Whose gone if National slumps?

Tuesday, 21 April 2026

ANALYSIS: Senior National Party MPs are staring down the barrel of an uncertain future on current poll results.

Sunday night’s TVNZ/Verian poll showed National on 30%, with no path to power, while Thursday’s Talbot Mills poll had the centre right party on 29%.

The Post has crunched the numbers to see which MPs would be in and out on current results and if the party dipped a little lower in support.

These assumptions are based on all National MPs with a majority of 3000 votes or less losing their electorate seats. As polling suggests National’s vote has dropped by eight points, a 3000-vote majority should definitely not be considered “safe” any more.

The impacted electorate MPs in this scenario would be Hutt South’s Chris Bishop, Wairarapa’s Mike Butterick, Mt Roskill’s Carlos Cheung, and Banks Peninsula’s Vanessa Weenink. We also assume that newly chosen candidate Katie Milne does not retain Maureen Pugh’s seat of West Coast Tasman - although given the Labour candidate who ran Pugh close is also not standing this time it is hard to predict this seat.

What would happen if National got 30%

It would not be happy days for the party if it got 30% of the voter turnout.

It is the same result recorded for National in the latest TVNZ poll and if it occurred on election day the party would have 37 MPs in total - 33 electorate MPs and four on the list.

Based on National’s 2023 list that would see Speaker of the House Gerry Brownlee turfed out of Parliament due to the fact recently appointed minister Mike Butterick would lose his seat on our assumptions. There is a chance that despite not being a minister Brownlee retains a higher spot on the list.

MPs on the list below that are former minister Melissa Lee, Nancy Lu and Vanessa Weenink - all of whom would be out of Parliament.

Despite losing his Hutt South seat, Bishop would return to Parliament via the list.

What if it went lower?

If more National voters turned their back on the party it would start to get dire for high flying MPs quickly.

On 29% the party would have one less list MP meaning Mike Butterick would not be back in Parliament and just senior ministers Nicola Willis, Paul Goldsmith and Chris Bishop would be clinging to their seats through the list.

It would be danger territory for senior National MPs if the party’s polling got to 28% or lower.

Under our assumptions Bishop, who has played a pivotal role in the Government and has been the subject of National Party leadership speculation, would be out of Parliament on 28% - again assuming he does not manage to win his Hutt South seat.

27%: the doomsday number

If only 27% of voters backed the centre-right party under our assumptions it would have no list MPs meaning senior ministers Paul Goldsmith and deputy leader of the National Party Nicola Willis would be gone.

It would have 33 seats in total which is the same as the party collected in the 2020 election, but in this scenario there would be significantly more electorate MPs, reducing the number on the list.