Stable government is created by much more than just numbers voting around the Cabinet table, and in New Zealand’s coalitions much of the wrangling over contentious issues, over which there is internal disagreement, is sorted out prior to Cabinet itself.

But having a situation where the prime minister’s party cannot necessarily carry the day in Cabinet, or could be voted down on any given issue, would make government considerably less stable and massively weaken any prime minister in that situation.

And Peters might be in a position to bargain for an over-the-odds number of Cabinet ministers if he is able to credibly form a government with either Labour or National.

The point is that the situation the National Party finds itself in has all manner of downstream consequences, even in the event of being re-elected. Quite aside from losing a swag of MPs, on those numbers almost every list MP could be gone — which includes front bench ministers like Nicola Willis, Chris Bishop, Paul Goldsmith and Speaker of the House Gerry Brownlee.

What everyone is now looking at is the trend. And that appears to be that National has settled into polling in the high 20s and low 30s. The question is whether that is locked in, goes back up a little, or heads further down into the 20s.

The other big problem is that if this polling — or something like it — is repeated elsewhere, it sets up two fronts for National to fight on. NZ First is overwhelmingly winning voters off National, and National also needs to win more voters back from Labour.

There is little doubt that some sort of circuit-breaker is needed. It is not clear what that will be or could be at this point.

So that is why it is so bad for Christopher Luxon.

But this is also not good news for Chris Hipkins. While Labour is still tracking well and his personal popularity remains above or around that of the Prime Minister, these numbers suggest there is no left-of-centre Government without Winston Peters — not even close.

That is obviously a position Hipkins does not wish to find himself in. This result on election day would see the combined Labour-Green vote at 43%.

That is not within cooee of forming government, even with Te Pāti Māori. The bigger and more structural problem now for Labour is the fuel crisis. In times of crisis, the opposition becomes far less relevant as the population turns to those in power who can actually make decisions. Government voices are amplified and opposition ones sidelined.

The conventional wisdom buzzing around the parliamentary precinct is that if the fuel crisis is relatively short and seen as well handled, it will be a positive for the Government. But if it runs longer and there are some crunchy shortages, it will be negative for the Government because it will be blamed regardless.

This, however, seems unlikely. The public clearly knows it is going to be bad, and also knows that there is little the New Zealand Government can do about it. And so far the Government’s moves have been pretty solid. It was always the nature of this crisis and there are limited options to boost fuel stocks, but there has been some creativity in trying to make deals.

It isn’t at all clear that Hipkins’ Labour has the juice to be able to take advantage of the politics if a more extended fuel shortage were to come about.

So now we have a situation — if this polling holds — where both Chrises are highly likely to be beholden to Peters and NZ First after polling day. And where, as things stand, neither of them appears likely to be able to get anywhere near enough votes for that not to be the case.

There are months to go before the election — and a possible fuel crunch in between. But the iron laws of arithmetic always govern politics. And at the moment, the sums are not adding up.